Chapter 3

The living room fell silent.

I stared blankly at Otto, lost in thought.

Dad noticed that the recording had finished playing, but I still hadn’t called him back.

His voice sounded again.

[Rose? Are you still angry with me?]

The house was silent, without even an echo.

Dad grew frantic as he tried to operate Otto and activate its camera.

[Otto, locate Rose.]

Otto was about to head toward the bedroom when I hurried in front of it.

But I was already dead.

If Dad discovered the truth now, Mom would never come back!

Otto passed straight through me, its mechanical voice repeating over and over.

[Locating kitten! Locating kitten!]

I used every ounce of strength I had and tried to press the call-back button on Otto’s body.

“Come on! Don’t let Otto go into the bedroom!”

Perhaps my desperate wish reached heaven, because I suddenly found that I could touch Otto.

There was no time to celebrate. I immediately pressed the call-back button.

The next moment, Otto fell silent.

[Kitten located. Search canceled.]

On the other end, Dad breathed a sigh of relief.

[Rose, you scared me half to death.]

He let out a long sigh and ended the call with Otto.

I floated over to the window and gazed at the sky outside.

One by one, the stars began to shine, glittering like Mom’s eyes.

Mom once told me that when people died, they became stars and watched over the people they loved.

Would I become a star, too?

Would Mom and Dad recognize me and wave hello?

I lowered my gaze to my transparent hands and smiled.

As long as Mom could come back, Dad wouldn’t have to lock himself in the lab every day and stare at Mom’s photograph until dawn.

He would smile just like he did in the photograph and take Mom and me to a dessert shop for strawberry cake.

He would watch The Powerpuff Girls with me over and over again.

He would also…

I froze.

I was already dead.

There was no “me” anymore.

I smiled faintly. It was okay.

As long as Mom and Dad were happy, that was all that mattered.

I didn’t know how long I had been floating around the house when Otto served me two more meals.

I sniffed the cat food, but I couldn’t smell anything.

Finally, I heard footsteps drawing closer in the hallway.

My heart gave a hard thump.

Dad must have brought Mom home!

I quickly floated toward the front door and stared at the security door.

“Mom, are you back?”

But as the footsteps drew closer, disappointment instantly washed over me.

It was Sophie.

“Daniel Dawson treats me like I’m a thief. He changes the door code every single day. What a joke!”

“All this pointless research every day. Does he really think he can bring a dead woman back to life?”

That wasn’t true!

Mom wasn’t dead!

She would be back very soon!

Sophie was evil!

Whenever she appeared, Mom and Dad would argue.

She always wore short skirts and heavy perfume.

When she saw me, she smiled and said, “You must be Rose. You’re just as cute as I heard.”

But in private, Sophie would secretly pinch me. Whenever I cried, she would listen and accuse me of hating her.

That was the first time Dad ever scolded me.

“Why do you take after your mother so much? Always so jealous. I’ve told you, Sophie and I are just friends!”

“If you can’t raise our child properly, then you don’t get to take care of her anymore!”

Dad took me to the lab, and I didn’t see Mom for an entire month.

When I saw Mom again, I suddenly realized that the light had gone out of her eyes.

After Sophie finished checking Otto’s operating data, she threw all the cat food I hadn’t eaten into a trash bag.

Then she sat on the sofa, scribbled over Mom’s face in the framed photograph, and wiped the glass clean.

“A useless woman gave birth to a useless child. Once the little brat is out of the way, this whole house will be mine.”

She hummed to herself until the expression on her face changed when she saw the incoming call on her phone.

“Sophie, is Rose all right?”

It was Dad’s voice!

Sophie’s voice instantly turned gentle.

“Rose is doing just fine. I just made her scrambled eggs, and she even said they tasted just like her mother’s.”