Maya was lying on top of the bed on Saturday while her friend Annie Coates sat at the white desk in the corner of the room with a pencil and notebook. Downstairs, they could hear Annie’s parents banging around in the kitchen and smell chicken wafting up from the grill outside, since the door to the patio stood open so Mr. Coates could come in and out without bothering to open it.
“Tell me everything you know about him,” Annie said, poised to make a list.
Maya was so glad to have found Annie. She’d never had a friend like her. She’d only been in Silver Springs for three months, but it felt as if they’d known each other forever. “That’s just it. I don’t know anything! I haven’t met one single person who knows less about their dad than I do.”
“Because he died before you were born. You never got to meet him.”
Maya frowned. “It’s not only that. My mother doesn’t like to talk about him for some reason. She acts weird whenever I bring him up.”
Annie wrote something in the notebook she had out. “How weird?”
Maya pictured her mother’s face, how tense it grew whenever Maya asked about her father. “That’s hard to explain. Worried or something.”
Annie looked up. “Maybe she misses him. Maybe it makes her sad to remember him. My mom always cries when she talks about my grandmother, who died last year.”
Sad wasn’t the impression Maya got, but she didn’t have a better explanation. “I guess. I just wish she’d tell me a little more about him.”
“When was the last time you asked?”
Maya brushed the crumbs from the cookies they’d eaten earlier off Annie’s comforter. “When we were packing up and leaving Eric.”
“She might’ve thought you were too young to hear about the motorcycle crash. My parents won’t talk about smashed heads or dying people, either. Not in front of me. They say it’s too gruesome.”
“How old do I have to be to hear about my own father?” Maya rolled over and shoved a pillow beneath her head as she stared up at the ceiling. “In two months I’ll be thirteen! That’s old enough to hear about motorcycle crashes.”
“True.” Annie blew a bubble with the big wad of chewing gum in her mouth and it popped. “Did she say you could talk about it when you’re older?”
Maya shook her head.
Annie pulled the remains of an even bigger bubble off her face. “What did she say?”
“Nothing, really. He was a wonderful man, and I look just like him.”
“That’s good!”
Maya lifted her head. “What’s good about it?”
Annie shrugged. “She said he was nice. That’s better than saying he was mean.”
“But get this—when I asked her what his last name was, she couldn’t remember it!”
Annie dropped her pencil. “No way!”
“Yes way! How can she be too sad to talk about him if she doesn’t even remember his last name?”
Annie bent to pick up the pencil, which had rolled onto the floor. “Do you know his first name?”
“Madsen.”
“I’ve never heard of anyone by that name.”
“I think that’s what it is. When I asked, she said ‘Mad...’ and then she stopped and said ‘...sen’ really fast.”
Annie bit her lip. “She might be embarrassed for having a baby when she wasn’t married and all that.”
“I know. And when she was so young. She has one of those dangly things you get at graduation in her scrapbook that says she graduated from high school the same year I was born.”
“She never went to college?”
“No.” Everyone who saw her mother assumed she was twenty-four or twenty-five, not thirty. Sometimes people asked if they were sisters, which made Jada squirm. Saying they were barely eighteen years apart made whoever was asking clamp their mouth shut and lift their chin, as if he or she suddenly smelled something stinky.
“I don’t see how we’re ever going to find out more about your father if she won’t tell you anything.”
“That’s why we’re trying to come up with ideas, remember?”
Annie blew another bubble, which made a soft poof as it broke. “I hate to tell you this, but I don’t even see a place to start.”
“We aren’t very good detectives if we give up that easily.”
“Then...what are we going to do?”
“My mom had to show my birth certificate to get me into school.”
“Which means...”
“I saw it.”
“Why is that any big deal?”
“Because a birth certificate says when and where you were born. It also says who your parents are.”
Annie jumped to her feet. “Did it have your dad’s name?”
“No. And my mother used Brooks as her last name, so that didn’t tell me anything, either.”
“Her last name is Brooks now.”
“It’s always been Brooks, except when she was married to Eric.”
“Then I still don’t get it,” Annie said, growing exasperated.
“My birth certificate said I was born here. That means my father had to have been alive close to that time and living here, too. It takes...you know—” she lowered her voice to a whisper so that there would be no danger of Annie’s older brother hearing them in the next room “—s-e-x between a man and a woman to have a baby.”
Annie giggled. “I can’t even imagine letting a boy put his thing in me.”
Maya shuddered at the prospect. “Me, either. But it can’t be all bad if everyone does it, and my mother must’ve done it with my dad or I wouldn’t be here.”
“If your mother was still in high school when she got pregnant, maybe he was, too.”
“That’s what I’m thinking.”
“Well, if your dad was in high school when your mom got pregnant, he was probably living with his family. Do you think they could still be around? His parents at least?”
“I wish, but my mom told me they moved away.”
“Did she say where they went?”
“She said she wasn’t sure.”
Annie pulled out the tie holding her hair back and let it fall as she combed her fingers through it. “Wow. This is going to be hard.”
The thought that she might never know anything more than she did right now was discouraging. Maya wasn’t out to make her mother feel bad about the fact that she didn’t have her father in her life. She’d once had a schoolteacher pull her aside to tell her she had a very nice stepfather and should be grateful for him. But Maya hadn’t been complaining about Eric when she wrote that paper about her father—she just wanted to fill in the blanks. Even those kids who didn’t have any contact with their father had usually met him—or at least seen a picture. Maya knew almost nothing! “It’ll be easier now that I’m living here.”
“In what way?” Annie asked.
“We know he was probably close to my mom’s age. And we know he was living here when she got pregnant, which would be nine months before I was born. I say we go to the library.”
“How will that help?”
“The motorcycle wreck that killed him should’ve been reported in the paper. I tried to find something about it online, but it said old newspapers were put on micro...something at the library.”
“Good! We’ll find out what that means, because you’re right. Wrecks and deaths and murders and stuff are usually in the paper, especially here, because we don’t have a lot of other news.”
“If that doesn’t work, maybe there’s a way to learn who was living here the year I was born,” Maya said. “A list or something. His name is weird, like you said, so if we look through all the school yearbooks from that time, we might find him. There can’t be two Madsens.”
Annie’s eyes flew wide. “Of course! You’re so smart! Even if we can’t find any high school yearbooks at the library, we can ask at the high school. The secretary or someone else probably keeps them. Did your mother go to Albany or McGregor?”
“The colors of her graduation tassel were red and white, so...”
“The Bulldogs. That’s McGregor. We’ve narrowed it down some already.”
“Annie! Maya! Neil! Dinner’s ready!” Annie’s mother called from downstairs.
Maya heard Annie’s brother’s door open and rolled off the bed. “Do you think we’ll find anything?”
“Of course I do. All we needed was a start, and now we’ve got that,” she said and lifted her hand for a high five.
It was so anticlimactic to learn Jada was in town and then have the rest of the month go by without a single sighting or confrontation. Maddox almost laughed at himself for ever having considered moving. He would’ve given up a good job for nothing. A decent living arrangement, too. Because he avoided stopping in town whenever possible and mainly just went back and forth between the orchard and the school, he’d been spending a lot of evenings playing chess with Uriah. At first, he’d done it because he couldn’t bring himself to say no to someone who was so obviously lonely, especially when he was bored himself and had no good reason to refuse. But it was getting to the point where he looked forward to the challenge Uriah posed. The old man wasn’t easy to beat. He still had a sharp mind, but that was what made Maddox feel sorry for him the most. His body was slowing down, could no longer keep up with all that had once been so easy for him, which had to evoke the worst kind of frustration. It had to be sad to lose the people you loved, too. Maddox always felt bad when he saw Uriah’s gaze linger on the photograph that graced his wife’s piano—their wedding picture. And he was still curious about Uriah’s son. The man never talked about him.
“Your move,” Uriah said.
“Yeah, I know,” Maddox grumbled. He’d let Uriah split his king and queen with a knight, so he had no choice except to move his king out of check, which would sacrifice his queen. Maddox had battled back from a deficit before, but he wasn’t seeing a clear way out this time.
Although...he still had both rooks. Maybe he could manage to bring one of his pawns across the board and get his queen back. That would take some maneuvering, but...
After he lost his queen, Maddox captured Uriah’s knight. “Your move.”
“I think I’m going to win this one,” he said.
Maddox scowled at him. “I haven’t given up yet.”
A slight smile curved the old man’s lips—right before he took one of the rooks Maddox was depending on to help save the game. How Maddox hadn’t seen that coming was beyond him. It was so obvious. “Damn.”
Uriah chuckled. “Your mind isn’t on chess this evening. What’s going on?”
“Nothing.”
“It’s still early, only...what, six? You need to get out, do something. It’s a Friday, for God’s sake. The weekend’s here.”
“And what do you think I should do?”
“Go to a movie. Grab dinner with a date. Get a drink. You know, burn off some of that restless energy. You’re too young to be working all the time.”
Maddox finished the soda Uriah had offered him. Uriah had confided that he’d once had an alcohol problem, so he didn’t touch the stuff these days, didn’t even have it in the house. “I’m not working all the time. I’m right here, playing chess with you, aren’t I?”
“Yes, and you’re doing it often enough that I know you’re not doing anything else.”
“That’s okay.” Maddox laid down his king to signify his surrender. “Let’s start another match.”
“No.” Uriah pushed away from the board. “Get out of here.”
“What?”
“You heard me. Go do something fun.”
Maddox had been feeling cooped up, on edge, tense. “I guess I could go to Santa Barbara...”
Uriah waved that idea away with one gnarled hand. “Don’t waste your time with the drive. It’ll cost you a lot more if you need to take an Uber home. Just go down to the Blue Suede Shoe. They have a live band playing on the weekends.”
“And if Jada is there?” They’d spoken a little about Jada, so Uriah knew Maddox wanted to avoid her.
“Let’s face it. You’re going to run into her at some point. You might as well get it over with so you can be comfortable in this town.”
“I’m not convinced I’ll be any more comfortable after. I’m sure she wants me gone.”
“She might not even be there. She’s probably manning the store for her mother until nine. And if I’m wrong? Maybe she’ll feel more comfortable, too, if you clear the air. Let her know you have no ill intent. Tell her your brother won’t be moving here when he gets out on the twentieth. A little reassurance can go a long way.”
Maddox remembered the night he’d driven past her house. He’d wanted to apologize then. He’d decided to give the Brookses some time, but three weeks might be enough. “I’m not convinced she’s ready to hear from me.”
“Then she can say so.”
Letting his breath go in a long sigh, he stood up. “All right. What’s the worst that can happen? They figure out a way to get rid of me like they did before?” he joked, but Uriah didn’t laugh.
“They’d better not even try.”
Maddox smiled at him.
“You’ve grown up since then.” He clapped Maddox on the back. “Let’s just hope they’ll give you the chance to prove it.”
Jada wasn’t at the Blue Suede Shoe. At first, Maddox was relieved. He sat at the bar, had a drink and watched a Dodgers game. As he listened to others talk and laugh, he realized that he was getting lonely here in Silver Springs. Coming to a “new” place, one where the only people he knew, other than Aiyana and her two sons who also worked at New Horizons, didn’t want him around, wasn’t conducive to him making friends.
Still, he was glad he’d come out tonight. Uriah had been right—he’d needed the change of scenery.
Oddly enough, as the night wore on and he kept watching the door, he began to feel more disappointed than relieved. He’d never had a chance to talk to Jada after Atticus was shot, to tell her how broken up he was by it all and how terrible he felt for her brother. While the prospect of confronting her remained as daunting as ever, it was also an opportunity he craved.
So instead of driving home when the game ended, he found himself cruising past Sugar Mama. He didn’t want to go in if Susan was there. But if Jada was alone, and the store wasn’t busy, he figured it would be a good opportunity to speak to her.
He couldn’t see any customers inside the store, but the window didn’t show everything. Movement told him there was someone behind the counter. Was there a second person in back?
He drove around to the alley, hoping to get a better idea of what and whom he might face, and was encouraged when he saw only one vehicle: the Chevy Volt.
That could mean Jada was working alone...
Or had her mother hitched a ride to work?
He figured he might as well find out. It’d be easier to encounter them both for the first time here, while there wasn’t anyone else in the store, than in a crowded restaurant or bar.
He parked down the street, so that he wouldn’t start any tongues wagging with his visit, and ambled down the covered sidewalk. He was grateful that the sun was finally setting. Normally, he loved the long days of summer, but tonight he felt obvious, awkward, out of place. Dusk blurred the lines around him, made him feel as though he didn’t stand out as much as he would otherwise.
When he came close to the sign for Sugar Mama, he stopped and glanced uncertainly into the street to see if anyone was watching him.
There didn’t seem to be, but he turned around, anyway. This was bullshit, he told himself. He was stupid to bother her. Everything had been going along fine. He just needed to keep his distance.
But after only three steps, he stopped again. He wanted to see her. Was that so terrible?
Without allowing himself to think about it again, he took a deep breath, went back and walked into the store.