In the aftermath of Luna’s alleged death, Poppy’s grief didn’t soften or fade the way people expected. Instead, it thickened, hardened, and fermented into something much darker. Her entire world imploded in an instant, yet from the ruins grew a sharper, colder resolve—one centered on exposing the truth behind what happened to her daughter.

She could not accept that Luna’s body had simply vanished or that fate had snatched her away without a trace. Night after night she stared at Luna’s last photo—those newly bright eyes, that quiet confidence—and each time, doubt crept deeper until it contaminated everything in her life.

That festering uncertainty was what first drew Sheila Carter toward her.

Sheila resurfaced when the sympathy cards had stopped arriving and people had politely begun to move on. One afternoon, she appeared at Il Giardino under the guise of coincidence, offering condolences wrapped in gentle, deceptively soft language. To the world, Sheila was the embodiment of chaos—a cautionary tale about obsession and destruction. But for Poppy, in that vulnerable moment, Sheila was the one person not telling her to “move forward.”

They spoke the same emotional dialect: sorrow sharpened into strategy, maternal love warped into vengeance. Sheila whispered about losing Finn, about being pushed aside for Steffy and the Forresters, and the conviction in her voice stirred something inside Poppy.

Their shared wounds created an uneasy alliance—two mothers who had lost their children and refused to accept the narrative they’d been given. Poppy told herself partnering with Sheila was simply tactical. Sheila knew how the powerful buried scandals, how they paid off witnesses, and how they manipulated systems in Los Angeles. If anyone could help her unravel the inconsistencies surrounding Luna’s accident, it was her.

But every bargain with someone like Sheila comes with a cost.

Poppy eventually realized Sheila’s sympathy was a mask. Luna’s tragedy wasn’t just a mystery to Sheila—it was a weapon. Poppy’s pain gave Sheila a chance to fracture Steffy’s world and weaken the Forresters. Their collaboration started quietly: late-night strategy sessions, swapped files, theories about altered police documents, and new leads that always seemed too convenient.

As they pieced together evidence—erased footage, questionable phone logs, a witness describing Luna arguing with a man in a designer jacket—Poppy found herself sinking deeper. The jacket in question? One that matched Finn’s.

When she confronted Sheila expecting anger, Sheila merely smiled and murmured, “Do you see now? The Forresters ruin everything.” That was when Poppy realized Sheila wasn’t chasing the truth. She was shaping it.

Still, Poppy didn’t break away. Instead, she began playing Sheila’s game—pretending to share her fury, pretending to agree with her conspiracy theories—while secretly recording their meetings and collecting her own evidence. Yet every time she stared into Sheila’s eyes, she saw a version of herself reflected back—a mother hollowed out by loss and driven to extremes.