Mya felt like she was tumbling down a well. “I didn’t—my mother—she wasn’t named Elena.”
“She wasn’t,” Adrian said softly. “The woman who raised you wasn’t Elena. But the woman who gave birth to you was.”
The food court clattered and sang and splashed around them. The fountain kept whispering. A teenage couple made out unconvincingly under the atrium. Life went on, insultingly indifferent.
Mya’s voice was small. “If this is true,” she said, each word an effort through syrup, “what happened to… Elena?”
“Our mother died twelve years ago,” Alexander said. His tone didn’t invite sympathy. It was simply the weather of the past: rain, then sun, then a drought you never got over. “She never stopped looking.”
“She believed you were alive,” Cameron added quietly, thumb rubbing the edge of the
