Maya took a year and a half.

She was not hostile.

She was polite in the specific way that fourteen-year-olds are polite when they have decided you are temporary, and I understood it completely, and I made three rules for myself and kept all three.

I never went into her room.

I never tried to be her mother, who is alive and involved and lives eleven minutes away.

And I never bought her anything expensive, because affection you can purchase is affection somebody can price.