“You need me to WHAT?”
He lowered his gaze. Apparently, it was too much for him to look me in the eye. Instead, he stared at his beer bottle.
“My sister,” he repeated. “She’s missing. I need you to help me find her. You know I wouldn’t ask you, Jess, if I wasn’t really worried about her. Doug’s told me you don’t…well…dothat anymore. He told me the war—well, that it really messed you up. And I totally understand that, Jess. I do.”
He looked up then and hit me with the full force of those baby blues.
“But if there’s any way…anyway at all. If you could just give me ahint about where she is…I’d really appreciate it. And I swear afterwards I’ll go away and leave you alone.”
I stared at him.
I should have known, of course. That it wasn’t ME he wanted. Not, you know, that I’d ever once entertained the idea, since opening my door to find him standing there, that that’s what he’d come for. To try to get back together, I mean.
And I will admit, it was a big relief that he wasn’t here to tell me about his impending nuptials with Karen Sue Hankey, or whoever. Not that I cared what he did anymore, or who he married.
I just don’t feel like I should have to know about it.
But to have come all this way to ask me to find someone—when he knew perfectly well how all of that finding people crap had messed me up—
Well, okay, he didn’t know, really, since I’d barely spoken to him since it happened. The war, I mean. And the part I’d played in it.
Still, he had to have read it in the papers. He had some nerve coming here and asking me to—
Then suddenly something else hit me, and I looked at him confusedly.
“You don’thave a sister,” I pointed out.
“Yes,” Rob said evenly. “Actually, I do.”
“How could you have a sister,” I demanded, sounding angrier than I’d meant to, “and not even tell me?”
“Because I didn’t know about her myself,” Rob said, “until a few months ago.”
“What?” I couldn’t believe this. I really couldn’t. I mean, first my ex-boyfriend shows up at my door, and not even because he wants to get back together with me. Then he pulls out some kind of ghost sister. Seriously, this is the kind of thing that only happens to me. Wait’ll the TV show’s producers got a load of this. “Did your mom put her up for adoption, and not tell you, or something?”
“She’s not related to my mom,” Rob said.
“Then how can she be your sister?” What was he trying to pull? Did he think I’d lost my MIND during the war, and not just my psychic powers?
“She’s my dad’s kid,” Rob said.
And then I remembered. You know, that Rob had a dad, too. I had never met him, because he’d left Rob’s mother when Rob had been just a baby. Rob had always been reluctant to discuss his father—didn’t even go by his father’s last name, which was Snyder, but his mother’s—until the day I’d accidentally stumbled across a photo of him, and dreamed about his whereabouts.
Which happened to be—for want of a better word—jail.
Rob had been even MORE reluctant to talk about his dad when he realized I knew where he was.
I just sat there staring at him. Because I seriously couldn’t figure out what he was talking about.
“So…your dad’s out of jail?”
It was Rob’s turn to wince.
“No,” he said. And I realized I’d never actually said it before. You know. TheJ word. It had always been an unspoken acknowledgment between us, back when we’d been—whatever-we-were. “No, he’s still there. But before he got sent away, after he and my mom got divorced, he met someone else—”
Understanding finally dawned.
“So she’s your half sister,” I said.
“Right.” Rob reached for a tortilla chip, scooped up a large amount of guacamole with it, put it in his mouth, and chewed. I doubted he was even tasting it. He was just eating it to be doing something with his hands, which always seemed to have needed to be doing something, since the day I’d first met him, either messing with an engine or folding over a paperback or kneading a rag. “I didn’t know about her until she wrote to me this spring. See, she wasn’t getting along with her mother, and so she started writing to my dad and he told her about…about me and my mom. So one night she called, and…well. It’s something, to find out you have a little sister you never even knew you had.”
“I can imagine,” I said. Actually, I couldn’t. I was just saying that to say something.
“Her name’s Hannah,” Rob said. “Hannah Snyder. She’s a great kid. Really funny and kind of…well, feisty. Like you, a lot, actually.”
I smiled wanly. “Great,” I said. Because, you know, that’s the image I want the guy I’m in love with to have of me. Funny and feisty, like his little sister. Yeah. Thanks for that.
Not that I’m in love with Rob. Anymore, I mean.
“Things were…well, Hannah said things weren’t great for her at home,” Rob said. “I mean, with her mother. She was into some things—Hannah’s mom—that she shouldn’t have been into. Drugs and stuff. And men.” Rob cleared his throat and concentrated on dipping another chip. “Men who Hannah said made her feel uncomfortable. You know, um. On account of her getting older, and them—”
“Paying unwanted attention to her?” I asked.
“Right,” Rob said. “And I didn’t think that was such a hot environment for her to be growing up in. So I started looking into what it would take for me to become her legal guardian until she turns eighteen. It wasn’t as if her mother wanted her around. Since school was out, she—Hannah’s mother—said it would be all right if Hannah came for a visit.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. But I wasn’t really listening. A part of me was wondering how Rob could ever think he could get a court to give him guardianship of his little sister when he was on probation.
Then I realized he probably wasn’t on probation anymore, for whatever it was he’d done. He’d been a juvenile back when he’d done it, and now he was over twenty-one. That was probably part of some sealed court record somewhere, and now that he was a business and home owner—a contributing member of society—it couldn’t come back to haunt him.
And I would probably never, ever know what it was he’d done that had got him put on probation in the first place.
“So a week ago, I picked her up from her mom’s place in Indianapolis,” Rob went on. “And Hannah came to stay with me. And everything was great. I mean, it was like we’d grown up together and never been apart, you know? We both like the same stuff—cars and bikes andThe Simpsons and Spider-Man and Italian food and fireworks and…I mean, it was great. It was really great.”
For the first time since we’d sat down, Rob’s hands stilled. They lay flat on the table as he looked at me and said, “Then day before yesterday, I woke up, and she was gone. Just…gone. Her bed hadn’t been slept in. All of her stuff is still in her room. Her mom hasn’t heard from her. The cops can’t find a trace of her. She’s just. Gone.”
“And you thought of me,” I said.
“And I thought of you,” Rob said.
“But I don’t do that anymore,” I said. “Find people, I mean.”
“I know,” Rob said. “At least, I know that’s what you tell the press. But, Jess. I mean…you used to tell the press that before. To get them off your back. When they wouldn’t let you alone, and it was upsetting Doug. And then again, later, when the government was after you to come work for them. You pretended then, too—”
“Yeah,” I interrupted him. Maybe a little too loudly, since the couple who’d just walked in looked over at us, kind of funny, likeWhat’s up with them?I lowered my voice. “But this time it’s not pretend. Ireally don’t do that anymore. Ican’t .”
Rob regarded me unblinkingly from across the table.
“That’s not what Doug said,” he informed me.