Chapter 4

Chloe's words opened the floodgates of their memories.

Bitterness rippled through my spirit. It hadn't occurred to me that even death wouldn't stop her from spreading filthy rumors about me.

There had never been any inappropriate relationship between me and an older man.

Chloe had ordered a mountain of things online but was too lazy to collect them from the parcel center at the entrance to our neighborhood, so she ordered me to go instead.

On my way back, staggering under the weight of the boxes, I accidentally bumped into a middle-aged man who was moving house. He caught my arm so I wouldn't fall. That was all.

Chloe embroidered that moment into proof that I was meeting an older man in secret.

That night I wasn't allowed dinner. I was forced to kneel in the living room and reflect on what I'd supposedly done.

Dad called me shameless and said I'd dragged the Carter name through the dirt.

Mom said vulgarity was bred into my bones.

Now that Chloe had dragged the story up again, the revulsion on their faces deepened.

"I always said she was filthy," Mom said through clenched teeth. "What do you expect from a girl raised in foster care? There's nothing she wouldn't do for money."

"Disgraceful!" Dad slammed a hand against the steering wheel. "Once we've confirmed it's her, we deal with the body quietly. Nobody outside this family hears a word."

Ethan leaned against the window, watching the streets race past.

"I hope she really is dead," he said, his voice glacial. "At least then it's over and she can't come back and put another stain on this family."

They cursed me the whole way there, inventing one sordid offense after another.

It was easier that way. If they decided in advance that I'd had it coming, they could blunt the horror of walking into a room to identify a body. They braced themselves for the squalid end of a daughter they'd already convicted.

At last the car stopped outside the medical examiner's building, and an attendant led them into an identification room.

"You should prepare yourselves," the examiner said evenly. "The decedent wasn't in good condition when she was found."

A white sheet covered a stainless-steel gurney.

When the examiner drew it slowly back, time stopped.

I was skeletal. Every trace of softness had been drained out of me, leaving sallow skin stretched tight over bone. Bruised purple patches of frostbite covered a body that had gone hungry for months.

Worst of all were the wounds on my arms, my legs, my cheeks. Stray dogs had torn down through flesh to the bone, and what was left of me was barely recognizable.

Mom screamed.

Her knees buckled and she went down on the floor.

Dad lurched hard enough that he had to catch himself against the wall. For the first time, the authority in his face cracked wide open, and underneath it was nothing but shock.

Ethan stood there as though someone had turned him to stone. His pupils contracted as he stared at my ruined face. His lips moved, but no sound came out.

They'd imagined a hundred possibilities on the drive over. Not one of them had been this—that I would die in a way so wretched, so degraded, so far outside anything a person should suffer.

Into that deathly silence came Chloe's voice, shrill and cutting, desperate to slash through the truth suffocating the room.

"Oh my God. How did she end up like that?" She clapped a theatrical hand over her mouth. There was no grief in her eyes at all, only a flash of panic.

Then she seemed to hit on an answer, and the venom came back with her certainty.

"I know what happened! She caught something off that man, some filthy disease. Why else would she waste away like that?

"She was too ashamed to show her face and she couldn't afford treatment, so she crawled off somewhere to die."

She turned urgently to Dad and Ethan.

"See? I told you she was a slut. Someone like that had it coming. Let's take her out of here and have her cremated quietly. This is humiliating.

"What happens if the press gets hold of it? Think what that does to the Carter name."

Every word scraped against the conscience of anyone in that room who still had one.

Finally the officer who'd been silent the whole time spoke up.

"Ma'am, I don't know what grievance you had with the deceased, but you'll show her some basic respect."

Detective Nora Bennett fixed Chloe with a hard stare.

"Our findings put her death more than a week ago. She died of organ failure brought on by extreme starvation and prolonged exposure to the cold. There's no evidence of anything you've described, so stop spreading it.

"This was an unnatural death and the body was illegally disposed of. We're opening a criminal investigation, and all of you will cooperate."