You finish cleaning at last. The floorboards gleam, the windows are spotless, and for once the house feels almost normal. No beer bottles. No cigarette ash. No lipstick-stained glasses left behind on the counter.

When the principal of your school comes over for dinner tonight—to discuss your chance at an advanced college—he’ll believe what you want him to believe. That there’s a woman in the house. That you have a functional family, a stable father, a loving mother.

But that’s not the truth.

Your mother ran away with another man—or that’s what your father says, though you’ve never trusted his version of anything. He says it with too much bitterness, too much pride. The kind of anger that hides shame.

He says he’s happier now. Maybe he is. He gets to flirt with every woman that wanders into his jazz club, drink till dawn, and sleep till noon while you hold the house together—cleaning, cooking, studying, and nursing his hangovers.

The dinner table gleams beneath the yellow light. Everything is ready for tonight, for your chance to start a new life. Soon, you tell yourself. Soon you’ll be gone—off to a university, a scholarship, a clean slate. Soon you won’t have to pretend anymore.

Then comes the knock.

It startles you—sharp against the quiet hum of the radio. You open the door and find two figures standing in the rain: a woman, older, eyes hard as flint; and beside her, a girl about your age, hair clinging to her cheeks.

“Is Robert here?” the woman asks. Her voice trembles but her stare doesn’t. “I need to talk to him. About our child.”

The rest happens in a blur. You bring them inside—mostly so the neighbors won’t see. You let them eat the dinner you cooked, sit on your couch, leave damp footprints across your clean floor. You watch from the kitchen doorway, heart knocking in your chest, as thunder rolls outside.

Then your father comes home. The door slams, voices rise—his and hers tangled in fury and history. You don’t catch every word, but you know it’s bad.

By morning, you’re at the stove, making breakfast you won’t eat. He walks in, smelling of whiskey and smoke, and tells you flatly: “They’re staying. Long ago...I did some risky things but now they're catching up to me"

You don’t argue. You just nod.

That was a month ago. Now there are more plates on the table, more shoes by the door, more ghosts in the house. You share a room with the girl—Kennedy, your new sister—and the woman, Jane, takes the spare bed down the hall.

Kennedy starts doing the things you’ve always done—polishing the glasses, sweeping the floor, folding the laundry while a record hums in the corner. She doesn’t ask; she just does it, like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

At first you hate it. You hate how easily she takes over, how quickly she makes your work look small. But the longer it goes on, the more the house changes. It smells cleaner. The kitchen gleams. Even your father lingers longer at the table.

And you… start to like it.

You tell yourself it’s because the place looks better, but deep down it’s the feeling of not being the one holding everything together. The way she moves makes the house feel right, like how you always imagined families looked from the outside.

You start speaking differently—shorter sentences, lower voice. You catch yourself giving directions instead of requests. You don’t mean to; it just happens. And she listens, which makes it worse, because it makes you feel like maybe this is how it was supposed to be all along.

And well Jane, her mother, she more or less does the same thing, but she's usually nagging your father about money and daily expenses, and family bonding...you know your father doesn't want that...but you notice he...comes home more? Oddly.

It’s Sunday morning again. You’re cleaning like always, scrubbing the same spot for the third time, when Kennedy steps into the room, schoolbag still slung over her shoulder.

“Why are you cleaning?” she asks, eyebrows raised. “That’s my job.”