Worst of all, she had no idea where her father was. No phone calls came at Christmas; no birthday cards arrived in the mail. It was so unlike him. Her mother had insisted he’d started over and didn’t want anything to do with his old family, but there’d been something about the way she said it that didn’t ring true. Maybe it was the venom in her voice, or how she continued to blame him for leaving. Maybe it was the way she’d treated her daughters like an inconvenience, while he always said they were a miracle. If Sage had to guess why they never heard from him anymore, she’d bet money it was because her mother had never given him their new address or phone number when they moved in with Alan. Still, it seemed like he could have found them if he’d wanted to badly enough.
She always wanted to ask her mother if she knew where he was or if she could call him, but had never been able to bring herself to do it. Because if there was any truth to what her mother said, being rejected for real would have been too hard to take. The first time had felt like an amputation; the second would have felt like death.
She often imagined him with another family and wondered if he had two more daughters, or maybe a son. Sometimes she wondered if she would run into another girl that looked just like her and Rosemary, making them triplets instead of twins. She wondered if they lived in a better neighborhood—if her father had gotten out of the low-rent section of town, away from the broken-down clusters of apartment buildings and two-bedroom houses where almost everyone she knew had a parent or uncle who worked at the Fresh Kills landfill.
Thinking about her broken family, she swallowed hard against the burning lump in her throat. No one knew where she was or what she was about to do. She felt like a feather that could be blown away by a gust of wind and no one would miss her.
Rosemary would have missed her, of course. If she hadn’t been sent away.
Rosemary. Her twin. She was alive. It was still hard to believe. What was it going to feel like when they saw each other again? Would it be awkward? Amazing? Would they wrap their arms around each other and fall down crying? Would Rosemary remember who she was? Would it be a wonderful reunion or another heartbreaking loss? A shiver of fear-spiked excitement snaked up Sage’s back.
Last night, when she’d learned that her twin sister was alive, still felt like a dream or something you’d see in a movie. And if she hadn’t been in the exact right place at the exact right time, she never would have learned the truth.
It was after ten o’clock when she’d decided to sneak out and meet her friends. She left her room and crept down the hallway of their fourth-floor apartment, picking her way around hunting rifles and plastic laundry baskets filled with rumpled clothes. She’d hated the place from the day they moved in. Maybe because it felt like her life after her father left—chaotic, messy, uncertain. The kitchen was small and cramped, with a harvest-gold stove and matching refrigerator that had seen better days. The closets smelled like mice and urine, and every noise made its way through the thin walls—someone’s hair dryer, women laughing, men yelling at a ballgame on TV, a muffled phone conversation filtering through the plaster along with the smell of someone else’s dinner. Any excuse to leave was a good one. Or maybe it was just Alan she hated.
Trying not to trip over the clutter, she tiptoed past the plastic-framed family portraits on the paneled walls—her and Rosemary in matching ruffled dresses; Alan with his arm around their mother when she still looked like Elizabeth Taylor, her black hair in a perfect bob, her silver-blue eyes happy and shining. Alan was smiling in the picture too, a normal-looking man with perfectly ordinary features, content and in love with his wife. But his eyes were cold and calm. Secret-hiding eyes. Sage knew that pictures, just like people, could be deceiving: one moment in time captured on film, everyone looking happy and perfect when the camera clicked—then, a minute later, bickering and stomping out of the room. Or yelling and screaming and hitting.
Before she got to the living room, she checked her jacket pocket again to make sure she still had the cash she’d taken out of Alan’s bedside table. Normally she only stole his drinking money to go out on weekends, but it was Christmas break and Heather and Dawn had asked her to go to a new disco over in Castleton Corners because Heather knew one of the bouncers, which meant they’d get in without being proofed. When she neared the archway to the living room, she stopped to listen, praying Alan was passed out drunk in front of the television again. As predicted, the TV was on, but to her dismay, Alan was talking to someone. It sounded like his hunting buddy, Larry. Edging closer, she peered around the doorframe.
Like the rest of the house, the living room was cluttered, the orange shag matted and worn, the furniture dingy with dust. Alan sat on the edge of the plaid recliner, shirtless and lifting dumbbells, his chest and face shining with sweat. Larry was on the couch, smoking and drinking a beer, his feet on the coffee table; he looked like he’d managed to shower that day, at least. A basketball game was on the TV, the volume turned down. Hoping they wouldn’t notice her, Sage got ready to slip past the doorway. Then Larry said something that made her pause.
“How long has she been missing?”
“Almost three days,” Alan said, his words punctuated by hard breaths as he lifted the dumbbells.
Sage frowned. Oh shit. Not another missing person.
“Why’d they wait so long to call you?” Larry said.
“Beats me. Maybe they thought they’d find her first. I should have changed our phone number so I wouldn’t have to deal with that bullshit.”
“Well, they sure took their sweet time lettin’ you know. Seems kinda strange if you ask me.”
“Nah, it’s not strange,” Alan said. “You got any idea how big that place is? The guy on the phone said they checked forty buildings. Forty. First they thought she wandered off and got lost, maybe ended up in the wrong ward, but now they’re searching the woods. He said Willowbrook has three hundred and fifty acres. Can you imagine how many retards they got there? It’s gonna take a while to search all that.”
Sage racked her brain, trying to think. Who did they know at Willowbrook? The only thing she knew about the place was that it was for mentally retarded and disabled kids, and everyone’s parents threatened to send their kids there when they were bad. Even the shop owners scared away troublesome teenagers by saying they’d called Willowbrook to come pick them up. Girls were warned that if they got pregnant too young, the baby would be born with an underdeveloped brain, taken away, and put in Willowbrook. But Sage had never heard of anyone who’d actually been sent there. And if someone were actually missing from Willowbrook—or any other place in the world—why would they call Alan, of all people? What could he do to help?
“Are the cops involved?” Larry said.
“Don’t think so,” Alan said. “Not yet anyway. The guy I talked to said he was one of those shrinks they got there. Guess they didn’t call the cops yet because they don’t want to cause a panic.”
“So why’d they call you?” Larry said. “What the hell are you supposed to do about it?”
“They had to call me,” Alan said. “I’m Rosemary’s legal guardian.”
Sage went rigid. What the hell was Alan talking about? Her sister was dead. She had died of pneumonia six years earlier— fifteen days before Christmas, two nights after they’d finished writing letters to Santa asking for presents they’d never get.