Page 201 of Gamebreaker

"I don't know what you're talking about, and neither do you, and if you say one single word to anyone, I will tell your mother you stole my phone and looked at my camera roll without permission."

"I did steal your phone."

"And I'll tell her you liked it."

Gianna lowered her hands. Her eyes were shining. She looked at me with an expression of such enormous delight that I almost laughed.

"You know," she whispered.

"I know nothing. I'm an empty vessel. Plates, please."

"How long have you known?"

I sighed. "Two weeks."

"And you haven't said anything?"

"It's hers," I said quietly. "It's her moment. She's spent her whole life having her moments taken away from her, or deciding she wasn't allowed to have them. I'm not taking this one." I picked up a plate again and set it down at the next place. "She'll do it when she's ready. On her terms. However she wants. And when she does, I'm going to act so surprised. I've been practicing my surprised face in the bathroom mirror."

"Show me."

I showed her.

Gianna stared at it for a second. "That's terrible. That's the worst surprised face I've ever seen in my life. You look like you saw a mouse."

"I'll keep working on it."

"You have to." Gianna grabbed my hand and squeezed. "Oh, she's going to be so happy. Do you know how happy she's going to be? She was so lonely, Harper. For so long. We'd all talk about it on the phone. Ma used to cry about it."

My throat tightened.

"I know," I said.

"You don't, though," Gianna said, very gently. "You weren't here for it. You didn't see her come home for Christmas every year and go up to that tiny bedroom and close the door. And now she's in there making sauce with Ma and laughing." She shook her head. "I haven't heard her laugh like that since she was a kid."

From the kitchen, Cam's laughter came through the doorway. It was loud and real and helpless, because Dani had apparently insulted the sauce, and Maria had thrown a dish towel at her.

Gianna and I stood there and listened to it.

"Thank you," Gianna said, very quietly. "For bringing her back."

I couldn't say anything. So I hugged her instead, holding a stack of plates against her back, and she hugged me back hard, and Sofia wandered into the dining room, looked at us, and said, "Are you guys sad or happy?"

"Happy," Gianna said.

"Then why are you crying?"

"Sometimes grown-ups do that," I told her.

Sofia considered this. "That's weird."

"It's extremely weird," I agreed.

Dinner was at six.

I want to describe it accurately, and I'm not sure I can, because I'd grown up with Sunday dinners, and I'd thought I knew what a family table was. My parents' table had been nice. It had been formal. It had been quiet, mostly, my father saying grace, my mother asking about school, the scrape of silverware on good china. I'd loved that table. I'd loved it for twenty-six years.

And then one Sunday, I'd sat down at it and told them who I was, and I'd never been invited back.