CHAPTER

27

I freeze.

The baby keeps crying, but then I hear murmuring and the baby quiets down. A light clicks on, its glow spilling into the front hallway.

I push the door open all the way and stand there, waiting for Lena to come rushing out and explain all this. The baby squawks a little more and I walk into the house, following the sound and the voices.

“She what?” a voice calls out.

Lena’s voice.

“She’s outside on the porch,” Janesh says. “It’s the middle of the night, Leen. What’s going on?”

“I don’t know. I need to call Kate right now.”

My feet glide through the house like I’m in a trance. There’s baby stuff everywhere. A high chair at the end of a dark wood kitchen table. Cloth books and squishy toys all over the living room, soft blankets tossed over the dark leather couch.

The house is cute and simple, throw pillows and paintings on the walls. There’s a lot of color—deep reds and oranges and dark purple. The air smells like orange blossom tea and milk. I keep expecting someone else to appear, like maybe someone who owns the house, but I only hear Janesh and Lena.

I tiptoe down a hallway off the kitchen and stop outside an open door. I don’t look inside. I don’t dare. I just listen.

“You need to go talk to Sunny,” Janesh says. “She knows something’s up. You should’ve told her right away.”

“That was out of the question and you know it,” Lena says. “I wasn’t ready. She wasn’t ready.”

“You’re stronger than you think you are. You don’t give yourself enough credit for all you’ve done. How much you’ve overcome.”

I hold my breath, waiting for Lena to say something.

“You don’t know what this is like, okay?” she says quietly. “You’ve never left your own daughter. You would never leave Samaira.”

Samaira.

“Leen, come on. Don’t—”

“Just take her, all right? If Kate wakes up and finds out Sunny’s gone, she’ll call the police. I’ll never see Sunny again.”

“All right. But, Leen, you need to tell her the truth.”

“I know that. I will.”

They go quiet and I hear a rustling sound, like maybe Janesh is hugging her. Then there’s a soft cooing noise, kind of like a dove. The baby’s in there. With Lena and Janesh. Only with them.

Knowing stuff is tricky business. Look at all that’s happened. I knew Lena wasn’t really a mermaid swimming free in the ocean, which meant she left me behind on purpose. Margot knew I wondered about kissing girls and it cost me my best friend. Then there’s Quinn. As soon as I found out she liked girls—as soon as I knew—it all blew up in my face, losing me my second best friend in six months.

Knowing stuff is dangerous.

Knowing stuff hurts.

But I can’t stop myself from stepping forward, closer, closer, until I’m standing in the doorway of a room with a big white crib in one corner. The room is lit by a single lamp with a blue whale for a base, and everything looks soft and warm. There’s a cushioned rocking chair and paintings on the walls of watercolor starfish and dolphins and sand dollars. And the colors. The colors are perfect. Aquamarine and cerulean and sky.

Lena and Janesh are in front of the crib, holding a baby between them. Lena smooths her hand over the baby’s head, which is covered in super-dark hair that looks just like Janesh’s. Her skin is brown like his too, although it’s a little lighter.

I breathe out as quietly as I can. The baby’s his. Only his. This is Samaira and he brought her with him on his visit from New York. But then I notice a ring on Janesh’s finger. A gold ring. Then I notice a ring on Lena’s finger too. Silver-colored with a simple round diamond on top. I’ve never seen it before. She’s never worn any rings the whole time she’s been here.

And then I keep noticing more and more stuff. I keep knowing.

The baby squirms while she pulls on Lena’s hair and I can see her whole face. I see freckles spilling over her nose and onto her cheeks. I see her eyes, which aren’t dark like Janesh’s at all.

They’re amber.

Just like mine.

My mind hums and whirls. I think back to all those entries I read in Lena’s journal, all the times she talked about S and my chest felt all warm and light, like I was loved, like I mattered.

But I don’t think S is me. I don’t think S is me at all.

“Mom?”

It’s the first time I’ve ever called her Mom. The first time I’ve ever called anyone Mom. The word feels small when it falls out of my mouth, but it lands like a grenade and blows up everything in the room. Lena’s head pops up and her eyes go wide. Janesh takes Samaira, who screeches and stretches her little arms toward Lena. Her onesie is bright blue. It has little yellow moons all over it.

“Sunny,” Lena says, hurrying toward me. “Sweetie.”

I feel her hands close around my arms. I think I even hear her saying stuff. Stuff like It’s okay and Let’s go outside and talk and Are you all right? But all I can see is Samaira.

S.

She’s crying and Janesh is cuddling her, his cheek smooshed up against hers while he sways her back and forth. Lena pulls on me a little, trying to get me out of the room, but I can’t budge. There’s a baby in here. Lena’s baby. Lena’s daughter.

“Sunny,” Lena says, “I need you to breathe.”

I am breathing, I want to say, but I can’t get my tongue to work. And maybe I’m not breathing, because my chest feels super-tight. Like, so tight, I may not be breathing at all. It’s not the kind of ache I get when I swim or surf too hard. It’s not even the kind of feeling I get around Quinn, all fluttery and nervous. This hurts, like a billion bricks just landed right on my sternum.

I back away from Lena, or I try to. I try to run. I try to disappear altogether, but my legs feel like they’re full of wet sand. My whole body feels like that—fingers and toes, arms and chest.

“Lena,” Janesh says.

“I know,” Lena says. She kneels down and looks at my amber eyes with her amber eyes and Samaira’s amber eyes.

I squeeze mine shut.

“Honey, take a deep breath, please.”

“Lena, she doesn’t look good,” Janesh says. “Is it her heart? Should I call Kate?” He knows about my heart. Of course he does. He’s Lena’s… he and Lena are…

“Just give her a minute,” Lena says.

I sink down to the floor and I grab at my chest, because that heart that everyone knows all about is pounding like a million hammers. It’s going to break every one of my ribs and bust through my skin.

“Sunny!” Lena’s hands tighten around my arms. Her face is super-close to mine and it’s like looking in a mirror, except it’s not.

“I’m calling 9-1-1,” Janesh says.

Samaira cries and cries.

My chest bursts open, or at least it feels that way. It splits right down the middle. Zip goes the scalpel. Blood. There should be blood everywhere. There should be blood covering the whole world when your heart gets ripped right out of your body, when your whole self spills right out onto the floor. But there’s no red. No white walls and steel operating table. There are only blurry faces of a family I don’t know right before everything goes dark.