All we ever knew

Prologue

I wasn't sure of a lot of things in my life.

When I was five, I wasn't sure why the moon always followed our car whenever we drove back home.

When I was eight, I wasn't sure as to why I could never see the end of a rainbow after a rainstorm.

When I was eleven, I wasn't sure why my father died at the time he had.

And even now, at thirteen, I'm still trying to figure a lot of things out.

But one thing that I was sure of, the one thing that always made sense was how much my mother loved me. It was something that didn't need tons of science to back it up, it wasn't something that was just said; I'd seen it every day of my life, and I had never once doubted it.

See, my mom is a very strong person.

Being left widowed at thirty and left to care for an eleven year old daughter, she was quick to get a job at a bakery so that I would always have everything I needed.

Even from a young age I'd recognized it, seeing her gentle smile after a long hard day of work. She'd never complained for the most part, always being the bright beauty she was, but deep down there was a truth that was often left unsaid.

No matter how much it pained me to think about, no matter how joyful the memories were of me and my parents, the truth was inevitable; this wasn't supposed to be Malia Breen's life.

Maybe she was actually happy in another parallel universe, not having gotten married at such a young age and probably off traveling the world like she'd always dreamed of. But she didn't deserve this life, the one where she's left alone with a child to care for. I think even dad knew it, before he passed away, because he continued to go on about her reconciling with what she'd lost.

I didn't know what lost meant, until Rajko Dupai came into our lives.

It turns out, he'd never left my mother's life after all.