“Gone where?” I asked.
My father rubbed his forehead. “She died,” he said. “Ella died. That’s all you need to know.”
I didn’t see a body. I don’t remember a funeral. No small casket. No grave.
One day I had a twin. The next, I was alone.
Her toys disappeared. Our matching clothes vanished. Her name stopped existing in our house.
For illustrative purposes only
At first, I kept asking: “Where did they find her?” “What happened?” “Did it hurt?”
My mother’s face shut down. “Stop it, Dorothy,” she’d say. “You’re hurting me.”
I wanted to scream, “I’m hurting too.” Instead, I learned to stay quiet. Talking about Ella felt like dropping a bomb in the middle of the room. So I swallowed my questions and carried them.
On the outside, I was fine. I did my homework, had friends, stayed out of trouble. Inside, there was a buzzing hole where my sister should have been.
At sixteen, I tried to fight the silence. I walked into the police station alone, palms sweating. “My twin sister disappeared when we were five,” I said. “Her name was Ella. I want to see the case file.”
