Page 74 of Winter in Paradise
When he steps back inside the house, he’s surprised to find his mother is still awake. She’s at the kitchen table in her pajamas, with the bag of ashes and her phone in front of her. When she hears the slider, she raises her head.
“I just got a text from Huck,” she says. “He’s going to bring Maia by tomorrow after school.”
“Great,” Baker says. He has no idea if this is great or not, but his mother seems buoyed by the news. “I’m happy to meet Maia tomorrow. But I’m flying back to Houston with Anna and Floyd on Friday.”
Irene nods. “That’s the right thing to do.”
It is the right thing to do, Baker tells himself. No matter how much it feels like just the opposite.
PART THREE
Love City
MAIA
What’s a love child?” Maia asks.
Ayers hits the brakes and they both jolt forward in the seats. She reaches an arm across Maia.
“Sorry, Nut,” Ayers says. “That just surprised me. Why are you asking?” She seems halfway between horrified and amused. This is one thing Maia has noticed about adults: they never feel just one way. Kids, on the other hand, are simpler: they’re angry, they’re sad, they’re bored. When they’re angry, they yell; when they’re sad, they cry; when they’re bored, they act out or play on their phones.
“I overheard someone say it, and I think they were talking about me.”
“Who?” Ayers says. “Who said that?”
Maia doesn’t want to get anyone in trouble. It was Colton Seeley’s dad. He was talking to Bright Whittaker’s father in the parking lot of Gifft Hill and he said something about the “love child of Love City,” and Maia had felt that the words were aimed at her. “Just tell me what it means, please.”
“It means what you’d think it means,” Ayers says. “A child conceived in love.”
“But does it have a negative connotation?” Maia asks.
Ayers laughs. “You know what’s scary? How precocious you are.”
“Tell me.”
“Well,” Ayers says. “I think it’s often used to describe a child whose parents aren’t married. So, way back in the olden days, having children was seen as a biological function to propagate the species. People got married and had children so that mankind survived. Whereas a love child is special. Its only reason for being is love.”
“And so that’s what I am?” Maia asks. “A love child? Because my parents weren’t married?”
“I’ve got news for you, chica. My parents aren’t married, either.”
“They’re not?” Maia says.
“Nope. They’ve been together a long, long time, thirty-five years, but they never got officially married. And guess what? I never think about it. Nobody cares.”
Maia loves that she is still learning new things about Ayers. Ayers is interesting—and Maia’s greatest desire when she grows up is to be interesting as well. She knows that to become interesting, she must read, travel, and learn new things. Maia is pretty much stuck on St. John for the time being, but she does love to read and she watches a fair amount of YouTube, which is how she and Joanie learned to make bath bombs.
“So if you and Mick had a baby, it would be a love child?” Maia asks.
“If Mick and I had a baby, it would be a grave error in judgment,” Ayers says, and she turns into Scoops. “I’m getting the salted peanut butter. What are you getting?”
“Guava,” Maia says. Before she gets out of the truck, she notes that she must be growing up, because she feels two distinct emotions at this moment: She is happy to be getting her favorite ice cream with Ayers. She loves Ayers. And she feels empty—like if someone did surgery and cut her open, they would find nothing inside her but sad, stale air. Her mother is dead.
Maia’s mother, Rosie, is dead. Some days, Maia can’t accept this truth, and so she pretends her mother is on a trip, maybe the trip to the States that Russ was always promising but which never came to fruition. Or, she pretends that Rosie and Russ made it to Anegada, have gotten a beachfront tent at the Anegada Beach Club, and are so taken with the flat white sands, the pink flamingos, and the endless supply of fresh lobster that they have simply decided to stay another week.
Other times, reality is dark and terrifying, like the worst bad dream you can imagine, only you can’t wake yourself up. Rosie is gone forever. Never coming back.
Lots of people offered their support—Huck, obviously, and Ayers. Also Joanie’s parents, especially her mom, Julie. Julie pulled Maia aside to talk to her alone.
