The Forgotten Daughter, One Last Time Chapter 05

The Forgotten Daughter, One Last Time Chapter 05

When I opened my eyes, the weight was gone, all of it. My body felt like nothing at all, like I might come apart if I stopped paying attention.

I expected to wake up to Mom — her worried face, her arms around me, the way she used to scoop me up when I was little and got hurt.

But it was still the rest stop. Snow was coming down hard now, piling up on everything.

I was still there, curled up on the ground. The beige scarf had turned mostly white, buried under a layer of snow.

I tried to sit up, but I kept going, rising, lifting, until I realized my feet weren’t touching anything.

I looked down. There was a body curled in the snow — small, still, not moving at all.

Purple cheeks. Blue lips. My eyelashes were frosted white, my eyes sealed shut.

That was me down there.

I reached down to touch myself, but my hand went straight through — like there was nothing there at all.

So that was it. I was dead. The thought just sat there, enormous and impossible, and I couldn’t look away from it.

The strange part was that I didn’t feel anything — no fear, no grief. Just a blank white nothing where all of it should have been.

I just hovered there, directionless, with nowhere to go and no reason to do anything at all. Time didn’t seem to apply to me anymore.

I watched the snow keep falling, covering my body one flake at a time — my face, my hands, the scarf. Before long, I was just another shape in the white.

Headlights still swept past on the highway. No one stopped. Not that it mattered anymore.

A whistle tore through the dark, and then the sky exploded — a single firework burst in gold, spilling light across everything.

Another followed, then another — red, green, blue — bursting one after another across the sky.

It was Christmas night fireworks. Somewhere out there, families were together, warm and full, celebrating.

And I had died alone in a rest stop no one would ever remember. I wondered if my parents had made it to Grandma’s.

Were they eating dinner right now? Were they sitting around the table?

Did anyone wonder if I’d made it? The thought had barely formed before the world around me rippled and dissolved.

And then I was somewhere else. Grandma’s living room, bright and warm, exactly how I remembered it.

The beige sofa, the family portrait on the wall, the TV blaring a Christmas special at full volume.

The whole house smelled like Grandma’s cooking — roast turkey and her famous stuffing, the kind she’d been making my whole life.

The furnace was cranked all the way up — the air so warm it felt like a different world from where I’d just been.

I couldn’t feel temperature anymore — I knew that — but being here still tricked some part of me into feeling warm. Dad was on the couch with a bowl of mixed nuts, eyes on the TV.

Mom was in the kitchen with Grandma. Olivia was curled up in the armchair, scrolling through her phone without looking up.

Leo was on the floor, pushing a new toy car in circles.

“We did pretty well with the shopping this year,” Dad said as Mom came out of the kitchen. “We should grab a few more gift cards for the family get-together tomorrow.”

Mom dried her hands on a towel and came over. “Yeah, you’re right,” she said.

“You know my sister’s kids are going to be expecting something. Oh — should we see if we can get up to the ski resort on the twenty-seventh?”

“Sure, I’ll check if there’s anything available.” They kept talking, bouncing plans back and forth — their voices easy, happy, full of holiday cheer.

Where to go, what to do, who to see. I drifted around them, close as I could get, wanting so badly to say me too, bring me too.

But when I opened my mouth, nothing came out. I was a ghost watching a family that had already moved on without me.

Olivia dropped her phone and wandered over to Mom. “My phone died. Can I use yours for a bit?”

“You’re always glued to that thing,” Mom said, but she handed her phone over anyway.

Leo ran over and tugged on Dad’s pants. “Dad! Can I have money for the convenience store? Please please please!”

“It’s too late for a snack run tonight, buddy. We’ll go tomorrow,” Dad said.

But he still pulled a twenty from his wallet. Leo squealed and took off running.

Not once, through all of it, did anyone say my name. Like I’d never been there at all.

Mom patted her pocket and frowned a little. “I feel like I’m forgetting something,” she murmured.

Grandma came through the kitchen doorway carrying a dish, set it on the table, and glanced around the room.

“By the way, where’s Chloe?”