21
My mother was making dinner when I arrived home that evening.
She didn’t even glance at me as I closed and locked the door, and made my way to the kitchen. I halted by the tall counter and sighed. With her lips pressed tight, she chopped onions with ease.
The warm scent of paprika and garlic reached my nose. “It smells nice.”
She took the cutting board to the range and pushed the chopped onion inside a pan with the knife. She returned to stand beside the sink and started chopping red and green peppers. And still she said nothing.
My skin itched with the urge to tell her I knew why she had been banished. To ask her more about my father. If he had really left us like she made me believe all these years, or if she left to protect him, to keep him away from alchemists.
But I already k
