Prologue

My great-aunt Nadia says that our mother abandoned us the way winter comes to Cranberry, Virginia—sudden, deep, leaving everything dusted with tiny splinters of frost.

But Nadia is wrong.

I was little, only five years old, and I awoke in the middle of the night knowing something was off. I wonder, now, if it was anything like Nadia's gift. Knowing things she has no reason or right to know. Whatever it was, something told me Mama was in the kitchen and I needed to see her right away.

I tiptoed downstairs in the only home I have ever known, even to this day. The two-story house Nadia bought the day she turned forty, with its strangely angled cupboards filled with books, and windows made of painted-glass butterflies, and an attic that whistled in wind so loudly, it always sounded to me like the songs of ghosts.

When I found Mama, she was surrounded with suitcases. In reality, there was no way she could have afforded more than two, but in my mind, she was in a spiral of Samsonite and Globe-Trotter luggage.

"Mama?" I whispered.

She whipped her head toward me with her hand on her heart. "Querida, you scared me."

I swallowed. "What's going on? Are we going to Disney?"

Mama laughed softly. "No, not today." She paused and tapped her fingernails on one of the suitcases. "Today, Mama's going on a long adventure. Understand? I'm going to see some cool things, like real tall mountains with the snow on the tops, and a beach filled with rainbow glass."

By then I was already crying. I must've known what she was saying, underneath all those pretty words. "No, Mama, don't go."

She wrapped an arm around me. "No, no, don't cry, querida. Or else you'll make me cry."

I tried very hard to stop crying, but in my memory, my face remained wet with tears.

Headlights shone in through the windows and Mama jumped up. "That's him," she said, breathless. "He's the one who's going to fix everything ."

She grabbed the handles to the suitcases and raced to the door. She winked at me. "I won't be long, okay? Tell Nadia—" She paused. "Tell Nadia I left some stuff in my room. Extra diapers, and the snacks you and Sage like, the fruit gummy things, okay?"

She was gone before I could respond, but I was on her heels, faster than the door could slam.

I was always little. I ended up taller than my older sister, Sage, as an adult, but it took a while to get here. From the ages of babyhood to nineteen, I was so small, in pictures I sometimes wondered how I didn't just fly away with all the wild weather I have faced in my life.

That night, I feel like I might have flown a little. The wind was whipping against me, pushing my hair in my eyes. Lightning streaked across the sky, and rain, and then tiny drops of hail, began to fall.

"What is this?" Mama asked, turning toward me as she gestured to the sky. One moment before, all had been clear. The next, an entire thunderstorm swept down upon us as though someone had tapped a cosmic weather button.

She took one look at me and knew where it'd come from.

Our gifts aren't supposed to come until around puberty. But something about my mami breaking my heart that night—it made mine come early.

"Here," Mama said, bending down in front of me. The truck behind her was loud and impatient. I think the man inside revved the engine and I jumped. A crack of thunder made me jump again. "Don't worry," Mama said as I began to wail. "I could use this, right, mamita? I only need just a tiny, little—"

And she took my hand and pinched me.

The second she did, the storm went silent. The rain ceased. The only thing that remained of it was the tiniest bit of lightning in Mama's hand. That must sound ridiculous, I know, but she held a piece of light— my light—and it sizzled and glimmered like she had plucked a slice of sun out of the sky.

"You don't need this, do you?" she asked.

I didn't even understand what she was asking, but I shook my head. Even at that age, I knew what she wanted me to say. And I wanted to make her happy. I wanted her to change her mind and stay with us. Stay with me .

Mama kissed my nose. "Go inside, Teal." Then she rushed away. She shoved her suitcases in the back seat and hopped in the front of the truck. She disappeared completely into the black behind the headlights—I don't know if it was because of the lightning, or because of her gift. When Mama didn't want to be seen, she simply would not be seen. Eventually they drove away and I watched until the greenish-yellow headlights rounded the end of the street.

This is where my memory dissolves. I must've listened to her. I must've gone inside, to my warm bed, snuggled between Sage and baby Sky. I must've and yet I can't say for sure.

What I do know, all these things I do remember—I've never told anyone, not even Nadia.

But the night my mother left, it wasn't like winter. It was hot. The wind was hot against my teary eyes. The hail was hot against my skin. And in my mother's grasp was the white-hot of lightning she pinched from the palm of my hand, and it burned and burned and burned.