Harmonized by Mary Behre Page A

What was she doing here? Yes, she needed his help, but from his expression . . . it looked like all she was doing was bringing him more pain. Regret had the backs of her eyes stinging and her rethinking her decision to talk about the past. Maybe she didn’t deserve forgiveness.
    â€œSit down, Carmelita,” he said without lifting his head.
    â€œOnly my mother ever called me that.” But she obeyed.
    â€œHow is Griselda?” He exhaled hard, straightened and twisted the lid off his water.
    â€œShe died.” She said it quickly, as if getting it out fast would keep the ache away. It didn’t work. This was exactly what she didn’t want to discuss, because every mistake Karma ever regretted came back to her mother.
    â€œI’m sorry, Karma. I know you were close.” Zig set his bottle on the floor and took her chilled, silken hand in his. She’d always had cold hands. He rubbed hers between his, warming them out of habit. He’d nearly brought them to his lips to blow on them, but stopped himself. “When did she pass?”
    Karma snorted. When she spoke her accent had returned. “
Pass.
I always hated that use of the word. Like there was some test she had to take and did so well on, she got to die. Like we should be celebrating.” Karma cleared her throat then her lips curled briefly into a grin. “She died four years ago.”
    Four years? The news jarred him. “I can’t believe I hadn’t heard. I’ve kept in touch with some of your cousins. Why didn’t they tell me?”
    â€œI’m not sure they know.” Karma’s words were barely audible. “I didn’t know who to call after she died. I hadn’t spoken to anyone in my family since the day I left town. I wasn’t sure anyone would have answered.”
    The resignation in her eyes had Zig whispering, “I would have. I wish you would’ve called me.”
    Pulling free of his grasp, she reached for her water. In a move too precise to be casual, she sipped from the bottle and slid to the other side of the couch. She stared at the bottle in her hands as if it were a microphone and spoke softly. “I couldn’t. It had been four years since we ended things. Since
I
left. For all I knew, you were married and had kids. I had no right to come back into your life at that point.”
    Annoyance raced through his blood. “I wasn’t married. No plans to ever make that mistake.”
    Liar.
    Karma whipped her gaze to his, searching. Her right eyebrow arched slightly. No doubt looking for his aura.
    â€œSee anything?” It was small of him, but he had to know if she finally could see him the way she saw everyone else in the world.
    She closed her eyes on a quick exhale, opened them again, and shook her head. “Your aura? No. How did you know I was looking for it?”
    â€œYour brow arches, right there”— he touched a finger to the delicately shaped brow—“whenever you look at, or in my case,
for
an aura.”
    Her mouth formed a small
o
before she traced the soft skin he’d caressed. “Do I do that all the time? No one’s ever mentioned it.”
    â€œProbably because they don’t know what you’re doing.” The urge to touch her again was too strong, so he took a gulp of water instead. “Didn’t your mother do something like that?”
    She let out a derisive snort. “No. I didn’t get my ability from her. When I was around fifteen years old, I made the mistake of telling her I saw an ugly dark pink color around her new boyfriend. I didn’t know what he was back then. But her color, which was normally a pretty pastel blue, changed to a sickly yellow. The moment I saw that, I knew I’d said something wrong. She had me in front of a priest so fast.
Madre de Dios
, I think they’d have performed an exorcism on me. I did the only thing I could think of: I said that I’d