Because if he had been angry, she could retreat.
If he looked hurt, she might have to explain.
Vanessa stepped closer.
“Marcus, this is your birthday. Do you really want to spend it interrogating everybody?”
He looked at her.
“I want to understand why my daughter thinks leaving the room is easier than standing in a family picture.”
Tiana pulled gently at his hand.
“Dad.”
He looked down.
“Please.”
Something in her voice stopped him.
Marcus released her.
“All right.”
Tiana walked upstairs.
She did not run.
Running invited questions.
She closed her bedroom door quietly and sat on the edge of the bed.
Below, music resumed.
People laughed again.
Furniture moved.
Life continued.
Tiana pressed both hands against her face.
She told herself she was not going to cry.
That promise lasted perhaps twenty seconds.
The first tear slipped between her fingers.
Then another.
She hated crying because Vanessa noticed swollen eyes and asked questions she already knew the answer to.
Tiana reached toward the small framed photograph on her nightstand.
Her biological mother, Aisha, stood beside Marcus at a beach in Tybee Island fourteen years earlier.
Aisha was pregnant.
One hand rested on her stomach.
Marcus stood behind her with both arms around her waist.
They looked young.
Ridiculously happy.
Tiana had no memory of that day.
Her mother died when Tiana was six.
Breast cancer.
Eighteen months of treatment.
Remission.
Then recurrence.
Tiana remembered hospital rooms more clearly than the beach.
She remembered scarves.
Medicine bottles.
Her mother sleeping in the afternoon.
Marcus learning to braid hair badly.
Aisha laughing at the results.
The last Christmas.
The last morning.
The last hug.
After the funeral, Marcus never removed Aisha’s photographs.
Not one.
When Vanessa moved in three years later, she said that was healthy.
At first.
She told Tiana she would never try to replace her mother.
“I don’t want to be your mom,” Vanessa had said. “You already have one. I just want to be someone safe.”
Tiana believed her.
For a while.
Vanessa took her shopping.
Helped with homework.
Asked about school.
Attended a dance recital.
Then little things changed.
Aisha’s photographs moved from the living room to Marcus’s office because Vanessa said the house should reflect “the present.”
Tiana’s Christmas stocking shifted farther from the others.
Family vacations were planned around Jordan and Maya’s school schedule even though Tiana attended the same district.
Vanessa bought matching pajamas for herself, Jordan, and Maya and then told Tiana the store had run out of her size.
That year, Marcus ordered another pair himself.
Vanessa laughed about the misunderstanding.
Later she told Tiana privately:
“You don’t need to insert yourself into every tradition.”
Tiana did not tell Marcus.
There were dozens of things she did not tell him.
Vanessa was rarely cruel enough to explain easily.
She specialized in small injuries.
Things that sounded ridiculous when repeated.
“Your mother’s necklace doesn’t match the dress.”
“Could you stay upstairs while my friends are here?”
“The younger kids need me more.”
“You don’t mind taking the smaller room, right?”
“You’re almost grown.”
“Your dad already worries too much about you.”
“Do you really want him choosing between us?”
That last question had arrived six months earlier.
Tiana never forgot it.
Her bedroom door opened.
She wiped her face immediately.
Maya stood there.
Eleven years old.