The Missing Scar

The porcelain knob turned under Elena’s hand with a final, sickening click. She yanked the door wide, the force of it hitting the wall and rebounding, but she didn't care about the noise anymore. She didn't care about the performance or the long game or the subtle art of the trap.

Val spun around, her back to the vanity mirror, her wet silk top discarded on the floor like a shed skin. She was naked to the waist, her chest heaving, the harsh fluorescent vanity lights draining the color from her face until she looked like a marble statue of a fury.

Elena didn't blink. She didn't look at Val’s face, or the rage contorting her features, or the hand reaching for a heavy glass candle jar on the counter. Her eyes went straight to the lower right quadrant of the woman's abdomen.

The skin was luminous and smooth. It was unblemished, save for the faint, temporary pink of the coffee scald. There was no jagged white line. No raised ridge of scar tissue. No evidence of the night in 1998 when Elena had held her sister's hand while the surgeons cut her open to save her life.

"You're not her," Elena whispered, the reality finally landing with the weight of a mountain.

She had suspected. She had gathered data. She had listened to the recordings and found the receipts. But seeing that smooth, perfect skin was the terminal point of her hope. It was the physical annihilation of the sister she had been mourning and celebrating all at once.

"Get out," Val hissed, her voice dropping into a register so low it was barely human. She didn't try to cover herself. She didn't reach for a towel. She stepped over the wet silk, her bare feet sticking to the tile with a wet, visceral sound.

"Where is she?" Elena’s voice rose, cracking under the pressure of a decade of suppressed grief. "Where is Diana? What did you do to my sister?"

Val didn't answer. She smiled, a slow, ugly widening of her mouth that revealed teeth stained with the dark residue of the stew. She looked past Elena, toward the doorway.

Elena felt the air in the small bathroom change. The temperature didn't drop, but the presence did.

"She finally did it, Marc," Val said, her eyes never leaving Elena’s. "She finally looked under the hood."

Elena spun around.

Marcus was standing in the doorway, still in his dress shirt, the sleeves rolled up to reveals forearms corded with tension. He wasn't holding the duct tape. He was holding a pre-filled medical syringe, the needle glinting like a needle-thin star in the hallway light.

"I told you she was getting smart," Marcus said, his voice devoid of the transactional warmth he’d used for three years. "You were sloppy with the top, Val."

"She tripped me!" Val snapped.

Marcus stepped into the bathroom, closing the door behind him. The space, already cramped, became a tomb.

"It doesn't matter now," Marcus said, his eyes flat and focused on the vein in Elena’s neck. "The confirmation is complete. We're moving to the final phase."

Elena backed into the vanity, her hands searching the marble for anything—a bottle, a razor, a comb. Her fingers closed around the cold brass key in her bra, but it was useless here.

She stared at the smooth, unscarred belly of the stranger and the husband holding the needle. There was no scar. No white line from the surgery they both cried through in 1998. The woman standing in the bathroom was a complete stranger.