Ones were rare. They went beyond uncommon, but in my line, we had them. The Kinkades were Roma for twelve generations, and I was the first to break that line.
Adam was the opposite of Roma. A Gadže—he was the American all-star boy with his bright white smile that belonged on a toothpaste commercial, and a body that was made for sports. He was all the more beautiful for it too.
And beautiful wasn’t an exaggeration.
I didn’t understand how there could be two of him walking around, yet, when it boiled down to it, Cain wasn’t beautiful. Maybe to others he was. But not to me.
Adam was light.
Pure.
I didn’t doubt he wasn’t pure in the Biblical sense. But his soul? It was good.
My heart swelled as I thought about him, and when I trudged into the house and Emma saw me, she tipped her chin to the side, a strange smile on her face.
“You look different.”
My eyes widened, and my cheeks instantly bloomed with color as my gaze tripped off hers—I saw her sadness without her even having to say a word, and knew Louisa hadn’t had a good day. Face to the floor, I muttered, “I do?”
She hummed under her breath, and I could feel her gaze flittering over me as she tried to judge why I looked different. As far as I knew, nothing had happened outwardly to make her think I might be in any way unusual in comparison to this morning.
“You look...” I cast a quick glance at her and was surprised with the sight of her smile, which was genuine. “Happy. Good time at the pool?”
It kind of saddened me that I might be walking around looking like a real miserable bitch all the damn time, but I was glad I looked happy. Glad it had made her smile, because she had enough sorrow in her days with Louisa.
“It was great,” I admitted. “They raised enough to fix the roof. The senator managed to get a big donation for the place.”
Emma’s grin widened as she dipped her hands into soapy water and cleared a few dishes in the sink. “That’s brilliant news. I’m not entirely sure what you’d have done with all your spare time if you couldn’t be in that pool.”
The prospect was a horrendous one. “Me either.” My shudder wasn’t feigned.
Thankfully, the state therapist I had to visit considered my time in the pool additional therapy, so that meant I could spend hours at the community center without there being an issue, so long as I did all my chores and kept up with my schoolwork. I had nothing in my life except my books and the pool so, of course, neither were a problem.
The notion that I had something else in my life now, someone, made my heart skip a beat as I dropped my bag onto the kitchen table.
It was a small room, papered with a cheery yellow pattern that made the north-facing kitchen a lot brighter than it might have otherwise been. Old-fashioned, dark brown cupboards graced opposing walls, and the matching table that Emma kept polished and clean stood right in the middle. Just off to the side, there was a utility room, and deciding to duck out of this conversation, I dug through my rucksack, grabbed the wet stuff from the plastic carrier I kept my gear in, and took it in there. There was, as always, a huge wash load.
Laundry was my chore.
People didn’t realize how personal laundry was, I didn’t think. They gave it to their kids to do, unknowing what it revealed.
I knew when Jon and Emma had sex, when she had her period. I knew when Louisa had another nosebleed, and I knew when she’d wet the bed. All personal information, things that I wouldn’t want a stranger knowing about me.
But then, I didn’t want anyone knowing anything about me.
That was the Roma in me. We were a secretive group, not because we were shifty like many had been taught to believe about us, but because we were taught that we weren’t safe. Never would be.
We were destined to travel the Earth, never finding a home, never accepted.
I’d found acceptance of a variant because I’d blended in. My nanny? She hadn’t. She’d lived her life proud to be Roma, and I knew I was shaming her by shoving our heritage aside and doing what I had to in order to survive. Still, that