They Loved Me Too Late

When that dealer tortured me, my dad, a narcotics cop, and my mom, the city’s chief medical examiner, were busy celebrating my sister’s win in the volleyball semifinals. To get back at my dad for destroying his drug network three years earlier, that man cut my throat. Right before I died, I called my dad. Before I hung up, he said, “Cut it out. Serena’s game is what mattered most right now.”

—

They found my body in an abandoned pharmaceutical plant on the north side of the city.

A nearby resident called the police because the stench was unbearable.

My parents rushed over from Serena’s victory banquet.

My dad, Silas Blackwood, still had the VIP badge from the banquet clipped to his shirt collar. My mom, Violet Blackwood, wore a long red dress that looked completely out of place in the dark, filthy factory.

Dad’s partner, Cole Rush, waited outside the tape and handed them masks.

“Remember this place?” Cole asked in a low voice. “The shipment we seized three years ago was here.”

Dad stared at the building for a few seconds, then nodded.

Mom opened the trunk. She pulled on a disposable protective suit and took out her toolkit.

Even though they were used to crime scenes, the moment they stepped into the plant, the stench hit them so hard they almost threw up.

I lay on the concrete floor, swollen out of shape. My skin had turned a dirty green, my face had been smashed in, and my neck was almost severed.

Flies circled above me. The air carried a sweet, thick smell of rot.

Mom pulled her mask up higher, took a deep breath, and put on a pair of purple rubber gloves.

I suddenly remembered the last time Serena scraped her knee. Mom had worn the same gloves while she cleaned the wound, moving so carefully, afraid of hurting her.

When I was alive, she never took care of me like that. That kind of tenderness only ever belonged to Serena.

Now those hands rested on my swollen wrist.

She stopped.

A metal bracelet had sunk into the flesh, stained with dark brown blood. There were bits of dried tissue stuck between the links.

It was the bracelet I had ordered the year before, after saving three months of allowance. On the inside, I had had everyone’s initials engraved.

Back then I had been nervous and hopeful, like a clumsy door-to-door salesperson, praying someone would accept what I offered.

Serena had tried it on and complained that it irritated her skin. Dad’s face turned dark on the spot.

“Can’t you do one thing right?”

“Ava, Serena is adopted, but you still have to treat her like your real sister.”

In that moment I was still busy defending myself, insisting in my heart that I did see her as a real sister, that was why I wanted her to have the same bracelet.

I simply did not know she was allergic to metal.

Now, looking back, all those explanations did not matter at all.

Mom frowned, pinched the bracelet between her fingers.

She would remember that this was the gift I had given them. Right?

I even imagined how she would break down when she noticed it was my bracelet.

But her expression did not change.

“Evidence bag,” she said, turning to her assistant, Peyton Wells. “Be careful around the clasp. There might be trace evidence.”

The bracelet went into a clear plastic bag and landed beside the toolbox.

I should not have held on to this kind of expectation anymore.

Mom took off her gloves and rubbed her temples.

“Female, around twenty years old,” she said. “Cause of death was a severed carotid artery, but she was tortured for a long time before that.” She paused.

Dad lit a cigarette.

“Looked like a vendetta,” he said. “Or revenge.”

He looked at Cole.

“What about the media?”

“They already asked around,” Cole said. “The department said if it involved drugs, DEA would take the lead.”

Cole added, “The killer is still out there. You have two girls. You should be careful.”

Mom answered almost immediately.

“Serena’s training camp has security around the clock,” she said. “As for Ava… she goes wherever she wants. I can’t control her.”

Dad’s hand, the one holding the cigarette, trembled.

“Old injury again?” Cole asked.

Dad let out a helpless breath. “The pain patches Ava bought me ran out…”

He stopped in the middle of the sentence.

I had found out about the gunshot wound he took on duty and the lasting damage it left. After that, I had prepared those patches for him every week. Now I was dead.

Cole patted him on the back. “Ava is your own daughter. Having more patience with her wouldn’t hurt.”

Dad took a deep drag and slowly blew out the smoke.

“The night before Serena’s semifinal, she cried and called Ava, begging her to come to the game,” he said. “Ava promised. Then she turned off her phone and vanished. Serena worried about her so much she messed up the first set and almost failed to advance.”

“Ava still hasn’t come home. She doesn’t answer, and no one is at her apartment.” He flicked the cigarette butt to the floor and crushed it under his shoe. “Kids you don’t raise yourself never put their heart into this home.”

I lay there, listening to all this, and it hurt more than the knife had.

Dad, Mom.

It was not that I did not want to go.

I could not.

On the day Serena played her match, I was already dead.

While you complained that I had not come home, I lay in this dark factory the whole time and waited for you.

Now you came. You saw my body and touched my bracelet.

And you still did not recognize your own daughter?