The Butterfly Sister (4 page)

“—No one will find out.”

“We need to be discreet.”

“I won't tell a soul,” I vowed.

He kissed me again, this time harder and deeper. A promise.

We said good-bye, and I walked back to my dorm room numb to the autumn evening chill, my mind floating, my thigh still warm from his touch, my lips fat and tingling. Heidi was still awake when I opened the door.

“Finally,” she said, leaping from her bed. “I was about to put out an APB. Where the hell were you?”

I immediately stood behind my dresser and began changing. “Oh . . . I was studying. My thesis.” I winced when I realized I'd left my backpack in Mark's Jeep. Would she notice I didn't have it?

“The library closes at ten,” she said, peeking around the corner of my dresser, oblivious that I was standing in my bra. We always undressed in front of each other.

I finally made eye contact. “I went to the diner.”

“I was starving,” she cried. “I would have gone with you.”

“Sorry, but I thought it would be fun to go by myself.” I grabbed my pajamas from the dresser drawer. “You know, be that mysterious woman alone in the corner booth.”

Heidi shook her head at me in jest. “You are
such
a nerdy English major.”

“Are you still working on something?” I asked.

“Unfortunately.” She sighed. “Are you going to stay up too?”

I knew I would be awake most of the night, energized by the ball of frenzy in my chest, recounting every moment of the evening, every look, every touch, every confession, but I told Heidi I was beat, hoping she wouldn't notice the change in my bedtime ritual. I couldn't bear to wash my face or brush my teeth, for fear of losing Mark's scent, the tang on my lips.

I kissed Mark Suter,
I imagined telling my best friend as I got into bed.

And he tasted like a man
.

December Diary One

December

Sometimes I wonder about Mark's parents, if I should blame them for what happened. Not his father for abandonment, and not his mother for neglect, but both of them, equally, for the mere genetic timing of his conception. Had they conceived him on a different day, in a different hour, at a different minute, perhaps his eyes would not have been so blue. Perhaps they would have been a murky brown, or a mossy green, and not that gleaming magnetic sapphire.

I fell in love with Mark with a childlike innocence, as if I saw a buoyant red balloon and followed it, grasping for the string, farther and farther beyond home, until at last I held it in my hand a moment before I plummeted into the depths of a neighbor's backyard swimming pool. And even as I thrashed and choked, I held on to that balloon, believing it would lift me out of the water and into the sky, into the promise of the horizon.

At what point was there no turning back? Was it when he first touched me, the electric sensation of his skin on my skin? Or when we first kissed, the smell of his breath that lingered long after we embraced?

No. No.

It was earlier, the first time I looked into his eyes.

Those blue eyes were the end of me.

Chapter 3

T
he night I found out Beth Richards was missing, nothing—not even my mother's warm honey almond milk—coaxed me to sleep. I lay awake brainstorming scenarios in which Beth Richards could be missing but still alive.

She had amnesia.

She was trapped at the bottom of a well.

She ran away to marry her first cousin.

What bothered me most was that I could not conjure Beth, not vividly. I couldn't recall details other than her blond hair and striking height, and her face remained a blur in my mind, like that of a fabric doll whose eyes, nose, and mouth were removed by a puppy appropriately named Chewy. If I had kept any memorabilia from Tarble, like my yearbooks, I could have looked her up.

It was only natural to belabor Beth's whereabouts—she was a missing person, a girl I knew, a girl my age—but there was another reason for my incessant thoughts. Pondering Beth's disappearance provided a respite from things I didn't want to think about, the memories that had flooded my mind upon reading the first sentence of
A Room of One's Own
:

Tarble. My father. My thesis. New Orleans.

Mark.

The biggest consequence of my insomnia, not counting a migraine headache, was that I arrived forty-five minutes late to work Monday morning. Unlike the staff reporters at the
Chronicle
—who came and went at odd hours to attend school board meetings or chase after incidents announced via police scanner—I actually kept a regular schedule as obituary coordinator. Technically, I was supposed to be at work by 8:00
A.M.
, but I'd been able to manipulate my start time by a good half hour. Georgene, the editorial assistant, was guardian of the office door, and I'd soon learned to bribe her with Starbucks—a white-lidded, seasonal coffee concoction with foam spilling out of the drink hole, set on the edge of her desk with a smile. Georgene usually kept her eyes on the treat, not the clock. But that morning, the morning after Beth's suitcase arrived, she hardly looked at her pumpkin spice latte or the slice of pumpkin loaf I'd added to sweeten the deal.

“What's going on, Ruby?” Georgene barely opened her mouth. I saw only her bottom teeth, speckled fuchsia from her lipstick.

“I overslept.” I nudged the wax paper pastry bag toward her. “Why are you whispering?”

“The police are here to see you.”

It was not so much what she said, but how she said it.
The police
. I imagined an entire squad of black uniforms around the corner, guns cocked, ready to fire at my next erratic move.

“Me?”

A solemn nod and a
follow me
gesture later, Georgene darted down the hall toward the break room. Obviously, this was what she'd been ordered to do: deliver me to the police at once.

Through the break room doorway, I saw a man of Cro-Magnon size, with dark eyes and a matching three-piece set of bushy black: hair, mustache, and eyebrows. He wore a black trench coat, and under that, a white shirt and red-and-gray-striped tie. With mammoth, broad shoulders, he stood motionless. His face was equally still; it conveyed nothing.

“Here she is,” Georgene said, shoving me through the doorway. My brown boots, and drips of coffee from my to-go cup, both spilled onto the shiny linoleum.

His dark eyes narrowed at the sight of me. “Ruby Rousseau?”

I looked to Georgene for moral support, but she was already halfway back to her desk. I willed that slice of pumpkin loaf to turn dry and stale.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“Detective Steve Pickens of the Milwaukee Police Department.” He put just enough space between his words to convey authority. He flapped open a black wallet before me, revealing a gold badge. “Are you Ruby Rousseau?”

“What is this about?” I could see the detective's upper lip twitch at the corner. He was annoyed. “Beth's suitcase,” I said after a moment, answering my own question.

He seemed to study me, perhaps taking in my greasy hair. I had chosen coffee over a shower that morning.

“You realize that suitcase, belonging to Ms. Richards, is evidence in a missing persons case?” he asked.

“No. I mean, yes, I thought . . .” I swallowed saliva mixed with air. “Beth's mom insisted she come get it, and so I offered . . .”

“—Take a deep breath, Ms. Rousseau.”

I followed his orders, but paranoia took over, and I wondered if the man was an imposter, if he was simply pretending to be a cop, with a stereotypical mustache and trench coat he'd copied from reruns of
Murder, She Wrote
. Perhaps he was the same man who had abducted Beth. He had already murdered her mother, and now he was coming for me.

“Can I see your badge again?” I asked.

He handed me the black leather wallet, and I inspected the shiny gold inside. It looked real. I noticed a thin, silver band on his ring finger. I wanted to ask him how he knew where I worked, until I remembered what he did for a living.

“Where's the suitcase?” he asked.

“In my trunk. I was going to drive to Milwaukee after work.”

“I'll be taking it with me.” He eyed my Starbucks cup and the spill on the floor. “For the record, I did go to your home first. You weren't there.”

I wiped the coffee spill up with a paper towel. “I needed the caffeine,” I explained. “I was up half the night.”

“What disturbed your sleep?”

“I just found out a girl I knew is missing, Detective. Does that not warrant insomnia?”

“You said
knew
instead of
know,
Ms. Rousseau. Does that mean you haven't been in contact with Ms. Richards as of late?” He adjusted his massive body into one of the break room's plastic bucket chairs and invited me to do the same with a wave of his hand. “Phone calls? E-mails? Texts?”

Because journalists like reading the competition, picked-apart sections of the
Tribune
and
Sun-Times
littered our break room table. I started sorting them to steady my nerves, but the detective placed a fat hand on top of mine and shook his head in disapproval.

“I haven't talked to Beth since I borrowed the suitcase,” I clarified. “That was in December of last year. Almost ten months ago.”

He scribbled something in his notepad.

“What happened to her, Detective?”

“That's what we're trying to figure out.”

“No, I mean, when was the last time anyone saw her? Because I tried looking it up online in the Milwaukee newspapers. I didn't find anything. I was surprised. A young, beautiful girl goes missing, and it isn't splattered all over the news?”

“The details of Ms. Richards's case are being withheld at this time.” He stared at me, long and hard like Superman using X-ray vision, then said, “You're sure you haven't spoken to Ms. Richards recently? Chatted with her on Facebook? Twitter? FaceTime?”

I nodded. I was sure. I had wanted nothing to do with Tarble College or its affiliates.

“Mrs. Richards said you graduated from Tarble with her daughter,” he said.

“We were in the same graduating class,” I corrected.

“And what was the nature of your relationship?”

“We were acquaintances.”

“And yet you borrowed her suitcase?”

“It's a small school, Detective. We lived on the same floor,” I explained.

Just then, I caught sight of my boss, managing editor Craig Hewitt, as he walked past the half-open break room door. I checked the wall clock. It was past nine. I was going to get fired.

“We had mutual friends,” I added. “But we didn't hang out or anything.”

“How would you describe Beth Richards?”

“Pretty. Nice. I think she majored in some sort of science?”

“Have you been in contact with any other classmates from Tarble?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

Mark's face came into focus then—his discerning blue eyes, chiseled jawline—so vivid compared to my halfhearted memory of Beth. I started playing with the plastic lid of my coffee cup, but when it squeaked, I stopped.

“I don't know,” I said. “Life goes on, I guess.”

“Have you been back to campus since you graduated?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“No reason,” I said. “Work. Life. Stuff.”

“Stuff?”

“I don't know,” I snapped. “Why do I feel like I'm a suspect here?”

“Are you a suspect?”

“You tell me, Detective.”

“Look at it from my point of view, Ms. Rousseau. I get a call from Mrs. Richards saying some girl in Illinois has Beth's suitcase, a suitcase she took on a trip during which she disappeared. It's suspicious. Can you give me that?”

“But it was the tag. See, I wrote my name on the tag. And I guess Beth didn't notice and didn't change it. The airline thought it was mine and sent it to me.”

“I believe you.”

“You do?”

“But I still have to do my job.”

“But I don't . . .” My voice cracked. “I don't know anything else.”

We played a game of stare down and I lost, my eyes diverting to my lap. I looked up in time to see the wrinkles around his eyes soften.

“Here's what I can tell you,” he said. “Ms. Richards flew to Pittsburgh Friday evening to attend a weekend photography workshop. The airline confirmed she was on the plane. However, no one has had contact with her since before she boarded. No cell phone calls. No credit card purchases. No trace of her.”

I let the information sink in. “Did you track her cell phone?”

The detective let out a grunt. “Let me guess, you watch
CSI
? Yes, we can track a cell phone, but only if the phone is turned on. Any call to Ms. Richards goes straight to voice mail. The phone's dead, has been turned off or was discarded. Do you have any other investigation suggestions for me?”

I shook my head no.

Detective Pickens stood then, reached into the pocket of his coat, and handed me a business card. “If you think of anything else, please give me a call,” he said. “I'm on the case in cooperation with the Pittsburgh PD.”

I stood too. “What about the suitcase?”

“Of course,” he said. “The suitcase.”

He escorted me past the front desk, past Georgene's perked ears and peripheral stare, and through the parking lot to my Corolla. I noticed a black sedan with tinted windows parked a few cars down from mine and realized it was his. I hadn't noticed it on my way in. I opened my trunk, and he hoisted the suitcase with an out-of-shape huff. Immediately, he inspected the tags, just as my mother and I had.

“The delivery service brought it yesterday?” he asked.

“Around six o'clock,” I said, fishing the business card from the delivery woman out of my pocket and handing it to him.

“Did you look inside?”

I cringed. “Yes, but we put everything back the way it was.” I shut the trunk to avoid his stare. “I hope there's something in there that helps.”

He unzipped the bag, looked inside, and zipped it again.

“Do you think Beth is alive?” I asked.

His eyes went dead. Cold. Apathetic. “Do you know how many active missing persons cases exist in this country? Close to one hundred thousand.”

“What does that mean?”

“Ms. Rousseau, I've been working missing persons for twenty years now, okay? We never find some of the people we're looking for. And the ones we do find are . . .”

“—Are what?”

He paused. “Do I really need to spell it out for you? You write obituaries, after all.”

I
had just booted up my computer when I felt a warmth behind me, heard a man clear his throat. I swiveled my chair to see Craig Hewitt standing at the entrance of my cubicle, resting an elbow on the partition. I diverted my eyes to the stack of faxes in his hand, willing my boss not to fire me.

“Busy day for the dead,” he said, handing me the papers, still warm from the fax.

I flipped through the info sheets the funeral directors had sent. Georgene usually brought them to me, not Craig.

“Did you know I started out in obits?” he asked, twirling a black Bic between his fingers like a baton. “They say it's the best way to learn newspaper style.”

I nodded but kept my eyes on the faxes.

“Here's a fun fact,” he continued. “Did you know that more people die in the month of January than in any other month?”

I shook my head no.

“And the least number of deaths occur in August,” he went on. “Murders generally happen on Sundays and suicides on Wednesdays, not Mondays as previously thought.”

I thought back to that cold, December evening. Yes, it had been a Wednesday.

“That's all very interesting,” I said.

“Useless knowledge.” He paused. “Ruby? Can I see you in my office?”

“Is this about the police?”
The police
. I said it just as Georgene had.