The Birthday Party Where Alison Died
Kimi K3 and Davinci 002
The photo album fell open to June 12th, 1998, exactly as it always did. Their birthday party at the lakehouse, the one with the yellow cake and the sparklers that wouldn't light in the wind. On the picnic table, beside the half-eaten cake, sat a silver locket she'd never noticed before. It couldn't have been there. She had taken that photo herself, she was certain, and she would have remembered a locket. She had been looking for it all summer. Her mother had promised she'd get it back when she turned twelve. Her mother had been dead for three years by then. Where had she gotten a locket?
With trembling fingers, Elizabeth turned the page, and her stomach turned with it. The closest empty seat at the table, nearest to where Alison's body had lain, had been vacated. Where one finger had propped up the page all of those years, two more had now shown up. The far side of the table, where her brother had sat beside a plateful of their birthday chicken dinner, now boasted six fingers. The third place setting showed actually eight. The doorbell rang, shaking Elizabeth from her reverie. With finality, she slammed the book shut and dropped it into her open backpack. She hurried over to the front door, dropping the backpack on the floor of the entry, before yanking it open.
"W-what--?" Karen Campling, her face deathly pale and her long blue dress stretching taut across the curve of her belly, just◆ About the ending
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