When Peri was fifteen, she did what she always did with the kids. By that point, her brother was eleven himself, fully capable in her mind of looking after the younger ones. So she went out, went to the beach, empty that day because of the wind, and sat by the waves, looked out into the ocean and thought about her life in five years, ten years, when she’d be far away from her family and all their traumas. She sat on the shore for hours. She decided that the next year, when she was sixteen, she would leave home. She was already aware of her beauty. It wasn’t a subtle thing, the way that men gawked at her, the glances she got in even the plainest of clothes. She knew she could use it all to her advantage, that her looks would get her ahead in life.

But she didn’t have to wait a year, it turned out. When she got home, everyone was gone. They were at the hospital. Her youngest brother, seven years old, had fallen out a window. It was a miracle he was alive. But his little body was broken. His little brain bleeding. Peri should have been watching him. From that point on, she was exiled from the family. Her mother asked her to pack up and leave that night.

So she did.

Peri glossed over the rest. She said that she started sleeping on friends’ couches, that eventually she got scouted for modeling, as she always knew she would. That she began to inhabit other worlds, quickly and eagerly. That she hadn’t seen any member of her family since her mother pushed her out, and she preferred it that way, that family is ultimately a poison holding you back, manipulating you into a loyalty that isn’t owed or earned. And now she was here, in Wyneck, with a rich boyfriend, incredible views of the ocean. The shit, it didn’t follow her here. She made sure of it.

“Wow,” Odilie finally said, swizzling her drink, the ice melting slowly despite the heat. “That’s quite a story. See, that takes gumption. You do have the bite, the claw, whatever you want to call it.” She was confusing these metaphors; Peri’s words so deliberate and pretty on her tongue, even as she spoke about such detestation. Odilie could watch her talk for hours. “I haven’t been through anything, really. My life, it’s sort of small.”