“Upstairs, sweetheart.”
The child finally obeyed.
Her bare feet disappeared along the hallway, then creaked on the stairs.
Mia waited until we heard a door close.
Then she stepped outside and pulled the front door nearly shut behind her.
Rain blew beneath the porch roof.
I stared at the woman whose funeral had destroyed my life.
“You let me bury you.”
Her chin trembled.
“Yes.”
“You let me stand beside a coffin and promise your mother I would take care of her.”
“Yes.”
“You let me send money for five years.”
Her eyes dropped.
“Yes.”
I held up my phone.
“And after Martha died, you pretended to be her.”
Mia looked toward the road.
“I can explain.”
I laughed once, but there was no humor in it.
“Then start with the dead woman I’ve been texting for three years.”
She flinched.
“I didn’t plan that part.”
“Which part did you plan?”
Silence.
“The funeral?”
She said nothing.
“The sealed coffin?”
Nothing.
“The money?”
Her eyes filled.
“Ryan—”
“No.
You don’t get to use my name like we spoke yesterday.”
She folded her arms across herself, the same way she used to when she was cold.
That familiar gesture hurt worse than seeing her face.
I had spent years missing those small things.
She had been somewhere else, still doing them.
Mia finally said, “The crash was real.”
I stared at her.
She continued carefully.
“I was in the car.
The road was slick.
A truck crossed into my lane.
I remember metal, glass, then waking up in a hospital two towns away.”
“That hospital declared you dead.”
“No.
The first responders found my purse and coat in the wreckage.
There was another victim after the collision.
Everything was chaos.
By the time I woke up properly, Mom had already been told I was gone.”
“That still doesn’t explain a coffin.”
“I know.”
“Or why you didn’t call your husband.”
Her eyes hardened with a kind of shame.
“Because when I woke up, I was terrified.”
