“Our friends from the neighborhood. Most of our classmates live too far away.”
“So, lots of new kids?”
“Yes.”
“Did you make new friends?”
“Yes.”
“And Angelique?”
A shrug. “No one she mentioned. She had Marjolie, of course. They walked over together each day.”
“What about a young man?’
Emmanuel flops back in the booth. “Now you sound like the stupid police.”
“Sorry.”
“My sister did not meet some boy. She would not leave me or my aunt or her dreams of medicine for some boy.”
There is so much disdain in his voice, I wonder if Emmanuel is protesting too much. But what he says next catches me off guard.
“‘I think that God’s got a sick sense of humor and when I die, I expect to find him laughing,’” he suddenly quotes.
It takes me a moment. “Wait, isn’t that Depeche Mode? But what do my high school memories have to do with anything?”
“Eighties music is very popular,” Emmanuel states seriously.
“I still don’t get it.”
Emmanuel looks around, as if expecting the sudden appearance of eavesdroppers, then whispers quietly, “LiLi doesn’t believe in love. She doesn’t believe in God either. ‘No one will save us, ti fre.’ She told me that all the time. When I woke up with nightmares, when I first cried with homesickness: ‘No one will save us, ti fre, but it is okay, for we will save ourselves.’ That’s what my sister believes in. Her strength, her determination, her plan. She was not waiting for our aunt to magically secure our visas, or for some lawyers to sue on our behalf. LiLi believes in LiLi. We will be okay, because she will work hard enough to make it so.” A pause. “You cannot tell my aunt this. It would break her heart.”
I nod slowly, leaning back in silence. The sister he describes, a girl who at the tender age of six supposedly had the fortitude to save her own mother and brother, who was still actively in pursuit of a better future for them all . . .
I think I would’ve liked that girl very much. And I don’t want to believe she could’ve been derailed by something as fickle as male attention. Then again, fifteen is that age. And maybe the girl who didn’t get to act like a normal six-year-old wanted for one moment to be foolish and giddy. I couldn’t blame her for that.
“Are you continuing to update this site?” I ask Emmanuel.
“Yes. The police . . . They were too slow to start. And now, all this time without any progress . . . We do not see or hear from them so much anymore. Even at school . . . It’s a new year. The other kids, teachers, they move on. It’s not their home that is empty.”
“You’re hoping this might gather national interest. Maybe get your sister’s case on a major news program, re-ignite the investigation.”
“I send letters and e-mails every week. They don’t answer. But my sister . . .” His voice breaks slightly. “She’s worth it. The whole world should know her. The whole world should be looking. Why . . . Why aren’t they looking?”
Then he can’t talk. Emmanuel looks down at the table, blinking rapidly. I reach across, lightly fold my fingers over his hand. He doesn’t pull away, but we both know it’s not my comfort he wants.
“I’m not GMA,” I say. “Or 48 Hours or any of those national shows.”
“No,” he states bitterly. Nothing like a teen to give it to you straight.
“But I can promise you,” I continue, “that I do care, and I am looking, and I won’t leave till your sister comes home.”
“She’s not your family.”
“I choose her anyway. According to you, she’s worth it. That’s good enough for me.”
He glances up, his eyes damp with tears. “She did not run away.”
“I believe you.”
“She did not leave us for some boy.”
“Okay.”
“But something has changed.”
“Clearly.”
“No, I mean recently. The past few weeks. Before, when she first disappeared, I monitored the internet for signs of activity all the time. But . . . It’s been a while.”
I nod.
“I’d stopped paying attention. But then you came, and you asked questions and last night . . .”
“What happened last night, Emmanuel?”
“I logged into one of her classes,” Emmanuel murmurs. “I just wanted to picture her leaning over the computer, tapping away. I wanted to feel close to her again. But I couldn’t.”
“You couldn’t log in, or you couldn’t . . . feel any hint of your sister?”
“The course was closed.”
“Like you said, it’s been eleven months.”
“No, not suspended or canceled. Closed. As in the work completed, so the class is no more. Sometime in the past month, my sister logged in. She submitted the homework. She passed the test.”
Emmanuel stares at me. “Last week, my missing sister . . . I don’t understand . . . I can’t explain . . . but of all things, LiLi completed her online class. She’s out there, somewhere, still doing her schoolwork. But not coming home to us. Why? Of all things . . . Why?”
CHAPTER 11
Detective Lotham is not happy to hear from me. The news that I’m with Emmanuel and the teen has something to share doesn’t improve his mood.
“What, you talked to him for four minutes this morning and now he’s bared his soul?”
“Actually, he came to me. First thing. No four minutes required.”
The detective growled. I have that kind of effect on law enforcement.
“Why?”
I treat the question as rhetorical. The answer, that Emmanuel brought his discovery to me because I’m not a cop, is hardly going to improve Lotham’s mood.
“Stay,” the detective orders. “I’ll call up the crime scene techs and be right there.”
“You don’t need crime scene techs.”
“You said he found something on the computer—”
“The internet. His computer is just the access point. And if you seize—for the second time—the laptop he needs for his schoolwork,then he’s definitely not sharing anything with either of us ever again. Bring yourself, Detective. That’ll be enough.”