Chapter 2 - The Trespassers

Six months later.

The autumn leaves in Maryland were a brilliant, fiery orange. I sat on the back porch of my mother’s sprawling countryside house, wrapped in a thick wool blanket, sipping a mug of hot apple cider with extra cinnamon—because I actually loved cinnamon, Brianna never really knew me at all.

The fallout from that night had been biblical.

Richard’s creditors finally caught up with him. Without Brianna there to play the supportive wife and maintain his facade, his house of cards collapsed. He was currently serving a three-year sentence in federal prison for tax fraud and embezzlement.

Brianna had tried to flee the state, abandoning Leo at a cheap motel in her desperation to escape her own debt collectors.

When the police called me—since my name was the only emergency contact left on Leo’s fake private school application—I didn't hesitate. I drove straight to child services.

Through the glass window, I had watched the little boy clutching his plastic car, crying for parents who had never truly loved him. He was a pawn, an innocent victim in a game played by two deeply evil people. I couldn't walk away.

I looked out across the lawn.

“Leo, don’t throw the ball too hard, she’s old!” my mother yelled, laughing joyously as she ran across the grass.

Leo, now a thriving, happy five-and-a-half-year-old, giggled and tossed a tennis ball to my mother’s golden retriever. He had put on weight. The dark circles under his eyes were gone. When my mother and I petitioned for emergency foster custody, the state approved it within days. Brianna officially terminated her parental rights to avoid being prosecuted for child abandonment.

My mother was currently finalizing the adoption. Leo wasn't my half-brother by blood, but he was my little brother in every way that mattered. We had saved each other.

“Maya!” Leo yelled, running up the porch steps, his cheeks flushed from the crisp air. “Look what mom bought!”

He held up a massive, insulated styrofoam cooler.

I laughed, setting my mug down. “What’s in there, buddy?”

My mother walked up the steps behind him, grinning. She popped the lid off the cooler.

Inside, packed in dry ice, were three dozen massive, beautiful Maryland blue crab legs.

“I figured,” my mother said, kissing the top of my head, “it was time we finally had that crab dinner. Just our real family.”

I looked at my mother, strong and radiant. I looked at Leo, smiling up at me with absolute trust. I thought about my promotion at work, my peaceful, quiet home, and the absolute silence from the ghosts of my past.