Chapter 4: What My Sister Knew
My sister's name is Patrice.
She is four years older than me and she has always been the one who keeps things in order — the one who made the phone calls when our mother was sick, the one who sat across from the lawyer and read every line.
I called her that night because I didn't know who else to call and because she had loved Rosie too, in her own quieter way.
I told her everything.
The boardwalk.
Carol.
The bag.
The photograph.
The note.
When I finished there was a silence on the line that went on long enough that I said, "Patrice.
Are you there?"
"I'm here."
"Say something."
Another pause.
"I need to tell you something," she said.
"And I need you to let me get through it before you react."
My stomach dropped.
"What?"
"About two years after Rosie left — so around 2010 — I got a letter."
The room went very quiet.
"From Rosie?" I asked.
"Yes."
I set down the glass of water I was holding.
I set it down carefully, on the coaster, the way you do when your hands are shaking and you don't want to spill.
"You got a letter from my daughter."
"She asked me not to tell you.
She said she needed me to know she was alive but that she couldn't — she said she wasn't ready.
Those were her exact words.
*I'm not ready.* She said she would reach out to you herself when she was."
"That was fourteen years ago, Patrice."
"I know."
"She never reached out."
"I know."
I stood up.
I sat back down.
"Did you write back?"
"I tried.
The return address was a P.O.
box in North Carolina.
The letter came back six months later.
Undeliverable."
"Did you tell anyone?
Did you tell Detective Pruitt?"
A pause.
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because she asked me not to." Her voice was careful, controlled, the way it gets when she's already decided how to hold a conversation.
"She said if I told anyone, especially you, she would disappear completely and never contact anyone again.
I believed her.
Diane, she was twenty years old and she sounded — she sounded frightened.
Not of you.
Of something.
I didn't know what."
Frightened.
Not of me.
Of something.
"What did the letter say?" I asked.
"Exactly.
What did it say?"
"I kept it."
"You kept it."
"Yes.
I've kept it for fourteen years in the back of my filing cabinet because I didn't know what else to do with it and I couldn't throw it away."
I pressed my hand flat on the kitchen table.
"I want to see it."
"I know.
I'll bring it tomorrow."
"Tonight, Patrice."
A long pause.
"It's almost eleven o'clock."
"I don't care."
She came.
She drove forty minutes at eleven-fifteen at night and she sat across from me at my kitchen table and she put a plain white envelope between us.
My name wasn't on it.
Just Patrice's address, in Rosie's handwriting.
The postmark said Asheville, NC.
March 2010.
I pulled out the letter.
One page, both sides.
*Aunt Patrice — I'm okay.
I know that's the first thing.
Please tell me you'll read past that before you do anything.*
*I can't come home yet.
I know that sounds like an excuse.
It isn't.
There are things that happened that I haven't been able to talk about and I'm not there yet.
I'm working on it.
I have a job and a place to stay and I am eating and sleeping and I am okay.*
*Please don't tell Mom.
I know how that sounds.
I love her.
That's not why.
I just — I need more time.
I'll reach out to her myself when I'm ready.
I promise.*
*If something happens to me — if I disappear for real — the name you want is Danny Crell.
I don't want to write more than that.
But if something happens, that's the name.*
*Don't write back to this address after April.
I'll be somewhere else.*
*Love, R.*
I read it twice.
Then I looked up at Patrice.
"Who is Danny Crell?" I said.
She shook her head.
"I don't know.
I never found out.
I tried searching the name once, years ago, and nothing came up that meant anything to me."
"She said if something happens to her, that's the name."
"I know what it says."
I set the letter down flat on the table between us.
"She was frightened of someone named Danny Crell.
In 2010.
And she never contacted me again."
Patrice looked at the letter.
May you like
She didn't argue with that.
"We have to find him," I said.
