Chapter 94

Ollie POV

“That’s pretty, Ollie,” Sophia said, looking at my painting. “It looks like the ocean. Or maybe the sky.”

I looked at it again. Maybe it did look like the ocean. The ocean where Mama and I had gone into the water that one time, before Ramon saved us. But that was a scary memory, so I tried not to think about it too much.

“It’s the sky,” I decided. “With the sun.” I added a yellow circle in the corner to make it official.

We painted for a long time, and it was nice. Quiet but not too quiet. The other kids talked and laughed, but it wasn’t overwhelming. It was just... normal. Like how things were supposed to be.

I was working on my third painting—this one was definitely dinosaurs—when I heard footsteps on the stairs. My whole body went tense, my heart speeding up, because what if Mama was awake and looking for me and got scared that I wasn’t there?

But it was just Uncle Troy and Uncle Rhodes. They looked tired, but Uncle Troy was ho