“Because Phoenix operates on a forty-eight-hour window for victim disposition.” He says it like he’s describing weather patterns. Inevitable. Impersonal. “They’ll have staged evidence. Probably a car accident. Burned vehicle. Dental records matched. By now, your family has been contacted by authorities.”
The bottle slips. Water spills across the table. I don’t move to catch it.
“They’ve been told you’re dead.”
The words don’t land right. They hover somewhere outside my body.
“I want to see.”
“Cassie—”
“I need to see.”
He studies me. Weighing the risk. Weighing the emotional damage. Then he turns the laptop back around. Types. Pulls up a news site.
The Washington Post loads slowly. Rural internet. Each pixel assembling like a countdown.
And there it is.
Cassandra Marie Brennan, 31, died in a single-vehicle accident on Rock Creek Parkway early Tuesday morning.
The words blur.
Ms. Brennan was an associate partner at Morrison & Vale, LLP, where colleagues described her as “brilliant” and “dedicated.”
They wrote my obituary.
While I was running. While I was learning about Faraday cages and rally points. While I was sleeping on this lumpy couch with a stranger standing guard, the world declared me dead.
Cassandra Marie Brennan.
That’s not me anymore. That’s a collection of facts. Degrees. Job titles. A parking space with my name on it. Twenty years of grinding to matter, to be seen, to prove I deserved a place at the table.
Gone.
Erased like a typo.
“The comments.” The words scrape out of my throat. “Let me see?—”
“Don’t.” He reaches for the laptop.
“Let me see!” I grab the screen.
I scroll down.
So young. What a tragedy.
Such a brilliant attorney. What a loss.
Rest in peace, Cassie.
People I’ve never met, mourning someone they didn’t know. Typing condolences into the void while they eat lunch. While they scroll past to the next headline.
My mother is reading this. My sisters. They’re planning a funeral for a body that doesn’t exist.
“I need to make a call.” I stand so fast, the chair crashes backward. “I need to speak to them.”
“No.”
