Boundary Born (Boundary Magic Book 3) by Melissa F. Olson Page A

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 like Sam, or rather, Sam looked that much like Valerya. Only two things were different from my sister: the eyes—Valerya had brown eyes, unlike the blue that Sam had shared with me and, apparently, Emil. Valerya’s hair was different, too. Despite the faded picture, I could see that instead of Sam’s dark chestnut, our mother’s hair had been reddish-brown. Just like mine.
    I felt my eyes prick with sudden, unwelcome tears, and I had to blink hard to keep them back. In the shot, the two of them were wearing simple, relatively timeless clothes that looked homemade. They stood in front of a barn—the faded photo had turned it more rust than red—that could have been anywhere. Anywhere with bright sunshine. “Where was this taken?” I asked.
    “Australia. We were visiting my brother at his farm.”
    Valerya was smiling for the camera, but her expression was pained and uncomfortable, like she wanted the photographer to put the camera down and let her escape. Maybe she just didn’t like having her picture taken. I felt a sudden rush of protectiveness for this woman, ten years younger than I was now.
    “Why weren’t you with her?” I demanded, finally