Forbidden Union

Alicia moved through the world like a carefully penned threat: long, curly red hair haloing a face so pale it seemed chiseled from moonlight; bright red lips that held a permanent, courteous detachment; and sharp blue eyes that cut through small talk as if dissecting motives. She spoke little and observed more, each smile calculated to reveal precisely what she wanted. At home she was the picture of normalcy - school recitals, dinners with the man who married her mother, birthday cakes with candles blown out on command - but the hush that shrouded her origin followed her like a shadow. Her mother would sometimes stare at old photographs with a softness that turned to something like regret, and there were nights when the memory of a stranger's laughter returned to the house like a draft. Years ago, before Alicia's life settled into the ordinary, her mother had a brief, intoxicating fling with a man who vanished as suddenly as he had arrived; unknown to either of them at the time, he was a creature that grazed the edges of human existence.