Dead Ringer

2

She was much too young and casually dressed to make me suspect a thing—tight black ringlets, baby-smooth face, plain white cotton t-shirt, ripped jeans. I didn't think much of the crunching tires and muted click of the car door behind me, but the stiff flip-flops on her feet gave away her approach, so that I wasn't surprised when she spoke from right behind me.

"Lost?"

My eyes roamed the horizon. "Maybe."

"Maybe I can help."

I stayed quiet. I didn't mean the kind of lost that could be solved with an atlas or Google Maps.

"Where you headed?"

I finally turned, though my head took an extra moment to follow my body. My gaze lingered on the horizon, as if I could see Boston rising out of the sky ahead, taking form, explaining itself. When I finally met her eyes, I hesitated, but she was waiting for an answer.

So I sighed and said, "Home." It was the truth. I just had to find it first.

We studied each other for a second, two lonely women standing in a parking lot beside a unisex bathroom as interstate traffic roared by a few feet away.

"I need you," she said.

For a moment I didn't question it. To be needed—that was something I never thought I'd feel again. It tugged at me in a way that nothing else had for a long time. For a heartbeat, I had a purpose. Maybe it was in a stranger's arms, and maybe I didn't care.

But my therapist's voice echoed in my head. "Drugs. Reckless sex. Risky behaviors to fill the numbness you feel. They will tempt you. Be vigilant. Be ready. Fight back."

I shoved my hands into my pockets, settling my weight back, leaning away as I looked her over from head to toe. "Who are you?"

"Forgive me." She dug around in her pocket for a moment, then pulled out a leather wallet. As she held it up, it flipped open, and all I saw were those three bold, blue letters.

FBI.

"Clarissa Parker," she added.

"What do you want with me?"

She shifted, snapping her credentials closed and stowing them back out of my sight. "Your sister."

Everything closed off. My throat, my heart, my lungs. I couldn't breathe, couldn't speak, couldn't be as I stared at the place where those three shiny letters had been and connected them with her words.

Your sister.

I wished she'd propositioned me. I wondered if she knew I wouldn't have said no. I was that desperate, for anything. Anything but this.

"She's dead."

The words rang sharp between us. She probably thought it was a reflex, a defense, something in response to her, but that wasn't it. I had been repeating those words ever since I'd been released, trying to make them feel real. Trying to make them tangible in a way that Matilda no longer was. It was like waiting for a promise to come true. It never did.

"I know." Agent Clarissa Parker flexed her toes, the heel of her flip-flop separating from the sole of her foot. She slapped it back into place and studied me. "That's what I wanted to talk to you about."

She turned, like she already knew I would follow, but I stood dumbstruck beside my car as her footsteps crunched on the smattering of gravel.

"She killed herself," I said when she was already halfway back to her ride. "What does the FBI want with a suicide?"