Her disappointment is palpable, but she quickly covers it with a smile and chirps, “Cool. See you at the register!”
Wulvers and humans share a lot of naming traditions, so I pick up one of the human baby name books and flip through it. So many names jump out at me, sparking my imagination about what our pups will be like. A girl named Violet with silvery fur like Mam. A boy named Ezra with Julia’s brown eyes.
“Baby names, huh?” Julia asks behind me. When I turn to look at her, her eyes are crinkled with a smile. “Any firm ideas yet?”
I shake my head. “It won’t feel real until we know how many pups we’re having. It’s a different conversation depending on how many there are, you know? Like if there are four, we’ll need a much longer list of potentials if we’re going to find that many we agree on.”
“Well, we don’t have to agree on anything. They’re your pups.”
I wish she’d stop saying things like that. “They’reourpups. They share half your DNA. Half your family history. You want me to deny them that?”
“I don’t want to argue in the store,” she murmurs, her eyes on the floor.
Shit, of course not. And sure enough, the manager’s eyes are on us. What am I doing, rolling up to her workplace to hash out serious topics, like I’m entitled to her attention no matter what else she has going on? I’ve made a major blunder. “I’m sorry. I’ll go.”
To my surprise, she catches my arm. “Wait for me after work? I get off at five. You’re right, we do need to talk about this.”
I nod, relieved she’s not shutting me out after my huge overstep. “And you can tell me the ending.”
She raises her brows. “What?”
“The ending of the story you were reading. I missed it, and I want to know what happens.”
That earns me a smile. “Okay.”
I’m ready with our coffee drinks, hers decaf and soy-milky, when she shows up at Three Wishes a few minutes after her shift is over. She slides into the seat across from me and takes a long, grateful drink of the steaming beverage.
“So…” I start. “I owe you an apology. I was antsy to see you, so I came to the store. I should have waited until you were done with work and called ahead so it wasn’t an ambush. I’m just a little excited, and I wasn’t thinking. I’m really sorry if I caused any problems with your manager.”
She shakes her head, laughing. “It’s no big deal. She already hates me.”
“Nobody could hate you.”
“You’d be wrong about that one.” She wraps her hands around her coffee mug and stares at the foam swirls on top, gnawing on her bottom lip. “What you said about denying the pups my family history…”
“I’m sorry,” I interrupt, guilt clawing at my guts. “I shouldn’t have said that. It wasn’t the time or place.”
“Maybe not, but it’s true. It made me realize that I really swept that under the rug with my girls. Richard didn’t want them to have ‘weird’ names. He wouldn’t even consider giving them Korean middle names. He said the babies would be Americans and should have American names. I told him that I’m American even though I have both kinds of name, but he wouldn’t hear it. I just assumed you wouldn’twant my input, either, especially since the pups will be growing up in a wulver family, and I’m basically just a surrogate.”
“You’re not just—” I start, but her smile stops me.
“I know. That’s what I realized once you said that. I’m not a third party. My thinking about this has been wrong. I’m their mom, even though it’s not going to be a typical family structure. I want them to have that connection even if I’m not raising them on a daily basis. They’ll be curious about me. They’ll want to know my stories to make sense of what it means to be half-human. My girls wanted to know their Korean side even though they didn’t get Korean names. Where they live now, their American names are the ‘weird’ ones!”
“I really hate that he didn’t want his daughters to have that piece of their birthright,” I mutter.
“He was doing what he thought was best for them, I’m sure,” she hedges. “Want to know a secret, though?”
I lean forward. I want to know everything about her. “Yes.”
“I gave them names anyway, even though they aren’t on the birth certificates. Samantha is Soo-Min and Molly is Eun-Min. I had lockets engraved when they were born, and those are the names they’re using at school, even though they’re technically nicknames.”
I grin at her little rebellion. “I love that. You must have a good relationship with them.”
She nods. “It’s hard having them so far away, but I’m so proud of them both. I wish you could meet them.”
I don’t point out that I can meet them whenever they’re in town. They might even want to know their half-siblings. She’s not ready to think that far ahead yet, though. “What do you think about giving our pups Korean names, too?” I ask instead. “Is that something you’d like to do?”
She nods shyly. “I was thinking middles, if that’s okay with you. I can make a list of names and you can pick from it, maybe?”
