“Does he have a big house? He has a house, right?” Her mother had an apartment inferiority complex. She was scrubbing and polishing every inch of the place to impress Sophie’s first boyfriend.
“He lives in a house, Mom. Believe me, he isn’t going to love me any less because we live in an apartment.
“No, but he might not want to stick around if he thinks you come from a line of slobs. SAMUEL!” her mother threw her head back and howled, “Samuel Usman, you stop stuffing your caramel wrappers down into the sofa!”
Sophie giggled and cleaned out the nest of candy wrappers they’d unearthed. “Mom, I’ll clean, okay? Jesse’s not going to leave me even if we live in a mud-filled hovel.”
Alidz, Ali for short, stopped and piled her flowing hair into a loose bun, sneaking a look at her baby’s beaming face. “Sophie... I know you’re in love for the first time. I don’t want you to think this is it. There are so— no?” Her daughter was shaking her head, a confident, radiant smile on her lips.
“No. Oh, I get that things can happen. People break up. But I have a good reason to think there’s something special between us.” Sophie rolled up the sleeve on her dark blue sweater, revealing the bracelet.
“He gave this to you? It’s beautiful.”
Sophie took a deep breath. “It also tells a story. Mom? Have you heard about the Snow King and the Night Queen?”
Her mother tilted her head quizzically. “It sounds like a children’s tale.”
“Actually, it’s a tale about how love lives on, even where life has ended. Listen.” Finger gently toying with the charms on her wrist, she began.
HER MOTHER WIPED HEReyes. “It’s beautiful. Tatik would have loved that story. You must tell your father when he’s done fixing the sink.”
“I will, but first, maybe I can ask you something. Do you know anything about my birth parents? Do you know— if they looked different? Like me?”
Her mother’s eyes widened and the hand clutching a tissue clenched tighter. “Why ask now? I know many people want to meet their birth parents when they are of age, but sometimes it’s just not possible. Sometimes God has a reason to put a baby with a different family,Sers.”
“I don’t need to meet them.” Was it a lie? Her heart didn’t know. Maybe she did need to meet them to understand herself,to understand why they had placed her with another family. “I just want to know what you know about them.”
Her mother was an honest woman, honest to a fault. She would sometimes choose silence if she couldn’t talk without telling a lie. Sophie watched her mother’s lips clamp shut and her dark eyes flicker toward the master bedroom. Her father was in there fixing a drain in the little half-bath. There was also a desk in the corner of that room, full of important papers. Sophie wondered if her mother wanted moral support or some document.
“Are you afraid to tell me?” Sophie asked softly.
Her mother swallowed several times.
“Afraid because you think I won’t like it? Or won’t believe it?”
“Samuel!” A choked gasp as she made the sign of the cross. “Come here!”
Her father was clearly happy to have his little girl home. He was in a joking mood, calling out, “As soon as I pry this wad of hair from the drain, Ali! They should make a Clog-Buster-Triple-Strength-Armenian-Beauty-Queen Edition. I— oh. Oh, no! What’s wrong?”
“Nothing is wrong!” Sophie felt oddly tense and her mom was making it worse. “Mom, Dad, you’ll always be my parents. I don’t need to meet my birth family, I only want to know what you know about them.” Tension turned to anger, part of the anger aimed at herself for never asking, part of it trained on her parents who had never brought it up. The anger came with a heat that bulged in her chest until it seemed to push against her skin. “All I’ve known is that it was a private, domestic adoption and that you took me home as a newborn! Tons of people are adopted! You don’t have to make this a big deal!” She glared, hands flung up in exasperation.
Her mother bit back a sharp cry and her father’s dark skin paled visibly.
Sophie forced herself to be calm, folding her hands in her lap as she cleared her throat. It was then that she noticed the muted scarlet tinge surrounding her fingertips. “Oh. You saw that, huh?”
Her calm question, accompanied by a shrug, dropped both her parents to the couch with twin gasps. “How long have you been seeing it?” her father demanded, voice shaky.
“I never noticed it. Jesse did.”
“You haven’t done it since you were three— and that one time when the therapist suggested a feeding clinic,” her mother whispered.
“Wait, wait. You’ve known that I— that I glow?”
“You don’t glow, exactly, Only your fingertips. Your eyes seem— brighter. Redder,” her father said carefully. “But it’s probably just a trick of the light. Blood pumping in thin skin. It doesn’t matter. Not at all. You’re perfect however God made you.”
“But how He made me is what I want to know more about,” Sophie pressed.
Her parents exchanged glances. “You were very hard on yourself when people began to call you different. You’re not different to us. You are beautiful and sweet. You’re smart and talented.” Her mother leaned forward and took Sophie’s hands in her own. “We never wanted to mention anything that might make you — stand out in a negative way. Not that it’s negative, but we’ve all seen what horrible little monsters bullies can be.”
