Anchor

Chapter Twenty (Part 2)

I never pictured myself as a mother.

Out of all the roles I ever could have pictured myself in, motherhood wasn't one of them. I don't know why. I guess I just never really thought I fit into the role. I hadn't grown up around a mother, therefore, I always deemed myself unfit to be one. I knew that was a stupid assumption, because it was in my biology to one day crave motherhood – human genome and all that – but I just never saw myself caring for another being.

I could barely care for myself – much less a child.

Or so I thought. I believed in that for eighteen years. Eighteen long, hard years. I grew up telling myself exactly that. I always believed that being unable to properly care for and protect myself made me unfit to take care of a child, blood of my blood.

Well, Kalla proved me wrong.

I'd been sitting in the couch in the living room watching TV by myself when she came down the stairs from her room, having finished her homework like the good girl she was. She was singing some childish tune I faintly recognized from my childhood days when she saw me sitting there alone.

"Z?" Her smooth voice called.

I turned, my brows rising in confusion. She'd never called me that before. Usually, only Jensen called me 'Z'.

"Yeah?"

"Today at school a girl made fun of me for not having a mom," she told me innocently, her voice small but devoid of anger or revolt.

"She did?" I asked, trying to not sound like this didn't surprise me. "What did she say?"

She sighed, coming to sit down beside me in the couch. "She said I was a freak and that's why not even my mom wanted me."

Kids could be cruel. I'd been there so I knew just how much it hurt to be told in the face something as awful and serious as that.

"You're not a freak, honey," I sighed, shaking my head.

She turned her big dark blue eyes on me, serious and so mature. "But I can do weird things."

I smiled cunningly, reaching my head to almost touch the top of hers, speaking in a loud voice as if I was telling her a secret. "No. You can do amazing things," I corrected softly. "And that only makes you special."

She shook her head, her blond locks blowing my curls around her face and scrounging up her little nose. "But the other kids at school can't do what I do."

"I know," I agreed. "They can't. Only you can because you were born to be special, Kalla. Many people are."

She eyed me, her eyes focused and as round as they could get. "Like you and Hayden and Krishna?"

I hated the fact that she'd put together in a sentence my name along with the other two names that I hated more than anything these days but I let it slide. Kalla was a child. Her innocence was still her bliss.

I gave her a motherly soft smile. "Yes. Like us. All of us."

"Even Mr. Russel?" She asked, her little mouth hanging open in surprise.

I laughed. "Yes. Even Mr. Russel. That's how we found you, dummy."

"What can you do?" She shot.

"Hum..." I thought of what I could actually say. "I can – I can see people..."

She tilted her head, confused. "People? People like us?"

I took a deep breath.

How do I say this to a kid?