“Did you talk to him?”
“I did before. He’s ok and he asked me to tell you that he’ll be home as soon as he can and that he loves you. He wanted to make sure that you know that you’re safe here with me.”
She just looked at me and her lip extended a little further.
“I’ll answer your questions, if I can. I just don’t have a lot of information right now,” I said.
“What’s his name?”
“What? You mean…you want to know your dad’s name?” I asked, and Lyra nodded. “Um…” I tried to think. Mostly, Silashad referred to him as his father or by various rude insults, but he had said it at least once. “Larry!” I blurted as it popped into my mind.
“Larry,” she repeated. “How about my mom?”
“I don’t know,” I said again, but I really wished that I did. “I’m sorry.” She didn’t answer.
Instead, she stood and I heard her going upstairs. Even though I wanted to a lot, I didn’t chase her. I finished making dinner and she did come down when I called that it was ready. Her beautiful slate blue eyes, just like her brother’s, looked glassy and had red rims.
Silas would have said some bad words but I held them in. I encouraged her to eat and she did take a few bites, but really, neither of us was too hungry. Afterwards, I encouraged her to hang out with me in the living room and she didn’t say yes, but she did follow.
We sat for a moment before I determined how I would start. “You were very little when you came to live with Silas,” I finally mentioned, and she turned to stare at me.
“Yeah, he had to adopt me because I needed a new home so I got to live with him. But I don’t remember.”
“That happened with me, too. Belle and Harry, my mom and dad, weren’t my birth parents. That means—”
“I understand,” she interrupted. She was now very interested. “Why?”
“My birth parents died when I was really young, just a baby. I went to live with Belle and Harry, my real parents, when I was seven. Your age.”
Lyra thought about that. “If they died when you were little, where did you go before you went to Belle?”
“I was in different places. First, I lived with my grandmother, but she didn’t do a good job taking care of me. That’s what I heard, but I don’t remember it. Then I lived with a few different people before I got adopted by my parents. That’s what they are, since they love me more than anybody and I feel the same way. But I wanted to know about my other family, too, the mom and dad who…”
Oh, no. I really didn’t want to get into a sex ed situation here, but I took a deep breath and got ready to explain about how babies came to be in a biological sense.
She was asking something else, though. “So you never met them? Do you know their names?”
I nodded. “My birth father was named Philip and my birth mother was Ursula. That was her mother’s name, too.”
Lyra had started humming and after a moment…
“I recognize that song. Is it from a movie? About the sea witch?” I asked her, and she nodded.
“And your mom is named Belle, the girl who likes to read and marries the Beast. Silas and I thought it was funny that you both have names like that,” she said. She sang a little and Iremembered telling him my name for the first time at Château Moderne and how he’d done the same thing.
“Belle is your real mom,” she announced. “Right?”
“Right,” I said. “But I was also curious about the woman who had given birth to me.”
“Did you find out about her?”
“Some things,” I said. “If you want to learn more about your parents, your brother might know. We could research them, too.”
“Would Silas be mad? He gets mad when he talks about them.”
He would have been crushed to know that she recognized that. “He doesn’t get mad at you,” I said quickly. “He gets mad at the situation, like how you have to wonder about them. He’s not mad that he gets to have you live with him, though. That’s the best thing that ever happened to him. No matter what, your brother will always love you.” I took a breath. “I love you, too.”
She didn’t answer me. But after a moment, she leaned over and I put my arm around her. We cuddled on the couch, watching a basketball game, until Silas called.
