Chapter 5

I heard crying from the hallway.

"My granddaughter! My poor granddaughter!"

It was my grandmother.

Her legs didn't work well, so she sat in a wheelchair, pushed by a caregiver.

My mother followed behind, wearing a black cotton jacket, her face bare.

They started crying as soon as they entered the station lobby.

My grandmother's crying was loud wailing, with slapping and shouting.

My mother's crying was silent, wiping tears, shoulders shaking.

Several young officers on duty all looked over.

"Don't worry, we found the girl. That's good news."

My grandmother grabbed the female officer's hand.

"I've been looking for her for four years!"

"Her father died young. I'm just an old woman who raised her, and she just..."

Halfway through, she clutched her chest, unable to breathe.

The caregiver pulled out quick-acting heart pills and shoved them in her mouth.

My mother dropped to her knees with a thud.

"Officers, please, I'm begging you to let me see my daughter."

"I dream about her every night."

The officers who didn't know the truth got teary-eyed.

Someone went to open the interrogation room door.

The moment the door opened, my mother rushed in and hugged me.

Her arms locked around my back, her face buried in my shoulder.

"Evelyn, my Evelyn, I finally get to see you."

All the officers nearby were wiping tears.

How touching.

But only I knew that the second she hugged me tight, her right index and middle fingers dug into the soft flesh at my waist.

Her lips pressed against my ear, her voice masked by her crying.

Only I could hear it.

"If you say anything wrong, I'll deal with you properly when we get home."

My body went rigid.

Exactly the same feeling as when I was twelve.

My grandmother's wheelchair was pushed in front of me.

She reached out her hand, trembling as she touched my face.

In everyone else's eyes, this was a white-haired old woman caressing her long-lost granddaughter.

But I could feel her fingers searching through my clothes.

From the collar to the back of my neck, from the roots of my hair to behind my ears.

She was looking for bugs, for recording devices.

She knew these things all too well.

After finishing her search and finding nothing, her fingers stopped on my cheek, the pressure suddenly increasing.

"If you don't want to actually become a corpse... play dumb."

She released her hand, slowly lifted her face, tears streaming down as she turned toward Luke standing in the doorway.

"Officer, this child isn't mentally well. I need to take her home."

Luke stood in the doorway without moving.

His gaze swept across my face and caught the two white fingerprints on my cheek.

Then my mother pulled a medical record from her bag and handed it to Luke.

"This is Evelyn's psychiatric evaluation. Severe schizophrenia, diagnosed two years before she disappeared."

"No matter what she's said, it can't be taken seriously."

Ha.

You're really in a hurry.

You don't even know what I said, but you're already rushing to discredit everything I've told them.

Luke took it and flipped through two pages, glanced at me, and said nothing.

My grandmother chimed in from the side.

"We've already contacted a psychiatric hospital. She can be admitted today."

A white ambulance was parked outside, with two orderlies in blue uniforms waiting in the hallway.

I clutched the table leg tightly.

"I'm not going back! I won't go back even if you kill me!"

My mother lunged over and grabbed my arm.

"Evelyn, you're having an episode. Listen to me..."

Two young officers who didn't know the situation started to help.

"Don't move."

Luke stepped between me and that mother-daughter pair.

"She's a key witness in a major criminal case."

"No one's taking her anywhere."

My grandmother's face darkened.

"She's my own granddaughter. I have guardianship!"

Luke slapped the medical record on the table.

"The hospital that issued this record — Grace Recovery Hospital — had its license revoked three months ago for selling fake diagnoses."

"This thing is just a piece of waste paper to me."

My grandmother's mouth twitched.

Luke pulled out another paper from the file.

"Also, Evelyn Carter is twenty years old, a person with full civil capacity."

"More importantly..."

"Her Social Security number is marked deceased."

"You have no legal basis whatsoever to take away a dead person."