Shadows Gray by Melyssa Williams

and the contrast makes me sigh. I resolve to stop biting them first thing tomorrow.
    “So you can look for Rose?” Emme’s nose is tucked in her book again. “Have you thought maybe she isn’t Rose, but just someone who looks like…well, like the way you imagine she would look today?”
    “Of course I’ve thought of it, but I’m telling you, she’s exactly how Dad describes with plenty of Mother thrown in, and even a little of me.  Our eyes aren’t exactly common,” I remind her, pointedly.
    “Your eyes are creepy.  Oops, I meant to say creepy in a beautiful way,” Emme laughs.
    “You’re no help at all,” I answer, crossly. “Tell me what to do!”
    “Alright, luv, don’t get your knickers in a twist.  Let’s piece this puzzle together, shall we?  Rose was left behind when you, your mum, and your dad disappeared back in what, the seventeen hundreds?”
    “1741, I think.”
    “What do you remember? Anything about that time? If she was left behind, what would it have been like for her?”
    “Well, it was France. It was cold; at least my only memories are of being cold.  I think I remember,” I falter, “I think I remember the night we left. There was a fire in the hearth and Mother was in her rocking chair.” Of course, it’s my dream I’m really thinking of, but it describes what Dad has told me of our home there and it felt so real; as if it could be more of a memory and less of a dream. “We lived in the countryside and there was a neighbor woman named Old Babba, kind of an old crone lady. She hobbled around with a walking stick and muttered a lot. I never understood much of what she said; I think I might have been a little scared of her. She used to come by almost every day, share her hen eggs and she had a goat, Dad says, so she shared her milk with us. We always hoped she found Rose the next day, and we always assumed she would have raised her or at least found a family to raise her.”
    “Didn’t it occur to you that she would be Lost, too?”
    “But she didn’t come with us that night.”
    “What if she’s only a half sister?” Emme asks, lightly.
    “Why?” Then it dawns on me. “If she wasn’t full blooded Lost she could be traveling less frequently? I suppose only my mother would know and she isn’t exactly here to ask, is she?” It’s not the first time I’ve been bitter about that.  More often than not I simply miss my mother, miss the long talks we should have had, miss the hair-braiding, and the arguments, and the lessons, and the companionship.  But occasionally, like now, I am simply angry with her. Angry that she left me, intentionally, to fend for myself and to never know her the way a daughter should. “But I’ve never doubted Dad is Rose’s dad too.  I mean, I guess I haven’t thought about it, but he has never alluded to any -,” I pause, feeling awkward, “Unfaithfulness on my mother’s part.”
    “She doesn’t look like your dad at all, but I suppose that’s hardly proof.  I don’t look like my dad, the bloomin’ sod, thank my lucky stars.” She winks at me. Emme’s dad was some sort of con man from what I can gather.  He wandered off after Joe was born and apparently no one looked very hard to find him. “Anyway, anything else you remember?”
    “Not really,” I frown. “Everything is fuzzy, I was only four. The next thing I knew I was in Italy two hundred years earlier. Mother killed herself and Dad started drinking. Not exactly the best part of my life.”
    “Well, it’s probably good you don’t remember,” Emme says, kindly. “I bet your dad remembers enough for both of you. No wonder he stays drunk.”
    “I suppose.”
    “Talk to him? If it is Rose, he should be told. Might sober him up.”
    Trust Emme to find the bright side of things.
    ********************
    Dad lounges at his usual spot, in his nylon lawn chair he brings to set up next to Prue’s food cart.  By the time I arrive, it’s lunch hour for the business men