Daniel frowned.
“Your sister?”
I whispered the name.
“Rebecca.”
My younger sister.
Rebecca Bell.
Beautiful, reckless Rebecca.
Dead for twenty-seven years.
At least, that was what we had believed.
Her car had gone through a guardrail during a storm. It was found crushed in a ravine, partially submerged in the river.
They never recovered her body.
But everyone assumed the current had carried her away.
My mother never recovered.
My father stopped speaking
Rebecca’s name.
And three years later, my mother died.
I kept reading.
Rebecca is alive.
I heard Daniel inhale.
The room tilted.
I gripped the letter harder.
Mr. Hale lowered his eyes.
“I helped your father protect her identity.”
I stared at him.
“You knew?”
“For twenty-seven years.”
I stood so quickly my chair struck the wall.
“You let me mourn her for twenty-seven years?”
“Carol—”
“You watched me bury an empty coffin!”
Tears exploded from my eyes before I understood I was crying.
Mr. Hale didn’t defend himself.
He only said, “Your father believed telling you would put you in danger.”
Daniel stood beside me.
“What danger?”
Mr. Hale looked directly at him.
Then he spoke the sentence that changed everything again.
“Rebecca didn’t disappear because of an accident.”
He paused.
“She disappeared because someone tried to kill her.”
And before I could ask who—
there came a knock
on the locked office door.
Three slow taps.
Mr. Hale went pale.
Because nobody was supposed to know we were there.
—
PART 4 — MY SISTER WALKED BACK FROM THE DEAD
Mr. Hale raised one finger to his lips.
Daniel moved in front of me instinctively.
The knocking came again.
Three taps.
Then two.
Then three.
Mr. Hale’s shoulders relaxed.
“That’s the signal.”
“What signal?” I whispered.
He crossed the room and unlocked the door.
A woman stood in the hallway.
Late fifties.
Gray-blond hair cut to her shoulders.
Dark sunglasses.
A long raincoat.
For one strange second, I felt nothing.
Then she removed the glasses.
My knees nearly gave out.
Her eyes.
My mother’s eyes.
My eyes.
“Carol.”
That voice.
Older.
Rougher.
But underneath it, I heard a twenty-five-year-old girl laughing in our childhood bedroom.
I whispered, “Rebecca.”
She began to cry.
So did I.
Then I slapped her.
Hard.
The sound cracked through the office.
Daniel froze.
Rebecca touched her cheek.
“I deserved that.”
I slapped her again.
Then I grabbed her and held her so tightly I could barely breathe.
For twenty-seven years I had imagined her cold in a river.
For twenty-seven years I had carried guilt because our last conversation had been an argument.
For twenty-seven years I had wished I could apologize.
And now she was in my arms.
Alive.
Warm.
Real.
“You let me think you were dead,” I sobbed.
“I know.”
“You let Dad die without telling me.”
“He knew.”
“You let me bury you.”
“I know.”
