Late November
The next three days were unbearable.
Kai and I moved around each other like strangers. Polite. Careful. Terrified of saying the wrong thing and making everything worse.
Maya stopped talking to both of us beyond necessary communication. She went to school, came home, locked herself in her room. Even Riley couldn't get through to her.
"She's shutting down," I told Margaret on the phone Wednesday night, standing on the balcony because the apartment felt too small. "Like she did when she first came to live with us. All that progress, just… gone."
"She's protecting herself," Margaret said. "Waiting for the abandonment she's convinced is coming."
"But no one's abandoning her."
"Aren't you? If Kai goes to MIT and you stay here, she loses both of you. Her life as she knows it ends. That's abandonment, even if no one means it that way."
I hadn't thought of it like that. But Margaret was right.
"What do I do?"
