Autopsied by My Mother

District Attorney Arthur Lancaster paced behind the observation glass and checked the clock at every turn. I used to watch his stride and know how bad the evening would be. Death hadn't put enough distance between us. The ventilation hummed above the morgue. Dr. Eleanor Lancaster adjusted her mask and chose a scalpel. She could read every bruise on a dead body. At home, she never looked long enough to read me. We had the same icy blue eyes. My father’s phone rang in his pocket. He caught it before the second ring. “Chloe, what is it? I’m busy.” I heard Chloe through the glass. I could picture the small frown she practiced whenever she wanted them to fix something. “Your ballet slippers? For God’s sake, did you check the hall closet?” He listened, then glanced at the covered body. “Harper probably took them. You know how she gets before your premiere. The little brat will do anything for attention.” My body lay a few feet away, ruined beyond recognition. He still found a use for me. Chloe needed someone to blame. “Sir, may I show you something?” Julian, my mother’s new assistant, washed the last grime from my left hand. He handled each finger with care and lifted my hand under the examination light. My knuckles had healed into a hard, uneven lump. No one had touched me that gently in years. “Severe comminuted fracture,” he said. “Old and poorly set. This hand struck a hard surface more than once.” My father waved him on without looking. Julian kept the hand raised. “You mentioned Harper had the same injury after the incident at the academy. She was defending her sister, right?” I remembered the locker door crushing Chloe’s arm and my fist jamming into the gap. The bones cracked on my second hit. Chloe cried afterward because the whole corridor was staring at her. My mother kept arranging her instruments. “Harper would never get into a fight that ended with the mob killing her. This Jane Doe is street trash. Save the sentiment for someone else, Julian.” My mother didn't look at my hand again. She had disposed of inconvenient details about me that way for years. She set the scalpel at my shoulder and began the first arm of the Y-incision, drawing it toward my sternum. The blade caught. Metal scraped over the thick skin below my collarbone. Julian bent toward the mark. My mother stopped with the blade pressed against it. The keloid lay thick and pale among the bruises. She had seen it every summer since I was ten, when a burning beam fell inside our summer home. I shoved her clear and caught it across my chest. At the hospital, she scolded me for ruining her dress. Her breath caught. She looked at the scar, then my ruined face, then the scar again. Her fingers tightened around the scalpel. She knew that mark. “Look at me,” I said, though no one could hear. “Just once.”