Chapter 1

My murder was messy, brutal.

It happened on my forty-ninth birthday.

Now, I just float, unseen.

I watch them find me.

Police lights flash through the trees in the state park.

They're looking at my body in a shallow grave.

It's not a pretty sight, even for me, and I'm the one who's dead.

They talk in low voices, "Severe trauma," one says.

Another points to the smashed, homemade apple pie near the grave.

Chloe's favorite. My Chloe.

I baked it for her, for my birthday, hoping.

My last words to her echo in my non-existent ears.

Hours ago, I called, wanted to see her.

She screamed at me.

"Don't you know Mom is coming home from her bypass surgery today?! Stop trying to ruin everything with your drama!"

"Mom" was Diane Johnson, her mother-in-law. Not me.

That cut deep, even before Frank Johnson cut everything else.

Now, Chloe is at the Johnsons' house, fussing over Diane.

She doesn't know I'm here, a forgotten horror in the woods.

My spirit aches. Heartbreak is a ghost's companion, it seems.

They lift my body onto a gurney.

So clinical. So final.

The pie, a symbol of my failed hope, gets put in an evidence bag.

My daughter. My estranged daughter.

This is the aftermath.

The van drives away, carrying what's left of Eleanor Vance.

Me.

The mortuary is cold, sterile.

Chloe works here. My Chloe.

She's the best restorative artist they have.

The irony isn't lost on me, even in this state.

The supervisor, Mr. Henderson, calls her into his office.

"We have a Jane Doe, Chloe. Badly disfigured. State park. We need your best work."

Chloe nods, all professional.

"Of course, Mr. Henderson."

She doesn't know it's me. How could she?

Maria Sanchez, her colleague, peeks at the intake form.

She shivers a little. "Poor woman."

Chloe is already looking at the preliminary photos, her face a mask of detachment.

"Approximate age, late forties," she murmurs, reading the notes.

Later, she makes a call.

I drift closer, a desperate, invisible mother.

"Hi, Diane," Chloe says, her voice soft, concerned. "Just checking in on you. How are you feeling?"

Diane, her mother-in-law, laps it up.

"Oh, Chloe, dear, so sweet of you to call."

My invisible heart shatters a little more.

She's worried about Diane.

Not about me. Not even a flicker of, "I wonder how my actual mother is doing on her birthday after I screamed at her."

The estrangement is a chasm, and I'm on the wrong side of it, forever.