Chapter 33 Absence
January arrives like a door slamming shut.
The holidays end. The decorations come down. Eleanor returns to college, her car packed with leftovers and clean laundry and a new sketchbook I slipped into her bag as a surprise. Caleb goes back to school for his final semester, college acceptance letters pinned to the bulletin board in his room like trophies. Oliver moves into the guest room permanently—Margaret insisted—and begins commuting to his art program's advanced studio sessions three days a week.
And I am still here.
The college brochures on my nightstand have multiplied. I've added schools with strong art programs, schools with journalism programs (in case I want to follow Eleanor's path), schools close to home and schools far away. The options feel endless and impossible, a choose-your-own-adventure book where every page leads somewhere I can't predict.
"Decision paralysis," Oliver calls it. "Classic artist problem. Too many possibilities, not enough certainty."
"How did you choose?" I ask him one afternoon. We're in the pool house studio, me with my new sketchbook, him with a canvas that's slowly becoming a portrait of Sam in his dinosaur pajamas.
"I didn't choose. I just... followed what felt right. Art felt right. The summer program felt right. Coming here felt right." He dabs paint onto the canvas, adding a scale pattern to Sam's imaginary tail. "Maybe you're thinking about it too hard. Maybe the right choice isn't something you figure out. Maybe it's something you feel."
"That's very philosophical."
"I've been hanging out with Eleanor too much. She's rubbing off on me."
I flip open my sketchbook. The first page, with its signatures and its promise, stares back at me. I haven't drawn in it yet. It feels too sacred, too full of possibility. What if my first drawing isn't good enough? What if I ruin it?
"You're doing that thing," Oliver says without looking up from his canvas.
"What thing?"
"The thing where you stare at the blank page like it's going to bite you. You did it at the gallery too, before the opening. You stand there waiting for permission to start."
"I don't need permission."
"Exactly. So start."
I pick up my pencil. The page is white and endless and terrifying. But Oliver is right—I've been waiting for something. A sign. A certainty. A moment when everything clicks into place.
Maybe that moment doesn't exist. Maybe the only way to start is to start.
I draw the first line. Then another. Then another.
An hour later, I have the beginning of something: a girl standing at a crossroads, four paths stretching out before her. One leads to a city skyline. One leads to a quiet house surrounded by trees. One leads to an open road with no visible destination. And one leads back to a house I know intimately—the Sterling mansion, its windows glowing with warm light, its pool turquoise and eternal.
The girl isn't choosing a path. Not yet. She's just standing there, letting herself consider all four.
"That's good," Oliver says, looking over my shoulder. "That's really good."
"It's just a sketch."
"It's not just a sketch. It's a map. A map of where you are right now." He taps the figure at the center. "She's not lost. She's just deciding. There's a difference."
\---
February brings Valentine's Day and Sophie's first school dance.
She is, predictably, a menace about it. The dance is for first and second graders only, and it involves cookies and punch and absolutely no slow dancing ("because that's gross," Sophie explains). But she's been planning her outfit for weeks, which means Margaret and Caroline have been dragged to no fewer than six stores in search of the perfect dress.
"It has to spin," Sophie tells me, modeling her ninth option. "If it doesn't spin, what's the point?"
"The point is looking nice."
"No, the point is SPINNING. Watch."
She spins. The dress—a frothy concoction of purple tulle—flares out around her like a storm cloud. She stops, dizzy, and beams up at me. "See?"
"I stand corrected."
"Will you come? To the dance? Mom and Caroline are chaperoning, but I want YOU there. And Caleb. And Oliver. And Eleanor, but she's at stupid college."
"I'll be there. Caleb has practice, but I'll make sure he comes after."
Sophie's face lights up. "And Oliver can draw pictures! And you can draw pictures! And then I'll have pictures forever!"
"Forever is a long time."
"I know. That's why I need pictures."
She spins again, and I watch her with something that feels like joy and grief tangled together. She's seven now. She was six when I moved into the pool house, when she was just a tiny lawyer negotiating pancake toppings and demanding pink cups. She's growing up in this house full of broken people and second chances, and somehow, impossibly, she's still so light. Still so full of joy.
I want to protect that. I want to bottle it. I want to draw it so perfectly that she'll always have proof that she was once a girl in a purple dress who believed spinning was the point of everything.
\---
The dance is chaos in the best way.
The school gymnasium has been transformed with crepe paper streamers and construction paper hearts and a DJ who only knows three songs, all of which Sophie declares "not spinny enough." Margaret and Caroline are chaperoning near the punch bowl, their heads bent together in quiet conversation. Oliver is sketching in the corner, capturing the controlled chaos of twenty first-graders hopped up on sugar. Caleb arrived late from practice, still in his workout clothes, and Sophie immediately appointed him "Official Dance Partner."
He's been spinning her for ten minutes straight. His arms have to be exhausted, but he's smiling—a real smile, the one he used to save for the fifty-yard line.
"Again!" Sophie demands.
"I need a break. My arms are going to fall off."
"Arms don't fall off. That's not science."
"It's definitely science. Sophie-science."
She considers this, then nods. "Fine. Go eat a cookie. But then MORE spinning."
I'm sitting on the bleachers, sketching the scene in my new book. The page is filling with Sophie's spins, Caleb's exhaustion, Oliver's focused posture, the streamers curling from the ceiling like colorful vines. This is what I want to remember, I think. Not the trial. Not the confrontation. This.
Oliver slides onto the bleacher beside me. "Can I see?"
I hand him the sketchbook. He flips through the pages—the girl at the crossroads, the sketches from the Christmas blackout, the portraits of the family I've been drawing in quiet moments over the past month.
"You're getting better," he says. "Your line work is more confident."
"I've had practice."
"It's more than practice. You're not drawing what you think you should draw anymore. You're drawing what you actually see." He points to a sketch of Margaret and Caroline, their heads bent together. "This one. You captured something real here. The way they lean toward each other without touching. The distance that's still there, even after everything."
"They're still figuring it out. What they are to each other."
"That's what makes it honest. You're not pretending it's perfect. You're showing it as it is." He closes the sketchbook and hands it back. "You should apply to art school. A real program. You're good enough."
"Maybe. I'm still deciding."
"Deciding is fine. Just don't let deciding become not-deciding. There's a difference."
Sophie appears at the bottom of the bleachers, her cheeks flushed, her tiara—the replacement tiara, slightly bent—slipping down her forehead. "Caleb's arms stopped falling off. He says there's one more spin in him, and he wants to know if you want to watch."
"I definitely want to watch."
"Good. Because it's going to be EPIC."
She runs back to Caleb, her purple dress streaming behind her like a comet's tail. I watch them—my brother and my sister, spinning in the middle of a gymnasium decorated with paper hearts, and I feel something settle in my chest.
This is enough, I think. This moment. This family. This strange, imperfect, magnificent life.
For now, this is enough.
\---
March arrives with college acceptance letters and a decision.
I've applied to five schools: three art programs, one liberal arts college with a strong visual arts department, and the community college near Oakhaven. All of them have accepted me. All of them are possible. But as I sit on the back porch, watching the pool lights cycle through their eternal colors, I realize I already know which one I'm going to choose.
It's not the most prestigious. It's not the closest to home. It's the one with the best art therapy program—a field I didn't even know existed until I started researching schools. Art therapy. Using creativity to help people process trauma. The thing I've been doing for myself since the night I first drew a family tree with rot at its center.
"Art therapy," Eleanor says when I tell her over the phone. "That's perfect. That's so perfectly you."
"You think so?"
"I know so. You've been doing art therapy for this entire family for a year and a half. You might as well get a degree in it."
The program is at a college two hours from Oakhaven—far enough to feel like my own life, close enough to come home on weekends. Close enough to be here when Sophie has another dance, when Sam learns to ride a bike, when Oliver has his next exhibition.
"I'm proud of you," Margaret says when I tell her. She's at the kitchen island, her laptop open to a spreadsheet I can't decipher. "Your mother is going to be so proud too."
"She already called. She cried."
"Happy tears, I hope."
"Happy tears. She said she never imagined I'd go to college. When I was growing up, she was just trying to keep us fed. College felt impossible."
"And now?"
"Now it feels real." I look around the kitchen—the marble countertops, the peanut butter jar still on the island, the view of the pool through the window. "This house. This family. It gave me something I didn't know I needed. A foundation. A place to stand."
"You gave it to yourself," Margaret says. "We just provided the space."
"You provided a lot more than that. You chose to keep me here. Even after you found out who I was. Even after everything."
Margaret sets down her pen and looks at me with the steady gaze I've come to trust. "I chose to keep you here because you belong here. Blood or no blood. You're my daughter, Maya. Not legally. Not biologically. But in every way that matters."
The words settle over me like a blanket. I've been called a lot of things since I arrived on Oakhaven Lane. Gravy. Illegitimate. A secret. A weapon. But this—daughter—is new. This is chosen.
"Thank you," I say. "For everything."
"Thank me by going to college and becoming an incredible art therapist. And by coming home for Sunday dinners."
"I can do that."
"I know you can."
\---
That night, I open my new sketchbook to a fresh page.
The crossroads drawing is still there, but it feels different now. Less like a question and more like an answer. The girl at the center has chosen her path—not the city skyline, not the open road, but the path that leads forward, toward something new. The college two hours away. The art therapy program. The future I'm finally ready to imagine.
I draw the girl walking. Her back is to the viewer, but her shoulders are straight. Her head is high. She's carrying a sketchbook under one arm and a letter from her mother in her pocket.
She's not running. She's not hiding.
She's just going.
And that, I think, is the bravest thing anyone can do.