There was silence for a moment. “I’m not sure that that’s possible, but I can have someone call you.”
Claire went around and around with the representative for almost ten minutes before finally saying, “That’s all for today, thank you.”
How had the FBI gotten the results before she did? Apparently, when Claire had sent off that vial of saliva, she sent every last scrap of her privacy with it.
Claire set down her tea and went over to inspect the pile of mail, hoping to find her results. Most of it was junk – advertisements, a flyer for pizza, and coupons. Nothing from the DNA company.
There was one letter that stuck out. It had her address hand-written onto it. There was no return address, and no name.
How odd. She tore the envelope open and pulled out the paper inside. As she unfolded it, something fell out and onto the floor.
Claire frowned and knelt down to pick it up. It was a Polaroid picture, face side down. She turned it in her hand and gasped.
It was a picture of her holding a baby, seemingly from many years ago. She flipped it over and back again, looking for a date or description, but there was nothing. She stared at the face in the picture for a moment before realizing that it wasn’t her, but her twin sister Rebecca.
Claire sat down on the couch, almost missing the cushion, as her heart rate picked up.
No, there was no mistaking it. It was absolutely her twin sister. Whose baby was that? Becca had never had a baby, and she’d died in the plane crash, too. She was the reason that her family was in that plane in the first place, to pick her up from a rehab facility in the mountains.
Prior to the rehab visit, Becca had been missing for over a year. She’d gone completely off the grid, and more than once they’d worried that she was dead.
Claire shook her head. She remembered that frantic phone call from Becca, saying that she was going to run off and none of them would ever see her again unless they took her out of that place immediately.
“Tell Mom and Dad they’ve got twenty-four hours, or I’m gone forever.”
Becca was always putting pressure on their parents like that. It had annoyed Claire to no end. She was home on spring break from law school, and after relaying the threat, she freely told her parents her opinion on the matter. “You should stop giving in to her. If she wants to run away, let her run away.”
“We can’t lose her, Claire,” her mom said sternly before making a call to Claire’s older sister Holly. Her husband Rob was a pilot at an airline, and he had a friend with a small single-engine plane. He had offered to fly them all down there to talk Becca out of her tantrum…
And so it went. The weather was bad, the plane had mechanical issues, and they crashed. The girls had lost their parents and their grandparents in one moment, all in the name of saving Becca a final time.
Yet seeing this picture brought up an old, dusty paranoia from Claire’s mind. It was a nagging feeling, an intrusive thought that never gave her rest. It poked and prodded, over and over: what if Becca had survived?
Her body was never found, though neither was Claire’s mother’s. The terrain was so treacherous that rescuers had to stop searching for their own safety. It, along with a strange feeling in her chest, left just enough of a seed of doubt in Claire’s mind, though.
When was this picture taken? She flipped it over again, desperate to find a date, but there was nothing. Becca looked different. Healthier. Happy, even. She was holding the baby in her arms and half smiling in her cool way.
Still dumbfounded, Claire reached for the letter.
“Do you remember me? I would like to meet again. I will be at Mountain Lake on January 2nd at dusk. The dock near the parking lot. I hope to see you there.”
She read the letter three times before realizing that the date had already passed. She’d completely missed it!
Why hadn’t she had her mail forwarded to the hotel? Probably because Gigi would’ve thrown it right in the trash.
Her stomach dropped. Apparently, whoever this guy was, he knew where she lived. How could he know where she lived? Claire barely knew it herself!
There was a noise outside, and she nearly jumped off of the couch.
Even the most level-headed person can feel like the earth is splitting beneath their feet with the right mix of fear and bizarre occurrences. Claire could only take so much.
She grabbed her purse and bolted, running from the cracks in her world that threatened to swallow her whole.
