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“No one intends to lie,” Irene says. “But it happens. Sometimes the truth is difficult and it’s easier to create an alternate reality or not to say anything at all. I can’t imagine how soul-shredding it must have been for Russ to… to go back and forth. Rosie here, me in Iowa City.”
Secrets become lies, and lies end up destroying you and everyone you care about.”
“The bigger issue is more than a lie. It’s a deception.
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.
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.
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.
There have been plenty of moments when Maia hasn’t felt like a survivor. There have been moments when she wished she’d gone down in the bird with her mother, because how is Maia supposed to go through the rest of her entire life without Rosie? It feels impossible.
Maia liked that idea enormously. Her mother was alive inside of her. Maia was her own person, but she was also a continuation of Rosie.
She tries to remember her mother in full, fleshy detail, because one of the things she has heard is that once people die, they fade from memory and become more of an idea than a person.
She will need two or three lifetimes to reach all of her goals.
Maia has an adult moment: she wants to meet them because she’s curious. At the same time, she doesn’t want to meet them because she’s scared.
They were taught in school that fear often derives from ignorance. Once you understand a situation, it becomes far less intimidating.
She marvels that her parents took her to the rice paddies of Vietnam, the red desert of the Australian outback, and the snow-capped peaks of the Swiss Alps, all with the aim of making her “worldly,” and still she has no idea how to negotiate this emotional landscape.
The sun is directly in her eyes so she squints, which suits her mood.
“You loved someone deeply here,” Huck says. “And you lost her. I think that makes this home for you.”
She is also, like any good HR executive, naturally suspicious.