Chapter Eleven

Vince read the letter through twice, heart hammering wildly. “It’s not true,” he said. “My parents and I didn’t abandon Valerie. My parents were crushed by her disappearance. We’ve never stopped hoping she would be found.”

“Why would anyone write these accusations?” Sheriff Walker tapped the corner of the letter, which was laid out on the table in the interview room at the sheriff’s department. After Tammy had telephoned to tell him about the note, Vince had agreed to meet her at the sheriff’s office, a place that was becoming all-too familiar to him after his recent visits. Travis sat on one side of the table, his brother, Sergeant Gage Walker, standing behind him. Vince and Tammy sat side by side across from him, not touching, but close enough that he could sense the rise and fall of her breath. This note had clearly unnerved her, and seeing her so upset had shaken him.

He forced his attention back to the sheriff’s question. “I don’t know.” He stared at the single V typed at the bottom of the letter.

“It sounds to me like someone’s pretending to be Valerie,” Tammy said.

“It’s signed the same way as the message left on my truck’s windshield,” Vince said.

“Did your sister sign her name that way?” Travis asked. “A single V ?”

“No. But we were only ten when she disappeared.” He tried to think but drew a blank. “I can’t say I’d ever seen her sign anything.”

“The letter writer refers to Valerie in the third person,” Tammy said. “She doesn’t say ‘I did not simply wander off,’ but ‘ Valerie did not simply wander off.’” She shrugged. “I don’t know if that’s significant. It’s just an observation.”

“Maybe she likes to refer to herself in the third person,” Travis said.

“Or maybe this isn’t Valerie.” Vince shook his head. “Of course it isn’t Valerie.”

Gage spoke for the first time. “Why do you say that?”

“Because even if Valerie is alive, she has no reason to want to hurt me. We were twins.” He looked down at the table and swallowed past a lump in his throat. “Losing her was like losing part of myself.”

“She’s been gone a long time,” Gage said. “Maybe she thinks you didn’t do enough to find her. Or she blames you for whatever happened to her.”

“But what could have happened to her?” Vince asked.

Gage and Travis exchanged a glance, though he couldn’t read the meaning behind that look. It was the kind of coded expression couples or siblings shared—the kind of communication he and Valerie had once enjoyed. “At the time your sister disappeared, both you and your parents mentioned another camper in the area,” Travis said.

“Valerie said there was a man camped near us,” Vince said. “I never saw him, and when we searched the area for him, we never saw any sign of him.”

“Was it like her to make things up?” Travis asked.

“No. I believed there was a camper and he left early.”

“Maybe he took Valerie with him when he left,” Gage said.

“I know my parents thought so,” Vince said. “They urged law enforcement to look for the man, and I believe they tried to find him. But no one else reported seeing him, and we didn’t have much to go on—just a man with a blue tent.”

Tammy leaned forward, her expression eager. “Do you think Valerie was kidnapped by this man and, after fifteen years, managed to escape and come looking for her family?” she asked.

“It’s one possibility,” Travis said. “Though that’s not to go any further than this room.”

Tammy shrank back at his stern look. “Yes, sir,” she said.

Travis slid the letter into an evidence bag. “Or maybe this is a hoax.” He regarded Vince for a long moment. Vince tried to remain still, to not reveal how unsettled the sheriff’s scrutiny made him. “Are you sure you can’t think of anyone who might want to harass you?” Travis asked. “An ex–romantic partner or someone you worked with? A former neighbor or classmate? Maybe another family member?”

“No one,” Vince said.

“You can’t think of anyone who has any reason to be unhappy with you?” Gage asked.

Vince shrugged. “No. I guess I’m not the kind of guy to upset people.” The truth was, he seldom got close enough to anyone to upset them—or to make much of an impression at all. He had friends. He had dated several women. But he couldn’t say any of those relationships had the depth he thought was required to end up with someone wanting to wreck his truck—or his life.

Travis stood and Gage moved away from the wall. “Those are all my questions for now,” the sheriff said.

Vince followed Tammy out of the interview room, down the hall and onto the sidewalk. She stopped at the corner and hugged her arms across her chest. “That was frustrating,” she said. “I was hoping the sheriff would have more answers.”

“Do you think Valerie could be the one doing this?” he asked. “Sending those notes and vandalizing my truck? Has she been alive all these years and we didn’t know?”

Tammy angled toward him, her expression soft with concern. “There have been other cases, of children who were abducted and turned up alive years later,” she said.

“Then why not just contact me and tell me the truth?” Frustration made knots in his gut. “Why attack my truck and accuse me of helping to get rid of her?”

“It does feel like there’s a lot of animosity in those letters—and what was done to your truck...” Tammy rubbed her hands up and down her arms as if she was cold.

It did. The idea that his sister—his twin whom he had loved without even having to think about it—would hate him this way felt dark and ugly.

They resumed walking, he assumed back toward the newspaper office. This time of day, the sidewalks were full of tourists and locals, running errands or visiting the shops and restaurants. He and Tammy had to walk close together, shoulders bumping frequently, in order to have a conversation. “What was Valerie like as a girl?” Tammy asked. “I mean, her temperament and attitudes? Was she like you or the opposite? Or somewhere in-between?”

He considered the question. Valerie had been such an essential part of his life that he had taken for granted she would always be there—until she wasn’t. And at ten years old, he hadn’t spent much time thinking about how other people felt or how they were different from him. But he had had a lot of time since then to examine everything he knew about his sister. “Valerie was more outgoing than I was,” he said. “More daring. She would talk to strangers in public or wander off on her own when we were in the park or out shopping.”

“Then she wouldn’t have been afraid, necessarily, of a stranger who approached her?” Tammy asked.

“No. I mean, our parents and teachers had talked to us about stranger danger. Valerie was smart. I don’t think she would have gotten into a car with someone she didn’t know. But if a person struck up a conversation with her, she would have been friendly. And she liked attention. I guess she was kind of a show-off.”

“Did that bother you when you were a boy? That she tried to get attention?”

“No. I didn’t care. I wasn’t interested in having people pay attention to me.”

“Did she have a temper? Was she quick to anger or to take offense?”

“Oh yeah.” He remembered. “She would get so mad sometimes. Her face would turn red, and she would stomp her foot.” He almost smiled, picturing her rage over not being allowed to do something she wanted to do. “It’s not fair!” she had howled, furious about not getting her way.

“But she could be sweet too,” he said. “That weekend of the camping trip, I was upset about missing a friend’s birthday party. Valerie tried to make me feel better. She even told my dad she thought I should be allowed to go to the party. And though she teased me about being afraid of things she wasn’t—spiders and steep mountain bike tracks and things like that—she was never too hard on me.”

“The two of you were close, then?”

He shrugged. “We were twins. And we didn’t have any other siblings or cousins who lived nearby. The two of us were kind of a team.”

“It must have been hard for you when she disappeared.”

“For a long time, it didn’t feel real,” he said. “I kept thinking the door would open and she would be there, laughing and telling us all it had been a joke, that she had merely been hiding.”

“Cruel joke,” Tammy said. “Would she have done something like that?”

“Maybe,” he said. “It would have been better than the truth—that we never knew what happened to her.”

But what if the person who was harassing him now did turn out to be Valerie? Would that be worse than believing she had died? He couldn’t wrap his head around the answer. “I’d like to know what happened to her,” he said. “And I want whoever is sending these letters and whoever attacked my truck to be found and stopped.”

“I want that too,” Tammy said. She rested her hand on his shoulder. “And I’ll do everything I can to help you.”

It was the kind of thing any person might say, but he could sense the sincerity behind her words. She cared. The idea touched him—and unsettled him too. He had spent years keeping his distance from people. If you didn’t get too close to people, you wouldn’t be too hurt when they left you. He understood that not everyone wanted to live that way, but it had worked for him so far. Why should he change now just because one curly-haired reporter was getting under his skin?

Fifteen years ago

“I T ’ S MY TURN to hide. You have to find me!” Before Vince could protest, Valerie slapped his shoulder and ran away.

Annoyed, he closed his eyes and began to count. “One, two, three...”

He hated when it was his turn to find Valerie. She never failed to choose the best hiding spots. Impossible spots, like the gap between the cushions and the underside of their hide-a-bed sofa in the den, or in the rafters of the garage. He could spend hours searching for her with no luck, except he often gave up long before then.

Not that it was better when it was his turn to hide. She always found him, usually within ten minutes. Then she would crow about how terrible he was at this game. Which was why he never wanted to play. But today he had made the mistake of promising to play whatever Valerie wanted, never thinking she would choose hide-and-seek on such a hot afternoon. It had to be near ninety degrees out, and the sun was beating down. Maybe that wasn’t hot to people like his aunt and uncle from Texas, but here in the mountains, with no air-conditioning in their house, ninety degrees was sweltering.

He reached fifty and decided that was enough. He was supposed to count to one hundred, but with Valerie, he needed any advantage he could grab. He opened his eyes and looked around, searching for any clue as to which direction she had run. He didn’t see any footprints in the rocks and grass that made up the empty lot behind their house where they were playing. No flash of the bright red T-shirt she was wearing. The shed door wasn’t ajar. Would she hide inside one of the parked cars?

He hurried to his mom’s Chevy and opened the rear door. A blast of heat pushed him back. Valerie had better not be in there. She’d roast. He forced himself to stick his head inside and look around, but no Valerie.

No Valerie in the shed either, or behind any of the trees or bigger boulders that ringed the lot. Their rule was that they had to stay within the lot, which was bordered on two sides by wooden fencing. The back side gave way to a steep drop-off. Vince approached this and looked over. It would be just like Valerie to slide down there, thinking it would be a stealthy hiding place, and not be able to get back up. But there was nothing in the gully below but more trees and rocks.

He turned around and faced the house. He hadn’t heard a door open or close, but Valerie might have managed to slip inside if she had been quiet. She was good at stealth. Better than he was. He was going through another growth spurt, and everything he did was clumsy. Squinting in the bright sunlight, he moved toward the house. He approached the back door, then looked under the steps. There was a shadowed hollow there where Vince had hidden once. It had taken Valerie over fifteen minutes to find him that time. She had even said it was a good hiding place.

But she hadn’t decided to use it this time. He moved along the house, looking behind the lilac bushes, their blooms spent brown twigs now.

Something scrabbled in the loose mulch behind him, and he whirled, heart pounding. He stared at the ground beneath the lilacs. What was down there? He didn’t see anything, but something had made that noise. “Valerie?” he asked, tentative.

Fingers gripped his ankle, hard, and yanked. Vince screamed and staggered back, arms flailing. Raucous laughter brought him up short.

Valerie, cobwebs draped across her hair like old lace and a smudge of dirt across one cheek, crawled out from beneath the porch. “Oh my gosh, that was great!” she shrieked, doubled over with laughter. “You screamed like a little girl!”

“You’re supposed to be hiding, not attacking me!” he yelled.

“You walked right past me!” she said. “I couldn’t resist. Your ankle was right there!”

He stared at the gap in the foundation she had squeezed into. “You have spiderwebs in your hair,” he said.

She swept her fingers through her wavy locks, and the sticky webbing clung to them. “There are spiders under there too,” she said.

He shuddered. “That’s disgusting.”

“No it’s not. I’m not afraid of a few bugs.” She lifted her chin. “I’m not afraid of anything.”

Vince envied his sister’s fearlessness. He was afraid of so many things—spiders and falling, not catching a fly ball in Little League, failing a math test and being stuck in fourth grade forever. “I bet you’re afraid of dying,” he said. “Everyone is afraid of that. Even adults.”

Valerie shrugged. “I’m not.”

“Liar.”

She leaned forward and slapped his shoulder. “Your turn to hide. And pick a good place.” Then she closed her eyes and started counting out loud. “One, two, three...”

Vince ran. He thought about leaving the yard and heading down the street to his friend Brett’s house. That would make Valerie mad, but she’d either tell their mom—in which case, Vince would end up grounded—or she wouldn’t tell anyone, but would exact her own revenge, like putting ants in his underwear drawer or putting dog poop in his bed. She had done both of those things before, and Vince had ended up punished when his mother found out. “Valerie wouldn’t do something like that,” she had said.

And Valerie had played the innocent like a pro, looking at him with wide, hurt eyes. Later, she had sidled up to Vince in the hallway, after his mother had sentenced him to spend an hour every day after school pulling weeds in the flower beds, and whispered, “That’ll teach you to try to get the better of me.”

Vince ran to the shed and hid behind the lawn mower and paint cans. It wasn’t the best hiding place, but it was a good enough spot to sit and think in the moments before Valerie came to find him. He would think about all the things he could do to get back at Valerie, but wouldn’t. If she hadn’t been his sister, he would have admired her daring instead of being jealous of it. And when it came down to it, he would rather have her on his side than angry with him.