The Missing Sister Read online

  “Miss Darby?” He leans his head in a way that is eerily familiar, like I’ve seen it before. Suddenly, his tone, the apologetic wish I could help you shrug goodbye, all ring insincere. Deliberate. Empty. The image of Ted Bundy giving interviews outside a Utah courthouse lunges forward in my thoughts. Jean-Luc’s voice follows: Psychopaths—those are the ones who sneak up on you. Is Valentin hiding something?

  “Inspector, why did you take scissors from the crime scene earlier this week?”

  “Pardon?”

  “The crime scene I saw you at. The opera lover who died from a gunshot to the head. I saw you pocket a pair of scissors as you were walking out. Shears.”

  A smirk, full blown, stretches his face. Newly grown gray whiskers twitch the corners of his mouth. “What is your meaning, please?”

  “Were they the murder weapon? Why would you take them?”

  He regards me a long while before speaking. “Miss Darby, I understand your . . . query. Some might say paranoia. I want to find your sister’s killer as much as you do, truly. And I am not the person who should worry you.”

  Valentin nods goodbye, then stands and crosses the street. I keep him in sight until he disappears behind another red-and-white-striped awning toward the river.

  Conflicting emotions push and pull within me. His smirk dropped as quickly as it appeared, replaced with unease. Whether I believe him—that a serial killer is randomly targeting people, that the body double’s cause of death is unknown—he won’t be sharing additional details.

  Manu is a twin. The photograph of the smiling young woman in the desert suddenly seems material, and I regret not grabbing them all from the dresser. Was there a photo of Manu and her sister? Manu may be dead—may not be related to the serial murders—but Valentin didn’t say Angela had been cleared of involvement. The framed photo of Manu and that man, the same one Angela has a photo of, further punts any premature relief. The photos form an undeniable link between the two women. And I have both hidden in my duffel under sweaty tank tops.

  I lift my hand to another cab, then stop midwave. The pamphlet. A quick rummage through the sections of my handbag, the zipped outer pocket against my hip, and the inner adult pocket that hides bandages and aspirin, confirms my burst of clarity: it’s still upstairs. Using a few choice words in English, I trudge back the whole block from the building I managed to travel.

  The pamphlet lies on the desk, right where I left it, next to Angela’s illuminated laptop screen, still bright from my earlier use and displaying her inbox. I’ve been very careful to check my email on my own laptop, to avoid signing Angela out of hers. For a reason I can’t place, instead of grabbing the rectangle of paper and leaving, I slide into Angela’s desk chair. My back presses flat against the cool wood. Gliding her mouse along the left-hand margin of her inbox folders, I hover over an arrow I’d ignored before; I click on it, and a hidden list expands, revealing a folder entitled UPDATES. I click again.

  Emails are shown in order by drafts then sent date—there are seven of them. Most were sent during her first few months here, and I remember replying to them. Drafts that she never sent—Update #1 and Update #2—seem to be written a few months after our parents passed away; I’ve never seen these.

  The final draft email seems to have been written a week before she disappeared. I hesitate over the subject line, Update #18, then click on it.

  Chapter 23

  from: Angela Darby

  to: “Darby, Shayna”

  subject: Update #18

  Salut, dearest sister! The party was hyper chouette last weekend. Carine got so wasted I thought she might puke into Serge’s hat like last time, but the giant baguette we ate for dinner balanced her stomach. That and the late-night kebab at three in the morning. Me, I got so drunk I started calling her Karen. God bless French drunk food! I miss burritos bad, but I’ll take a French fry kebab until Mexican culture makes its way here. I got my best grade yet this semester on my final research paper for my third year of graduate school and really feel like I’m getting the hang of my French slang. Salut, ma poule!

  Summer is here! FINALLY. Although I’ve been so busy with research recently I don’t know if I would have noticed except for the summer solstice tomorrow. The internship is trucking along as usual. When I began, back in Update #11, I had no idea I’d come to spend all my free time with dead people. Imagine! Obtaining the internship with the Archaeology Society was a lottery (I guess everyone wants to be underground), and back in November when I started, I could not have known it would develop into a lifestyle of mine. Going from every Thursday to most days seems like a leap, but not when you consider all I’ve learned down there. The smell of decay, the thrill of discovery, and exploring paths that have not seen warm bodies in centuries is intoxicating.

  On another note: I think I have a stalker. I wasn’t worried at first—his style of clothing is colorblind hipster, so I always see him coming when he follows me round at the Sorbonne—but he moved into my building last month. Now I sleep with the Taser I got on the black market here (since they’re illegal), but I can’t shake the feeling that he’s watching me whenever I exit my door. Sometimes, although he lives on the fourth floor, I think I hear someone in the hall. I wish to God the French employed look-holes in their door designs. If anything happens to me, you’ll know where to check.

  Eventually, dear sister, I hope to send all these updates to you and catch you up on my life, instead of saving them as drafts in my inbox. Until then, I’ll wait for our reunion of minds via our twin connection.

  Twin for the win,

  Gelly

  Chapter 24

  My eyes fix tight on the doorknob from the farthest corner of Angela’s studio apartment. Her bed frame, armoire, nightstand, and writing desk block the entry in my frenzied attempt to Tetris myself a barricade. Each time the building creaks, my heart seizes, like I’m watching a movie of my life, the one where I usually bellow at the woman to sprint for the exit. Rereading Angela’s email for the twentieth time only heightens my impulse to scream.

  If I’d opened this UPDATES folder yesterday, nothing would have changed. I still wouldn’t have seen him. I still would have refused to call him for help. But I would have known. Days were spent with Jean-Luc. Before I learned he stalked and abducted my sister.

  All the emails from the folder, I printed, then arranged on her floor. I recognized most of them from earlier—before radio silence ensued—from when Angela first moved to Paris after New Year’s. Emails from when she was getting settled and when we fought over our parents’ house. I set those sad memories aside to focus on the new additions, the latest written only a week before her disappearance, it seems, and never sent. So many things don’t add up. While so many other things about this coil my guts.

  Updates numbers three through seventeen are missing. I stared at update number eighteen, trying to comprehend for an hour. Summer Solstice. Colorblind. The confusion in the embassy employee’s voice this morning returned in sharp detail: no Jean-Luc in the citizen assistance department. Then I snapped to action, moving furniture against the door—the bed frame, the chest of drawers—moving quickly and quietly. I set the mattress in the corner, then took up my vigil.

  Jean-Luc is above me. Jean-Luc held me. Jean-Luc abducted my sister.

  Floorboards moan overhead. Shit, shit, shit. I draw my knees into my chest and resume rocking. How did I miss this? Footsteps descend from his apartment, the wood groaning with his weight. What badge did he show me the first day? I hold my breath, waiting for the sound to soften, for his feet to find the thick carpet of the hallway before my door. What kind of idiot believes the coincidence of him living just above?

  The tempo continues with the curve of the railing. Step. Step. Step step. Step. Step. Step step. Silent tears rack my shoulders. This is all my fault. I had one job, one clear message from her. Trust no one. My eyes pull wide remembering the moments passed with him, the man my
sister basically named as her attacker. How did no one else find this folder? Wasn’t her apartment searched a dozen times over? But Seb didn’t mention this folder. And she didn’t implicate Jean-Luc by name. Valentin took photocopies of everything. What is Jean-Luc’s last name? Filler? Fuller? The police seemed to have everything they want in that box marked PREUVES.

  I dial Valentin’s number from his card via Skype. No answer. I try again with the same result. The chipper, bouncing ring is a frustrating contrast to my anxiety. Chewing the remainder of my thumbnail offers something to focus on. A terrible habit, and painful when you get down to the base where flesh meets the nail plate, as I have. A sharp sting jolts through me as teeth catch deeper than before. Blood pools beneath the translucent shell.

  Before long, fatigue steals up behind me and strikes. My throat is scratchy when I wake, my body achy all over. A dreamless, heavy nap leaves me feeling more exhausted than when I lay down. It shouldn’t come as a surprise, but the review of what meager meals I’ve eaten, and the stress, the grief, leaves me feeling bitter—angry—that this is my constant.

  I open my laptop and log in to my email inbox. The emails Angela originally sent me are all there—confirming she never hit “Send” on updates one through eighteen. Several advertisements for cheap plane tickets and discounted surfing classes appear as new mail, along with a chain letter from my auntie Meredith. Her note above the chain message wonders how I’m doing; what plans did I have for my upcoming birthday? I haven’t heard from her since February, when she asked for a loan she insisted my father would have given her, and our birthday is in late September; I shake my head. The communication is a reminder no one from home knows I’m here.

  The whiteboard’s message—ALIVE. TRUST NO ONE—remains stark in black marker. The black dots and even planes that so confused Seb add an air of alien hieroglyphics, even to my practiced eyes. I haven’t touched it once, for fear of ruining evidence and somehow losing the one link I feel confident relates to my search.

  My heart drops into my stomach, tightening my belly until I could mistake the pain for menstrual cramps. Anguish leaves a chalky taste in my mouth. An empty wine bottle—Seb’s? Angela’s?—rests in the corner of the kitchenette. It is old, long exposed to the air and elements at this point, but I cross to the kitchen and lick the top lip of the bottle. The alcohol hits my tongue, spreading like a fire across it. I search every cabinet of Angela’s for liquor but come up empty. Disgust and desire alternate, flooding my core.

  I sit down on the mattress again. Angela’s list on the back of the Danse La Nuit flyer juts from the flap of my bag. How much longer can I stay here? How much longer should I?

  Knock knock.

  My eyes fly to the door. A noise comes from the other side, followed by swearing. Someone is trying to get in.

  I grapple for the Taser that I shoved under the pillow and watch as the lock rotates back. The door cracks open. I scan the room for a hiding place, anywhere to duck into, but the floorboards will creak and give away my position if I try. I sit frozen as the door inches backward, the bed frame, chest of drawers, and writing desk moving at a glacial pace. A hand slides in, then flicks the light switch in the afternoon shadows. Dark hair violates the space.

  “What do you want?” I ask, my voice trembling. The person moves fully into the room, and I blink hard, not sure what is happening.

  “Exactly as I thought. We’re leaving this apartment, Shayna.” Chang stares at me. A reprimand is on her lips, but she peers at me with concern.

  “You . . . Did you just break into Angela’s apartment?”

  Chang’s thin eyebrows lift. “From where I stand, I just interrupted a very depressed afternoon. Come with me.”

  I struggle to my feet. The pamphlet to the crypts remains on Angela’s desk, now pushed to the wall. I grab the folded paper, then meet Chang at the door.

  Chapter 25

  from: Angela Darby

  to: “Darby, Shayna”

  subject: Update #1

  Hello, sister.

  Although you may not know it, today is All Saints’ Day in France—Toussaints. It’s the day after Halloween, which I celebrated with a trio of American girls from Wisconsin, and the beginning of the holidays—aka the Period of Unrelenting Solitude for Those of Us Alone. It’s been three months since our last email, our last fight over Skype. My guess is: You did not sell our childhood home? (My spidey sense is tingling.) And while I meant what I said, that I needed space, indefinitely, I can’t deny the gnawing need to communicate with you, dear twin. To tell you all the things I’ve been withholding, as I’ve begun to climb out from the muck, from the bottomless pit of mourning, and the Camembert. O, the Camembert.

  School has been rough this semester for obvious reasons. It continues to be hard to focus, mostly late at night. When I come home after a long day, the emptiness creeps in to fill my chest, like a slime I can’t siphon out. I know I don’t need to describe it to you.

  The less obvious reason is I’m not French and am learning the French are quite aware of this fact. Well, yes and no. The less-less obvious reason is I don’t look French. I don’t look American, from what our movies have told the locals here, either. For all their laïcité, their desire to remove religion from government affairs, any obstacle that might impede societal cohesion, the French are hyperfascinated with my pays d’origine. What is your country of origin, they ask. “Well, I’m American,” I reply. But they shake their head. No, no, where are you from? They won’t relent until I say my mother is from China and my father’s family is Scottish and Dutch.

  Whereas, when Piper from Wisconsin is beside me, all she has to say with her dirty blonde hair and blue eyes is “American.” There seems to be an underlying racial theme: if you’re not Anglo-looking, you must not be French or American. As though I’m expected to return one day to a country I’ve never visited.

  At a time when I already feel isolated and alone, being called out not only as the Other, the foreigner unfamiliar to France, but also being categorized as semiforeign to the United States—the Other Other—stings. This in-betweenness has been a theme for us before we became aware of it, vacillating between enjoying shrimp and pork dumplings with the family and attempting to administer Kelly Clarkson’s chunky highlights on each other. I’ve grown to let it go at home. To feel the itch of offense and release the emotion back into the wild from whence it came. But here. At this moment in life. After losing you. Mom. Dad. It’s a reminder I’m neither wholly your twin anymore, nor someone’s daughter, nor American enough, nor White or Asian enough. I’m somewhere else. Somewhere in between.

  Are these the ravings of a woman experiencing dairy product withdrawal? Maybe. Certainly that, coupled with starting a doctorate program, could lend itself to the argument. Or maybe I’m tired of smiling and releasing the emotions, and just want to be accepted.

  Although I won’t send this (ever?) for a while, it feels good to write to you. Maybe I’ll continue.

  Update #1: complete.

  With madeleines and un café allongé,

  Angela

  Chapter 26

  The roads to Notre Dame are packed at four in the afternoon. Chang was enthusiastic when we got to the ground floor and I mentioned I wanted to go—but now, with the windows halfway down and exhaust hitting our lungs, I wonder whether I should have suggested Les Deux Moulins for the easier route.

  Traffic jams slow our pace, crossing into the Île de la Cité, the tiny island that houses the church and—shudder—the morgue. Both Chang and I are quiet as we pass. Tourists and locals alike enjoy the warm summer day, a few families and couples eating pastries along the River Seine. When we roll to a stop beside the church and the concrete plaza before it, the overall meaning of Angela’s second clue hits me. Divine Research. Maybe Angela wanted me to go to Notre Dame all along, a place steeped not only in divinity but who knows how much research over the centuries.

  Ticke
ts for the crypt tour are sold inside the church vestibule. I buy one for myself, then I lean beside a slab of stone a foot thick that reaches my shoulders. After I assure Chang I don’t need an escort, she waves goodbye and joins the throng of people exploring the crowded nave of the church. According to a plaque on the wall above, the stone was knocked loose from the rectory during World War II bombings. A dusty smell lingers here, like these massive columns first began supporting the marble rafters a thousand years ago and have witnessed countless major events in the time since. Angela would have glowed here in all this history, while all I can feel is impatience for the tour to start.

  Blonde hair flashes in my peripheral vision, and I snap my gaze to a woman with a chin-length bob. Not Jean-Luc. A scan of the vestibule confirms tourists surround me, their bulky cameras poised to capture activity. I raise two fingers to my neck and count to thirty before my pulse slows back to a normal rhythm.

  A man in a black robe cuts toward a thick wooden doorway, gated and locked, leading to the crypts. Beyond the iron bars there’s a spindly railing descending below. Groups of people bunch together while the man wields a ring of keys, trying this one and that until we hear a click. The gate swings open. A few of the prayerful in the closest pews raise their heads our way. When I look again for Chang, she’s out of sight behind the choir.

  The spiral staircase winds down into darkness. We make four full turns, then all eleven of us find ourselves on a dirt floor. I’m the only one who hangs back near the stairs, taking slow, measured inhales until my eyes adjust. A green-lit sign, SORTIE—exit—sits on the wall opposite behind another gate; cracked steps climb up and out of sight. Construction lamps, the handheld kind, are suspended on hooks and positioned at intervals along the ceiling, offering comforting orbs. The crypts are larger than I expected, with several chambers branching off the main artery we stand in. Deep stone compartments are stacked three high along the walls. Our tour guide, Loïc, recounts the history of Notre Dame and the famous cadavers that once graced these shelves. I wander into the first adjoining room, taking care to duck a protruding section of rock. One of the family’s little girls twirls by herself in the back, her red backpack providing extra momentum to swing round. She sees me, then stops, running to join her mother in the main area. Loïc asks our group what we know about embalming.