My Mother Had Four Fingers in the Photo

My mom had been out of contact for five years, and in the photo that came this month, one of her fingers was suddenly missing.

My parents said there was no cell signal at the construction site where they worked, so they never called and never video chatted.

The only thing that ever came was on the first of every month, right on schedule — five hundred dollars for living expenses and one photograph.

In the picture that had just come in, they were still burned dark by the sun, smiling, waving at the camera. I zoomed in and counted again and again.

My mother's right hand really did have only four fingers. Chapter 1 My heart dropped. Had my mom hurt her right hand?

They must have been scared of worrying me, scared it would get in the way of school. Something that big, and they hadn't said a single word about it.

Five years ago, on an ordinary night, my parents sat me down. "Dani, you're about to start high school. We want you to get a better education, a better life than this.

So we've decided to go away for work and earn the money to put you through it.

However hard it gets, however tired we are, we're going to give you the best we can." I tried everything to stop them. I cried and begged them not to go.

But early the next morning, before it was even light, they walked out of the house without so much as a suitcase. That was five years ago.

Before they left, they told the school one thing: an older neighbor down our road would look in on me. In five years that neighbor never once came to the door.

For five years my parents moved from jobsite to jobsite, all over the country.

Dad always said the same thing. "The site's way up in the hills, there's no signal at all, and there's no internet in the trailers either. Let's not do calls or video.

We're on a prepaid plan, and every minute costs money. Better to put that money away for you, for college." And that was that. Like clockwork.

On the first of every month they sent me five hundred dollars for living expenses, and with it came one photo of the two of them. Five years. Sixty months exactly.

Five hundred dollars a month without fail, one picture, and once in a while a line or two of concern in a text. Beyond that, we had almost no contact at all.

In the photo, my mother's right hand was missing its pinkie. I was so afraid I'd misread it that I blew the image up and counted over and over. Four. There really were only four.

Mom had told me she cooked for the crew on the site and Dad did the heavy labor. How do you get hurt like that cooking?

I stamped my foot, frantic, and the tears came whether I wanted them or not. The guilt came down on me with its whole weight.

If it hadn't been for me, my parents never would have gone through any of it. Then I noticed that my father's raised left hand looked wrong.

The second I saw it clearly, I forgot to breathe. My dad's left hand had six fingers on it. It had grown two pinkies! It must have been the shock.

My hand jerked and the phone hit the floor hard. The sound startled Fiona, sitting next to me. "Danielle, what's wrong? What happened?

You look awful." I forced my voice flat. "Nothing. It slipped." I picked the phone up like it was nothing, then hurried into the bathroom and called my parents. Once. Twice.

Nobody picked up. All I got was a recorded woman's voice telling me the number could not be reached at this time. I lost track of how many times I dialed.

By the end, the message had changed. The number was no longer in service. Back when I missed them, I used to call too.

But apart from the money and the photos they sent me on their own, I had never once been able to reach them. After a while I got used to it.

Used to being alone on that road, where only a handful of houses were left. Used to eating alone, and falling asleep alone.

I walked back to the classroom in a daze. "Fi, I think something's happened to my parents." Chapter 2 "Can you lend me some money? I want to go find them." Fiona was my best friend.

I didn't want to keep anything from her anymore, so I told her all of it. "Fi, the more I think about it, the more wrong it feels. I've got a bad feeling.

I think my parents are in trouble." Fiona told me not to panic and asked me to send her the photo. She opened it, zoomed in, zoomed out, zoomed in again.

After a long time her brow pulled tight. "Danielle, this photo… I think it was generated by AI." "AI? Generated?" There was no doubt anywhere in Fiona's voice. "Yes.

This picture was made by AI." She pointed at one corner of the image. "Look right here, the edges are all mush.

The leaves behind your mom are fused into one clump, no separate shapes at all." Then she pointed at the extra finger on my father's hand. "That's the generator getting its parameters wrong.

The finger missing from your mom's hand got transplanted onto your dad's." Fiona wouldn't lie to me.

She spent a lot of her free time on photography and photo editing, and she knew what she was talking about. It still felt insane to me.

But somewhere underneath, I was still holding on to a scrap of hope.

I pulled up the old pictures they'd sent, one after another, and held the phone out to her. "Look at these for me.

You're not telling me every one of these was made by AI?" Fiona's face turned grave as she worked through them. It took her a long time.

When she finally looked up, it clearly hurt her to say it. "If I'm reading these right, every one of them is fake except the very first." I pushed down whatever was rising in my chest and motioned for her to keep going. "Tools like this only got good enough to fool the human eye in the spring of 2023, and your parents left in March of 2021.

Look at that first photo. Their expressions, the stuff around them, the color saturation—there's almost nothing you can catch.

From the second one on, it's a different story." I swiped through as she talked, and by the twentieth photo my voice had started to shake. "It's like the face in every single one of them is the same face.

The angle of the smile, the lines in the skin, all of it exactly the same." Fiona nodded. "Right. That's an obvious editing artifact.

Somebody took the faces out of the first photo and pasted them straight onto everything after it." She pointed at the album. "Keep going." She was right.

After the spring of 2023 the expressions in the photos did start to change. But when I really looked, the fakeness was in all of it. A huge, helpless weight came down over me.

My whole body went slack and I slid down onto the floor. "What happened to my parents? Where are they right now?" Fiona pulled up the earliest picture, the real one.

She studied it for a while, then went searching on her phone. "Dani, there's a lot of landmark stuff in this photo. I traced it and I found the jobsite. But it's here.

It's in this city. Under thirty miles away by car." "Here? No. There's no way." I shook my head before she'd finished. That was the first place they'd landed after they left.

I remembered it perfectly. They said Louisiana. Chapter 3 They even told me about Louisiana.

How hot it was down there, how many bugs, but the country was beautiful… How could it be right here?

Fiona patted my back gently and took her time before she spoke. "Dani, hasn't the way your parents behave ever struck you as strange?" "Strange?" I went back through it.

Five years ran past behind my eyes. That night they left, so sudden and so final. Five whole years without one phone call, without one video.

Apart from the money that landed on the first and the one photo that came with it, I couldn't find a single real trace of them anywhere.

Even the week I finished eighth grade and took the placement tests for high school, they didn't call to ask how it went.

Just a text before the test telling me to give it everything.

And when the scores came back, one line saying I'd done great. "Danielle, your parents send you five hundred dollars a month.

That barely covers food, never mind school fees and everything else.

If the neighbors weren't always slipping you something, and you weren't out handing out flyers on the weekend and washing dishes at that diner, you wouldn't make it through a month.

And they've never once asked, and they've never raised it." She stopped and weighed what she said next. "Site work is hard, but the money isn't bad.

They keep telling you they went away to work so you could have a better life. If it was really for you, why five hundred a month…" She wasn't wrong.

Those five years, I lived on nothing. I brought it up once, that the money wasn't enough.

My mother sent back a few lines and nothing more. "Your father and I walked away from our home and went that far to work, for you. Can't you spend a little less?

Do you have to squeeze us till we drop before you're happy?" A few lines, and everything I had to say got shoved back down my throat.

With all of it laid out in front of me, my head felt like it was splitting open. "I can't make it add up, Fi.

If they really are out there grinding for me, how could they stand not contacting me at all? Is it honestly just that it's inconvenient?

And if something dangerous happened to them, why does the money still come in on time every single month?" "To hold you still.

To keep you calm." There was no hesitation in Fiona's voice. "A few hundred dollars a month and one photo, so you'll believe your parents are living their lives like normal.

That way whoever's on the other end can do whatever it is they want to do." "Who's on the other end?" My voice wouldn't stay steady. Fiona shook her head. "I don't know who it is.

But I'm sure there's something very wrong underneath this." Right then a hundred fragments came crowding into my head.

I'd scrolled past plenty of stories about people lured overseas by fake job offers.

Locked inside compounds, beaten, tortured, and worse than that… I couldn't let myself follow that any further. I pulled Fiona up by the arm. "Sign us out at the front office.

We're going to the police." At the station I told them everything exactly the way it happened. The officer dialed the number I gave him for my parents right there at his desk.

The same recording came back: the number was no longer in service.

He looked at the transfer history and the photos I pulled up, and his frown kept deepening. "What's your name, and your date of birth?" I answered both.

He listened and typed at the same time, fast. "Father, Curtis Vaughn, born July 14, 1980. Mother, Bridget Vaughn, born June 10, 1982." Chapter 4 I nodded hard. "Yes.

That's them." The officer kept scrolling, and every click pulled his eyebrows down a little further. "You said they went to Louisiana five years ago.

And after that they moved around the country for work?" "Yes." I didn't hesitate. "And you believe they're in danger now?" "Yes…" My throat had gone dry and tight, but I made myself keep going. "I've even thought they might not be alive anymore.

How else could there be no call and no video in five years?" I could hear myself getting louder.

In the end I slid down the wall to the floor, covered my face, and cried until no sound would come out. The officer handed me a tissue.

There was something on his face he hadn't said yet. "Officer, just say it.

Whatever it turns out to be, I can take it." I wiped my face and made myself sit up, and I waited for the heavy answer. "The records show that in five years your parents have never once left this city." "There's no missing persons report and no death record.

Two years ago your father walked up to a DMV counter himself and renewed his license.

The car is still registered in his name, and it's been insured every year since." "How is that possible?" I couldn't get it into my head. "You're saying that for five whole years my parents have been right here in this city and never left it?" The officer nodded. "That's right." His fingers went back to the keyboard. "The address on the license and the address on the registration are the same one.

It's less than six miles from your school." "That can't be right.

Did you pull the wrong people?" He gave a small shake of his head. "The information doesn't get things wrong." Then he stopped and glanced around the room. "I'm not supposed to be giving you this address." He took a pen and a slip of paper, wrote a line on it, and pushed it across the desk to me. "You didn't get anything from me." My hand was shaking when I picked it up.

The second I read what was written there, my breath stopped in my chest. "How could they be here?" Fiona saw my face and took the paper out of my hand.

Then she made a small sound of her own. "Crestline Park? That's one of the top two or three communities in this city. It's expensive. How would your parents be in there?

Could this be a mistake?" The officer looked at the two of us, out of options. "Why don't you go over and have a look?

Maybe something will turn up." Outside the station I stood there holding the address, hollowed out.

The parents I'd thought about every day and every night were less than six miles from me? And if they really were there, why lie to me for five years?

Why never once come see me? "Dani, I'm coming with you." Fiona said it like it was already settled. There was no time to be careful with money. I flagged down a cab.

On any other day, to save what I could, anything under three miles I walked, and anything over three I took the bus. Today was the first time I'd sat in a cab in five years.

The front gate of Crestline Park was blinding. The pillars and the iron fencing were polished until they looked plated in gold.

There were four guards at the gate alone, and none of them were relaxed about it. They stepped into my path. "Which building and which unit are you here for?

Do you have an appointment?" I pinched the slip of paper between my fingers. My palm was soaked. "Resident's name and unit number, please. We have to call up and confirm.

We can't let you in otherwise, I hope you understand." I made my voice come out level. "I'm here for Curtis Vaughn.

He's in… Building Three, unit 2801." Chapter 5 The older guard heard me out, looked something up on his computer, and picked up the phone. "Hello, this is the gate.

I have two girls here asking to come up. They say they're here for a resident." Something in my chest lurched. Did my parents really live here?

The guard raised his head and asked politely, "You're the girls coming to do Mrs. Vaughn's facial, right?" I froze for half a second, then nodded. "Yes. Mrs.

Vaughn asked for us herself." Mrs. Vaughn. Did he mean my mother? She had people come to the apartment to do her face now?

She used to stand in an aisle a long time deciding whether to buy one bottle of lotion. The guard hung up and waved Fiona and me through.

Inside, the place was enormous, wider open than the football field at our school.

There were trees everywhere and cool shade under them, no different from the parks I'd only seen on my phone.

I had never laid eyes on anything like it outside of a television. "Danielle, I heard the smallest floor plan in here is twentytwo hundred square feet, and it's four hundred a square foot at the low end.

With the finish work, you're not getting one for under nine hundred thousand." I nodded and didn't say anything.

Just walking to the base of Building Three took Fiona and me a solid twenty minutes. We rang, and the lobby door released.

There was a concierge at the elevator bank who pressed the button for us. I had never been anywhere this expensive in my life. My parents. Were they really living here?

Standing in front of 2801, I was wound so tight I forgot to breathe. "I'll get it." Fiona pressed the bell.

In those few seconds of waiting, my head was pulling in a dozen directions at once. I didn't know whether I could survive whatever was behind that door.

I wanted it to be them, and I was terrified it would be them. Then, inside, footsteps. My heart came up into my throat. "Coming, coming…" "That's not my mom's voice. That is not her