I shrugged a shoulder. “I don’t know. I don’t want to cry.” As I said it, the first tears wet my lashes.

“Shh.” Izzy dug for a tissue in her bag.

Rainey walked out of the kitchen and toward us just then. I turned my face away.

“I’m getting ready to bake cookies in the kitchen. Maybe Effie would like to help?” she asked Izzy.

Effie’s eyebrows rose, and she bounced up to stand. “Oh, can I, Mommy?”

“You sure?” Izzy asked Rainey.

After a glance and a small smile at me, she nodded.

“Sure,” Izzy said. “Thank you.”

Effie took Rainey’s hand easily, and they walked off.

“That was nice,” Izzy said.

“I haven’t yet figured her out.”

Izzy took my hands. “Are we okay, Lucia? This is important. I know we haven’t talked about it, about me leaving. I was wrong to just take off. I know that. I’m back now, though, and I’m not abandoning you again, okay? You’re not alone, even though it may feel that way right now.”

I smiled. More tears fell. “We’re okay, Izzy.” It felt good to say that. Felt good to have my sister back, actually.

She hugged me tight to her, then whispered into my ear. “Are there cameras? Listening devices?”

Her question surprised me. “I don’t know,” I whispered back. “I haven’t seen any but can’t say for sure there aren’t.”

She pulled back and looked at me. “The pool looks amazing.”

I knew what she wanted. “Let’s go check it out.”

We walked outside and away from the house toward the swimming pool.

“How is he? When no one’s around, I mean?”

“Bossy.” I couldn’t tell her about earlier. About any of it. “And gone, mostly. He just got back from wherever he was, actually.”

“He looks at you like he wants to eat you alive.”

He scared me, but I didn’t want to say that out loud, and not to Izzy. “I can’t figure him out. He’s horrible one second, then nice. Almost…caring. Like he gives a shit what I feel or think.” I picked a single dandelion growing in the otherwise immaculate lawn. “But then he’s a jerk again, and then he disappears.”

“Is he making you…” she hesitated.

“Sleep with him?” I thought of what I’d found in his bedroom and felt my face heat up.

She nodded.

“Not yet.”

“Good. Are you able to come and go?”

“I don’t know. Not on my own, I think.”

“Okay, that’s fine. I’ll just come get you. If he wants to send someone to follow us, we’ll deal.”

“It doesn’t matter, Izzy. I’m stuck here.”

“Luke and I…We’re not going to sit back and let them have everything. Let them have you.”

“Luke?”