Lyra turned. And turned. And turned—until a figure crossed into her field of vision.Alisa.The lawyer held something in her hand.Another file.
Lyra stopped dancing.
“I eavesdropped on your calls,” Alisa admitted fully without shame. “And then I felt compelled to check up on one last Hail Mary attempt I’d made at getting the hospital records regarding thedeathof Katalin Aquila Reyes.”
“At this point, what does it matter?” Lyra asked, her voice coming out low and raw.
“It matters,” Alisa said quietly, “because of the cause of death—and the date.”
Lyra climbed down from the stage, took the file from Alisa’s outstretched hand, and read. “Complications from a C-section.” Lyra’s gaze flitted up to Alisa’s. “Did she fake a pregnancy, too?” Alisa said nothing, and that was when Lyra saw the date.
Nineteen years earlier.They’d all already known there was a Crucible nineteen years earlier, but thedayof Katalin’s supposedly fatal C-section—
“My birthday,” Lyra said, and then she thought back to her call with that con man who shared her blood.
You were never really mine, princess. You were always hers, your mother’s—Lyra squeezed her eyes shut, but that did nothing against the onslaught of thoughts.
My mother’s.
And when Lyra had toldTomthat she didn’t needhimto tell her about her mom, he’d smiled that wry little smile and shaken his head.It’s funny—you look so much like my little sister…
“Just like her,” Lyra whispered. “I look just like her.”
You were never really mine, princess. You were always hers.
My sister bought a blanket for you before you were ever born. Darby might even still have it.
He’d saidDarby. Darcy first, then Darby, but never once had he referred to Lyra’s momasher mother.
Not once.
The date on that death certificate stared back at Lyra, and her thoughts went to Keith Kane, the onlyDaddyshe’d ever known, and to whathe’dsaid on the phone, the very last thing he’d said before she had to hang up on him.
You’re my girl. You know that, right? You’reourgirl, Lyra, your mom’s and mine. But there’s something I need to—
“Tell me,” Lyra finished out loud. “There was something he needed to tell me.”
You’reourgirl, Lyra, your mom’s and mine. But…
Somehow, Lyra’s hand managed to find its way to her phone. She called her dad back, and even though it was the middle of the night, he answered, because for Lyra, healwaysanswered. Always had and always would.
“Tell me,” Lyra said, her throat tightening around the words.
“Let me wake your mom.”
Lyra’s dad had said, on their last call, that her mom was tying herself in knots.Not about a plot hole. Not about the paparazzi.
“Hey, baby.” The sound of her mom’s voice was a familiar comfort to Lyra, one that threatened to tear her apart.
“I spoke to Tomás.” There were so many other things Lyra wanted to say, answers she wanted to demand, but those four words were all she managed.
“How?” her mom said.
“It doesn’t matter,” Lyra said, thinking about the fact that her whole life, people had said that she didn’t look like her mom. “Hedoesn’t matter.” That much, at least, was true. “My whole life, you told me you left him when I was three days old, and then when I found that picture, you told me that actually, he was the one who left. Left and came back. Left and came back. You said the two of you were together almost a year, but pregnancy takes time, Mom, and that picture of the three of us together—I wasn’t a newborn in that picture. How old does a babyhave to be toclap? Six months? Seven? And Tomás—he’sTomnow, by the way…” Lyra swallowed. “He said…”
Lyra trailed off. She felt like she was a hundred feet in the air, looking down at a field, taking in the whole picture, seeing all the things she hadn’t been able to see up close.
“I can explain, Lyra.”
