My Sister Life

Excerpt from Chapter 1 WILMINGTON, DEL. My sister Karen disappeared when she was fourteen years old. The Wilmington Journal ran a photograph of Karen with the word runaway? beneath her face. The next day they ran the same picture. The caption asked, dead or alive? I was twelve years old. Karen told me, "I'm going to the corner, want anything? You want your Teaberry gum? Do you want a Hearn's cake?" I sat at the kitchen table, writing five sheets of detention homework. My sister was dressed up, wearing smoky nylons and low heels that shifted her posture forward. Her lipstick was frosted salmon-pink. Her matte powder erased her features. "I don't have money for sweets," I told her, fishing. Karen said, "I've only got a dollar. That's not enough for both of us." "Forget it," I said. "I'm going to the store," Karen said again. She pinched the doorknob for a long time, I thought, before turning it. I saw the kitchen clock above her head; its second hand had become bent. As it circled the numbers, the needle scratched a silver gouge in the clock's white face. Then my sister went out. When Karen hadn't returned after forty-eight hours, the Penny Hill police recognized that it wasn't a typical pout session or simple teen whimsy. Federal investigators were directed to our street. My father, Ray, laid out some of Karen's report cards with the teachers' comments. The FBI agent picked up one yellow booklet and read the teacher's remarks, "Karen is an agreeable student but too retiring. She should be encouraged to participate in class discussions." "This says your daughter is the shy type?" "She's quiet," Ray said. "These shy kids don't usually take off. But sometimes a wallflower turns into a wild seed," the agent said. Ray didn't like what the agent was suggesting, and he asked me to leave the room. I wasn't reluctant to leave because I could hear everything the agent said by standing inside the dining room chimney. Inside the mortared shaft, their conversation was amplified. I heard my mother sniffling. She ripped a tissue from its hollow box, and another. Veronica was giving a performance. The agent asked about our two older stepsiblings, each of them married and living on their own. Had Karen ever confided in one of them and run off to one of their homes? "It wouldn't be an option," Veronica said. Veronica was painting an icy picture of our family's splintered relations; she was implying that when people jump ship, it's every man for himself. The FBI agent asked, "Does Karen have a nickname she goes by?" "'Peaches,'" Ray said. "Oh, please," Veronica said. "Only Ray called her that." "That's right, I call her 'Peaches,'" Ray told the agent. The FBI man asked, "Was your daughter a virgin?" Veronica asked Ray, "What's your guess?" Her voice had an edge. "These days, I don't know," my father said, and the FBI agent chimed in with his similar beliefs. "These days," he echoed Ray. The agent was careful to indict the age and not the girl herself. He wanted a list of Karen's boyfriends. "Karen didn't have any boyfriends," Veronica said flatly. "None? Are we sure?" Ray said. "If she had had any boyfriends, do you think she'd have been so gloomy all the time?" "Love is strange," the FBI man said. There was a tight silence. "In fact, if your daughter acted gloomy, that's a good sign she was in over her head," the agent told my parents. I was asked to return to the room to relate the details of Karen's departure. "What did Karen tell you?" the agent asked. I told the agent what my sister had saiFlook, Maria is the author of 'My Sister Life', published 1999 under ISBN 9780609000083 and ISBN 060900008X.