Chapter 20
The next few years were the quietest, happiest of my life.
Arthur grew. Fast.
He was two, then three, then four. He had Marcus’s sense of humor and my stubbornness and a curiosity that got him into everything. He climbed trees. He drew on walls. He asked “why?” a hundred times a day. He loved dinosaurs and space and baseball and, much to Marcus’s dismay, unicorns.
We bought a bigger house in the suburbs—still close to the city, but with a yard and a treehouse and a dog—a big golden retriever named Sunny that Arthur had picked out from the shelter when he was three.
Daniel and Sarah got married. They had twin girls, Lily and Grace, the following year. Arthur was thrilled to be a big cousin. He taught the girls how to build block towers and how to chase the dog and how to make the funniest faces.
My father married Ms. Rita. They moved into a smaller house down the street, spending their days gardening and traveling and spoiling all three grandchildren rotten.
Marcus was promoted to District Attorney. He won the election by a landslide, running on a platform of justice for everyone, rich or poor. He worked hard, but he always made it home for dinner. He never missed a Little League game. Never missed a school play. Never missed a bedtime story.
I ran the scholarship fund full-time now. We’d given out over two hundred scholarships to kids who never would have been able to afford college otherwise. Every year, we had a banquet, and the kids would come up and tell their stories. Every year, I’d look out at them and see my mother’s face in every single one.
Life was… normal.
Boring, even. In the best possible way.
I’d forgotten what it was like to wake up without fear. To walk out the door without looking over my shoulder. To know that when I put my son to bed at night, he was safe. That nothing bad was going to happen to him.
I should have known better.
It was a Tuesday in April. Rainy. Gray.
I was in my office at the scholarship fund, going over applications for the coming year, when my receptionist buzzed me.
“Maya? There’s a woman here to see you. Says she’s your cousin. From your mother’s side.”
I frowned. I didn’t have any cousins on my mother’s side. She’d been an only child. Her parents were dead. There was no one left.
“Did she give a name?”
“Claire. Claire Bennett.”
The name meant nothing to me.
May you like
“Send her in.”
The woman who walked into my office was in her mid-thirties, with brown hair and my mother’s eyes. Exactly my mother’s eyes. She was nervous, twisting a ring around her finger, carrying a
