Chapter 3: Come Inside
I stepped back from the door without thinking.
Diane followed me in.
I don't remember deciding to let her.
My body just moved — back into the hallway, past the coat rack, into the kitchen — the same path I'd walked ten thousand times.
My hands found the kettle.
Filled it.
Set it on the burner.
I needed something to do with my hands or I was going to fall apart on the floor.
"Sit down," I said.
My voice didn't sound like mine.
Diane sat at the kitchen table.
She was still wearing the dress.
In my kitchen, under the overhead light, the pale blue fabric looked exactly as I remembered it.
The pearls caught the light the same way they had in the fitting room mirror twenty years ago, when Teresa had spun around laughing and said, *This is it, Mom.*
I pressed my palms flat against the counter.
"How did you find me?" I asked.
"The letter had your name.
Your full name and this address." Diane set her bag on the table carefully, like it contained something breakable.
"I searched online.
It wasn't hard to find you."
"How long have you had it?"
"Three years.
Since I bought the dress." She paused.
"I didn't open the lining right away.
I just wore it.
It fit perfectly.
I know that sounds strange."
"It doesn't," I said.
Because it didn't.
Teresa and I had always been the same height, the same narrow shoulders.
I would have fit that dress too.
The kettle began to hiss.
I poured two cups I didn't want and brought them to the table and sat down across from Diane.
Up close, the resemblance was worse.
Not just the eyes.
The shape of her jaw.
The way she held her hands in her lap, fingers loosely linked.
Teresa used to sit exactly like that at this same table, doing homework, waiting for dinner.
"You said there was something else," I said.
"Before I open the letter.
Tell me the something else first."
Diane looked down at her tea.
"I'm not sure where to start."
"Start with how you knew to come here in person.
You could have mailed the letter."
She was quiet for a moment.
"Because I needed to see your face when I told you."
My chest tightened.
"Told me what?"
Diane raised her eyes.
"I think Teresa is still alive," she said.
"And I think she's been trying to come home for a very long time."
The kitchen went completely silent.
I heard the refrigerator hum.
A car passing outside.
My own breathing.
"That's not possible," I said.
"The sheriff — the search — she was declared —"
"I know what she was declared." Diane reached into her bag and set a photograph on the table between us.
"I found this tucked behind the lining, with the letter."
I looked down.
It was a photograph of a woman.
Taken recently — the image was sharp, digital, printed on plain paper.
The woman in the photo was standing outside a diner somewhere, squinting into the sun, one hand raised to shield her eyes.
She was around forty years old.
She had Teresa's eyes.
She had Teresa's jaw.
She had the narrow shoulders I would have recognized anywhere.
My hand moved toward the photo before I could stop it.
"Where was this taken?" I whispered.
"I don't know," Diane said.
"It was inside the lining.
With the letter."
I pulled the photo closer.
The woman's other hand, the one not shielding her eyes, was resting against the diner wall.
On her wrist was a thin bracelet.
Silver.
With a small charm shaped like a bird.
I stopped breathing entirely.
I had given Teresa that bracelet the Christmas before she d*ed.
A little silver swallow, because she'd loved the poem about the swallow that always came home.
"Open the letter," Diane said quietly.
My fingers found the folded paper.
My name on the outside, in handwriting I would know in the dark, in a dream, in the last moment of my life.
I unfolded it.
The date at the top made my vision blur.
It had been written eight months ago.
*Mom,* it began.
*If you're reading this, then Diane found you.
And if Diane found you, then I'm running out of time.*
I looked up at Diane.
Her expression told me she already knew what the letter said.
"Who are you?" I asked again.
Not the same question as before.
A different one entirely.
Diane folded her hands on the table.
May you like
"Teresa is my sister," she said.
"And the people who took her twenty years ago — they know she's been trying to reach you."
