I fall on top of the mattress as Poppy curls beneath the sheets in the bed without taking a shower. Blood and brain matter cling to me like a bad stench, but I can’t seem to care. What the fuck am I going to do? Pop and I don’t have any other family. It’s just us, but that doesn’t mean that people won’t be asking questions. We know other people. Fuck, even the parents know people.

There’s a knock on the door and I shuffle around to see Victor leaning against the frame.

“Victor, huh?”

He chuckles, widening the door. “I guess she filled you in.” There’s a pause, until he finally nudges his head to the hallway behind him. “We need to have a chat, son, and I’d rather that happen out here than in front of Poppy.”

Shuffling out of the sheets, I follow him down the stairs and out through the entry to the sitting room. Their house—or mansion—is the kind that slaps dollar bills in front of your face as soon as you see it. I’m pretty sure I even saw guards at their entry gates. The furnishings and architecture hold an obvious opulence, but there is more to it than that. It feels like a home. The kind you watch on TV where the mother is always cooking or baking, and the child is a straight-A student. It upsets me in a way that I can’t explain because not only is it unfamiliar, but it is—mundane. So why the fuck did this man invite me into his perfect family and life without so much as knowing who I am? In his eyes, I just killed my father. What would make him think I wouldn’t do the same to him?

Victor spreads the sliding doors wide, opening onto a sparse area of flush greenery growing delicately through the cracks of the aged concrete and vibrant plants flowering among the shrubs. There’s a small pool house that’s up against the backyard, overlooking the pool and the patio of the main house with a built-in wooden patio and plants that hang off hooks, with lights switched on inside.

Victor stops walking, his hands on the railing of the frame that wraps around his patio. “You and Poppy can both stay in there starting tomorrow. Pearl, my wife, is setting it up for you both.”

The sun has long since set, and I don’t care much about the fact that I still haven’t washed off the blood on my skin. The words I want to ask choke me. Why the fuck has this man just taken in two strangers? But two strangers where one just killed his father.