The Secret Sister by M. DeLuca (leveled readers txt) 📗

“Busiest time in teaching,” I said. “New beginnings and all that. Well, you’d know about that, wouldn’t you? I mean…”

His brows knit as I blathered on, terrified to allow even one moment of silence between us. I was still mumbling about something inane like putting up inspirational posters on classroom walls when he checked his watch, stepped out onto the road and glanced down the street. “He’s late.”

“You expecting someone?”

He nodded as a familiar silver SUV approached, swishing to a halt beside us.

“You’ll have to excuse me now, Anna. My ride’s here,” he said, opening the passenger door. Karrass’s silver head craned forward to look at me. Past and present collided. I staggered backwards on the sidewalk as the car swished away.

It took me a few seconds to realize they were gone. Leaving me in the terrible present. Me, Anna. Teacher. Educational researcher. Respectable woman. Beloved wife of Guy Franzen, son of a monster.

I glanced up at Gord’s office. The windows were dark except for one that glowed with a night security light. It was as good a time as any to take a look inside his inner sanctum up on the penthouse floor. After all, I’d waited a long time for this moment. But my insides coiled in on themselves at the thought of the task ahead. I checked the street in both directions. It was dark, deserted. Guy was in class. I had at least three hours to kill and I was ready.

The day after Duluth, I hid Birdie’s pictures somewhere safe. Dennis kept calling me but I ignored him. I’d done without him for so long I didn’t know how to be around him again. Better to let him stay in my memory like he’d always been. Didn’t want to spoil it by seeing some broken-down old train-wreck of a man. Besides I hadn’t found Birdie yet. Couldn’t explain how hard I’d tried for so many years to cling to her, protect her – the princess wearing the crown. I saw her now in every kid that walked through my classroom door. Broken down, hungry, rejected, tattooed, pierced, scarred, angry. I tried to save them all, but none of them were Birdie.

I ignored him for three, maybe four years. Until the phone call came. The call I’d waited for but dreaded.

Linda Martin, her voice echoing from the other end of an infinite tunnel.

“Anna?”

“Yes. It’s me.”

I took the call in the staffroom, a cup of stale coffee in my hand. The sun shone through the barred window and a robin perched on the tree branch. Nice. Normal. Happy springtime. Tweet, tweet.

“You still there, Anna?”

“What’s up?”

“I have news.”

“Is it Birdie?”

“I need to see you.”

“Did you find her?”

Tweet, tweet. Why doesn’t it goddamn shut up? It’s messing with my head.

“I’m coming there to see you.”

“Tell me. Tell me now.”

“I’m on the way.”

But she couldn’t tell me because she didn’t find me there. I left so I didn’t have to see her lumpy, saggy ass under the faded Gap jeans. I shut myself in my apartment kitchen and wouldn’t open the door so she came around to the side door. A uniformed cop was with her. She let herself in. I couldn’t hear because I pressed my hands to my ears and backed away from them.

“We found her body, Anna.”

A weird sound like a child’s wailing came from my mouth. I slid down the wall to the floor and sat there rocking back and forth. Linda squatted down, put her arm around me and held me.

“Rachel Levine’s coming in from the country. She’ll be here soon. Don’t worry.”

All I could say was Rachel, Rachel.

I sat like that for maybe two hours until Rachel showed up and put her soft arms around me. She was the one who took me to the cop station, who held me up when my legs buckled under me after they showed me Birdie’s green ring and her little denim jacket and asked me if they were hers. She was the one who cradled me like a baby when the sweet-faced cop with the photo on his desk of a toddler in overalls, explained that dental records helped identify a decomposed body found buried on a farm outside Duluth as Birdie’s.

Birdie’s was the sixth body unearthed in a nightmare harvest of missing women at the home of Arliss Stroud. He was a local handyman and carpenter who’d hung many a door and framed numerous barns for people in the neighborhood. Seemed he made a whole lot of trips to Duluth in his spare time and rarely came back alone.

It was all over as quickly as that. My search. Finished.

Half of me was finally gone.

Forever.

I was off work for a year after that.

A good part of it was spent in a hospital where I slept all day and gazed out of the window at night trying to think of nothing. Pills dulled the edge of feeling until I was ready to come home. After that I endured six months of therapy. Long days made bearable by many trips to the mall. Always the mall. The scent of cleanliness, the sparkle of lights and nice things. Guaranteed to take the sting of pain away.

Robin welcomed me back like the father I never had and the very next day I called Guy Franzen’s colleague, Brian. I’d already vowed to hunt down the bastard who ruined Birdie. But I decided to do it through his precious son, Guy.

44

Gord’s office reeked of Axe. The sweet, flowery stink reminded me of a funeral home.

I flipped his laptop open. Careless and arrogant, he’d left a screen saver without password protection, so it was easy enough to open the history and find the chat rooms. I took out Birdie’s note from my purse. The one that came with the envelope of photographs. I never could figure out what she meant by ToXicBoy and the string of numbers listed on the torn-edged scrap of paper. But I had a hunch. I typed