Disappearances Read Online Free Page B

and stop obsessing about yourself and Neil Hershberger. Maybe that’s what Sadie should have done.
    There were too many big girls in the family while Anna was growing up. Somehow, she had been shorted, whether it came from Mam’s mental illness, or whether she was born with this decayed sense of her own worth. Whatever the cause, she needed help.
    “All right, Anna. Stop it. Get your fingers out of your ears. Look at me.”
    “Go away.”
    “All right, I will.”
    She walked away, closed the door firmly behind her, then heard it open and Anna calling, “Come back, Sadie.”
    “Not unless you’re chide .” (nice, normal)
    “I’ll try.”
    Sadie picked up the fabric, took it over to the window, parted the curtains and looked at it, peering closely, as if it were a foreign object.
    “You weren’t really going to make this, were you?” she asked, kindly and unaccusing.
    “’Course I was.”
    Her words were hard stones pinging against Sadie’s flinching face. Somehow that answer was a solidified thing, an assurance that Anna was no longer the harmless little girl who ate great dishes of Lucky Charms cereal. She was actually a concern, a problem to be addressed, like a broken porch step or a refrigerator that stopped working. You had to acknowledge that it needed fixing and then apply yourself, even if it put you in a state of despair. This thought swam into her consciousness, like a shark in a peaceful barrier reef.
    Softly, but firmly, Sadie addressed her sister. “Wouldn’t you be afraid? Ashamed to wear it to the hymn singing?”
    “Huh-uh!”
    “I bet you would.”
    “Hah-ah.” So pronounced, her words were almost guttural.
    “Come on, Anna. It’s way too bright. The parents would have a fit.”
    “Hah-ah.”
    “Tell you what. I’ll buy you another one if you’ll go shopping with me.”
    Anna rolled over on her back, then sat up, pulling her knees to her chin, wrapping her arms around them. Her dark hair was disheveled, a lock hanging into her large, dark eyes and the dark shadows of … what? Tiredness? Lack of good nutrition? Her eyes made her appear older, much older in fact, than her years.
    Anna said nothing and just looked at her steadily, unflinching, with a cold look Sadie could not fully perceive.
    “I want the dress I chose.” The voice was flat, the words hard as nails.
    Sadie said nothing, sighed, turned toward the dresser, picked up a small bottle of cologne, winced, gasped in shock at the words written diagonally across it. Still saying nothing, she plucked off the cap, spritzed a small amount on her wrist, rubbed it with the palm of her hand, and sniffed. “Mmm.”
    Anna’s face brightened.
    “You like it?”
    “Yes, it smells … different. Where did you buy it?”
    “Neil gave it to me.”
    The defiant note in her voice is what gave away the lie. There was an angry retort on Sadie’s tongue, but she caught herself just in time, knowing that a thick, suffocating confrontation would follow, driving a wedge of cast iron into the fragile relationship between them.
    “He did? No birthday, no nothing?” Sadie turned, her eyebrows raised, surprise in her voice. “And you’re not dating?”
    Anna came up off the bed in one movement, her face darkening as anger propelled her. Standing boldly, one thin hand on her hip, her pelvis jutted out in defiance, she clipped her words short.
    “No, we’re not dating. Which I hope you know is none of your business. If I remember correctly, you weren’t dating Mark for a very long time. Just sort of creeping around.”
    It was the sarcasm that did it. Turning, she felt the heat rise in her face, did nothing to stop it. She stepped within a foot of her sister, thrust her face close to hers, and let her words fall where they would.
    “Anna, you know Neil did not give you that cologne. You also know that you are on a dangerous road, completely obsessed with a person of … of questionable intent. You can’t do this, Anna. He doesn’t seem