Chapter 3: Ten Years of Silence
I didn't ask questions in the car.
Clara sat in the passenger seat with her hands pressed flat against her thighs, watching the side mirror the entire drive.
She only spoke once, to tell me to take the long way.
I didn't know what that meant, but I did it.
When we got to my apartment, she stood in the doorway and looked around the way people do when they're checking for exits.
"Sit down," I said.
She sat.
I put a glass of water on the coffee table between us and stayed standing.
My legs didn't feel steady enough to fold.
"Start from the beginning," I said.
"The crash.
The night it happened."
Clara wrapped both hands around the glass.
She didn't drink from it.
"The crash was real," she said.
"I was in the car.
I went off the embankment.
I'm not going to pretend that part didn't happen."
"Then what?
You just walked away?"
"I was pulled out." Her voice was flat.
"Before the fire reached the car.
Someone pulled me out."
I stared at her.
"Who?"
She looked at the table.
"His name was Daniel Marsh."
The name meant nothing to me.
I said so.
"He wouldn't mean anything to you," Clara said.
"He was someone I'd gotten involved with.
Before the accident.
Someone I was trying to leave."
"Trying to leave how?"
She finally looked up.
"He wasn't the kind of person you leave cleanly, Sarah.
He had money.
He had connections.
And he had things on me — things I'd done when I was young and stupid and thought I was in love." She paused.
"When the car went off the road, I think part of me thought it was over.
That it was finally finished."
"But he pulled you out."
"He was following me that night.
He saw it happen." She pressed her lips together.
"He pulled me out, and then he told me what would happen if I ever went back.
To my life.
To my name.
To you."
The room was very quiet.
"He threatened you into disappearing," I said.
"He told me he would go to the police with what he had on me.
Old things.
Things that would have put me in prison." Her voice cracked slightly on the last word.
"And then he said if that wasn't enough motivation, he knew where you lived."
My chest went cold.
"He threatened me."
"He described your apartment," Clara said.
"The one you had back then.
He knew the street.
He knew your schedule." She shook her head.
"I believed him.
I had every reason to believe him."
"So you let us bury you."
She didn't answer.
She didn't need to.
I sat down on the arm of the couch because my legs finally gave out.
I looked at my sister — alive, ten years older, sitting three feet away from me — and I didn't know whether to reach for her or walk out of my own apartment.
"Where have you been?" I asked.
"All this time."
"Different places.
I changed my name twice.
I worked cash jobs.
I stayed away from anything that could be traced." She looked at her hands.
"I got good at being invisible."
"And Daniel Marsh?"
"He checked in.
Not often.
But enough to remind me he was still there." She paused.
"Until about eight months ago.
I stopped hearing from him.
I waited.
I kept waiting.
And then I started to think — maybe something had changed.
Maybe I could finally—" Her voice broke.
"I just wanted to go to a dentist, Sarah.
I just wanted to live like a normal person for one day."
I looked at the window she'd been watching through the whole drive.
"What did you see?" I asked.
"At the clinic.
In the parking lot."
Clara set the glass down very carefully.
"A car," she said.
"Parked across the street.
It was there when I arrived.
It was still there when you walked in." She met my eyes.
"It's the same model he always drove."
The silence stretched between us like something about to snap.
"Clara," I said slowly.
"Does Daniel Marsh know you're in this city?"
She opened her mouth.
Closed it.
Her phone — the cheap prepaid one she'd pulled from her jacket — lit up on the table between us.
May you like
Unknown number.
Neither of us moved to answer it.
