Chapter 4 - The Voices of the Forgotten
It was Lily.
My youngest. She was fifteen now, a sophomore in high school, with my dark, wavy hair and her grandmother’s quiet, observant eyes. When Chloe had walked out the door that rainy November morning, Lily had been asleep in a bassinet lined with a clean towel because we couldn't afford replacement crib sheets.
Lily stood up from the family table. She wore a lavender bridesmaid gown, her hands trembling slightly, but her eyes were fixed on the woman who had shared none of her life.
Beside Lily, Brooke and Clara stood up in unison. Then Penny.
Four young women, ranging from fifteen to twenty, standing shoulder-to-shoulder like a fortress wall.
Chloe’s throat swallowed convulsively. "Lily... baby... look at you. You’re so tall. You have my nose..."
"Don't," Lily said. The single word was quiet, but it hit Chloe like a physical blow. Lily reached into the crate, where she had evidently placed her own contribution earlier that afternoon.
She pulled out a pair of tiny, white leather baby shoes. The soles were completely worn through at the heels, patched with black duct tape that had dried and peeled away over the course of a decade and a half.
"Dad kept these in his work locker," Lily said, holding them up for Daniel and the room to see. "I took my first steps in these shoes on the linoleum floor of a laundromat while Dad was waiting for our clothes to dry. He cried because you weren't there to see it. He actually cried for *you*, Chloe. He thought you were somewhere out there in the city, heartbroken and weeping because you missed your baby walking."
Lily took a step toward the dais.
"Where were you that weekend, Chloe? Maya found the dates."
Maya didn't even look up from the screen. Her fingers flew across the keyboard. A social page clipping from a regional lifestyle magazine materialized on the ten-foot display: *Daniel Vance and his stunning new companion, Chloe, attend the Winter Gala in Aspen.* Dated December 12, 2010.
In the picture, Chloe was draped in silver fox fur, holding a champagne flute, laughing with her head thrown back.
"I had double pneumonia when that photo was taken," Clara spoke up. Clara, our eighteen-year-old, who was currently a freshman on a full academic scholarship at the state engineering institute. She pulled an accordion folder of medical charts from the crate. "Dad gave blood twice in one week to buy my nebulizer. The Red Cross told him he was deferred for being anemic, so he walked five miles in the snow to an independent plasma center across the county line just to get forty dollars for the medicine."
Clara dropped the medical charts onto the table. They landed with a heavy *thud*.
"Dad sat by my bed with an ice pack on his arm where the needle had bruised his vein," Clara said, tears finally spilling over her lashes, though her voice remained steady. "He sang me the lullaby that *you* were supposed to sing. He didn't sleep for seventy-two hours. He held my hand every time I coughed until I threw up. Where was your fur coat then?"
Penny, sixteen, stepped forward next. She didn't hold up a document. She held up an old, cracked Motorola flip phone with an antenna held together by scotch tape.
"Dad’s old phone," Penny said. "He kept it in his top drawer for ten years. Every single Christmas, every single birthday, he charged the battery. Just in case. He told us, 'Your mom might call today, girls. She’s probably busy, but she hasn't forgotten you.' He lied to us, Chloe. He lied to protect *you* from being the monster you are."
Penny pressed a button on the phone. The screen flickered, ancient and green.
"Do you know how many missed calls were on this phone from you between 2009 and 2024?" Penny asked.
She didn't wait for an answer.
"Zero. Not one ring. Not one text. Not a postcard from your ski trips. Not a dollar for my braces. When I broke my collarbone falling off my bicycle when I was eight, Dad had to borrow five hundred dollars from our church pastor to pay the deductible. You were buying a summer home in the Hamptons."
Chloe looked around desperately, her hands fluttering like wounded birds. She looked at Daniel. "Daniel, please! Make them stop! This is an ambush! This is a coordinated smear campaign! They’re doing this to extort us! They want our money!"
"Extort you?" Brooke, twenty, laughed. A sharp, clear, bitter laugh that echoed through the ballroom. "We don't want a penny of your blood money, Chloe. Jessi paid for this entire wedding herself. Dad paid for the floral arrangements with his retirement bonus from the transit authority. We didn't invite you here for money."
Brooke stepped up to the edge of the crate.
"We invited you here so that before you spent another fifteen years telling your wealthy friends that you were a mother who lost her children to tragedy, you would have to look at the wreckage you left behind."
Jessi reached back into the crate. Her face had settled into an expression of absolute, terrifying finality.
May you like
"And now, Daniel," Jessi said, turning her attention completely away from Chloe and locking eyes with the man in the bespoke tuxedo, "it’s your turn to look inside the box."
***
