"Mom."
Leo pushed open the glass door to the kitchen, slipping inside like a cat and leaving the door ajar just a crack.
Eleanor Vance was standing at the counter slicing cucumbers for lunch. Startled by the sudden voice behind her, her hand slipped, the knife blade catching the edge of her thumb. She turned around, annoyed, and lowered her voice: "What are you doing? Scared me half to death. Your father is in the study finishing his syllabus. If he catches you sneaking around, you’ll be on the receiving end of another lecture."
Leo was twenty-two, freshly graduated from college. He took after his mother—bright green eyes, a faint dimple on his right cheek when he smiled, and a spark of unpolished youthful rebellion in his gaze.
Checking to ensure the study door down the hall was tightly shut, he grinningly leaned in close to his mother. He rolled up the left sleeve of his short-sleeved shirt, pulling the fabric all the way up to his armpit.
"Look."
Eleanor leaned in, her pupils dilating as she drew in a sharp breath. The knife almost slipped from her fingers completely.
On the skin just over Leo’s left ribs, right beside his heart, was a fresh tattoo. It was a falcon with outspread wings soaring through a dark night, drawn with sharp, wild lines. The edges of his skin were still slightly red and inflamed, glistening with a thin layer of soothing ointment.
"You... you got a tattoo?!" Eleanor whispered, her voice trembling. "If your father sees this, he’ll lose his mind! You know how he feels about these things—he thinks only delinquents get inked!"
"That’s why I’m only telling you, Mom." Leo quickly pulled his sleeve down and wrapped an arm around her shoulders, swaying her gently in a pleading gesture. "It’s my graduation gift to myself. The falcon stands for freedom. I’m going to carve out my own path, not sit in some corporate office you and Dad picked out for me. Besides, nobody can see it under my clothes anyway."
Looking into her son’s excited, eager-to-please eyes, the knot of anger in Eleanor’s chest dissolved like ice in warm water.
She reached up, gently patting his cheek with a mixture of helplessness and affection. "You... always taking advantage of the fact that I cover for you. Promise me you’ll be careful when showering, and don't let your father see. And remember to apply the cream—it's so red, what if it gets infected?"
"Got it! You’re the best, Mom." Leo grinned, swiped a cucumber slice from the cutting board, popped it into his mouth, and darted back upstairs to his room.
Eleanor watched his retreating back, shaking her head helplessly, though the smile on her lips couldn't be hidden. It was one of the countless little secrets shared strictly between her and her son.
The nightmare arrived three days later, on a night of torrential rain.
Outside, the rain poured down in sheets, thunder rumbling low across the valley. Arthur Vance sat on the living room sofa when the phone rang. A minute into the call, his hand shook, dropping his teacup onto the hardwood floor. It shattered into a dozen porcelain shards, spilling dark liquid everywhere.
"Is this Mr. Vance? This is the State Highway Patrol. Around 9 PM tonight, a severe multi-vehicle collision occurred on the mountain pass... A car lost control, crashed through the guardrail, and burst into flames..."
Outside the autopsy room at the county morgue, the air was cold enough to freeze blood.
Arthur looked as if he had aged ten years overnight. His back was slumped, sitting on a cold metal bench with his face buried in his trembling hands, letting out suppressed, desperate sobs. As the pillar of a traditional, respectable family, he had strived for dignity all his life, but in this moment, he was entirely broken.
Eleanor stood stiffly against the tiled wall, as though her soul had been drained out of her. Her tears had dried hours ago, her eyes staring vacantly at the cracks in the linoleum floor. Her mind kept echoing her son’s playful voice from three days ago.
A young detective approached them, his expression grim. "Mr. and Mrs. Vance... The vehicle is registered under Leo Vance’s name. A burnt leather wallet and charred remnants of a driver’s license were recovered from his personal belongings. Due to the intensity of the fire, the victim's face is... unrecognizable. We need you to step inside for an initial family identification."
Inside the autopsy room, harsh fluorescent lights stung their eyes.
On the stainless steel table lay a body covered by a white cotton sheet.
The medical examiner slowly pulled back the upper portion of the sheet.
Arthur took one look, collapsed emotionally, turned around, and buried his face against the wall, weeping uncontrollably. The body was a charred, broken mass, filling the room with a suffocating stench of burnt flesh.
Eleanor trembled as she forced herself to step forward. The maternal bond choked her with a tearing, suffocating grief. Looking at the corpse, her tears welled up again. She reached out a cold, shaking hand, wanting to touch her son’s arm one last time to say goodbye.
The detective reminded her softly from behind, "Mrs. Vance, please accept my condolences. The victim suffered extensive surface burns, but because the left side of his body was pinned against the car door, it remained relatively protected..."
Eleanor’s hand froze inches away from the victim’s left arm and ribs.
Because the victim’s shirt had been burned away, his left chest and rib area were completely exposed. Though stained with soot and dried blood, that patch of skin was intact—a deathly, smooth pale.
Eleanor’s fingers hovered in mid-air. Her tears suddenly stopped.
She froze.
She wiped her eyes frantically, bent closer, and stared intently at the victim’s left ribs—
It was completely smooth. No dark night, no soaring falcon. Nothing at all.
Three days ago, she had personally touched that tender, inflamed skin. Three days ago, her son had proudly shown her that unique tattoo. Tattoo ink penetrates deep into the dermis—even in a fire, it could not simply vanish into thin air from an undamaged patch of skin!
"This isn't him," Eleanor’s voice was barely a whisper, but in the quiet autopsy room, it struck like a bolt of thunder.
Arthur turned around weeping, grabbing her elbow. "Eleanor... don't do this to yourself. I know it's hard to accept, but the police confirmed the car, the watch, his ID. That is Leo..."
"I said this isn't him!"
Eleanor suddenly burst into a sharp scream, violently shoving her husband’s hand away. She pointed at the body on the steel table, her eyes bloodshot, her words dripping with agonizing clarity:
"He is not Leo! Leo had a mark on him, this person doesn't! HE IS NOT MY SON!"
The detective and the medical examiner exchanged a quiet, sympathetic look. The detective stepped forward, his tone gentle yet excruciatingly firm: "Mrs. Vance, we understand the shock you are experiencing. But the vehicle registration and recovered items all align. Please try to calm down..."
"What do any of you know?!" Eleanor shouted, her voice echoing off the stainless steel walls. But this time, the despair in her eyes was gone, replaced by an almost terrifying, crystal-clear lucidity.
"I know every single mark on my boy’s body! This is NOT Leo! My son is still alive!"
Arthur held his sobbing wife tightly around her shoulders, choking back tears: "Eleanor, please, stop this... Let him rest in peace..."
Under the pitying, sorrowful gazes of everyone in the room—looking at her as if she were a mother driven insane by unbearable grief—Eleanor stopped struggling.
She stared coldly at the frozen corpse, then looked at her husband and the officers who believed every word of the official story. She had never told her husband about the tattoo. If she brought it up now, everyone would just write it off as a hallucination born of a mother's denial.
The whole world refused to believe her.
Slinking her trembling fingers into her coat pocket, Eleanor softly touched the small family photograph tucked inside.
Her son was still out there somewhere. And this dead boy lying on the cold steel table... who on earth was he?
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