“I’m not sure what you’re saying.”
“Chances are your sister got a ton of credit card offers in the mail before she disappeared, right? So what if she actually applied for one?” He turns the card over and points to the bank’s name on the back. “Say from Bank of the USA? I bet we could sign into her account no problem since you’re her sister. All we’d need is her Social Security number, and then we’d probably just have to answer a bunch of random security questions and the answers would be things like your mom’s maiden name and other stuff you’d already know.”
“Oh,” I say. I try and force a smile.
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s a nice idea! And thanks for thinking of it!” I frown.
“You’re frowning,” he says.
“I just don’t think it’ll work.”
“Why not?”
“It’s too easy.”
“But that,” Sean looks me straight in the eye, his mouth curled into a mischievous little smile, “is exactly why it’s going to.”
Three minutes later we’re in the spare bedroom, which I think of as Nina’s room even though Mom uses it for storage and we moved here after Nina was already gone. One of the only jokes I can remember my mother making in the last few years is one she made right after we moved in. She said, “Ellie, you know you’ve really made it when you’re so rich you have an entire room for just your shoes,” and then she opened the door and tossed in a pair of discount black flats that she said pinched her feet but the store wouldn’t take back because she’d already worn them. She meant this, of course, ironically. So now this is just where we keep all the stuff that has nowhere else to go—old tax returns and report cards and a lamp that was my grandmother’s that’s too nice to throw out but too depressing to display.
“So apparently I was a top-notch user of scissors in first grade,” I say, holding up a report card. I’m crouched down on the floor behind a big, green plastic box. “But occasionally I ate the paste.” I put the card back in the box, and keep digging. Sean is crouched down next to me looking over my shoulder.
“And you’ve had all your immunizations,” he says, nodding, “which is important.” He reaches down into the box. He picks up what looks like a small blue notebook. A passport. He opens it.
I look over his shoulder. It’s Nina’s. In the photo Nina’s about the same age that I am now. Her hair is pale pink hanging just above her jawline. She’s smirking, like she has a secret. I’ve never seen this picture before.
“I guess my mom must have tossed that in there when we moved from our old house,” I say. “Nina was already gone then.”
Sean is staring at it, then looks up at me and then back down at it. He’s shaking his head slowly, his face is flushed. “You look so much alike it’s insane. You could be twins.”
I look at the picture again. “You think?”
I don’t believe him, but I’m flattered, anyway.
“You ever think about dyeing your hair like that?” He taps Nina’s picture.
“Not really,” I say.
“It’d look good I bet.” Sean shrugs and hands me the passport. “You should keep this with you.” I slip it in my back pocket. “You never know when you’ll need to make a last-minute international getaway.”
I laugh and then look back down into the box I was searching through. A little dog is staring up at me, with a curly mustache under his nose and a giant beret on top of his head. “Bijou!” I say, and I feel myself start to smile at the memory. I pick up Nina’s drawing. I haven’t thought about Bijou in a very long time.
“What’s that?”
“A picture of our old dog,” I say. “Bijou.”
Sean is looking over my shoulder, grinning. “Bijou must have had incredible balance to keep such a big hat situated so perfectly on top of his head. Most dogs can’t do that.”
“Yes,” I say. “Well, most real dogs can’t, but a few imaginary ones can.”
Sean cocks his head to the side.
“We didn’t have an actual dog,” I say. “We were never allowed to get one. But we got the very best imaginary dog ever one summer.” I pause. “Nina got him for us.”
And Sean nods as though of course this makes perfect sense. He glances back down at the stack of papers in his hands and then before I can continue he’s shouting “Yes!” and holding out a piece of paper so I can see. “Ellie, look!”
It’s a photocopy of an insurance claim form. Sean begins to read it out loud. “On October twenty-third, two thousand-four, Nina Wrigley had a regular cleaning at the dentist, a check-up, and a set of X-rays…” Sean flips the form over and points to a spot right near the top where her Social Security number is written out neatly in my mother’s serious-looking handwriting. “There it is,” he says.
I stand up, suddenly breathless. “The computer’s downstairs.”