Boundary Born (Boundary Magic Book 3) - Melissa F. Olson Page 0,18

gray and a neat goatee. He carried a little extra weight around his middle, but it was mostly disguised by his simple, forgettable clothing: khaki pants and a plain charcoal button-down, with new-looking casual oxfords. The only remarkable thing about his clothes was the awkward way they fit. His shirt bunched a little just below the collar, and his pants hung low, as though the pockets were filled with change. I’d had a lot of practice looking for weapons under clothing, but this didn’t seem like guns or knives, just . . . weighed down.

At first glance he had appeared to be about forty, but now I saw the signs of age: sag under his chin, lines around his mouth, and the small potbelly despite his wiry forearms. I put him just north of fifty. His eyes were cornflower blue, exactly like mine. And Sam’s, and Charlie’s.

That itself wasn’t proof of paternity or anything, but the more I looked, the more similarities I spotted. Our noses. Our thick eyelashes. I glanced at his hands. Even his fingernails were shaped like mine.

“Why are you here?” I blurted, and immediately felt like a jerk.

But he didn’t seem offended, just nervous. His fingers kneaded together at his waist, as though he were holding an imaginary hat. “I was hoping to meet you. Speak to you. Explain why . . .”

He trailed off, looking so mortified that I took pity on him. “Are you okay with animals, Mr. Jasper?” I asked. “Dogs and cats?”

“Yes, of course. And please call me Emil.” For the first time, I noticed his unusual accent. His vowels were long—like someone from Canada or the Midwest—but there was also an odd lilt I couldn’t place.

“Okay, well. Come in.”

I ushered him ahead, catching a familiar scent. Cigar smoke. I’d known a few guys who smoked them on deployment. As soon as Jasper—Emil—was through the door, Chip and Cody were falling all over each other to lick his face. Emil dodged gamely, hunching down a little so he could scratch their backs while they were on the floor. We went into the living room, where I motioned him toward an easy chair, heading for the opposite couch. I couldn’t keep myself from perching on the very edge, as though my body still expected him to go for a weapon. Emil turned to greet my gray cat Gus-Gus, who literally stepped onto his back by way of greeting. “Hello,” he murmured, scratching Gus-Gus under the chin. You can tell a lot about a person by how they are with animals, I had learned, and Emil certainly seemed to be passing that particular test.

Then I remembered how everyone said Hitler was a dog person. “Um, would you like something to drink?” I said, because the internal voice of my mother would have been scandalized if I didn’t. “Coffee, water? Or I think I have soda . . .”

I trailed off, but Emil shook his head. “I’m fine,” he assured me. “I had coffee on the flight.” Once Emil’s eyes were off the animals and on me, they roved over my face like he couldn’t stop himself. Like he’d finally found the pot of gold at the end of his rainbow.

I had a sudden, juvenile urge to throw off that blissful expression. “Tell me about my . . . my mother,” I said, wincing at the word. It felt too much like a betrayal of my real mom, who had raised me and loved me and worried about me every day. But at the same time, what else could I call the woman whose uterus Sam and I had once shared?

Emil’s face shut down a little. “Her name was Valerya,” he said, as though he had practiced the words in front of a mirror. “We met in Russia, when I was there on a student visa.”

His hands moved up suddenly—I had to make an effort not to flinch—but he was just fumbling at his pockets. He pulled out a photograph and reached across the coffee table to hand it to me. “That was us.”

I took it with an automatic reverence. I’d seen all the paperwork on our adoption, and a newspaper article from shortly after we were born, but there were never any photos. The picture that Emil handed over showed a trim, youthful Emil with his arm around a young woman. She looked maybe twenty or twenty-one, and for a second I honestly thought Emil had Photoshopped in my sister. Valerya looked that much