"Being stubborn, as usual."
Terence didn't even look up. He was busy hanging a banner on the wall.
The banner was a gift from Maplewood Orphanage, embroidered with four gilded words: Boundless Love.
He stepped back two paces, admired it with satisfaction, then pulled out his phone and snapped a photo.
The living room was a picture of warmth and prosperity: the grand piano, the commendation banner, brand-new space heaters.
Harrison was draped over the piano bench, grinning ear to ear.
On the other side of the wall, in the second bedroom, the air had grown so foul that not even a fly could survive in it.
The curled-up body inside was coated in a layer of black grime. In that sealed, windowless space, her body temperature was dropping, degree by degree.
No one knew. No one wanted to know.
The next morning, my mother was up before dawn for the first time in memory.
Not for me.
Director Cara Finch from Maplewood Orphanage was coming for a home visit. It was the first annual check-in since the adoption.
Mom had been cooking since five a.m. The dining table was buried under a feast fit for a holiday spread.
Braised pork shoulder. Sweet-and-sour sea bass. Mushroom chicken stew. The whole apartment smelled incredible.
On the kitchen counter, shoved into the corner, sat a blackened aluminum lunchbox.
Inside were leftover vegetable scraps and watered-down soup from two nights ago. Already sour.
That was mine.
Director Finch was a heavyset woman in her fifties. The moment she walked through the door and took in the scene, her eyes welled up.
"Mr. Chavez, in twenty years running the orphanage, I've never seen a family treat a child the way you treat Harrison. Not once."
Terence waved her off with practiced humility.
"It's only right. Harrison is our own flesh and blood, as far as we're concerned."
Harrison performed a piano piece he'd learned two days ago. He butchered it completely, but Director Finch led the applause.
Riding the warm atmosphere, Mom stood and walked to my bedroom door.
Her expression carried a hint of tenderness.
"Sweetheart, listen to how lively it is out here. I know you love your brother so much that you gave up your room for him, but you still need to eat. Come say hello to Ms. Finch, okay?"
She raised her voice deliberately so everyone in the living room could hear.
From behind the door, nothing. Not a sound.
Director Finch reached over and patted Mom's shoulder.
"Your older daughter sounds like a good kid too."
"She is. Just headstrong."
Terence sighed on cue from the side.
"Teenage girls get jealous easily. She's been sulking ever since her brother arrived. Nothing we say gets through. Last night she threw a fit and locked herself in her room. She still won't come out."
"Oh, that's nothing. You two are doing more than enough."
After the director left, Mom went back to the table to clear the dishes.
Terence's phone was buzzing nonstop in the residents' group chat.
The neighbor from the floor below had sent a long voice message.
"Mr. Chavez, is something leaking in your apartment? Black water's been dripping from my bathroom ceiling since last night, and the whole place reeks like something's burning. What is going on up there?"
Terence typed back immediately.
"So sorry about that, everyone. My older daughter was in a bad mood and burned some scrap paper in her room to blow off steam. I'm really sorry. I'll take care of it right away."
The chat went quiet for a beat. Then the messages came flooding in.
"Burning paper? Mr. Chavez, you're way too soft on that girl!"
"Is your older daughter mentally ill or something? You adopt a little brother and she loses it like this?"
"You and your wife are saints for putting up with that. In my house, she'd have gotten a beating."
Terence replied to each message with apologies.
"It's our fault as parents. We haven't raised her right. Tomorrow I'll send everyone a gift card as an apology, and I'll treat Mrs. Chen to coffee."
Mom said nothing. She just wrinkled her nose.
The smell was getting worse.
A burnt, acrid stench laced with something else entirely was seeping through the cracks around the door and the gaps in the unsealed pipes, creeping into the living room.
