Prologue
I laugh and unwrap my gifts. My mother and father laugh too and take pictures.
"Lori, look at the camera!" My mother says. I look and grin.
"To our princesses 13th birthday," my father says. He holds his hand out towards me.
"A dance, mil-lady?" My father asks. I laugh and take his hand. We dance around the yard, the mansion we live in looms in the distance. My mother laughs at us. She sits down to watch the dance.
Our mailman stops at the mailbox and places the mail in, he grins and waves to us. I watch as he drives away.
"Look, he dropped a piece of mail on the street." I say.
"Well go pick it up, then." My mother tells me. I do as she says. I break free from dancing with my father and run down the long lawn to the road. I pick up the parcel of mail.
"Mother it's just a piece of blank paper!" I call.
Then I heard tires screech and then my world went black.
-•-
Two years later, Mrs. Wilcox sat in the window of her home, watching the rain fall. She had nothing left. Her husband had wasted away and died, her daughter was gone, probably dead. All she had was a big house, millions of dollars, and no one to share it with. Mrs. Wilcox was startled out of her trance when the doorbell rang. She answered the door to find a police officer on her doorstep.
"I'm so sorry." The officer said. "We found her body this morning."
Once the officer was gone Mrs. Wilcox sat on the sofa to cry. She truly had nothing left.
-•-
The officer got into his car.
"Yeah I told her." He said into his phone.
"What? Of course she bought it. Didn't look twice at the fake badge." He said into the phone, again. He dug around the front seat for his toothpick. He found it under some muddy shoes, examined the toothpick, and put it in his mouth.
"Yeah. To the world, that girls dead." He said again. "Yeah you can let her join the others now."
He then started the car and drove away.