Chapter 2 - The Birth of Nora Vance
Three weeks passed. The physical burns healed into angry, pink scars across my forearms, but the emotional burns only deepened.
Using the rusted battery-operated radio in the cabin and a discarded newspaper I found in a public park dumpster, I followed the aftermath of my own "death." The local news was filled with it. “Suburban Tragedy: Local College Graduate Perishes in House Fire.” There was a picture of me from my graduation—smiling, naive, unaware that the people flanking me would one day sentence me to burn.
The community had rallied around the Millers. A GoFundMe page had raised over $150,000 for their "loss and displacement." David’s real estate business was booming due to sympathy clients. Tyler had been awarded a local bravery commendation for "surviving the horrific ordeal."
They were thriving on my corpse.
I knew I couldn't stay in Ohio as a ghost forever. I needed a new life, a new face, and a new name.
Before the fire, I had been working as a freelance digital archivist. I knew how to navigate the deep, dark corners of the internet. It took me two weeks of careful, risky maneuvering on a stolen burner phone using a public library's Wi-Fi to secure what I needed. I spent the last of my hidden emergency cash—money I had kept in a ziplock bag buried near the cabin years ago—to buy a clean identity from a data-broker on the dark web.
Her name was Nora Vance. A girl from an isolated town in northern Maine who had died in a home birth twenty years ago, whose death was never officially registered in the federal database.
I used the library's bathroom to cut my long, dark brown hair into a sharp, asymmetrical bob. I dyed it a piercing, platinum blonde. I bought a cheap pair of non-prescription, thick-rimmed glasses to alter the structure of my face. When I looked in the mirror, Hannah Miller was gone. Nora Vance was staring back. Sharp. Steely. Unforgiving.
"Hannah is dead," I whispered to the glass, watching my breath fog up the surface. "But Nora is going to be your worst nightmare."
My first target wasn't my parents. It was Tyler.
Tyler was the center of their universe. To destroy a tree, you don't start by hacking at the thick trunk; you poison the roots, and you clip the most precious branches. Tyler had just accepted an internship at a prestigious architectural firm in Chicago—a position my father had undoubtedly pulled strings to get him.
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I bought a one-way bus ticket to Chicago. As the skyline of the Windy City appeared on the horizon, glowing against the night sky, a predatory smile touched my lips.
The Millers thought they had paid the ultimate price by sacrificing their daughter. They had no idea the bill was finally coming due.
