“Don’t leave.”
“I won’t.”
“Do not leave that building.”
“Okay.”
“Promise me.”
“I promise.”
I hung up.
Then stood in the kitchen with my keys in one hand, realizing my entire body was shaking.
Ten years earlier, Lily and I had been twenty.
Same birthday.
Same dark hair.
Same irritating habit of finishing each other’s sentences.
But we had never been identical in the way strangers expected twins to be.
Lily was quieter.
She noticed things.
I filled silence.
She preferred the edge of the room.
I liked the center.
People constantly compared us.
Who got better grades.
Who ran faster.
Who looked more confident.
Who had the “better smile.”
I hated it.
Or I thought I did.
Lily apparently hated it more.
The night she disappeared, she had been driving home alone along Blackwood Highway.
Rain.
Poor visibility.
A curve near the edge of Bellmere.
According to investigators, her car left the road, went down a steep embankment and caught fire before emergency crews could reach it.
