I EMBRACED THE WORLD

Chapter Three: The Photograph

Marta didn't explain herself right away. She let the silence sit between them for a few steps, the way people do when they're deciding how much truth someone can actually hold.

"Things haven't been good for you and your brother since your father left you where he did," she said finally. "I know it's not my place to say it. But somebody should have, a long time ago."

"We're not — " Princess stopped, started again. "Dada Sonje takes care of us now. She's not our mother, but she takes care of us."

"I know who Sonje is." Something moved across Marta's face — not quite disapproval, not quite pity. "That's not the same as being cared for the way a child should be, anak. But I'm not here to speak badly of her. I'm here because there's something of yours I think you should have."

They had reached the small sari-sari store at the corner, the one Sioning always used as a landmark for where to turn. Marta stopped there, reached into the cloth bag at her hip, and pulled out a photograph, worn soft at the corners like it had been carried a long time.

"Here," she said, holding it out. "Look."

Princess took it with both hands, the way you hold something you already suspect is important.

A woman looked back at her from the photograph — young, dark-haired, with a smile that reached all the way to her eyes in a way that made the whole picture feel warm even in faded color. Princess didn't need Marta to tell her who it was. She already knew, the same instinctive way she'd known her own face resembled her father's and nothing else.

"She was beautiful," Marta said quietly. "Inside and out. You have her smile, even if you don't believe me yet."

Princess didn't answer. She was too busy memorizing the photograph — the tilt of the woman's head, the exact curve of her mouth — pressing every detail into some private room in her mind before she had to give it back.

"Can I—" she started.

"Keep it," Marta said, before she could finish asking. "It's yours more than it's ever been mine."

It was two weeks before Sioning finally agreed to let her go.

"Just for the afternoon," Sioning said, tucking a small bag of pandesal into Princess's hands like insurance against whatever the day might bring. "And you come straight back before it gets dark, you hear me?"

"Opo," Princess said, already halfway out the gate.

The walk to Marta's took longer than she expected — past the edge of the subdivision, past the last paved road, until the ground turned to packed dirt and the noise of the city thinned into something closer to birdsong. Bamboo groves rose up on either side of the path, cool and green, and the air itself seemed to loosen the further they walked, like it had more room to breathe out here.

"When you were still a baby," Marta said, watching her take it all in, "your Tatay Pedring and I used to bring you under the trees like these, just so you could get some fresh air. You wouldn't remember it. You were too small."

Princess didn't ask how that was possible — how a farming couple she'd only just met had once held her as a baby. There would be time for that question later. For now, she let herself be led.

The bahay kubo came into view at the end of the path, bamboo-framed and modest, ringed by a small plot of vegetables and fruit trees that clearly fed more than just two people. Neighbors waved as they passed, unhurried in a way Princess had never seen adults be. Everyone here seemed to know everyone else, and to actually like what they knew.

"It's so beautiful here, Nay Marta," Princess said, turning slowly to take in the whole clearing — the trees, the modest garden, the quiet.

"Halika, anak," Marta said, waving her the rest of the way up the path.

A man was already standing in the doorway when they arrived, wide-shouldered and sun-worn, breaking into a grin the moment he saw her.

"Halika kayo — ang laki na ng anak!" He pulled her into a hug before she could decide whether that was allowed, the kind of hug that didn't leave room for hesitation.

"Tay Pedring," Princess said — and found, without quite meaning to, that she was hugging him back just as tightly.

She was still smiling into his shoulder when she heard Marta's voice shift behind her, quieter now, aimed at Pedring instead of her.

"I gave her the photograph," Marta said.

Pedring's grin didn't fade exactly — but something behind his eyes went careful. "Already? I thought we agreed to wait until—"

"She needed to see her mother's face, Pedring. Some things don't keep."

Princess pulled back slightly, catching the tail end of a look passing between them — one that had nothing to do with photographs and everything to do with something neither of them had said out loud yet.

"Wait until what?" she asked.

Neither of them answered right away.