Chapter 3 - TWO HALVES OF A WING
Linh felt as though the ground beneath her had dissolved. Her throat closed up, dry as ash.
“That bracelet…” Linh choked out, her vision tunneling until the only thing in the universe was that tiny piece of tarnished silver.
The little girl shrank further behind the boy, but lifted her wrist just a fraction of an inch—a subconscious gesture, as if caught between the urge to hide it and the impulse to show it.
“It was my mom’s,” the girl whispered, her small voice almost lost in the din of the market.
Slowly, with hands that shook so violently she could barely control them, Linh pulled back the long sleeve of her own grey trench coat.
Fastened around Linh’s wrist was the other half.
The missing right wing of the angel. It hung from a delicate, matching chain, scratched and aged in the exact same pattern. Twelve years ago, on Mai’s fifth birthday, Linh had bought the matching trinkets at a local fair, keeping one wing and giving the other to her little sister.
The boy’s face drained of all color. He looked from Linh’s wrist to the girl’s, his jaw slackening in shock.
The little girl stared at both bracelets, her mind visibly struggling to process the connection.
May you like
Linh’s knees gave out completely. She sank onto the wet pavement, uncaring that the dirty rainwater soaked through her coat. A decade of built-up grief broke inside her chest.
“I gave this to my baby sister…” Linh sobbed, her voice broken and raw. “Where did you get this? Who is your mother?”
