The handwriting on the first page was Sophie’s. Smaller and tighter than her usual style, the way people write when they are trying to take up as little space as possible. I turned to the opening entry.
“Dear Maya, Mom still leaves your toothbrush out. I don’t think she’s noticed mine needed replacing.”
I read the line twice. A third time.
I reached for my phone.
The dispatcher answered on the second ring.
“Mom still leaves your toothbrush out.”
***
“My name is Jennifer,” I said. “I need someone to come to my house. I found something in my daughter’s room. My other daughter. The one who came home.”
I gave the address. I set the phone face down on the carpet.
Sophie stood in the doorway. She hadn’t moved.
“Read the next line,” she said softly.
I wish I had stopped.
“I found something in my daughter’s room.”
I turned back to the notebook. My hands were not entirely steady.
The second entry was dated three weeks after she came home from camp.
“Dear Maya, everybody keeps asking if I remember anything from the lake. Nobody asks how I am.”
The notebook entries kept getting worse.
“Nobody asks how I am.”
***
The third entry was from October.
“Dear Maya, I got an A on my science exam today. Mrs. Ellison gave me extra credit. Nobody asked if you would have gotten one too. It was getting harder to breathe.”
I turned to a page near the middle. The handwriting had grown smaller, more compressed, as if Sophie had been trying to fit too many feelings into too small a space.
“It was getting harder to breathe.”
“Dear Maya, I think Mom is disappearing too. She washed your hoodie again today. She called the camp director again today. She drove past the search site again. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to tell her that I need her to come back.”
I closed the notebook.
I picked up the bundle of envelopes instead.
I opened the top one. The paper inside was covered front and back in Sophie’s handwriting, pressed hard into the page; the pen strokes deep and certain.
“I think Mom is disappearing too.”
“Dear Officers, My name is Sophie. I’m 12 years old. My twin sister, Maya, went missing from Pinewood Summer Camp 14 months ago. I’m writing because I need to know you haven’t stopped looking. Please write back. Please tell me you haven’t stopped.”
The letter had never been mailed.
None of them had.
***NEXT PAGE
