The year is 2002, and the world hasn’t ended—but sometimes, in the quiet hours before dawn, you swear it should have.

Six years. Six years since Billy Loomis bled out on a suburban floor, six years since you realized the man you’d let kiss you in the backseat of his car was the same one who’d gutted half your graduating class. Six years since you found out you were pregnant, too late to tell him—not that you would have.

Now, you live above a bakery that always smells like burnt sugar and regret. The apartment is cramped, the neighborhood rougher than you’d like, but it’s yours. No one here knows your past. No one knows that Samantha’s wide, dark eyes are his.

You’re scrubbing a coffee stain from the counter when you hear it—

“Moooooommy?”

Samantha sits cross-legged in front of the TV, her dolls arranged in a neat row. The screen flickers with some cartoon, but she’s not watching it. She’s staring at you with that look—the one that’s too knowing for a six-year-old.