Chapter 4

Both their faces changed in an instant.

"Where's your Sophie? You make sure she's careful going to and from school. I just passed by on my way to buy groceries and saw it. God, blood everywhere. Terrible thing to see."

Lisa Dickerson meant well with the reminder.

The father gave an awkward laugh.

"The kid's in one of her moods. Won't come out to eat."

Lisa glanced at the mother in the living room and shook her head.

"Barrett, I'm only saying this for your own good. Look at your Sophie. Those thin little arms and legs, she doesn't look anything like a five-year-old."

"Talk to your wife. People have to look forward. Surely a living person is worth more than the dead."

The father's smile turned more bitter, and he nodded without a word.

"All right, I hear you, Lisa."

After she left, the father lingered in the doorway, as if turning something over in his mind.

A moment later he picked up his keys and went out.

When he came back, there was a bag of pork ribs in his hand.

"Lisa's right. Sophie's too thin. A kid can't go without meat."

The mother's lips parted, but she said nothing.

The father had just stepped into the kitchen when she called him back.

"I'll do it. What do you even know how to cook. Just help me out."

There was a light of a smile in the father's eyes, and my own heart quickened to match it.

The meals in this house were either cooked by the father when he got home, or by the hired help.

I had never once eaten anything my mother made with her own hands.

Smiling, I was suddenly caught by an ache.

Such a shame. I never got to taste it before I died.

Before long the mother set a plate of sweet-and-sour ribs on the table.

She stared at it, sinking into thought.

"Back then Nina kept crying and begging for meat too, so I made a plate of braised ribs just like this. When the doctor wasn't looking, I slipped a piece into her mouth."

"Nina ate it with her eyes squeezed shut and said she'd never had anything so good. But that one piece almost made her throw up her whole stomach."

The mother's eyes glistened, wet with tears.

"I hated it. Hated myself for not giving Nina a healthy body, hated that she suffered all those years."

She lowered her head, choking on a small sob.

"The truth is, I know Sophie's innocent. But a person has to hate something, or they can't go on living."

The room was utterly silent.

After a while the mother wiped away her tears, stood, and walked to the door of my room.

"Sophie, come out and eat. Mommy made sweet-and-sour ribs."

No one answered her.

Her patience thinned.

"Sophie, can you not hear me? Come out and eat."

I stood beside her, shouting again and again.

"Mommy, I'm right here!"

But no one heard my voice.

Her face darkened, as if something had come back to her, and she pulled a key from the drawer.

"You think I can't do anything if you won't come out?"

As the key went into the lock, the television that was on suddenly carried something familiar.

Both of them turned to look.

"A traffic accident has occurred at the Sycamore Street intersection here in the city. The victim was a little girl of only five, killed on the spot. Let's go to our reporter for the report from the scene."

The camera cut, and there was my body, covered in blood, lying on the ground.

The mother went white and cried out.

"It's Sophie!"