The Missing Sister Read online

  Carved designs decorate the bronze door nestled within the arch. A simple cross, couched in an alcove above, sits atop a Latin inscription that probably reads, tongue in cheek, Dead men tell no tales. I stare at the great brick building that is the Paris morgue, wondering whether the answers to my questions about Angela lie inside.

  Last night I searched through every desktop folder and bookmarked website on her laptop a second time in the event I’d missed another message. I clicked through all of her torrent files and haphazardly explored a code-source editor program I didn’t understand. I gave packing another go but only got as far as one box of clothing and beer steins. I couldn’t do more. Not before seeing for myself that Angela is the body pulled from the river.

  Divine Research. What did she mean? Divine as in guess? Guess her research? Guess the meaning of her research? Or are they two separate words, bearing two separate instructions? The possible combinations—together or separate—as nouns, verbs, or adjectives, are endless.

  Divine: Guess, determine. Holy, transcendent.

  Research: Investigate, probe. Analysis, inquiry.

  The time stamp on Angela’s blog post read June 1, 2014, the end of our junior year of college. However, the author can choose the date that displays on the post; just because it said Published on June 1 doesn’t mean it was. Those eleven digits might not mean anything at all.

  Around three in the morning, I fell asleep imagining what my world would be like six hours later. What kind of truth I would learn only fourteen steps away from where I stand now.

  She must be inside this building.

  She can’t be inside this building.

  My phone buzzes, interrupting my exercise in the Schrödinger’s cat paradox. Inspector Valentin’s name scrolls across my screen, a bad sign. He should already be here.

  “Good morning, Miss Darby. I must apologize, but I cannot attend you at the morgue.”

  “What? Why not?”

  He clears his throat. “There has been a break in a case. The morgue director will be quite helpful and will answer any questions you may have. Again, I apologize to leave you to this task, but it must be done before you fly home tomorrow.”

  “Of course. Thanks.” I hang up, already reaching toward the brass handles of the door. Interesting that he said a case and not our or your case—bad sign number two, and it’s not even 9:00 a.m.

  “Bonjour,” a raspy voice rings out. A middle-aged security guard stands to greet me in the empty lobby. Crumbs tumble down the straining buttons of his shirt; a pastry wrapper peeks from the trash bin beside him. I search among the limited French phrases I know by heart.

  “Bonjour, monsieur,” I reply. “Parlez-vous anglais?”

  The security guard breaks into a goofy grin. “Leetle bit.”

  Another try. “I need . . . directeur de la morgue.”

  He straightens, shoulders back, chin up. “Suivez-moi.” With an open palm, he motions for me to pass through the security gate. A large, leafy plant I can’t identify decorates one corner of the lobby, and a wide billboard lists the building’s office numbers beside names. High-vaulted stone ceilings give the appearance of a courthouse or an old manor, but for the antiseptic smell carrying from the air ducts. Uncomfortable memories of being treated for lice by the school nurse pop into my head.

  The security guard leads me down a narrow hallway lit by dim panels above. We pass more than one corridor, and I resist imagining where they go, what secrets they hold, what procedures are performed farther in.

  We come to a door with a plaque fixed beside it: DIRECTEUR DE MORGUE. My escort opens the door without knocking. An older man, around what would have been my dad’s age—late fifties—sits behind a broad cherrywood desk, papers stacked in bunches before him. Rows of filing cabinets line one side of the office and remind me of a game I played with my dad as a kid—Where does the virus hide? He would label his filing cabinets (hands, feet, nose, eyes, mouth), and I’d have to locate the virus—a travel pack of tissues—before it infected the rest of the body. Angela always wanted to play, too, but my seven-year-old self, jealous of the attention she got showing off what she’d learned in dance class, would never allow it.

  The room stretches wide, with no windows to provide a sense of the time of day. The security guard rattles off something in French, then leaves us with a smile.

  The director nods to me. “Asseyez-vous.”

  I slide onto an aluminum folding chair. Though the temperature crept up an extra five degrees today, a sweater would be handy in the sudden winter of this building.

  “How can I help you?” the morgue director asks in French, peering at me from above square-rimmed spectacles. A blazer hangs on a coat hook in the corner, and his white button-up shirt is fastened to the neck. He regards me clinically.

  “My name is Shayna Darby. Can we speak in English? My French isn’t great.”

  Slate-gray eyes widen. He stands. “Ah, yes. I have waiting you since weeks. Inspector Valentin apprised me . . . expect you. My condolences. Angela, correct?”

  I nod, choosing to ignore the lack of conjunctions and prepositions and instead feel grateful he’s willing to speak on my terms. He grabs a set of keys from the wall.

  “My name is Julien Park. We see her now.”

  A slick, bitter taste fills my mouth as I follow him down the narrow, dimly lit hallway. Fear courses through my body at finally being here, living out my nightmares of the last three weeks. I focus on the pleats in Park’s trousers to stay calm. The width of the hall forces us to walk single file, with Park’s head inches from scraping the paneled ceiling as he barrels forward. The bounce to his gait seems better suited to a jaunt at Six Flags than an institution of death. We pass through double doors to a bright hospital wing, where the space opens and I can breathe easier. Refrigerated air gusts from vents on either side—refreshing against the nausea gripping my stomach.

  He halts at a door marked CONSERVATION. I search for the nearest exit in case the unthinkable—my sister’s body—is in fact inside this room, and find the hallway extends another fifty feet, then forks into a right and left turn. The only sure way out appears to be the way we came.

  Park uses a key to open the door. Metal drawers line each wall of the room in floor-to-ceiling squares. Each bears a label identifying its contents, except for one. The air smells sickly sweet, perfumed and covering odors, masking decay. I cross to where Park waits beside the unmarked stainless steel box. He raises his chin a fraction.

  “Your sister passed a week underwater. She changed. This, not your sister.” The full gaze he fixes me with seems defiant, challenging. Choosing to believe the director means Angela has changed state, from my sister to a putrid, soggy remnant of a person, is the only option I have. If he meant otherwise, that this is literally not my sister, could that mean . . . ? What could that mean?

  A burst of vanilla-scented air claps me in the face, and I dissolve into abrupt coughing. The director remains grim. “Believe me, this smell is not worst you encounter today.”

  He pulls hard on the drawer beside us, bending with his knees, until it extends fully. A white cotton sheet covers the cadaver that slides out. Cold temperatures have kept decomposition at bay, but an underlying smell pricks my nostrils, standing the hairs of my neck on end. When I identified my parents, it was from behind glass and in the presence of a police officer—nothing remotely this intimate. Questions I haven’t allowed myself to consider since stepping into Angela’s apartment resurface. Is she cold? Is she happy? Is she at peace?

  The director turns to me, tilting his head to the side. “I give you a moment.”

  A click of the door seals me in alone with a room full of death. I stare at the slopes and valleys of this woman’s shell. A metallic taste tickles the back of my mouth.

  It could be Angela. It could be anyone. Angela and I are above average in height, five foot six, with medium builds. I’m heavier in the hips, and she’s always been busty, but no one would notice
this except for us. Is there a unique detail to Angela’s body that marks her as different from anyone else? Valentin’s question rang in my ears for days after our phone conversation, along with my stuttering lie: I—I don’t know.

  We share a birthmark. In the most unobtrusive of places—only a select number of people would see it.

  I lift the sheet to peek underneath and hesitate, struggling between total revulsion at being so close to a cadaver and the terror of discovering that it’s Angela. The steady thrum of the ventilation system shuts off; silence engulfs the space. A smell like waterlogged bread left to rot at the foot of a restaurant pier rises, mingling with the vanilla. I clear the sheet from the body, ripping the bandage off in one swift motion.

  Ash-colored flesh fills my vision, mottled from long-term submersion in water and exposure to the appetites of fish—chunks of skin missing sporadically throughout; a nipple chewed halfway off. Dark hair rests in tangled clumps that reach the elbows. The face is almost nonexistent. An ear that was once pierced multiple times from cartilage to lobe hangs by a single flap of skin. The lips are gone, straight teeth laid bare. The eyes, mercifully, are closed. I won’t bother verifying they are brown. A hole marks the forehead above dark eyebrows. The gunshot wound.

  A heave racks my shoulders as I move down the body to examine the most important place. Deep ligature marks show on the wrists, and a tertiary glance shows more of the same at the ankles; she was tied up before death. I pause at the cadaver’s hips. The pubic hair appears oddly normal, and out of respect for the person this once was—and because I cannot believe that I’m here—I mentally block it out for what I’m about to do next.

  Slipping two shaking fingers between the knees, I apply pressure until the thighs part just barely. Discolored, spongy skin stares at me, like a zombie’s. But the puckered flesh at the top of the inner right thigh is unblemished and without any trace of the semicolon-shaped birthmark that dots both my and Angela’s skin.

  I take two giant steps back and slide, dumbfounded, to the ground. Shock pulls my eyes wide before something works its way up my throat. Inappropriate noises bubble, gurgling like a carbonated drink. I cover my mouth as best I can against the shaking of my ribs, but it’s no use—giggles spill from my lips, and pressing my hand tighter only makes me laugh more.

  Growing up, Angela always worried we would be mistaken for the other, even as she wanted us to be the twinliest of twins. She dressed in flowing earth-mother vibes in college to contrast my jeans and sleeveless button-ups but chose complementary colors to mine. Wore her hair down when she knew I liked mine up. She went to such lengths to set us apart and make our individuality known while still definitively linking us. Now she’s been mistaken for a stranger without nipples.

  A sob interrupts my laughter and then I’m crying, bawling into my hands. Pools of wetness seep onto my tank top. My body quivers against the wall, digesting this final truth: she’s alive.

  “Mademoiselle?” The director cracks the door.

  “One second,” I reply, standing up. The body now seems a stranger, where seconds ago it could have been my own severed arm. I whip the sheet like I’m making a bed. It billows across the corpse. Who is this person? Remembering how Seb already identified this swollen stunt double as Angela, I check the left then right ankle and find the tattoo he mentioned. The symbol for Gemini. A Roman numeral two, curved at the top and bottom—the astrological sign for twins, although it, too, took a beating underwater; the skin is wrinkled, distorting the image. Could our birthmark have been removed? Could Angela have gotten it lasered off? Is the Gemini symbol a common tattoo here?

  Details. These are all details I can’t process yet. Angela is alive. The only thing that matters is my sister is not anywhere near this morgue.

  Angela’s whiteboard message flashes to mind. She’s alive and on the run from someone.

  I pause, my hand on the doorknob. Once, in high school, I borrowed Angela’s red skirt to wear to an interview—to pop among the applicants—despite her texting, Do not borrow it. Sibling relationship be damned, when she discovered this, she was livid I’d disrespected her boundaries. She’d explicitly told me not to do something, and I did it even so. She was always insistent that when she said something, she meant it.

  Knowing this, I wonder if I need to take her words on the whiteboard at their most literal sense—to trust no one. Not even figures of authority or morgue directors.

  Park uncrosses his arms when I emerge with a sniffle. I fix him with a grieving stare, then spit out the words before I can falter. “This is my sister. It’s Angela.”

  His eyes reduce to slits. “How you are sure?” His tone is cold, detached.

  My hands fidget at my sides. I cast about for the right words, not sure of the answer in any language. Angela would have known that one of the first things on my list would be to come and see for myself she was dead—after identifying our parents’ bodies, there’s no way I would have swept aside this moment for closure.

  And she left two notes meant only for me; she wouldn’t want me to divulge anything I learned here, especially on official paper. Right?

  I draw another finger below my lashes. “I’m sure. Can I sign now?”

  Park remains unmoved. His mouth purses. The hallway’s sterile lighting magnifies the throbbing in my head. “Monsieur?” I say.

  “Miss Darby, this body is like balloon. The body . . . was shot after death. The tattoo was . . . appliqué . . . after death. How you are sure?”

  I stare at him, my fake confidence rattled. Valentin never suggested the tattoo or the gunshot were made postmortem. Why would someone tattoo and shoot a body after it’s already dead? And why didn’t Valentin tell me? Was he trying to trap me in a lie?

  The certainty I felt minutes ago is gone, sucked up into the ventilation system, but I can’t see any way to deviate from the course I’ve chosen. For whatever reason, Angela hasn’t revealed to the police that she’s alive. I need to know why. “I’m sure. It’s Angela.”

  The director throws his hands up and bounce-walks away. We pass through the double doors, back into the cool lighting and into his office. With quick strides, he rounds the desk to grasp a folder, then thrusts it into my hands. I open it. Identification du corps is written across the top of the first sheet. Several paragraphs of French precede a space for witnesses to confirm or refute the identification of a body. Sebastien Bronn signed his declaration July 9, two weeks ago.

  “You understand what you are sign?” Hooded eyes twitch at each corner.

  Out of all the text, there is only one sentence I understand completely:

  Ce cadavre est celui de MADEMOISELLE ANGELA DARBY.

  This is Miss Angela Darby’s body.

  Silence reverberates in the small space of Park’s office. The magnitude of what I’m about to do weighs on me like a sweaty woolen blanket. My signature will essentially close the book on my sister’s disappearance. Why would she want me to sign away her investigation? What could make her so scared or feel this trapped that she wants to remain “dead”? Her two notes to me boomerang in my head:

  Alive. Trust no one.

  Divine Research.

  This moment may come back to haunt me, yet I can’t escape the conviction that I’m doing what Angela needs me to do. “Yes. I sign now. Pen, please.” I reach across Park’s desk and pluck one from a plain ceramic coffee mug. He implores me again in French to reconsider—he’s given up persuading me in English—but I tune him out. I can still go to Valentin and try to extract information from him, to make sense of this, without admitting what I know.

  With a flourish, I sign my name below Seb’s, then place Angela’s file on the desk. For whatever reason, my sister doesn’t want to be found by just anybody, and especially not by the police.

  She’s waiting for me.

  Chapter 7

  from: Angela Darby

  to: “Darby, Shayna”

  date:
May 3, 2015, 3:37 p.m.

  subject: Outstanding news

  Dear sister—

  I hope this finds you well and enjoying the consistent vitamin D (sunrays) I traded in for fresh pastries. Skies are on the cloudy side here today, but you know what?

  I’m walkin’ on sunshine! Whooooaa!

  Such is the constant ballad of joy ricocheting in my head, as I type this from a café on the Champs-Élysées—no big deal (*hair flip*)—because I just confirmed: I’m staying! The Sorbonne dubbed me a real-life graduate student, and I’ll be able to enjoy the summer before school starts in September, tracking down spots where famous authors died while enjoying cheap wine, pinkie finger poised in the air. The Sorbonne has an amazing doctoral history program that can be completed in four years, and it provides research internships for hands-on experience. How crazy would it be to study European history in Europe? It would be so nuts it’s ALMONDS, and exactly in line with my theme of choosing more.

  Life is so rarely what we expect, dear sister. I feel like our generation has been told by everyone—our parents, our grandparents, by society—to settle. Settle for whatever you can grab on to, and don’t let go once it’s yours. No, no, no! Our generation has to do better, to choose more, to settle for more—when the world is offering less. Instead of waiting until I’m retired, I choose to live now. To enjoy the world, my youth, my ambitions and my dreams now, now. Because tomorrow is not promised, little (by two minutes) sister, and we have to do the best with what we’ve got. Let it be known! said the preachy twin.

  I hope you can be happy for me, Shay. A doctorate in four years for pennies is beyond anything I thought possible for myself. (Democratic socialism for the win!) The problem is I can’t leave France without finding an apartment, setting up a bank account, and receiving my student visa—I can’t come home before school starts again this fall. (Democratic socialism fail.)

  My agenda has been a Rorschach test of scribbling notes and broken pen stains lately, nailing down all the dates and documents I have to provide. I’m sorry I’ve been so MIA and we haven’t Skyped—I’ve only been to the Louvre once this month (*hair flip*), I’m that busy. Part of me wants to throw a giant fit each time I argue with the immigration office, but I don’t. You really have to go along to get along here. I can’t help thinking how we would own this city, were we here together.