Grandchildren.
Regrets.
Stories the other never heard.
And, somehow, we still have time.
For nearly forty years, Laura’s disappearance was the unfinished sentence of my life.
Now I finally know how that sentence ended.
And for the first time since I was sixteen, I’m not waiting for an answer.
I’m living with the truth.
And I spent years wondering whether my sister was alive somewhere, whether she had been hurt, whether she had left willingly, or whether something terrible had happened to her.
The not knowing was the worst part.
Death, as unbearable as it is, at least gives you something definite to grieve.
Laura left us with a question mark.
I carried that question into adulthood.
Into marriage.
Neighbors walked the roads.
Police asked questions.
Our parents called relatives, hospitals, friends, anyone who might know something.
For months, every unfamiliar car slowing near the house made my heart jump.
Every phone call after dark felt important.
Every knock at the door made me run.
But eventually, the calls became less frequent.
The searches stopped.
People returned to their normal lives.
I didn’t.
Neither did my family, although we learned how to pretend.
My mother kept Laura’s room almost exactly as she had left it.
My father stopped talking about her almost entirely.
And I spent years wondering whether my sister was alive somewhere, whether she had been hurt, whether she had left willingly, or whether something terrible had happened to her.
The not knowing was the worst part.
Death, as unbearable as it is, at least gives you something definite to grieve.
Laura left us with a question mark.
I carried that question into adulthood.
Into marriage.
Into motherhood.
Then grandmotherhood.
I learned to live around it.
But I never really stopped waiting.
Even decades later, whenever I saw a woman with Laura’s hair or heard a familiar laugh in a crowded store, some part of me still turned.
Then one ordinary afternoon, my granddaughter Sophie walked into my kitchen and brought the past with her.
She was sixteen then.
Almost exactly the age Laura and I had been when everything changed.
“Grandma?”
I looked up from the counter.
Sophie was wearing a cream-colored sweater.
There was a large yellow sunflower stitched across the front.
The bowl I was holding slipped from my hands and hit the counter.
Sophie jumped.
“What?”
I couldn’t answer.
I stared at the sweater.
The cream wool.
The slightly oversized sleeves.
The sunflower.
I knew that sweater.
I had known it before Sophie was born.
Before her mother was born.
Before I had wrinkles or gray hair or grandchildren.
Laura had worn it on our sixteenth birthday.
The last night I ever saw her.
“Sophie.”
My voice barely came out.
“Where did you get that?”
She looked down at herself.
“This?”
“Yes.”
