Jane Doe on the Table

Chapter 3 Scars They Chose to Ignore

The forceps stopped in my mother's hand. She looked from the scar to my ruined face and back again. Recognition held for one second.

She had seen that scar before.

I was ten years old when the guesthouse caught fire. Black smoke covered the windows, and Chloe was screaming inside.

No one moved toward the door. I did.

I found her huddled under a bed and dragged her toward the door beneath my body. A ceiling beam came down across my back and showered us with embers before we reached the exit. Chloe came out with soot on her dress and no burns.

In the white main house, my parents held a sobbing Chloe, wiped soot from her face, and checked her arms for scratches. My scorched nightgown stuck to the blisters on my back. The family doctor treated me in a sterile guest bathroom while they stayed with her in the living room and asked whether she was frightened.

By morning, they were calling what I had done reckless. The scar, they said, might teach me a lesson.

In the morgue, my mother blinked twice and looked away. She moved the forceps to an unmarked part of my arm.

"Some kind of brand," she said. "Likely gang-affiliated. Irrelevant to the cause of death."

She wrote nothing about the fire in her notes.

The morgue door opened. Julian, Chloe's fiancé, stopped at the smell and covered his nose.

"God, it reeks. Is this really necessary, Arthur? We have guests arriving." He glanced at my body and turned away. "Chloe is a mess. She's convinced Aria planned this. She's probably in some filthy motel right now, laughing at us."

My father nodded without asking how Julian could know.

The three of them discussed lilies for the centerpieces, the string quartet, and the honeymoon in the Maldives beside my open body. Their pleasant voices filled the chilled room. My mother even laughed at one of Julian's complaints about the guest list.

An alarm sounded in the hallway and cut her off.

Every head turned toward the door.

The same urgent tone repeated.

Sarah pushed through the door with a printout clenched in both hands. Her face had lost all color.

"Doctor. Chief Croft." She struggled to keep her voice level. "The DNA sequencer ran the body's sample against the private database for unsolved cases and family members."

She held out the printout.

"We got an immediate, priority-one match."

The hallway alarm kept beeping while the private database displayed its priority-one match. My father tore the report from Sarah's hand and scanned the result. My mother still held the bloody forceps above the table.

Sarah faced my mother and read the name on the page.

"Dr. Croft, the person on your table is Aria."