“These are fine,” Sarah said quickly. But Mom headed up the stairs to Sarah’s room, talking to herself. I looked over at Sarah and realized it was the first moment we had been alone together since yesterday, since she’d come home. The first time in four years. I found it hard to take my eyes off her face: sharp, pointy angles I didn’t recognize as “Sarah” yet. I waited for her to speak, to say my name the way she used to, drawn out, like when she was angry with me. So, Nee-co . . .
But she didn’t say anything, instead she seemed totally focused on eating her bagel as quickly as possible, like someone might come and snatch it away from her.
“You, uh, sleep okay?” I asked, breaking the awkward silence, then felt stupid. That was a question for a guest, not for your sister. And also, how could she sleep? She had a back covered in cigarette burns and didn’t know where she had been for four years—no one with a past like that could possibly close their eyes and feel safe ever again.
“Yeah,” she said quietly. She looked up at me with an open expression on her face that I didn’t recognize at all. “But I’d kill for some coffee—do you guys have any?”
You guys.
“I think Mom might have some around.” I stood up to check the cabinets. “You know, when Gram comes she likes it.” I found instant coffee and held it out to her, raising my eyebrows.
“Better than nothing.” She smiled. “They’ll have some real stuff at the station—you know how cops love their coffee.”
She picked up a second bagel and I put the kettle on the stove, wondering how Sarah knew that cops loved coffee. Mom had offered it to the detectives yesterday.
Mom came back in with an armful of clothes. “Maybe this?” She held up a black dress, but Sarah just shook her head. “This?” She showed us a tailored wool jacket. “At least cover your feet, it’s chilly out.” She put a pair of leather ballet flats beside Sarah. “Why is the stove on?”
“I’m making some coffee, for Sarah,” I said, and Mom looked over at me quizzically. I watched as Sarah slipped off her flip-flops and put her feet into the flats, or tried to. They were too small, and she pulled at the back to try and cram her toes in.
The doorbell sounded and Mom left the kitchen to get the door just as Sarah stood up. I brought her the coffee mug. “Those fit okay?” I asked, motioning down to the shoes. The front was crammed with her toes, shoved in like one of Cinderella’s stepsisters’.
“They’re a little tight,” she admitted. “You know, if you don’t wear leather shoes for a while, sometimes they shrink up.”
“I’ll grab you a pair of mine—hold on,” I told her. I could hear Mom talking to the detectives on the porch as I raced up the stairs. I wore a size 8 now; Sarah had been a size 7 before. I walked by Sarah’s room, and stood outside the closed door for a moment. Should I grab another pair from her closet for her? Maybe she was right about them shrinking. A minute later, I came down with a pair of flats from my own closet.
Sarah took them gratefully and pulled them on fast, swigging coffee from the mug in front of her—black, no sugar. “These are perfect. Here goes nothing, huh?” She smiled at me as she headed for the door.
Mom had convinced the detectives to let Dad accompany Sarah, so we watched from the front yard as they drove off all together in an unmarked police car. I learned to recognize these cars early on after Sarah’s disappearance, when they were parked outside our house most days: dark blue or black Ford four-door sedans with no registration sticker on the plates.
“I almost don’t want to let her out of my sight, you know?” Mom admitted. She wrapped her arms around herself and looked on the verge of tears.
I knew how she felt. The night before, I had been tempted to steal into Sarah’s room, just to look at her asleep, just to check that there was a real girl in Sarah’s bed.
“You know, her shoes—” I started to say, then stopped myself.
“What about her shoes?” Mom asked.
“Nothing, just that they don’t fit anymore.” I kicked the frosty dew off some blades of grass as we went back up the walk to the house.
“I was thinking that we need to take her shopping. I’m sure all her old stuff doesn’t fit, and frankly I don’t want to see her in any of those clothes. It would be like seeing a ghost.”
I thought of Sarah’s beautiful clothes—a closet full, untouched, unworn, the clothes I had once coveted. The clothes that Mom had preserved for the past four years, hanging neatly in her closet, the room kept just as it had been when Sarah was fifteen, waiting for her. Now it was all out of style, wouldn’t fit, wouldn’t work for the Sarah who had come back to us.