Wicked Like a Wildfire (Hibiscus Daughter #1)(10)

“It’s fine,” I said, swallowing hard. “I’m fine.”

“Are you sure? I could talk to her, I could—”

“No, please. That’ll only make it worse. She’ll hate that you even heard that, and she’s not going to let up on me, not even for you.” I gave her a wobbly smile. “I just need a minute, and there’s someone waiting at the tables. She needs you back inside, she said. You should go.”

Nev let me loose uncertainly, stealing a last concerned look over her shoulder as she disappeared back into the kitchen. My hands were still shaking as I approached the one occupied table beneath our awning. I took a deep breath and stilled my fingers, so that our one-sheet menu wouldn’t tremble as I laid it down in front of the old woman who sat at the table.

“Good morning, ma’am,” I said, my voice sludgy with tears. I cleared my throat, eyes fixed on the table. “We don’t have everything that’s on the menu, but what do we have is marked off with the little stars. And I can tell you about all the other—”

“No need,” the woman said, and I glanced up at her in surprise. Her voice had no trace of age to it, but was low and smooth, startlingly sweet. What I could see of her face was young, too. A large and sleek pair of sunglasses hid her eyes, against the bolt of sunshine that slanted over her even beneath the awning, but her delicate jawline was taut, her mouth pillowy and upturned. No crow’s-feet or sagging jowls; even the skin on her neck was clear as a mirror.

It was the hair that had fooled me, pure white and almost dazzling in the sunlight. I had never seen white hair that seemed lush and healthy as snow-fox pelt. Twisted back from her temples, the rest of it fell loose, draped over one shoulder like a stole. She was stroking it as she watched me, and I couldn’t blame her; I practically had to curl my fingers into fists to keep from reaching out and touching it myself. It was even brighter against her blouse, which was the exact azure of the water in the bay.

“You have really pretty hair,” I said stupidly. “Is it dyed?” Of course it wasn’t, idiot. No bleach in the world turned your hair into white silk.

“It isn’t, and thank you,” she said. “Yours is beautiful, too. And you have a very exceptional face to go with it, has anyone ever told you that?” She smiled at me, and to the surprise of no one, her teeth all but sparkled. I couldn’t help smiling back, even though my insides still wobbled. “No, don’t answer that. I’m sure you’re sick of hearing it.”

I wasn’t, actually. Our father was Japanese, Mama had told me and Malina once in a rare, raw moment of softness. A sailor, on a week’s leave in Cattaro, long gone by the time our mother even realized she was pregnant. Our black hair and the tilt of our eyes came from him, though where on Malina it came across as Eastern European, on me it was unmistakably Asian, at startling odds with my gray irises. My high, round cheekbones were his too, prominent as apple halves beneath my skin. Because of my face, I’d heard “alien” and “geisha” and “Japanka,” which simply meant “Japanese woman” but could be whetted into a slur sharp like a fishing hook.

But I definitely hadn’t heard “exceptional.”

Maybe that was why Mama’s prohibition on love had never felt all that difficult to bear. Who was ever going to look at me here, anyway, in this sea of faces that looked not even a drop like mine, and see anything but strangeness?

“Just like a vila,” the woman continued. “A Montenegrin fairy queen in the flesh.”

I wondered whether she would consider adopting me, whoever she was. If she liked the look of me this much, she might like Malina even better. She could have us as a matched set.

Under my scrutiny she stopped touching her hair, and then began turning her own hand over back and forth, as if she’d forgotten it belonged to her. “Strange light here,” she murmured. “Grainy, almost? Or much too bright?” She glanced back up at me, quirking her head to the side like a sparrow. “Does it look strange to you? The caliber of the light?”

“Ah, no?” I made a show of looking around as if I had some actual method for gauging light. “Seems like a pretty standard-issue early-morning gradient, to me. But I’ve never really, uh, examined light all that closely. I don’t think.”

“Gradient!” She clasped her hands together, delighted. “Excellent word. Clever, too, then, and not just so lovely to look at. No wonder . . .”

She murmured that last bit low, like a secret to herself, but I could catch the pain behind it.

“I’m sorry,” she said, mistaking my baffled silence for embarrassment. “I’m babbling like an idiot. It just feels so odd to be back here again, after so long. It all seems so slovenly, somehow. And the smells . . .” She took a deep breath, her nostrils flaring. They were absurdly perfect, precise as blown glass. It seemed like such a silly thing to notice, yet there I was, admiring them. “I’m not sure if I even like it here, anymore.”

“Are you from around here, then?” I asked, curious. She had a touch of the lazy Montenegrin drawl to her accent, though nowhere near as strong as mine. Compared to the Serbs’ crisp speech, we all sounded like we were talking around a mouthful of honey.

“Not exactly here, but close enough. Much closer than where I’ve been, anyway, and all this looks more familiar than not.”