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“There are a few things I haven’t told you, Lark.” “Things like what?”
“Well, for starters... I’m not your mother.”
6
Lark
My years of performing have allowed me to hone restraint. So even though my hands shake and my
lip trembles, my words are even. I don’t lose control. “What do you mean, you’re not my mother?”
Mom looks beyond me, into the past. A place she has never taken me.
Now that she is looking beyond me, I don’t want her to go. “Never mind,” I say, reaching across the table for her hand.
I’m not ready for everything I know about myself to change. “I don’t want to know,” I tell her. “I want things just as they are, right now.”
“It’s time, Lark. I’ve held it back to protect you. I made rules to keep you safe, but you’re all grown up and pretty soon you’ll leave the nest and fly away.”
“Getting a job doesn’t mean I’m leaving you. It’s your rules forcing me out.”
“I know that, Lark. But it does mean I can stop hiding the truth. You’re ready for more than what I’ve given.”
I run a finger over the rim of the glass, my heart tight, scared of what she might tell me.
We look like mother and daughter. Her silver hair matches the idea of what a witch’s should be, and my jet-black hair isn’t too far off. We both have green eyes and small frames. We are one and the same.
Or, so I thought.
“My sister and I found you both in a tiny basket on the doorstep.”
I rest my elbow the table, leaning in, lost in about a hundred ways. “Both?”
“You and what we assumed to be your twin sister. Though, even then, you were opposites. She was fair-haired, and you were raven-black. Her eyes were hard and yours were bright.”
“Sister?” I scoff. “What are you saying?”
“That we found you. And kept you safe, all these years, as your mothers.”
“I have a sister and an aunt and you aren’t my mother?” I pull back my hair, nervously. My heart aches with fear and tears spill on my cheeks. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Don’t you want to know?” “But why now? Why... tonight?”
“Because my half-truths are no longer enough for you. And Lark, I don’t want to lose you.”
But I can feel it in my bones, she already has lost me. How can I trust her when she’s kept such a fundamental truth from me?
“Stop being a witch for one night,” I tell her, my voice sharp. There is nothing restrained about me anymore. That girl, the one hiding behind someone else’s rules, she’s gone.
“If I’m not yours, whose am I?”
“Lark, I wish I had the answers. That’s why I’ve never told you.
I don’t have the words that will make this better.”
She’s kept so much from me, and from where I’m sitting, it feels as if my entire life has been a lie. And she has no good reason for keeping me in the dark.
“I don’t need it to be better,” I say, my words ice cold. “I just need it to make sense.”
Mom reaches over the table for my hand. But I pull back, wanting out of this kitchen and this web of lies.
“Sense?” she asks, drawing her empty hand back to her lap. “There is no sense when we’re talking about the mysteries of the Universe.”
I purse my lips. For once in my life I’m not willing to make this easier for her.
“Twenty-one years ago, my sister and I went to the woods looking for herbs and when we returned, there you both were, sleeping soundly in a basket on the doorstep.”
I scoff. I’m not one for giving attitude, but right now I want to turn this table upside down.
I bite my bottom lip to stifle the sob rising in my chest. “Like I said,” she says softly. “You won’t like this.”
I pour another shot of scotch, swirling the tumbler of amber liquid as I collect my thoughts. “And you and your sister, you just kept us? You know that makes you a baby snatcher. You are certi- fiably insane, you know that, right?”
Mom looks at me as if I’m the one who has lost her marbles. “You weren’t stolen. And there are crazier things than finding a baby in a basket.”
“Like what?”
“Like those five hawks staring at us through the kitchen window.”
I turn in my chair to see where she’s pointing, and sure enough they are right there, watching, perched on the windowsill.
“Holy shit,” I whisper, really taking them in. “They’re massive.”
They see us staring, but don’t move.
I squeeze my eyes shut. It’s all too much. I move from the chair, my feet wobbly from all the booze, and I stand in the door- way, unable to meet my not-mother’s eyes.
My entire life is a lie.
But there is one thing I must ask before I step away. I steel my courage and look up at her.
