“No. Not yet. I’ll wait.”

“For what?” Royce leans forward, resting his elbows on the bar. “What could you possibly wait for?”

I clench my jaw. “The wedding.”

“And why the fuck would you do that? You know the girls are all wanting to be there.”

I turn in my seat to face him. “They’ll be safe. And why?” I shake my head, staring off into the distance. “Because she won’t believe me unless she sees it with her own eyes. It’s my only choice.”

“There’s something I need from you going forward, Wicked. And you may not like it because it is outside of this community.” I watched as he picked up a box of matches and slowly lit every candle on the mantel. “The girl I have in there, I need you to do something for me one day, and you may like it or not. I’m yet to figure that out…” I widened my arms over the edge of the bench. Any time Skully said that he needed me to do something, I knew it was going to be bad. But with him stalling, I was sure I wasn’t going to like his next words.

“I will be putting you and Poppy into a home. One night, when you receive a text message from me, you’re going to kill your foster father. Now this is going to spark an avalanche of events.” He turned to face me, crossing his arms in front of him. “You will be collected by a family. Her family.” I adjusted myself on the wood. His jobs were usually a little less committal than this, and I was still only thirteen. When was he hoping I’d do this? “The rest will be told to you on a need-to-know basis. I don’t want to overload you too much right now.” He waved forward. “Go to your room.”

Pushing up from the bench, I made my way down the aisle. When I hit the doors, I turned as he said, “You’re the only one I can trust to get this done.” I made my way down the hallway, passing the stairs that led up to the rooms. Taking the stairs two at a time, I passed all of the damaged photographs of the old nurses and doctors. It’s not until I was back in my room, that I fell onto the bed, staring up at the white padded walls.