slid out of her sister’s arms and grabbed up the duffel bag before Maya could protest. “Come in,” she beckoned. “Welcome home, I guess.”
Welcome home. Strange how little it felt like home. Maya followed her inside the condo. It was a nice enough place, modern with lots of natural light, though rather austere. If not for a few dishes in the sink and the television humming in the living room at low volume, Maya wouldn’t have believed anyone actually lived there. There were no pictures on the walls, no décor that spoke to any sort of personality.
Kind of like a blank slate. Though she had to admit that a blank slate was appropriate for their situation.
“So this is it,” Sara announced, as if reading Maya’s mind. “At least for now. There are only two bedrooms, so we’ll have to share a room…”
“I’m fine with the couch,” Maya offered.
Sara smiled thinly. “I don’t mind sharing. It’d be like when we were little. It’d be… nice. Having you around.” She cleared her throat. Despite how often they had talked over the phone, it was painfully obviously how oddly awkward it was to be in the same room again.
“Where’s Dad?” Maya asked suddenly, and perhaps too loudly, in an effort to diffuse the tension.
“Should be home any minute. He had to stop off after work and get a few things for tomorrow.”
After work. She made it sound so casual, as if he was leaving an office for the day instead of CIA headquarters in Langley.
Sara perched herself upon a stool at the bar-like countertop that separated the kitchen and small dining room. “How’s school?”
Maya leaned against the countertop on her elbows. “School is…” She trailed off. Though she was only eighteen, she was in her second year at West Point in New York. She’d tested out of high school early and was accepted to the military academy on the merit of a letter from former President Eli Pierson, whose assassination attempt had been thwarted by Agent Zero. Now she was top of her class, perhaps even top of the whole academy. But a recent tiff with her sort-of ex-boyfriend Greg Calloway had evolved into hazing and some bullying. Maya refused to give in to it, but she had to admit it made life irritating lately. Greg had a lot of friends, all of them older boys at the academy whom Maya had shown up at least once or twice.
“School is great,” she said at last, forcing a smile. Sara had enough problems of her own. “But kind of boring. I want to know what’s going on with you.”
Sara almost snorted, and then held her hands out at her sides in a grand gesture at the condo. “You’re looking at it. I’m here all day, every day. I watch TV. I don’t go anywhere. I don’t have any money. Dad got me a phone on his plan so he can keep an eye on my calls and texts.” She shrugged one shoulder. “It’s like one of those white-collar prisons they send politicians and celebrities to.”
Maya smiled sadly at the joke, and then cautiously asked: “But you’re… clean?”
Sara nodded. “As I can be.”
Maya frowned at that. She knew a lot about a lot of things, but recreational drug use wasn’t one of them. “What does that mean?”
Sara stared at the granite counter, tracing a small circle on the smooth surface with an index finger. “It means it’s hard,” she admitted quietly. “I thought it would get easier after those first few days, after all the junk was out of my system. But it didn’t. It’s like… it’s like my brain remembers the feeling, still craves it. The boredom doesn’t help. Dad doesn’t want me to get a job just yet, because he doesn’t want me having any extra money lying around until I’m better.” She scoffed and added, “He’s been pushing me to study for my GED.”
And you should, Maya very nearly blurted out, but she held her tongue. Sara had dropped out of high school after she was granted emancipation, but the last thing she needed right then was a lecture, especially when she was opening up like she was.
But one thing was clear: Sara’s problem was worse than Maya had realized. She’d thought her younger sister had just been experimenting recreationally, and that the near-OD on pills had been an accident. Yet the opposite was true. Sara was a recovering addict. And there was nothing that Maya could do to help her. She didn’t know anything about addiction.
But is that really true?
She suddenly recalled a night, about two weeks earlier, when she’d woken her dorm mate by coming in from the gym at one in the morning. The irritated cadet had grumbled at her, half-asleep, something about being a “workout junkie.” And then Maya had stayed up for another hour studying, only to be out on the track for a jog at six the next morning.
The more she thought about it, the more she realized she knew all about addiction. Wasn’t she addicted to proving herself? Had she not been chasing a dragon of her own success?
And her father, even after all the tumult of the last two years, had still gone back to the job. Sara still craved the chemical high the way that Maya craved accomplishment and their dad craved the thrill of the chase—because maybe they were all just a family of addicts.
But Sara is the only one that’s acknowledged it. Maybe she’s the smartest of all of us.
“Hey.” Maya reached over and put her hand on Sara’s. “You can beat this. You’re stronger than you know. I have faith in you.”
Sara smiled with half her mouth. “I’m glad someone does.”
“I’ll talk to Dad,” Maya offered. “See if he won’t relax a little bit, give you some freedom—”
“No,” Sara interrupted. “Dad isn’t the problem. He’s been great to me; probably better than I deserve.” Her gaze swept the floor. “The problem is me. Because I know damn well that if I had a hundred bucks in my pocket and could go wherever I wanted, he’d have to come find me again. And next time he might not get there fast enough.”
Maya’s heart broke at the obvious torment reflected in her sister’s eyes, and then again at the knowledge that there was nothing she could do to help. All she had were empty words of encouragement, which were all but meaningless in the scope of solving her problems.
Suddenly she felt incredibly out of place in that foreign kitchen. They had been through so much together. Growing up. Mourning their mother. Discovering their father. Family vacations and fleeing from would-be murderers. The kinds of things that anyone would assume would bring two people closer together, create an unbreakable bond, had instead created the vacuous silence that ballooned in the space between them.
Was this how it was going to be now? Would the girl before her just continue becoming more and more unrecognizable until they were mere strangers who happened to be related?
Maya wanted to say something, anything, to prove herself wrong. Reminisce about some happy memory. Or call her Squeak, the childhood nickname that hadn’t been used in god-only-knew how long.
Before she could say anything at all, the doorknob rattled behind them. Maya spun as the door swung open, her fists balling instinctively at her sides. Her nerves still jumped when it came to unexpected intrusions.
But it was no intruder. It was her father, carrying two grocery bags and taking seemingly cautious steps into the kitchen of his own home at the sight of her.
“Hi.”
