awsomsauce
Sixteen year old Poppy Lou learned early that home was never a place. It was a question.
She doesn't remember the day her family let her go, only the feeling of a hollow ache that never quite left. The foster system became a blur of unfamiliar faces and temporary beds until she was adopted by a man who promised stability but delivered something far colder. In the house that was supposed to save her, silence was heavy, and kindness was rare. Love, she decided, was something that happened to other people.
Then, one morning, everything changed.
Her adoptive father was found dead in the driveway, claimed by a drug overdose. The man who had cast the longest shadow over her life was suddenly gone. There were no final words, no explanations, just flashing lights, whispered conversations, and a future she couldn't yet see.
In the aftermath, buried beneath paperwork and unanswered questions, another truth surfaced: her biological father was alive. Not only that, she had seven older brothers. Seven strangers who shared her blood. Seven possibilities of what family might mean.
Now, standing on the edge of a life she never expected, Poppy is left to wonder which is more terrifying, staying alone in the only world she's known, or stepping into the arms of a family she lost long ago.
For the first time, hope feels as unfamiliar as fear