Page 115 of Kingmakers, Year Three

“Cat!” I bark, my voice louder than I intend.

Cat breaks off, startled by my tone.

I try to speak softly, but my heart is racing in a sickening way.

“Are you saying my mother is alive?”

“Yes!” Cat cries happily. “Or at least, I’m almost certain.”

The uneven floor of the tower seems to lurch under my feet.

I really thought she was dead.

I thought that’s why she never tried to contact me.

Now Cat is telling me my mom was alive all along.

She could have called me any time.

“She’s in Chicago,” I say dully.

“That’s right.” Cat nods. Her expression is eager and hopeful. It hurts me almost as much as her words.

I always wanted to move back to Chicago. I wished I lived there instead of Moscow.

My mother went without me.

“There’s something else,” Cat says, unfurling the paper she’s been clutching so tight. It’s a grainy black and white photograph, printed on the shitty printers in the computer lab.

I take it from her though I don’t want to.

I’m afraid to look.

I smooth out the wrinkles, battling against my churning stomach and the frantic thudding in my chest.

I see my mother, older but instantly recognizable, holding the hand of a small girl with blonde pigtails.

“I think you have a sister,” Cat says.

I look at that image, my mother holding the hand of the girl the same age that I was when she left.

The little girl looks up at her, happy and trusting.

I tear the picture in half, ripping mother and daughter apart.

Cat stares at me, stunned.

I rip those pieces into smaller pieces and I throw them on the floor.

It does nothing to stifle my rage.

That paper might as well be tinder—my fury flames up ten times higher.

Cat is open-mouthed, already backing away from me.

“You had no right,” I hiss, the anger rising and rising.

“But I?—”

---