The tear inside me happens anyway, forcing me to make the choice all over again. Little girl or me.

I keep waiting for another sound. At least a few minutes pass before I get up. My screen’s dark. Foster hasn’t responded yet. I hope he doesn’t for a little longer, so his real doesn’t tangle with this reality.

A reality I’m a week from escaping.

Tucking my phone into my skirt, I kick the pillows out of the way, tired of not knowing. I ease the door open and quietly step into the hall, to the banister. As I grip the wooden railing, I scan the living room below. It looks like it often does—a lamp knocked over, picture frame on the floor, the fireplace tools scattered like they were thrown.

Except one thing doesn’t match all the other times.

My mother’s unmoving on the floor in front of the fireplace. She’s wrong, though. Blood runs from her nose and a gash to her forehead, but it also soaks her top and covers her exposed skin. It absorbs into the rug from what has pooled on the hardwood around her.

“Mom,” I shout, already running down the stairs.

I land on my knees beside her body. Because that’s what I’m looking at—my mom’s body.

Fuck, fuck, fuck. I check for a pulse. But I already know, blinking rapidly at the puncture wound on the other side of her chest just above the neckline of her sweater.

Then I see the blood on the fireplace’s hearth. The poker lying on its side, pointed tip wet and darkened with more.

I look down again, and my hand falls away from where her pulse used to be. A sob bursts out of me, my stomach roiling.

“…take care of it.”

My head jerks toward the kitchen—to the muffled voice.

Daniel appears from around the corner, on the phone. He stops when he sees me, surveying me on the floor, kneeling in blood. “Make sure Marlo’s the unit they send to the house.” He ends his call, and I can’t breathe as he holds out a hand, gesturing to the body—the body. “I heard a crash on my way in from the garage. Someone was running out the front door, and … she was already gone.”

I scramble to my feet as he steps forward, my skin throbbing with every pound of my heart.

“She was already gone,” Daniel repeats, tone steady. So fucking steady while my body’s near convulsing.

My eyes fall to the literal blood on his hands. “I tried to find the source of the blood and resuscitate her, Remi. The intruder attacked her. She must have fallen on the fireplace poker and punctured an artery.”

My phone vibrates. Foster’s text. His picture.

“The intruder,” I say, voice weak and not steady, “who ran out the front door?”