The Missing Sister Read online

  Too casually. Too fast to really grasp their meaning. I read a second time. A third. I blink, and the symbols pulse through my eyelids and set fire to the brief reprieve of calm I felt a moment earlier.

  “Are you thirsty? Hungry? How are you feeling?” Seb rummages in the kitchenette cabinets, then stops when I don’t answer.

  Every exposed hair on my legs, arms, and neck stands on end. Angela’s message to me reads:

  ALIVE. TRUST NO ONE.

  “Shayna?” Sebastien’s voice is at my ear. “How are you feeling?”

  No one. Not even her boyfriend? The man with a key to her apartment and hands the size of waffle irons.

  I turn to face his barrel chest and raise my eyes to his.

  “Parched.”

  Chapter 2

  When we were kids, a clear dirt path still existed from our home straight to the beach, to a sandy inlet only a handful of intrepid surfers claimed as theirs. Nowadays, most paths in the area, and in San Diego as a whole, are laid in concrete, brick, or wooden boards. Filters, Angela would say as we got older, standing between us and what is real.

  The cool dust that covered our feet and crept up our ankles and told us we were alive back then led us to a cove, an earthy chute that spit us out from encroaching suburbia and into a world of magic. Seagulls and hidden crabs waited along the water’s edge and beneath the sand, sometimes under stubborn rocks that would relent only to four tiny hands. Seagulls were part dog, in our mind, the way they followed us around, and we named them—No, that one’s Rory, not Fred. We expected a message to be hidden in every bottle we came across and that at any moment a mermaid would surface near the horizon and flip high in the air. The dirt path was a gateway to discovery; it was there we first started babbling in our own made-up language. We drew tentative scribbles in the sand until they became consistent shapes with meaning, opening a new dimension of possibility.

  Moon, Angela would say to me as I frowned in concentration, let’s make our own magic.

  We stuffed napkins with our words into soda cans and set them adrift, certain a reply would come.

  Turns out, I only had to wait twenty years for one to turn up in France.

  Seb busies himself getting me water from the kitchen while I cross to a sweeping window with open shutters. The square below boils with life. I turn away. The outdoor warmth cloaks my back, making the apartment frigid by contrast.

  Angela’s studio is utilitarian, a perfect square, with wooden beams protruding from the ceiling. The largest furniture item is the twin bed tucked against a wall, a simple white comforter draping its frame. The kitchen nook is squeezed in the left corner, beside a closet-size bathroom and a set of drawers.

  I look anywhere except the whiteboard.

  “I’m really tired,” I announce. “Would you mind if we start cleaning later today? Jet lag is catching up, and it’s three in the morning for me.”

  Seb regards me, not speaking. A breeze flicks a dark strand of hair across my face, but I don’t move. Holding his eye contact feels important for some reason, like if I don’t, he’ll see right through me—that I’m not actually tired, but rather that potent adrenaline is flooding my veins.

  He nods. “I will return this evening. I live on the Left Bank, so I will be here by seven o’clock, if that is okay.”

  “Sounds good.”

  He turns to leave, casting another sorrowful glance upon Angela’s personal items and the tiny bed they probably shared.

  “Sebastien?”

  “Seb. Yes, Shayna?” His voice brightens, as though I might put off my nap.

  “The key?” I hold out my hand, wondering whether it’s his only copy. The floorboards moan as he crosses to me. Two keys dangle next to the pocket flashlight of the key ring—one, a regular aluminum kind similar to my own house key in my suitcase; the other, three inches of metal, almost an inch wide at the base, that looks like it was forged in a blacksmith’s shed circa 1562. Like it once belonged to a jailer.

  He hesitates above my open palm, then steps back. “Do you know what this note reads?”

  I flinch. “Note?”

  He shrugs toward the whiteboard beside me. “I have never seen her draw that way before. It was here when I came looking after she disappeared. I have been trying to figure it out for weeks. There seems to be some kind of pattern.”

  My teeth catch my lip. “She used to doodle a lot as a kid.”

  “Doodle?”

  “Draw, I mean. Since we haven’t spoken in a few years, you might have a better guess than me.” I turn and close the shutters halfway, my attempt at subtlety—Goodbye, Seb. I turn back. “When were you here last, before she disappeared?”

  His gaze shifts to over my shoulder. A child screams laughter somewhere beneath us, the sound fading into high-pitched giggles. After another beat, he places the keys in my hand. “Maybe a few days prior. The note could have been there then, only I did not notice it. Enjoy your nap, Shayna. Welcome to—” He stops himself with an abrupt noise. “Well, I am glad we met.”

  I lean against the windowsill, watching him leave. The door closes. My breathing stutters to a gasp.

  ALIVE. TRUST NO ONE.

  As kids on the beach, we made up our own language by inserting a nonsense syllable after each vowel. In the third grade, we took the idea one step further and started writing it down, inserting the symbol for pi—two vertical bars with a squiggly line on top—as the nonsense syllable. When both of us became interested in mythology in the fifth grade, we translated the letters into Greek and wrote them backward and upside down. Accents and semicolons were added to each top horizontal line to confuse the casual viewer, a form of insurance. No one else knew our secret code. No one else could’ve duplicated it.

  She is alive. My twin is alive.

  My chest buckles, punching the air from my lungs. Faltering, half-formed breaths struggle for depth.

  Single births always wonder at us, the multiple births. News outlets feature stories about one twin getting into a car accident and the other twin feeling a jolt of pain and fear on the other side of the city. I didn’t feel anything three weeks ago. No terrible ache, no spasm of fright. When Seb emailed me, I wondered if my lack of premonition was somehow because I had stopped being a good twin, if I had forsaken our supposed ethereal bonds and now we were like any other siblings. If I was to blame because I didn’t feel and share in her pain, left her to shoulder the suffering of her death alone.

  Angela is alive.

  My head falls forward, and hot tears spill down my cheeks and onto the mess of discarded papers beneath her desk. Key words pop from the titles of the books piled at my feet. History. Paris. Ancient. Twelfth century. Famine. War. An encyclopedia in French rests on top of a small inkjet printer. As much as she enjoyed a good story, Angela never read the fluff that decorated supermarket checkout stands. We’re alike in that way.

  The note could have been there then. Seb’s words rebound in my head as I stare at the whiteboard message. Half of the final symbol is missing, partially erased. What if this message was written a month ago in a bout of nostalgia? What if this is a cruel inside joke or a note to self? Dates occupy the lower-left-hand corner of the whiteboard, also partially erased—4/7, 4/1, 4/. Ghosts of other notes that were wiped away to make space remain—hrough, and ave bewitched me—and a list of words in French I don’t have the context to guess. I press my cheek against the wall beside the whiteboard and squint. Is the marker residue uneven? If our language was written more recently, the marker might be fresher somehow. Thicker. But is that marker residue or dust? I push back from the wall with a grunt and look around the studio.

  In adolescence, Angela always went off the deep end in decorating, emphasizing color and decor over utility—adding a fuzzy rug on top of the carpet to provide stylistic layers. But this space is spartan. There’s no television, no electronic gadgets aside from her laptop and printer. No books for pleasure, and nothing decorating the walls apart from the whiteboard and a
corkboard hanging opposite that holds random leaflets, coupons, and a medal from the Paris half marathon. I wonder how long Angela’s lived here. The only framed photo in the room, near buried behind a tin cylinder of pens on the desk, is of our grandparents before they left China and immigrated to San Francisco on a steamer ship. A large beer stein from Berlin has the place of honor on the kitchen counter. Our aunt Judy, a loud, assertive craft brewer in Idaho, would be proud.

  I step away from the whiteboard, feeling it burn at my back, and cross to the small counter of the kitchen nook. Seb had retrieved a mini water bottle from the fridge; I pound it. The coolness of the water is a shock to my insides, like the flood of cortisol to my system.

  My eyes flit to the twin hieroglyphics on the whiteboard. Part of me wants to run with this rejuvenated squeak of hope, and part of me knows Angela’s gone. The note is just an eerie coincidence. I can’t lose sight of why I’m here: to answer some questions for Inspector Valentin, confirm that the body they have is Angela’s, pack up her apartment, donate clothing and textbooks I don’t want, and ship her home to San Diego on Tuesday.

  I step out into the hall, dimly lit by the skylight, and assess the landing—empty. Angela’s is the only apartment on this floor in the narrow building, as though its architect was in a hurry to reach the top and forgot to create a neighbor. I try to lock up, but the dead bolt is resistant. The key moves millimeter by millimeter counterclockwise, and I alternate pushing and pulling on the door to try to line up the bolt and the hole, until I begin swearing.

  “May I help you?”

  I scream and whirl to face a man standing at the stairwell. Thick blond hair falls across his alarmed expression. Flat palms snap to his chest.

  “Sorry! Didn’t mean to startle you.”

  “No,” I gasp. “I’m fine.”

  The man frowns, takes a step backward. “Did you need help closing up?” A French accent billows his words, the vowels taking on a rounded sound. High cheekbones make him appear underfed.

  “Thank you, I got it.” I push against the door and confirm the lock is secure.

  He straightens a purple dress shirt, then holds out a hand. “Shayna Darby? My name is Jean-Luc Fillion. I’m your embassy liaison.”

  “My what?”

  “I’m from the American embassy.” He lowers his hand when I don’t move. “I’m terribly sorry for your loss, Miss Darby. The embassy would like to be of service to you, whatever you need, while you’re in Paris. I don’t know if you saw me, but I was at Charles de Gaulle waiting for you, after the digital fingerprint stations.” He pauses. “With a sign.”

  The wheels slowly begin turning in my overloaded brain. Yesterday, before I left for the airport, a member of the embassy called to say he would meet me at baggage claim, to help me handle anything that might arise while I’m here. Apparently I promptly forgot about it. “Yes. I mean, thanks for driving out here to catch me.”

  Jean-Luc shifts his weight. He looks up to the fourth floor, then back to me. “My pleasure, miss. I actually live above your sister’s apartment, so it wasn’t any trouble.”

  Both eyebrows shoot into my hairline. “You live here? That’s . . . convenient.” My tone is playful, but my stomach immediately pinches. Angela’s note flashes to mind before I brush it away. I can’t start off by rejecting government officials; they’re the handful of connections I have abroad.

  “Can I see a badge?”

  He fishes a black leather square with a clip from his back pocket. “Of course.”

  When he flips it forward, a generic office mug shot stares back at me. Not a hint of a smile against the white background—at once bureaucratic and legitimate looking. I catch his name across the top and a few numbers before I feel sheepish and return it. “That’s fine, thank you. I should get going. I’m actually meeting the detective on my sister’s case.”

  He waves me forward with a tight smile. He must have sat in two hours of traffic to the airport and back. “Of course. I’ll walk you down.”

  We descend in silence, excepting each creak of the warped steps. At the bottom, beside the open door marked CONCIERGE, a woman digs in a large army-style backpack with a fold-over top. An empty reusable grocery bag dangles from a thin arm. Coke-bottle glasses and gray-streaked black hair would give her the appearance of a regular grandmother, were it not for the items she withdraws from her backpack: a retractable measuring tape, a boxing glove, and a book with Cyrillic script on the cover.

  Unable to find whatever she’s looking for, she throws up her hands, swears in Chinese, then kicks the door back open and disappears inside.

  If Angela really is gone, what will happen to her apartment? Has she paid rent? Does she owe any?

  “That’s Madame Chang.” Jean-Luc lifts his chin, already acting the tour guide. “And the last you’ll probably see of her during the day. She’s a night owl.”

  I nod. “So you know . . . knew . . . Angela, too? Since you live here.” The past tense feels garbled in my mouth, uncomfortable. Less than an hour earlier, I felt an endless void of panic and loss. Now there’s only a bizarre hollow emotion, sucked dry and stuffed with queasy uncertainty.

  “I moved in recently, but I saw her once or twice, yes. It’s why the brass at work thought I would be the most available of all the repatriation employees. I’m actually one of the foreign interns.”

  “Ah. So you do all the bitch work.” I can’t help admiring—testing—his level of English.

  Jean-Luc clears his throat. “That is correct.” He hands me a business card from his pants pocket. A phone number and his name are printed on one side. “If you need anything, you know where I live.”

  I slip the card in my bag and thank him, already turning toward the main entry. Although the last thing I want to do is leave the whiteboard unattended, to part ways with this—possible—proof that my sister is alive, I step outside. Its invisible tether trails behind me, as I hail a cab and wonder whether Inspector Valentin knows more than his muffled calls suggested.

  Chapter 3

  Montmartre bustles in the afternoon with a deep humidity that moistens every back. Street vendors hawk items around me as I climb into the cab in a daze. The driver takes me down a hill, through what appears to be the tourist section—the Champs-Élysées, he announces—awash in dazzling verandas and brightly colored flags swaying overhead in the breeze.

  We pass over the Seine River from the Right Bank to the Left. Couples sitting outside cafés sip wine and tiny coffees while observing the crowds. At a stoplight, a man juggles a soccer ball from knee to knee on the base of a weatherworn statue, drawing curious onlookers and a few alert policemen.

  This city is Angela’s home, her permanent address for the last three years. Instead of finishing up at UC San Diego, as I had done, mere footsteps from where we grew up in La Jolla, Angela stayed in Paris after spending a semester abroad. I got her reasons why. She discovered ancient urban planning studies during her sophomore year of college, and the Sorbonne is world renowned for its program in that field. While I was happy for her, I didn’t understand why she would choose to be so far away from our family. From me. Why she would move to the land of Da Vinci Code mysteries, baguettes—when she’s been gluten-free since we were twenty—and Serge Gainsbourg, a cultural hero of fetishists and machismo. And especially why she stayed after our parents’ deaths.

  Outside the police station, pollution mingles with the thick summer air to insulate the street like a blanket. I head for the metal doors. Menacing gargoyles clutch the corners of a stone portico, glaring as I pass beneath. Inside, I pass through the door in the one-way glass to where two metal detectors and a guard armed with an AK-47 flank a second set of doors. I try not to stare as I continue inside—my first sighting of the French military. Individuals wait along the walls on cushioned benches, one man sleeping, mouth agape. Framed black-and-white photographs decorate the walls, and a sprawling mural of a Napoleonic battlefield hangs above the reception desk, like a warning tha
t history often repeats itself.

  Behind the sweeping wooden desk, a middle-aged woman with Shirley Temple curls clacks out a thundering rhythm on a keyboard. “Mademoiselle, bonjour,” she says as I approach.

  “Bonjour, madame. Inspecteur Valentin? J’ai rendez-vous avec.”

  The receptionist smirks at my five-year-old’s French but picks up a telephone and speaks quietly into the receiver. With a sharp nod to me, she replies, “Take a seat,” in English.

  Most people in the lobby this Sunday afternoon are drunk, high, or talking to themselves, except for an older woman knitting pink yarn that barely hangs past her wrists. I pick the corner bench nearest the desk just before another one-way glass door swings open. A small man in slacks and a tie breezes through, barely breaking stride as he zeros in on me. A cloud of mint moves with him, cutting through the smell of stale booze and body odor.

  “Mademoiselle Darby, bonjour. Je suis l’inspecteur Valentin.” He extends a firm handshake, drawing himself up to meet my height. A bulbous nose is his leading feature, countering a heavy brow. Thinning hair dusts the crown of his head and gathers into a ring of curls, monk-style. Brilliant green eyes seem to extract information without speech, assessing and searching my face. “Suivez-moi.”

  I follow him down a brightly lit hall and pass an office clearing stuffed with cubicles. He pauses beside a glass wall that separates his office from the peons but still gives the visual illusion that he remains a part of the team. The door bears the outline of a predecessor’s name.

  “Alors, Mademoiselle Darby.” Valentin closes the door behind me, cutting the noise of chatter and phone calls in half.

  “Excusez-moi, mais . . . Can we speak in English, please?” Speaking to him over the phone was a damned travesty. Although he did switch from French to English when I asked, between the faint transatlantic communication and his accent, I only understood every other word.

  Valentin’s eyes narrow. Slender fingers tug on a black necktie, loosening the knot without shifting his gaze. “Of course.”