"Arthur, stop wasting time on people who don't matter. Pull every missing-girl report filed in our district over the last ten days. Let's see if we can ID the victim."

My mother left those words behind and walked into the forensic lab, standing before my body once again.

I remembered something she used to say: the dead can't speak, but they often have more to tell than the living.

Chief Medical Examiner Carlson was conducting his second autopsy.

I lay there like a doll stitched together with rough, careless thread, limbs splayed in all directions.

My mother glanced at me once, then closed her eyes, jaw tight, swallowing hard against the bile.

Then her gaze locked onto Chief Medical Examiner Carlson's hands, brow furrowed in thought.

A moment later, the furrow deepened.

She reached out and gripped my ankle.

My breath caught.

Was she about to find out?

There was a scar on my ankle from when I was little, when I'd been playing and tumbled down the stairs.

But instead, she frowned. "There are ligature marks on the ankles. That doesn't match his previous method. He never restrained his victims before. It was like he knew they couldn't escape."

My nose burned and a dull ache swelled through my chest.

Cedric Cobb never tied anyone up—but that didn't mean no one else would.

She was so strong.

Mom, do you know? I was scared. It hurt so much…

Just then, my mother's phone rang.

She walked briskly out of the autopsy room, and for the first time all day, a smile crossed her face.

"Kate, sweetheart—I was just busy, didn't hear your call."

"Don't worry about a thing. I'll drag that brat to your wedding if I have to. She refuses? Then she's no daughter of mine."

Kate's sugary voice drifted through the phone: "It's okay, really. Even if Elisa doesn't want to, I won't hold it against her. After all, I'm the one who wronged her first."

Fury flashed through my mother's eyes. "She wouldn't dare. Once I'm done with this case, I'll go get her myself. I don't care if I have to tie her up and haul her there—she's showing up at your wedding."

"Things have been dangerous lately. Stay home the next few days, keep your doors and windows locked, and don't go anywhere."

When she spoke to her beloved niece, her whole voice softened, went gentle and warm in a way I'd never once heard aimed at me.

For me, there was never anything but harshness.

She had barely hung up when Aunt Margery's call came through.

"Captain Donaldson-Walker, has Elisa come to see you? She told me she wanted to come tutor the kids in her spare time, but I haven't been able to reach her for two days."

Aunt Margery was one of the few relatives who still kept in touch with me.

She was too busy with work to look after the children properly, so I'd offered to come over on weekends to help out and tutor them with their homework.

The anger my mother had just tamped down roared back to life. "Why would I let her stay with me?"

"That girl is always scheming. She lies like she breathes. And you actually believe what she tells you? That's a joke."

Aunt Margery listened to the tirade and spoke up awkwardly: "Captain Donaldson-Walker, Elisa isn't like that. She's never once turned me down for anything."

That only made my mother's voice sharper, thick with resentment. "Oh, she'll do anything you ask, but she ignores mine? All I asked was for her to be Kate's bridesmaid, and she won't even return my calls for days. Now she wants to play some disappearing act."

"Tell her this for me: I'm giving her two more days. If she still won't agree, then she's not my daughter anymore."

She said it with a frozen face and hung up without waiting for a reply.

Uncle Arthur happened to be coming to find her and caught the tail end of it. He raised an eyebrow.

He turned his head deliberately toward the empty air and sighed. "You know, if she's not calling you, you could just call her. She's your kid—why turn it into a whole war?"

My mother shot him a look, about to walk away, when someone called out to her.

"Captain Donaldson-Walker, someone's here to file a report. His daughter is missing."

In the reception room, a middle-aged man sat with exhaustion carved into every line of his face, eyes red-rimmed as he spoke.

"My daughter is twenty-three. She just graduated from college. The day before, she called me and said she was coming home to see me. But today I can't get through to her phone."

"She's never been out of contact for more than two days. Please, I'm begging you, help me find her."

Uncle Arthur and my mother exchanged a glance, both watching this grown man cry like a child, something raw and heavy settling behind their eyes.

The body lying on that autopsy table was also roughly twenty-three years old.

I hovered in the air, my eyes stinging, something heavy pressing down on my heart.

A man like him—the kind you'd pass on the street without a second look, who probably never fussed over anything—and here he was, shaking apart because his daughter was gone.

His daughter had been gone less than two days, and here he was, sobbing in a police station, ready to drop to his knees and beg.

But my own mother, the mother who once told me she loved me more than anything, was still raging at me five days after I'd disappeared. Still accusing me.

Still convinced I was playing some disappearing game because I didn't want to be Kate's bridesmaid.

My chest had gone hollow, scraped out until there was nothing left to hurt. It was just like the saying:

Someone who cares about you hears you cough once and worries you've caught a cold.

Someone who doesn't care could watch you hang yourself and think you're on a swing.

My mother was still weighing whether to tell the man in front of her about the girl's body they'd found.

The timeline didn't quite match up.

Then his phone rang. An unknown number.

She went on alert instantly, signaling him in a low voice to put it on speaker.

"Dad, I'm sorry. I just realized someone stole my phone. I'm calling from a classmate's. Don't worry, I'll be home in an hour."

The man nodded over and over, tears streaming down his face.

He'd been crumpled against the wall moments ago; now he braced one hand on it and dragged himself upright.

On his way out, he bowed repeatedly. "Officer, I'm sorry for the trouble."

My mother watched him go, and the sadness in her eyes looked real. "Children are everything to their parents. Every missing-persons case—the thing I dread most is the look in those parents' eyes."

I drifted beside her, watching those eyes.

Mom, you just said children are everything. So what am I?

To you, am I nothing but something to resent?

You feel for them. Why couldn't you ever feel for me?

A full day and night of searching, and the task force had turned up nothing. Not a thread. Every face in the room looked hollowed out.

"A whole person goes missing from someone's household and nobody notices?"

"Nobody even filed a report."

"What, was she an orphan? Living on the street?"

Everyone was speculating, tossing out guesses about who I might have been.

That was when the switchboard operator knocked and stepped into the conference room.

"Captain, someone's calling in—says they'll only speak to you."

My mother frowned, puzzled, and picked up.

"Detective Donaldson? Hi—I run the company where Elisa's interning. She hasn't shown up in three days and none of us can reach her."

"Since you're her mother, I figured I'd call you directly. This counts as me reporting it, all right? Whatever happens to her from here on out, that's not on us."

The irritation she'd barely tamped down ripped loose again. "What does she have to do with me? I'm telling you right now—call this line about her garbage one more time and I will book you for obstruction."

My boss was stunned into silence. The moment he heard "book you," he stammered out an apology and hung up.

The room went quiet. Everyone knew her temper. No one dared say a word.

Uncle Arthur made some excuse about case files and pulled her into his office.

"Faye, this doesn't add up. Three days and Elisa hasn't been to work. Her great-aunt called too—can't get through to her either. What if something's actually happened?"

"I tried calling her myself while you were on the phone. Still no answer."

"Let me take a few people and go look for her."

My mother's face was hard, her voice sharp. "There's a victim lying in a freezing autopsy room waiting for us to get her justice. That killer is still out there. We don't have time to waste on her little stunts."

"She's doing this on purpose. She doesn't want to be a bridesmaid, so she's playing these childish games."

"Trust me. Give it three days and she'll show up."

She was right that, before, no matter how much she hated me, no matter what she said, I'd go to the Criminal Investigation Unit to see her every so often.

Even when she threw everything I brought her straight into the trash.

I still went.

But Mom.

This time, I was already inside the Criminal Investigation Unit.

I'd been right here beside you the whole time.

My mother didn't go home that night. She called Kate, reminded her twice to lock all the doors and windows, then slept at the office—if you could call it sleep. The hunt for Cedric Cobb had stalled, and she refused to leave the building until it broke.

She worked past midnight, barely shut her eyes before her phone jolted her awake.

Six in the morning. Calls at that hour were never good news.

She shot upright and grabbed the phone.

"Hello? Is this Elisa Walker's mother? Your daughter's rent is over a week late. I can't reach her, and you're listed as the emergency contact. Come pay it for her."

The landlady. An old woman.

She slept little and had a habit of calling people at dawn.

Because it was an elderly woman on the other end, my mother swallowed her anger. She said "Fine" in a flat, cold voice.

Then hung up fast.

She sat back in her chair, frowning. For days the victim's identity had stayed a dead end—yet somehow my name kept needling its way into every call, every loose thread, every interruption.

The irritation built until she couldn't stand it. She pulled out her phone and scrolled to my contact.

After a long hesitation, typing and deleting and typing again, she sent one line: *You have one hour to get your ass in front of me.*

The message went out instantly. A red exclamation mark appeared beside it.

Her eyes went wide with disbelief. She slammed the phone onto the bed.

"Elisa Walker—you actually had the nerve to block me."

She paced the room with her hands on her hips, fuming. The phone rang several times before she even heard it.

She glanced at the caller ID.

Walker.

That was the name she'd saved for me.

"Elisa Walker, you really have nerve. Playing these childish games with me."

"I'm warning you—you could be dying tomorrow and you'd still owe me today. You're doing your bridesmaid duties first."

"Don't think a stunt like this will make me forgive you. Let me be clear: unless you die, I will never forgive you. Not in this lifetime."

A few seconds of silence on the other end. Then a voice came through, tight and uneasy: "Captain—it's me. We found the scene. The first crime scene. This phone was picked up right here."