that, nothing had been the same. Their relationship had changed instantly, dramatically, but that wasn’t the most painful part. At least she was still there physically, at the time. No, the slow burn was so much worse. After the admission in the hotel, after they had returned home to their Alexandria house, Maya went back to school. She was ending her junior year of high school; she’d missed two months of work but she hit the books with an intensity Zero had never seen in her before.
Then that summer came, and still she exiled herself to her room, studying. It didn’t take long for him to figure out what was going on. Maya was fiercely intelligent—too smart, he’d often say, for her own good. But in this case, she was too smart for his good.
Maya studied and worked hard and, thanks to a little-known bylaw in her school district’s charter, she was able to test out of her senior year of high school by taking and passing every AP exam. She graduated from high school before the end of that first summer—though there was no ceremony, no cap and gown, no walking with classmates. No proud, smiling photos next to her father and sister. There was just a form letter and a diploma in the mail one day, and Zero’s abject astonishment as he realized what she was trying to do.
And then, only then, was she gone.
He sighed. That was more than a year ago now. He’d last seen her just this past summer, around July or August, not long after his fortieth birthday. She rarely came down from New York these days. On that occasion she’d come back to get some of her belongings out of storage, and had hesitantly agreed to have lunch with him. It had been an awkward, tense, and mostly silent affair. Him asking questions, prodding her to tell him about her life, and her giving him succinct answers and avoiding eye contact.
And now she was coming to dinner.
“Hey.” He hadn’t heard Maria come into the loft bedroom, but he felt her arms around his midsection, her head resting against his back as she hugged him from behind. “It’s okay to be nervous.”
“I’m not nervous.” He was very nervous. “It’ll be good to see her.”
“Of course it will.” Maria had organized it. She had been the one to reach out to Maya, to invite her over the next time she was in town. The invitation had been extended two months earlier. Maya was in Virginia this weekend to visit some friends from school, and reluctantly agreed to come. Just for dinner. She wouldn’t be staying. She made that very well known.
“Hey,” Maria said softly behind him. “I know the timing isn’t great, but…”
Zero winced. He knew what she was going to say and wished she wouldn’t.
“I’m ovulating.”
He didn’t respond for a long moment, long enough to realize that the silence was becoming uncomfortable as it yawned between them.
When they first moved in together, they had agreed that neither of them was terribly interested in marriage. Kids were not even on his radar. But Maria was only two years younger than him; she was rapidly approaching forty. There was no longer a snooze button on her biological alarm clock. At first she would just casually mention it in conversation, but then she ceased her birth control regiment. She started keeping keen track of her cycle.
Still, they’d never actually sat down and discussed it. It was as if Maria simply assumed that since he’d done it twice before, he would want to be a father again. Though he never said it aloud, he secretly suspected that was why she hadn’t pushed for him to return to the agency, or even to teaching. She liked him where he was because it meant there would be someone to care for a baby.
How can it be, he wondered bitterly, that my life as an unemployed civilian could be more complicated than as a covert agent?
He’d waited too long to reply, and when he finally did it sounded forced and lame. “I think,” he said at last, “that we should put a pin in that for now.”
He felt her arms fall away from around his waist and hastily added, “Just until we get past this visit. Then we’ll talk, and we’ll decide—”
“To wait longer.” She practically spat the words out, and when he turned to face her she was staring at the carpet in undisguised disappointment.
“That’s not what I’m saying.”
Yes, it is.
“I just think it warrants a serious discussion,” he said.
So I can man up enough to admit I don’t want it.
“We should at least deal with what’s in front of us first.”
Like the fact that the two children I already raised hate me.
“Yeah,” Maria agreed quietly. “You’re right. We’ll wait longer.” She turned and headed out of the bedroom.
“Maria, wait…”
“I have to finish dinner.” He heard her footfalls on the stairs and cursed himself under his breath for mishandling that so badly. It was pretty much par for the course in his life lately.
Then the doorbell rang. The sound of it sent an electric tingle through his nervous system.
He heard the front door open. Maria’s cheerful voice: “Hi! It’s so good to see you. Come in, come in.”
She was here. Suddenly Zero’s feet felt like lead weights. He didn’t want to go downstairs. Didn’t want to face this.
“And you must be Greg…” Maria said.
Greg? Who the hell is Greg? Suddenly he found the willpower to move. One stair at a time, she slowly came into sight. It had only been a few months since he’d last seen her, but still she took his breath away.
Maya was eighteen now, no longer a child, and it was showing more rapidly than he cared to admit. When they’d met for lunch the past summer, her hair was still long and curled into the military-requisite donut bun, but she had since had it cut shorter, a pixie cut, short on the sides and back and sweeping across her forehead, accentuating her lean face, which was growing mature and angular. She looked stronger, the muscles in her arms developing, small but dense.
She was looking more like him every day, while he was looking and feeling less like himself every day.
Maya glanced up at him as he came down the stairs. “Hi.” It was a passive greeting, not bright but not flat. Neutral. Like someone greeting a stranger.
“Hi, Maya.” He moved in to hug her and the slightest hint of apprehension shadowed her face. He settled for a half-embrace, one arm around her shoulders while her hand patted his back once. “You look… you look well.”
“I am.” She cleared her throat and addressed the elephant in the room. “This is Greg.”
The boy, if he could be called that, stepped forward and stuck out an enthusiastic hand. “Mr. Lawson, a pleasure to meet you, sir.” He was tall, six-two, with short blond hair and perfect teeth and tanned arms that were testing the limits of his polo shirt’s sleeves.
He looked like the high school quarterback.
“Uh, nice to meet you too, Greg.” Zero shook the kid’s hand. Greg had a firm grip, firmer than was necessary.
Zero
