I slide plates in front of both of them.
Lumpy pancakes, sliced strawberries, and syrup that I found in the pantry behind a box of Pop-Tarts that I'm pretending I didn't see because I refuse to judge this man's grocery choices.
Sadie Jo eats quietly. Three bites in, she looks up at me.
"Leah?"
"Yeah, honey."
"Can I ask you something?"
"Always."
She sets her fork down.
Those blue-gray eyes, too old for thirteen, carrying things no kid should have to carry, fix on me and I think she's been thinking about this for a while and has finally decided I'm safe enough to ask.
"Your scar," she says. "The one on your forehead. How'd you get it?"
I touch it without thinking.
The raised line above my eyebrow, running up into my hairline.
I've told this story before—to Coin on the porch, to patients who ask, to the occasional kid at school career day who has no filter.
But Sadie Jo asking feels different.
Heavier. Like she's not really asking about my scar.
"There was a fire," I say. "When I was four. Our house burned down. My brother pulled me out. A beam fell on me and that's where it hit."
"Did it hurt?"
"I don't really remember. I was pretty little. I remember being scared, and I remember Garrett's arms, and then I remember being at Aunt Ellie's kitchen with bandages on my head. But the actual pain? No. I think I was in shock."
Sadie Jo processes that.
I can see her turning it over, the way Coin turns the coin—carefully, from every angle, looking for the piece she actually wants.
"Did your mom get out?" she asks.
My chest tightens. "No, honey. She didn't. Neither did my dad."
"So, your brother raised you."
"Yeah and Aunt Ellie."
She's quiet for a long time.
Wrenleigh has stopped scrolling. She's watching us from behind her phone screen, pretending she isn't.
I can see her eyes above the phone case, blue and sharp and fixed on her sister.
"Do you think..." Sadie Jo starts. Stops. Starts again. "Do you think our mom ever thinks about us?"
The question lands in the kitchen like a grenade with no pin.
I set down the spatula.
