The Night Before - Wendy Walker Page 0,12

family friend who’d come for a visit than a family member. So it also felt strange to be in her room, looking through her private things.

And yet, at the same time, she was family, and Rosie was worried the way only family can worry because of the history they shared and the things she knew. And how those things now made her feel. The mother bear protecting her cub.

Something is wrong.

It was a familiar feeling. One she’d had since she wore braids and plaid kilts and would find Laura in her room, crying under her bed where no one would see her. Or up in that tree, fear overcoming the determination that made her start climbing.

No one remembers that Rosie had gone up after her more than once, swallowing her own fear to help her sister get back down. But that was the truth.

What is the truth now, Laura? Where are you?

She shook off the apprehension and let her eyes scan the room the way they never had before. Even when she’d come to find her sister here—bringing her food, bringing Mason to jump on her bed. Seeing if she wanted to go for a walk or a drive or sneak out for a drink after Joe got home. She’d been in this room dozens of times and yet never seen it beyond Laura. It was always just a setting, a backdrop. Now, it was transformed in her absence.

She looked around carefully. There were four coffee mugs, some empty, some with remnants days old. Also three dirty dessert plates. Four water glasses. Rosie gathered them slowly, methodically piling them on the floor just outside in the hallway.

Her eyes turned next to the unmade bed. The black eyeshades that lay across a pillow. The sheets and blankets tangled from restless sleep. Dreams. Nightmares, maybe.

Does the past visit you at night, Laura? Is that why you can’t sleep?

She shook out the covers and then made the bed. Replaced the throw pillows that had fallen to the floor. Laura was everywhere in this room. Her smell. Her clothes, strewn about the pieces of furniture. A chair. A bedside table. Even the floor. They hung in the closet and draped from the shelves where they had been placed without any concern for folding. For order. And Rosie found herself straightening them as she checked the pockets, undoing the chaos in this room as though it might turn back the clock and bring Laura home safe and sound.

It was just after five-thirty when she sat at Laura’s desk. A laptop was open, its screen black. Papers and books were stacked in piles. A notepad. Pens. Writings on paper.

Rosie looked through them, slowly at first, cautiously, as though Laura might walk through the door and see her. It was ridiculous. Of course she was looking for something, anything, that might tell her where her sister had gone. If for no other reason than she had Rosie’s car and she had promised to have it back by morning.

Page after page, there was nothing but work. Notes and data about companies. She’d said she was staying on top of things. Rosie hadn’t fully believed her.

She started then with desk drawers, finding most of them empty. A stapler, but that was Joe’s, when this had been his desk. Some more pens. Paper clips. Nothing personal. Not even a checkbook.

She closed the last one and sat back in the chair, her eyes now on the computer. She placed her finger on the track pad and swirled it slowly until the screen came to life. It wasn’t locked.

She sat back then and stared at the screen, now filled with the color from a photograph.

Rosie was startled as she saw herself staring back, just ten perhaps, with Laura, who must have been eight. Beyond them, at the edge of the creek that ran behind their house, were two little boys. She knew them instantly.

One of them was Joe—strong and tan, his dark hair long, past his ears. How strange it was to see him as a boy, to be reminded that they’d been friends since birth, that they’d ever been friends like that, wild and free and young.

The other boy was Gabe, of course. He was the opposite of Joe—tall and slender, with a buzz cut. Each of them was so different, like they had been cast in a television show. Still, the four of them had been inseparable, and even though other kids came and went, they were the ones who’d