My chest tightened. Of course it was wrong to trick a child. Let her believe I was her mother, when her actual mother was trawling the ocean floor. But if Sue had been able to take a break from being an evil, manipulative bitch for five minutes, I wouldn’t have walked in here with the wrong name on my lips, and the wrong wallet in my purse.
What was I supposed to do when Alex, Rhodes, and Micah came at me, calling me their wife and showering me in relief and concern? Was Isupposed to say,oh, sorry, I’m not actually your wife. I’m her twin sister who is currently impersonating her to get back the life she stole from me?
What? You want to know where the real Sue is? Well, funny thing is, I threw her broken body off a cliff.
There was no ending to that conversation that went well. Davis would’ve turned me right around and marched me to the nearest jail cell.
On top of that, this little girl believed her mother was sitting right next to her. How could I be the one to tell her she was dead, and she’d never see her again?
I gazed into her eyes, my broken head wrecked for reasons that had nothing to do with its meeting with the steering wheel.
I just have to go along with it for now until I figure out the best way to handle this without ending up in prison. I’m not after anything that isn’t already mine. When it’s all said and done, I’ll make them understand why it all got so screwy.
Sighing, I smiled at her. “Yeah, Omma’s silly sometimes, but I like to be silly every now and then. Do you like to be silly?” I asked as the argument between the guys and Davis got louder.
She nodded.
“Then, let’s be silly and ask each other lots of silly questions.” I winked. “I’ll go first: what is the name of the prettiest girl in the world?”
She giggled again. “Nari!”
“Nari,” I whispered. “That is a beautiful Korean name. So, let me guess, your other name is Lily.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And how old are you, Lily?”
“This many.” She held up six fingers.
“I see, and...” I lowered my head, speaking softly in her ear. “Which one is your daddy?”
Lily cocked her head, brows crumpling.
I tried another way. “What’s your last name?”
“Nari Kim!”
Chewing my lip, I let it go. They probably hadn’t gotten too far into the discussion of biology and one-sperm/one-egg discussions with a six-year-old, and that was okay. It was only a teenage girl’s obsessive curiosity that made me ask.
I spent an entire year of high school doodling Sarah Newbury, Sarah Spencer, and Sarah Montgomery in my notebook, and that was only when I was taking a break from imagining what versions of our children would look like. My little cherub face with their everything else? The only result of that union would be completely, off-the-wall adorable—
—and she is,I thought, stroking Nari’s hair.
A small part of me wanted to know which version of my fantasy came true—
—with the wrong sister.
I let out a rough breath, feeling the question I truly needed to ask coming up my throat. “Do you have any brothers or sisters, baby girl?”
She tossed her head. “No. I want a sister, but you won’t let me have one.”
I barked a startled laugh at her directness. Oh yes, I loved this girl.
“And does... Omma have a brother or sister?”
She cocked her head the other way. “Grandma?”
“No, me,” I corrected. “Do I have a brother or sister?”
