Poppy Comes Home Different

Poppy is sitting in the breakfast nook at Hart House when I arrive with Nico's permission and two marshals outside. She is clean, fed, and wearing the white cardigan Vivian always liked for photographs. That combination tells me more than bruises would. She looks up at me calmly and says, "Grandma brought me back because she said children shouldn't be stored in operation houses."

The sentence is too adult in the middle. Coached, even if partly genuine.

"Did she hurt you?" I ask.

"No." Poppy reaches for the orange juice, misses by half an inch, and corrects. The movement is slightly slow. "She made me do takes."

I kneel beside her chair. "Are you all right?"

"I'm tired." She lowers her voice. "The peach tea made me sleepy and then everyone talked like I was a hallway." Her gaze flicks toward the ceiling camera above the pantry arch. "Dad says we're fixing the family version now."

There it is again: version, not truth. Narrative has been her inheritance since birth.

Poppy leans closer and slips something into my hand under the table. A folded sugar packet. Inside is a tiny torn piece of paper from a legal pad. Only three words: dock. blue barrel.

"Where did this come from?" I whisper.

"Callum wrote it," she breathes. "He was in the room next to mine for a little while. Then they moved him."

The world narrows to the paper. Owen had Callum and Poppy in adjacent holding rooms at some point. Whatever noble compartmentalization he still imagines for himself is dead now.

Poppy sits back before anyone can notice. In a normal voice she says, "Dad wants to talk to you in the study."

I stand with the paper pressed into my palm like a pulse. Dock. blue barrel. Somewhere in Hart geography, that phrase is about to become a body, a witness, or both.