My daughter was found in the gymnasium storage room. She wasn't breathing. Her school uniform was gone. Semen was found on her lower body. The school blamed it on a homeless man with mental health issues. Three months after my daughter died, I received an anonymous text message. 【How do you like my masterpiece? Your daughter was crying for her mommy right before she died! It was so much fun hahaha…】 Masterpiece? My hand tightened around the phone. I was going to make the real killer truly “enjoy” my masterpiece! 1 I had just finished a surgery when I got the call from the homeroom teacher. The surgery had gone exceptionally well; the patient was stable. But before I could even take a breath, the teacher’s voice on the phone was frantic. “Chloe’s mom! You need to come to the school right away! Something’s happened to Chloe!” When I arrived at Maple Creek Middle School, the area was already cordoned off with police tape. I saw a group of officers struggling to restrain a man who was fighting wildly. He was dressed in rags, his hair a tangled, dirty mess, and he was screaming for them to let him go. Ms. Peterson, Chloe’s homeroom teacher, led me to the gym storage room. That’s where I saw my daughter. My Chloe lay naked and still on one of the green gym mats, her legs spread apart. A dark purple bruise circled her neck like fingerprints. Her wide eyes stared blankly at the ceiling, her face pale with the unmistakable look of death. Just yesterday, she’d been bouncing around, full of life. The world spun around me. I stumbled and fell to my knees beside her body. The moment I saw two officers carefully lift her into a body bag, I lost all control. A raw, heartbroken sob tore through me. After my husband passed away, it was just Chloe and me. She was my entire world, my reason for living! Who killed my daughter?! I stopped working, put everything on hold. Two weeks later, the police finally gave me their findings. They had interviewed students, Ms. Peterson, and people in the neighborhood. Piecing it all together, they arrived at a logical conclusion. The man who killed my daughter was the same one I’d seen the police struggling with that day. He was a homeless man, known to have psychiatric problems. He often wandered near the school, so the security guard hadn't paid much attention. On the day Chloe died, the security guard had accidentally fallen asleep on duty. The man had slipped into the school and killed my daughter. I couldn’t accept it. My daughter… my Chloe… just starting seventh grade… Her life, barely begun, snuffed out by a mentally ill man! And violated even after death! What made it even worse was knowing that because of his diagnosis, the man wouldn’t face the death penalty – he’d just be sent to a psychiatric hospital. But the police report showed the semen recovered from my daughter was a definitive match to the homeless man. The hard evidence was laid out in front of me. Not just the police, but Ms. Peterson and the school administration urged me to accept the outcome quickly. “Sarah,” Ms. Peterson said gently, her voice full of strained sympathy, “I know this is incredibly hard to accept right now. But dragging this out won’t do anyone any good.” Filled with a turmoil of doubt, grief, anger, and confusion, I finally signed the paper closing the case. For the next three months, I felt hollowed out, stripped of all energy and spirit. I spent my days sitting numbly in the empty house, from dawn till dusk, replaying memories of Chloe. The hospital sent me a termination letter due to my unexplained absences. I had no heart left for being a doctor, for saving lives. Every time I thought of the patients I’d healed, a bitter unfairness washed over me. Why them and not my Chloe? Don't they say good things happen to good people? Then why did my daughter die so horribly? One morning, I was sorting through Chloe’s things, tears streaming down my face, soaking the floor. “Chloe, you always complained I didn’t have time to play with you. Mommy was wrong. Please come back, okay?” I spoke to the empty air. Of course, the silent room offered no reply. Clutching the little pony stuffed animal she loved so much, a sudden urge hit me. I wanted to see the man who supposedly killed her. He was confined to the state psychiatric hospital now. No phones, no internet. Just patients with vacant stares. Through the thick observation window, I watched the man sitting on his bed. My hand slipped into my pocket… I had brought a knife. Just as I was about to rush in, to end him, my phone vibrated. An anonymous text message popped up. 【How do you like my masterpiece?】 【Your daughter was so stupid, so easy to trick. Oh, forgot to tell you, she was crying for her mommy right before she died!】 【Hahahaha so funny, so much fun…】
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