"What's all th - ? What did you do to your hair? Why are you so scratched up? Is that a tattoo?" Dad blinked at me while he held his hands up as if he expected the answers to come crashing down from the ceiling. Hopefully they wouldn't crush him.

He needed to know everything, or mostly everything, and I would prove it to him. Mom had said she couldn't tell anyone about us, and I loved Mom like crazy, but maybe that kind of thinking had been part of why she was dead. Because ...