Chapter 2

My mother' s sharp eyes caught something glinting on my neck. It was my locket. A cheap, silver-plated heart I bought from a street vendor for five dollars.

She reached for it. For a wild, impossible moment, I thought she would recognize it.

"Don't wear that piece of junk, Kelsie," my father had sneered just last month at the dinner table. "It makes you look cheap. It makes this family look cheap."

I had clutched it in my hand, the metal cool against my skin.

"I like it," I had whispered.

"You like it?" he'd scoffed. "And what does that matter? When are you going to start thinking about how your actions reflect on us?"

Now, I watched my mother hold the locket between her gloved fingers. I prayed. See it. Remember. Remember me.

She studied it for a second, her brow furrowed. Then her expression went blank again. She turned to a nearby officer.

"Bag this. It might have the killer's prints on it."

She dropped it into the small plastic bag the officer held out. My heart, the one that no longer beat, shattered. It was just evidence. I was just evidence.

The sound of another car door slamming cut through the air. My father. District Attorney Courtney Ochoa. He strode onto the scene, his jaw tight, his eyes scanning the swarm of police activity. He looked powerful, angry. This murder was a stain on his city, a complication in a busy week.

He saw Diane and walked over, his face grim. "What a mess. Any idea who she is?"

"Not yet," Diane said, her voice low. "No ID. Face is... well, we'll need dental records."

Courtney swore under his breath. "This is the last thing I need right now. The press is going to have a field day. 'Brutal Murder of Young Woman in DA's City.'"

He ran a hand through his perfectly styled hair. He was already thinking about the narrative, the public perception.

I was a ghost, and they were standing over my corpse, complaining about their own lives.

"On top of everything else," my father continued, his voice laced with irritation, "Kelsie's gone off the grid again. Has she called you?"

My mother sighed, a sound of pure exhaustion. "No. I've tried her phone a dozen times. Goes straight to voicemail. Charlotte called this morning, hysterical. Thinks something's happened."

"Something's happened?" Courtney laughed, a bitter, humorless sound. "Something always 'happens' with Kelsie. She's just being dramatic. Probably shacked up with some loser to get back at us for grounding her. She'll come crawling back when she needs money."

They didn't know. They couldn't possibly know. They were talking about me, their missing daughter, while my body lay decomposing at their feet. The irony was so thick, so cruel, it felt like a physical weight.

I wasn't "off the grid." I wasn't being dramatic.

I was right here.

I had been for two days.

A man in a suit approached them. Judge Adler Hendrix, a close family friend. His face, usually jovial, was somber.

"Courtney, Diane. This is horrific." He looked from their stressed faces to the sheet now covering my body. "I heard on the scanner. Do we know anything?"

"Nothing," Courtney said, his voice tight. "Just another tragedy. Some poor family is about to get the worst news of their lives."

He shook his head, a performance of sympathy for the cameras that would soon arrive.

Adler' s gaze softened as he looked at Diane. "You look exhausted. Is everything alright at home?" He knew about our family's tensions. He'd seen my father's favoritism and my mother's coldness firsthand.

"It's just Kelsie," Diane said, waving a dismissive hand. "She's run off. Again. Right before Javon's championship game, of course. She always has to make everything about her."

I wanted to scream. I wanted to howl until the force of my grief could shake them.

It was never about me. Not really. It was always about Javon.

Javon, the golden boy, the adopted son who had seamlessly filled the space I had left behind when I was lost as a child. When they found me years later, that space was already occupied. I came back to a home that was no longer mine. I was a ghost in their house long before I became a real one.

"I'm sorry, Courtney," I whispered into the wind, but the words were lost. "I can't come home."

Not this time.

Never again.