Chapter 3

Sophie's phone rang, and her mother's name lit up the screen.

"Mom?"

"Sophie." Her mother's voice was wrong. Too fast, too thin, like she was holding her breath between words. "Is Clara with you?"

Sophie sat up straight, the essay she'd been half-writing forgotten on the screen in front of her. "What? No. Why would she be with me?"

"She's not answering her phone. She's been in her room all afternoon. She said she wanted to rest; she does that some days, but I just went up to check on her, and she's gone. Her bag's gone too."

"Maybe she just went for a walk," Sophie said it quickly, the way you say something you need to be true. "To clear her head."

"It's been four hours." Her mother's voice cracked on the last word. "Sophie, I can't find her medication bottle. I don't know if she took it with her or if she left without it."

The floor of Sophie's stomach dropped out.

"Call the police," Sophie said, already on her feet, already reaching for her jacket without quite deciding to. "Mom. Call them right now."

"Your father already did." A breath, unsteady. "They're saying she might have just left on her own. That it happens, with kids her age, that she'll probably turn up somewhere…"

"Clara wouldn't disappear without her medication or without making sure someone knew she was safe." Sophie's voice came out sharper than she meant it to. "You know that. She's careful about that stuff. She has to be."

"Did she tell you anything?" Her mother's question came out sharp too, almost accusing, then softened just as fast, like she'd heard herself say it. "I'm sorry. I just—did she say anything to you? Before you two stopped talking? Anything at all?"

Sophie opened her mouth to say no.

Then she heard it again, the way she'd heard it every night for three weeks without letting herself think about it. Clara's voice, cracking through the hallway as Sophie walked away, the door already half-shut between them.

Sophie, please—don't—

Don't what?

She had never let herself finish that sentence. She wasn't sure she could finish it now.

"No," Sophie said.

"Please come home. Please. I need you here."

"I'm coming."

Sophie hung up and sat on the edge of her bed for a moment, phone still in her hand, not moving. Four hours. Clara had been gone four hours, and everyone in that house had simply assumed she was resting, the way they always did when Clara said she needed to be alone.

Her phone buzzed.

Not a call. A text. From Clara.

Sophie's whole body went still. She unlocked the phone with hands that weren't quite steady.

I didn't steal Ethan because I loved him.

Sophie read it twice before her brain caught up to what it was looking at.

A second message came in right behind it.

I kissed him because I needed you to leave him.

"What," Sophie whispered, to no one, to the empty room.

A third message.

He wasn't dating you because he loved you, Sophie. He was looking for something.

Sophie's thumb hovered over the keyboard. Her heart was pounding so hard she could feel it in her throat, in her ears, everywhere at once. She typed as fast as she could.

Clara, where are you? Are you okay? Please answer me.

She hit send.

The message didn't go through.

She tried calling. It rang once, barely a full ring, and then went dead, the line cutting out like the phone on the other end had simply been switched off.

"No. No, no, no…" Sophie opened the conversation again, needing to see the words, needing them to still be there.

The messages were gone. The thread showed no sign that Clara had ever contacted her at all—no timestamp, no gray bubble, nothing. Just the last conversation from three weeks ago, sitting untouched, like the last few minutes hadn't happened.

Sophie's hands were shaking now, badly enough that she set the phone down on the bed to keep from dropping it. She pressed her palms flat against her knees and made herself breathe.

Three weeks. Sophie had spent three weeks hating Clara for a betrayal she no longer understood.

“He wasn't dating you because he loved you. He was looking for something.”

"What was he looking for?" Sophie said out loud to the empty room, to her sister who wasn't there to answer.

Her phone rang.

She flinched so hard she nearly knocked it off the bed. She grabbed it, and for one wild second she let herself believe it was Clara, that this was all about to be explained away in one relieved phone call.

It wasn't Clara.

ETHAN.

The name sat there on the screen, glowing, patient, exactly the way it had every time he'd tried to reach her over the last three weeks except this time, Sophie's stomach didn't turn with anger.

It turned with something closer to fear.

The phone kept ringing.