Total pages in book: 173
Estimated words: 163802 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 819(@200wpm)___ 655(@250wpm)___ 546(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 163802 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 819(@200wpm)___ 655(@250wpm)___ 546(@300wpm)
What? You want to know where the real Sue is? Well, funny thing is, I threw her broken body off a cliff.
There was no ending to that conversation that went well. Davis would’ve turned me right around and marched me to the nearest jail cell.
On top of that, this little girl believed her mother was sitting right next to her. How could I be the one to tell her she was dead, and she’d never see her again?
I gazed into her eyes, my broken head wrecked for reasons that had nothing to do with its meeting with the steering wheel.
I just have to go along with it for now until I figure out the best way to handle this without ending up in prison. I’m not after anything that isn’t already mine. When it’s all said and done, I’ll make them understand why it all got so screwy.
Sighing, I smiled at her. “Yeah, Omma’s silly sometimes, but I like to be silly every now and then. Do you like to be silly?” I asked as the argument between the guys and Davis got louder.
She nodded.
“Then, let’s be silly and ask each other lots of silly questions.” I winked. “I’ll go first: what is the name of the prettiest girl in the world?”
She giggled again. “Nari!”
“Nari,” I whispered. “That is a beautiful Korean name. So, let me guess, your other name is Lily.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And how old are you, Lily?”
“This many.” She held up six fingers.
“I see, and...” I lowered my head, speaking softly in her ear. “Which one is your daddy?”
Lily cocked her head, brows crumpling.
I tried another way. “What’s your last name?”
“Nari Kim!”
Chewing my lip, I let it go. They probably hadn’t gotten too far into the discussion of biology and one-sperm/one-egg discussions with a six-year-old, and that was okay. It was only a teenage girl’s obsessive curiosity that made me ask.
I spent an entire year of high school doodling Sarah Newbury, Sarah Spencer, and Sarah Montgomery in my notebook, and that was only when I was taking a break from imagining what versions of our children would look like. My little cherub face with their everything else? The only result of that union would be completely, off-the-wall adorable—
—and she is, I thought, stroking Nari’s hair.
A small part of me wanted to know which version of my fantasy came true—
—with the wrong sister.
I let out a rough breath, feeling the question I truly needed to ask coming up my throat. “Do you have any brothers or sisters, baby girl?”
She tossed her head. “No. I want a sister, but you won’t let me have one.”
I barked a startled laugh at her directness. Oh yes, I loved this girl.
“And does... Omma have a brother or sister?”
She cocked her head the other way. “Grandma?”
“No, me,” I corrected. “Do I have a brother or sister?”
“Nuh-uh.” Her denial crashed on my head like a ton of bricks. “Just Mommy. Grandma wanted one perfect child, just like Mommy wanted one perfect child.” Nari said it in a tone like she was repeating something she’d been told many times before. “So I can’t have a sister because you don’t have one, but that’s not fair, Mommy. I still want one.”
I didn’t lose my smile. “Of course you do, baby. I always wanted a brother too.”
Leaning back, I tipped my head to the ceiling so Nari wouldn’t see me seethe.
The worst part was that I wasn’t even surprised, and I didn’t even blame Sue.
Sue couldn’t erase me from my childhood home and my hometown... unless my mother did it for her.
How could you live in the same home as your grandmother and believe she only had one child, unless she let you believe it?
It’s also the only explanation for why her husbands don’t know they’re not talking to their wife.
When a carbon copy of your wife walks through the door, your brain takes a shortcut to the simplest explanation: This is your wife.
It doesn’t think this is your wife’s secret twin sister that she brought home to surprise us so she could also get off on crushing her sister’s feelings one last time.
It also didn’t help that ten years didn’t change the two of us much at all. We still cut our hair the same length. Our body types were still the same, and we didn’t gain any new or visible piercings or tattoos. There was nothing about me to make a person think I wasn’t Soo Min Kim.
Our differences had always been on the inside.
“Okay,” I breathed, returning to Nari. “Do you have any silly questions to ask me?”
Her brows blew up, mimicking the little “o” her pink lips made. “I can ask too?”
“Sure can.”
“Hmm.”
Her look of concentration was so adorable, it made my heart burst. There was a hundred percent chance that if my baby-crazy self had known about Nari earlier, I would’ve bankrupted myself a long time ago, because I would’ve showered her with gifts and attention at every possible opportunity.