The Dual Claim
We clinked coffee cups, and then suggested she show me around the pack house while we waited for Elara to arrive.
A young woman who was a much younger version of Halia arrived with a toddler on her hip.
Halia extended her arms to the little girl, but she tucked into the woman carrying her.
“Umi come see Tuta,” Halia coaxed the girl.
She shook her head, her little curls bouncing.
“Are you being shy?” the woman holding her asked.
Halia introduced the woman as Landsi, her youngest daughter.
“Umi’s mother and father died in a car crash when Umi was just a few months old,” Landsi informed me while bouncing Umi on her hip.