Chapter 4

"Ms. Sullivan! The victim's phone was smashed to pieces in the crash, but the memory card survived. We spent all day on it, and we finally recovered the last number she called before she died."

My mother sat down in her chair, picked up her coffee, and nodded, satisfied. "Good. Whether it leads anywhere or not, call it and try. Who knows, maybe it'll help us confirm who she is."

Her colleague fiddled with the phone excitedly, then shook his head, a little wistful. "I've got a feeling this girl didn't come from much. Her phone's an old model, years out of date, and buffers if you try to watch a video on it. Usually, it's girls like that who come to the city to work. God only knows how her family's going to take the news once they find out."

I turned my hopeful eyes on my mother. Right, Mom? Knowing I died like this, so horribly, would you feel even a little bit sad?

Would you finally feel something for me? Even just a little?

In the end, I was bound to be disappointed.

My mother let out a sigh. "Any child is the center of their parents' world. If something like this happened to my Kyle, I don't think I'd even want to keep living. He's everything to me."

Whatever amusement I'd felt froze solid. Kyle. Why was it always Kyle?

I was the one my mother carried for nine months and gave birth to. Just because his mother had died young, did that mean he got to claim everything of mine as his by right?

I wanted so badly to march up and ask her: if she didn't love me, why had she even had me in the first place?

But it was far too late for that now.

Her colleague had already entered the number, and everyone crowded around, curious. My mother's apprentice looked at the number on the screen and muttered something, confused.

"That's strange... this number looks like..."

Before he could finish the sentence, a phone started ringing loudly, cutting through the quiet room.

It was my mother's phone.

Every eye in the room went wide at once.

My mother, oblivious, answered the call. When she saw it was me calling, she immediately snapped, annoyed.

"You've finally decided to call me? Where the hell have you been all this time? Do you even care about this family anymore? Do you even care about me, your own mother? Say something!"

No one answered her. Then her voice started playing back through my phone's speaker.

Everyone's faces turned even paler. When my mother looked up and saw their expressions, understanding finally began to dawn.

"Why... why does this phone have my daughter's number... then who is this, lying here?"

The room fell into an eerie silence. The truth was practically staring everyone in the face. But not a single person dared to say it out loud, that the girl who'd been alive and laughing just days ago was now nothing but a heap of mangled flesh.

A few seconds later, my mother suddenly started shaking her head violently.

"It's not true! There's no birthmark on the body's arm! It has to be a coincidence! Maybe... maybe someone just happened to find my daughter's phone! Nothing's happened to Sophie, nothing could have happened to her!

"The body... that's it! If I just finish restoring the face, we'll be able to see exactly who this is! Then we'll know the truth! It won't be her!"

With that, she stumbled and staggered back to where my body lay. Her hands, always so steady, trembled uncontrollably now as she worked, bit by bit, to bring my face back.

The truth was about to come out, whether she was ready for it or not.