In all honesty, Elise had been planning on staying the night at Destiny’s, it was late and a Friday night so she didn’t have to be anywhere in the morning. However, she was tired and as much as she loved Des, and usually took every opportunity to sleep in her best friend's bed, she also just missed the comfort of her own bed sometimes. It had been a long week and Lucky’s first day, she would be lying if she said she wasn’t at least a little worried about her foster brother’s mental health. So she had Lexi drive her home when she took Ali out for a late-night dinner, she knew her mother would already be asleep at this point and it seemed unfair to even consider calling her for a drive.

Something felt off the second she stepped in the house, but it wasn’t something she could place the moment she walked in the door. She took her time, slowly slipping her shoes off, checking her phone to be sure the GPS said that her mother was here. She was, of course, which Elise tried to take comfort in, though she still wasn’t sure she did. She could hear the sound of a shower, one she would have assumed belonged to Lucky, but… it wasn’t his voice coming through singing to some indistinct track. She was used to singing in the house, her momma was always humming as she went about her chores, and Olive had always sung while she was getting ready for work or school when she still lived here. However, this wasn’t her mother or sister’s voice, rather, it was someone else, but it was definitely feminine.

She tried to measure the sound against all knowledge she had of her friends’ voices as she crept up the stairs in the dark, opting not to turn on the switch in case a murderer was showering away her mother’s blood or whatever other weird fantasy she was dreaming up in her anxiety. She was struggling to remember who Lucky had been flirting with throughout the day, but none of them matched up with the voice she was hearing now, bopping along with some trendy song Elise wasn’t familiar with.

She had a fleeting thought of the older sister, Lucy, that Olive had warned her about, the faceless young woman who Lucky had not been willing to open up about. Their mother had told her there was nothing to worry about, but Elise wasn’t so sure, what if Lucky was just biding his time while they were all growing attached to him. It had barely even been a week, but she’d gone clothes shopping with him and laid on his bed bothering him, and she had already started to grow attached. He might not stay long, she knew that, but she had to hope that even if he left he would finish school or stay in touch. Surely he would be smart enough to stay the few months until school was over, right?

Her stomach plummeted as she got to the top of the stairs, the voice sounded like the feminine counterpart to her brother as it came into clarity. Lucy had been listed in the file as part of their caseworker’s reasoning as to why he and his brother were flight risks, she was obviously here to pick Lucky up. It was too late to wake her mother up, but maybe there was something she could say, some way she could convince Lucky to stay for just a little longer.

Elise paused at the closet in the hallway to pull out the baseball bat she had hidden there, just in case, she didn’t think it would get violent but her mind was getting away from her again. She could very well be hearing what she wanted to hear and it wasn’t Lucy, it could still be a murderer.

“Hello?” She called, holding her bat tightly in one hand, carefully turning the doorknob to see if it was locked, before throwing the door open.

The girl in the shower looked comfortable on the other side of the foggy glass, lost in the song, dancing around with Lucky’s soap, it was almost unnerving to see someone so comfortable in a home that she didn’t belong in. Unless her mother had invited her to stay with them and had failed to inform Elise?

Her skin was the same warm tone as Lucky’s, her face was rounder, softer and her nose was cuter in a way Lucky’s wasn’t quite, more like Olive’s face or even their mother’s. The biggest difference was the short mop of curly pastel pink hair that she slicked back with wet hands. She was struck by how much the young woman in the shower oddly looked like Simon.

Elise had just started trying to count backward on Simon’s age to try and figure out if it was possible he might have had an illegitimate child they didn’t know about when the girl turned, finally noticing her standing there wielding the bat. She jumped in fear, clutching at her chest, and gasping to try and catch her breath. “Goddess, Elise you scared the shit out of me, I thought you were staying at Destiny’s.” She laughed like this was an easy situation, like they knew each other when they most certainly did not. The young woman turned back to her shower casually as if there was nothing weird happening at all and Elise wanted to scream, but she also didn’t want to bother her mother. “Do you mind? I’m sort of taking a shower, can we talk after? Not that I’m not used to people watching me shower, but it’s a little weird when my sister does it.” The way the girl laughed only added to the confusion that she was struggling with but she had asked nicely, so Elise stepped out and closed the door behind her.

She slid down the wall outside the bathroom, still clinging to the baseball bat for a shred of sanity while she waited, gripping her hair as she put her head between her knees to breathe through the Anxiety. When the shower finally stopped, she watched for the door to open, the young woman stepping out with her hair wrapped up in a t-shirt. She was dressed in a set of pyjama Lucky had bought with her, a loose t-shirt and short flannel shorts that seemed to suit them both. It was unsettling to see the stranger in her brother’s clothes.

Elise just stared, still trying to reconcile the similarities between the young woman and her dead brother, gripping her bat a little tighter as she got to her feet, visibly on edge. “Who the fuck are you and what are you doing in my house?”

Lucy stared blankly at her, her own confusion setting in until it finally dawned on her. “I uh… Shit….”