Four years ago, at the tender age of thirteen, Claire's life was abruptly shattered. The joyous celebration of making the dance team with her parents and younger sister, Jennifer, was quickly overshadowed by an ominous shift in her father's demeanor.

“Mom, Dad, I made the team,” she’d chirped, bursting through the door, brimming with innocent excitement. Their evening had been a perfect picture of family bliss – pizza, ice cream, and the sweet sound of her parents’ proud laughter.

Then, the inexplicable happened. Her father's face, once beaming, clouded with an unseen worry. “Dad, what’s wrong?” she’d asked, her small voice tinged with concern. His only response had been a terse, “Nothing, sweetheart. I think it’s time to go home.”

The next morning, an unsettling quiet hung in the air. Her mother’s hushed instructions to stay at Mrs. Jones’s house across the street felt strangely heavy. Later, peering from Mrs. Jones’s window, Claire watched in growing horror as a police car pulled into their driveway, its presence a stark, cold pronouncement of the end of her world. Mrs. Jones’s tearful explanation – “your parents were killed in an animal attack” – echoed in her ears, a lie she would unknowingly carry for years.

Now, at seventeen, the bitter taste of orphanhood and the revolving door of foster care were all Claire knew. "Claire, this is the fourteenth time this year that you have been kicked out of a foster home," her social worker, Nancy, sighed, as they drove back to the orphanage. Claire simply rolled her eyes. They didn't understand. She and Jennifer were a unit, a family, and no one would ever separate them.