My father cut in. “Enough,” he snapped. “Dorothy, go to your room.”
Later, they sat me down in the living room. My father stared at the floor. My mother stared at her hands. “The police found Ella,” she said.
“Where?”
“In the forest,” she whispered. “She’s gone.”
“Gone where?” I asked.
My father rubbed his forehead. “She died,” he said. “Ella died. That’s all you need to know.”
I didn’t see a body. I don’t remember a funeral. No small casket. No grave.
One day I had a twin. The next, I was alone.
Her toys disappeared. Our matching clothes vanished. Her name stopped existing in our house.
At first, I kept asking: “Where did they find her?” “What happened?” “Did it hurt?”
My mother’s face shut down. “Stop it, Dorothy,” she’d say. “You’re hurting me.”
I wanted to scream, “I’m hurting too.” Instead, I learned to stay quiet. Talking about Ella felt like dropping a bomb in the middle of the room. So I swallowed my questions and carried them.
On the outside, I was fine. I did my homework, had friends, stayed out of trouble. Inside, there was a buzzing hole where my sister should have been.
At sixteen, I tried to fight the silence. I walked into the police station alone, palms sweating. “My twin sister disappeared when we were five,” I said. “Her name was Ella. I want to see the case file.”
The officer frowned. “How old are you, sweetheart?”
“Sixteen.”
