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Pictures of the two of them standing next to an eighteen-year-old Daniel at his high school graduation. Birthday parties and Daniel blowing out candles. Homemade Halloween costumes and William at some bar calling a Bingo game. Linda holding up a pie she made at Christmas with a Christmas tree behind her here, in this living room.

They seemed warm. Friendly.

I swallowed. “Did you have a good childhood?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Daniel said. “It was a great childhood.”

“Were they good people?”

I saw him study me. “They were the best people I’ve ever known.”

We sat there in silence.

“Was your childhood good?” he asked.

It took me a long time to answer. “No.”

I stared at the album. The picture on the page was kids. A lawn full of kids, playing in the sprinklers. My cousins. My brother.

I had been robbed. This life, this family, had been stolen from me.

This was my alternate universe, laid out in full color.

And then Daniel flipped to another page and there was a picture of a twentysomething Amber. Sitting in a lawn chair drinking one of her Bloody Marys.

She’d been here. But where was I?

“What year is this?” I asked. But I think inside I already knew.

Daniel turned the page and the date was scrapbooked onto the bottom.

The Fourth of July when I was eight.

Bile rose in my throat. The summer of the smoke alarm and the carrots. The first time I went into the system.

She’d left me alone and come here. She left me to starve and fend for myself while she came back to her secret family to eat burgers and pretend I didn’t exist. It was the last thing I needed to see.

I got up. “I need to leave.”

Daniel got up too. “Are you sure? I was—”

But I was already running for the foyer, a panic attack building. I had to get out of here.

I heard Maddy making excuses for me, and Justin came out on my heels, clicking the car locks off a second before I got to the door.

By the time Maddy got into the back seat I was sobbing.

Maddy leaned into the front. “Are you okay—”

“GO! GET ME OUT OF HERE!” I shouted.

Justin put the car in reverse and I watched through water-blurred eyes as my brother and his wife stood on the porch, shrinking in the distance as we backed out of the driveway.

I was breathing into my hands, trying not to hyperventilate.

“That fucking bitch,” Maddy said from the back seat.

“Why the hell would she do this?” Justin asked, turning on the wipers. Dragonflies were all around the car. It was like a sudden swarm of locusts through the blur of my tears.