DUTTON BOOKS

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, New York

  First published in the United States of America by Dutton Books,

  an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2022

  Copyright © 2022 by Malinda Lo

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  Dutton is a registered trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Visit us online at penguinrandomhouse.com.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

  ISBN 9780525555285 (hardcover)

  ISBN 9780593616079 (international edition)

  ISBN 9780525555292 (ebook)

  Cover art © 2022 by Feifei Ruan

  Cover design by Anna Booth

  Design by Anna Booth, adapted for ebook by Michelle Quintero

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

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  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  2008

  Chapter 1

  2013

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  2023

  Chapter 55

  Acknowledgments

  Credits

  About the Author

  To my Wellesley friends, with gratitude for a lifetime of friendship: Aimee, Betty, Cameron, Hye-John, Lesly, Nicole, Sarah, Sarah, and Vincent. Thank you for being there for me, always.

  2008

  I started calling my grandmother by her first name when I was thirteen. It was the summer before Grandpa died, and Dad and I were spending the month of July with them in Woodacre, California. They owned a cedar-shingled cottage there where they’d go for weekends and vacations, and after Grandpa retired from Berkeley, they moved into it permanently.

  My grandmother was an artist who was known primarily for her paintings and photographs. She was always mentoring a few art students, and one of them had a show opening in San Francisco during our visit. My grandmother took me with her.

  The show was in SoMa at a garage that specialized in hybrid and electric vehicles, and doubled as an art gallery. A red plug-in Prius was elevated on a lift at the back of the garage, which had the cleanest polished concrete floors I’d ever seen. I had expected to see paintings hanging on the walls, but this artist made wire sculptures. They hung from cables that stretched across the space, twirling slowly in the air like graceful dancers made of silver mesh. Other sculptures were installed on stands scattered across the floor. Most were abstract in form, but some resembled female bodies or animal-like shapes: arms and tails extended, or elongated heads that seemed to look at you, even without eyes.

  I was the youngest person there. As soon as we arrived, my grandmother was pulled away by a stranger, and then another one, and after a few minutes of awkwardly hovering a few feet away, I retreated to the rear of the garage by the Prius. Nearby, two couches were arranged around a sky-blue shag rug, and I sat down by myself while more people came through the garage’s huge open doors.

  I could see the traffic whooshing by on Mission Street in the dusk. As Saturday evening settled into Saturday night, growing shadows blurred the city’s hard edges and turned them into soft-focus suggestions. I had been to plenty of art galleries before but not a Saturday night opening, and I’d dressed up for it in a teal-and-white sundress along with a carefully applied coating of lip gloss. Sitting on that sofa, I felt grown-up, almost.

  I lost track of my grandmother in the gathering crowd. It was mostly women, mostly casually dressed in jeans and tees or tank tops, sneakers or boots, along with a smattering of all-black ensembles. Many of them had bare arms covered with tattoos: flowers or pinup girls or intricate abstract designs. A couple of women, one with pink hair, sat across from me on the other couch and set down small paper plates of cheese and grapes, while they toasted each other with clear plastic cups of white wine. I thought about making a plate of cheese for myself, but before I could get up, a Black woman with very short hair sat down beside me.

  “This seat’s not taken, is it?” she asked.

  “No,” I said.

  “Thanks.” She held a plate of cheese and grapes, too, but instead of wine she had a small bottle of Pellegrino. She twisted it open and took a sip.

  I could see the brown skin of her scalp where her hair was faded in on the sides. I didn’t want to stare, so I lowered my gaze. She was wearing black jeans and black motorcycle boots.

  “Joan West is supposed to be here tonight,” the woman said. “Have you heard of her?”

  I looked up. “Yeah, she’s . . .” Her right eyebrow was pierced, and her eyes were sapphire blue. The edges crinkled as she smiled at me, and suddenly I didn’t want to admit that Joan West was my grandmother. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to be connected with her, but this woman was speaking to me as if I were an adult, like her. To be Joan West’s granddaughter made me a child, which I didn’t want to be. “She’s great,” I said. “I like her work.”

  “Yeah? What’s your favorite?”

  My grandmother’s most recent paintings were quite different from her previous work, but I liked them. Long, golden sweeps of light across doorways and honeyed wooden floors. When I looked at them, I thought of her and Grandpa on their deck in Woodacre in the late afternoon, the smell of wild grasses in the sun.

  “I like her Time series,” I said.

  She nodded. “Very meditative. I really appreciate her photography. The shots of her children especially.”

  I knew the ones she was talking about. The pictures of my dad and Aunt Tammy when they were kids in Colorado. “Yeah, I’ve seen those,” I said. “People say they’re not about her children, but about the way we think about childhood.”

  The woman’s smile broadened. “You know a lot about Joan West’s work. Are you a fan?”

  I realized I had put myself on a path toward directly lying about who I was, rather than simply skirting the truth with careful omissions. It was a little exciting.

  The woman’s smile softened as she looked at me, as if she knew I wasn’t telling the whole truth, but she wouldn’t push me. It was as if we were co-conspirators, and the thought of conspiring with her sent a nervous thrill through me. I wondered who she was.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m a fan.”

  She nodded as if she had expected me to say that. “Joan’s been a big influence on a lot of artists here in the Bay Area. She should be way more famous than she is.”

  I felt shy as I asked, “Are you an artist?”

  “I am,” she said, as if it surprised her.

  “What medium do you work in?” I’d heard my grandmother pose this question to others before, and I thought it made me sound mature.

  The woman blinked, her smile disappearing for half a second before it returned. “Metal and wire. Sculpture mostly.”

  “Sarah! There you are.”

  We both looked up as my grandmother came toward us. She was wearing a purple-and-gold-patterned blouse that draped around her in some complicated way that created wings when she opened her arms for a hug. The woman sitting next to me rose to her feet and embraced her.

  “Thank you so much for co
ming,” she said.

  “Of course I came. I’m so happy for you.” My grandmother saw me watching and said, “I see you’ve met—”

  “Hi, Joan,” I said quickly, standing up and smoothing down my dress. I flushed as my grandmother gave me a funny look.

  The woman grinned. “Yes, I think I’ve met one of your biggest fans,” she said.

  My grandmother seemed a little puzzled. “Aria, this is Sarah Franco. She’s the artist featured here tonight.”

  Metal and wire, she had said. I was embarrassed that I hadn’t put that together.

  Sarah extended her hand to me. “Hello, Aria. Nice to meet you officially.”

  “Likewise,” I said. Her palm was rough, her fingers a little scratchy.

  I wondered whether my grandmother was going to explain who I was. We didn’t look related because she was white and I’m half Asian, although there was something similar about the shapes of our faces.

  “I’d better go get ready,” Sarah said. “I have to make a speech.”

  My grandmother squeezed her shoulder. “I’m looking forward to it. And congratulations.”

  “Thanks. Nice talking to you, Aria,” Sarah said, and then she headed off toward the front of the garage.

  My grandmother looked at me with an amused smile. “Shall we go up front and get a good spot? I want to be sure to see everything.” She put her arm around my shoulders, and I knew she didn’t mind that I’d called her Joan, and maybe she even thought it was funny.

  During Sarah’s speech, she thanked my grandmother for mentoring her over the past five years, for pushing her to go beyond her comfort zone. The audience applauded when Sarah pointed out my grandmother standing beside me, and when she stepped forward to acknowledge their applause with a smile and a wave, she looked beautiful and wise. I felt a keen sense of pride to be related to her—to Joan West. She was my grandmother, yes, but she was more than that, and it seemed inadequate to call her by a name that said nothing about her accomplishments.

  From that night on, she was Joan to me. When my dad told me I was disrespecting her, my grandmother laughed and said, “We’re on a first-name basis now.”

  * * *

  —

  Barely a couple of weeks after my dad and I returned to Massachusetts, Grandpa was diagnosed with fourth-stage pancreatic cancer. It all went so fast.

  In mid-August, we flew back to California. Dad took a leave of absence from Wellesley College, where he taught. Aunt Tammy and her family came up from Pasadena, and we all stayed in a vacation rental near Woodacre. A hospital bed was set up in my grandparents’ bedroom and Grandpa spent more and more time there, while nurses came and went twice a day.

  Dad and Aunt Tammy kept scurrying back and forth—from the kitchen to the bedroom to the grocery store and back—as if they were trying their hardest to hold the world together with their bare hands. Joan sat at Grandpa’s bedside and read to him, everything from the latest astronomy papers to his battered old Robert Heinlein science fiction novels. Sometimes I sat with them, and Joan’s voice would lull me into a half-waking dream of rocket ships and the boys who flew them.

  Grandpa died in September. It was one of those perfect, golden days in Northern California, the air warm and weightless, the light like slowly melting butterscotch. Dad had made plans to grill steak for dinner because Grandpa said he wanted some, even though he wasn’t eating much anymore. He never ate it.

  The memorial took place at the Unitarian church in Berkeley that my grandparents had gone to in the two decades they lived there. It was full of Grandpa’s former colleagues from Berkeley’s astronomy department, where he’d been a professor, but plenty of Joan’s friends came, too. Afterward, when I was waiting in the church vestibule for my parents, I saw Sarah Franco, the artist from the garage show. She was dressed all in black, with a black button-down shirt and polished black oxfords. She came over to me and told me she was sorry for my loss, and I realized then that she’d always known I was Joan’s granddaughter.

  2013

  Dad and I took a 6:00 a.m. flight from Boston to San Francisco. Our seats weren’t together because he’d bought the tickets last minute, but I was relieved to be alone. I got a window way in the back, only a few rows up from the toilets.

  As soon as the plane took off, I reclined my seat and stuffed the tiny airplane pillow against the edge of the window, trying to make myself comfortable enough to sleep. The plane smelled like bathroom cleaner and somebody’s egg-and-cheese bagel. The constant hum of recycled air seemed to press against me, pushing me deeper into the hard plastic window shade. I began to imagine my body passing through it, envisioning my skin and bones as individual cells and then singular atoms and then only photons—energy itself. And each photon, each tiny particle of light, could be instantly inside the wall of the airplane and simultaneously beyond it. My whole body could be suddenly outside, thirty thousand feet above the earth’s surface. I imagined the whirling air around me, nitrogen and oxygen and water vapor in the clouds and in me, the dawning sunlight scattered by microscopic particles of water and the atoms of my body.

  I slept in that unsettled way I often do on planes, half dreaming, half awake. I still remember one of those dreams. It has stayed with me my entire life. I’m in the woods; the trees seem too tall to be real. I look up and up and can’t see their tops, only their feathery, dark green needles draping down and down. My grandmother is there, wearing a smock splashed in gold and blue and green. She holds a brush loaded with fuchsia paint and begins to sweep it across her torso, as if she is her own canvas. She notices that I’m standing nearby and raises her eyes to look at me.

  She says: Don’t worry, something will happen.

  And then I’m on a beach, and someone is handing me a shell. Pink and white, coiled tight.

  I say: Is this something?

  The airplane shuddered and I jolted awake, and the captain came over the speaker and said, “We’ve reached some expected turbulence over the Rockies, so I’ve turned on the fasten seat belt sign. Please return to your seats.”

  The pillow slid down from the window. A bright white line shone from the bottom of the shade, and I inched it up, wincing against the sunlight. When my eyes adjusted, I looked out and down, and far below me the Rocky Mountains looked the way they do on topographical maps: wrinkled blue and brown, unreal.

  If only, I thought. If only this wasn’t real.

  * * *

  —

  Morning traffic was heavy as we left the San Francisco Airport rental car center, and Dad was silent as Google Maps navigated us onto the freeway. I stared out the window as we passed Colma and Daly City, continued up the stop-and-start length of 19th Avenue, then through Golden Gate Park and the Presidio. Finally, we reached the Golden Gate Bridge, glowing red in the sun. To the right, the glittering bay and Alcatraz; to the left, the blue of the Pacific beyond the suspension lines, and then we were swallowed by the rainbow entry of the Waldo Tunnel through the Marin Hills.

  I wasn’t supposed to be here. I was supposed to spend the summer on Martha’s Vineyard with my friends, not in the remote woods of Marin County with my grandmother. The interior of the car suddenly felt airless, and I fumbled for the button to unroll the window. Traffic noise and warm dry air blasted inside. It smelled like Northern California: brown grass and sunshine and something else, some kind of tree or plant that grew here, and I remembered Grandpa taking me out on his precarious rooftop deck on late-summer nights to look at the stars. An ache inside me. He died five years ago, and I still missed him.

  “Smells like California,” Dad said loudly over the rushing wind. They were the first words he’d spoken since we got in the car.

  I glanced at him, and maybe because I had been thinking about Grandpa, I noticed how Dad looked like him. His eyebrows were bushy in the same way. “Yeah,” I replied.

  Dad gave me an eager smile. “You always loved visiting here.”

  I knew he was trying to get me to feel better about this summer, but I didn’t feel better and I didn’t want to pretend like I did.

  “It’s too bad we never visited here with your mother,” he said. “She has family here, too.”

  I felt like I must have known this before, but even so, it surprised me. “Who?” I asked.