He opened the wardrobe, then pulled out one of its drawers, waiting for Summer to come over and look. Inside the drawer was a book she didn’t recognize, one her mother would never read. It was self-help: How to Live Well and Free. She stared from the book to Taured, not comprehending.

“Open it,” he said.

“Why?”

The flash of anger in his eyes made her reach forward and flip open the cover. But there were no pages—the book was hollow. Inside were several needles, a glass orb and four foil-wrapped packages the size of quarters.

“It’s not hers.” She looked him squarely in the eyes. “It’s. Not. Hers.”

He hit her again, this time hard enough to move her whole body. Before she had time to recover, he left. Summer crawled onto her mother’s bed and wept. She would not believe that liar; she would not turn on her mother, not even to save herself. “Stubborn like your dad,” Lorraine used to say. “Stubborn to a fault.”

She thought briefly of the memory before she fell asleep: the food, the feeling of being at the desk. Feelings she couldn’t identify with words. Then...nothing.

That night, Marshall and Dawn came to collect her. She’d been asleep when they opened the door and now, as they led her through the familiar halls, she was in a half daze. In the kitchen, they led her to one of the freezers.

“In you go,” Marshall said.

Taured was, of course, waiting for her, standing beside a table with his hands in his pockets. On the table was a lump covered by a light blue sheet. Before she could process the sight, Taured had pulled the sheet down. Beneath it was the bluish body of her mother, naked and still.

There was nowhere to go. She could see Marshall’s head outside the small window in the freezer door. Taured lifted her mother’s arm and held it up for her to see.

“These are track marks,” he said of the pinprick scabs that freckled the skin on the inside of her arm. He dropped her arm roughly and it landed with a thud on the table. Summer heard her own breath wheeze from her throat like she was being strangled.

He walked to Lorraine’s feet and stood in front of them ceremoniously; then he pushed apart her big and second toes. Summer wanted to scratch his face off for touching her. She didn’t want his hands on her or her mother, ever—ever.