there,” Danny said. “She’s going to fix this, Tori.”
“Fix it? How?”
He stared down at his shoes.
He didn’t know.
I did.
Danny had barely left my street when the family found my number.
That evening, a cousin added me to the family group chat as though I’d merely been away for a weekend.
By two in the morning, forty-one messages filled the thread.
I lay in bed with the screen lighting the ceiling and watched my mother’s story change shape.
The earliest messages almost sounded human.
She’s alive.
