Chapter 2 - The Reappearance
I turned the deadbolt and pulled the door open.
My mother, Clara, stumbled forward off the porch step, catching herself on the small entryway table while my father, Richard, hovered anxiously behind her. Both of them looked older, flushed with the frantic energy of people who had just realized they had made the most expensive miscalculation of their lives.
For a fraction of a second, my mother’s eyes darted across my face, searching for the broken, weeping daughter who had begged them to come to the funeral six months ago.
What she found instead was a woman who didn't blink.
“Hannah... oh, thank God,” my mother breathed, her hands flying to her chest in an instantly theatrical display of relief. She stepped forward as if to embrace me, her voice softening into a dripping, maternal syrup. “When we saw that headline on the morning news... Hannah, honey, why didn't you tell us? We’ve been worried sick about you for months!”
I didn't move an inch. I kept my arms firmly crossed over my chest, blocking the threshold with my body.
“You were worried sick?” I asked, my voice terrifyingly calm against the winter chill. “Funny. You weren't worried sick when I called you from the hospital chapel. You weren't worried sick when you told me Sabrina’s birthday dinner was more important than my husband and my children’s funeral.”
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Richard’s face tightened defensively, stepping up beside his wife. “Now, see here, Hannah, that was a misunderstanding—”
“A misunderstanding,” I repeated, the word tasting like ash. “You told me to my face that a restaurant reservation mattered more than three caskets. Don't you dare come into my home and rewrite history.”
