Chapter 2

When I pushed open the front door, the aroma of food hit me, but my stomach only churned.

In the dining room, Anna's parents were already seated at the long table.

Across from them, as always, was an empty seat with a clean place setting.

Anna's mother carried a casserole, carefully spooning creamy mashed potatoes onto the plate in front of that empty seat. She cut up a piece of gravy-covered steak and placed it there, murmuring:

"Anna, time to eat. I made your favorite roast beef today."

Ten years, rain or shine.

They believed Anna had died heroically in flood relief efforts ten years ago, her body never recovered. A hero.

So for these ten years, at every meal, they left a place for Anna, with food set out.

As if she were still alive, just away on a trip.

I stared at that plate of steaming food, hatred churning inside me.

The daughter they worshipped day and night was actually living well in another city at this very moment.

And Anna and Brandon were humbly begging me to save their daughter.

I changed my shoes and walked over step by step.

"Smith, you're home? Hurry and wash your hands for dinner, today..."

Anna's mother looked up at me with a kind smile.

But her words cut off abruptly.

Because I walked straight to that empty seat, and under their shocked gazes, I picked up the food left for Anna, turned around, and threw it—plate and all—into the kitchen trash.

The crash of breaking dishes exploded in the silent air.

"Smith, have you lost your mind?!"

Anna's father shot to his feet, trembling with rage.

Tears instantly streamed down Anna's mother's face as she looked at me in disbelief:

"Smith... what are you doing? That's... that's food left for Anna..."

I turned around and looked coldly at them, at these pitiful old people who'd been kept in the dark for ten years.

I couldn't tell them that their proud daughter wasn't dead at all.

Anna just found my autistic son and me to be burdens, so she and my best friend planned a fake death and ran away together.

I couldn't say a single word of it.

I could only vent my ten years of accumulated resentment in the cruelest way.

"Dead people don't deserve to eat."

That night, I didn't return to my room.

I sat in my son's room.

Everything in the room remained exactly as it was when he left. His crooked drawing of our family still sat on the desk.

I picked up the worn, matted stuffed toy from the bedside.

This was a birthday gift Brandon had given my son.

My son loved it.

In his final moments, he clutched it tightly in his arms, calling over and over:

"Mommy... Mommy..."

I held that toy and sat there all night, until dawn squeezed through the curtain cracks and shone coldly on my face.