The Sometime Sister by Katherine Nichols (ebook reader for comics .txt) 📕

“This guy tells me you had quite the day yesterday.” Harry grinned over his coffee. “It’s been a while since I had breakfast with an ex-con.”

I tried to smile.

“Too soon?” he asked. “Sorry. What did you find out?”

I replayed my conversation with Eva, then came clean about my meeting with Adelmo.

“But she wasn’t the only one I met with yesterday.” I turned toward Justin. “I should have told you before, but the timing was off.”

I took a deep breath and explained about the detour Prez had taken on our journey. When I got to the part about our trip to Puerto Lopez, Justin jerked upright and sat on the edge of his seat. When I got to the point when Adelmo approached me on the beach, he jumped out of the chair and began pacing in front of the patio door.

“Please, do not tell me you left with that thug!” he said through clenched teeth.

“He’s not a thug. At least, I don’t think he’s a thug. And I didn’t go off with him. We went to a museum to talk.” There was no reason to tell him no one else was at the museum or how long we sat in the garden. “Could you please sit down? You’re making me nervous.”

He sat.

I summarized my conversation with Adelmo, leaving out the part about his ominous promise to make things right. When I finished, no one spoke for what seemed like forever. Harry broke the silence.

“So, Balsuto claims he’s working on uncovering what happened to your sister.”

The way he said “claims” made me remember Adelmo’s warning about not believing everything I heard. Could he have been referring to himself in his warning? Did Harry suspect Adelmo of direct involvement in Stella’s death?

“I still can’t believe you were alone with one of the most dangerous men in the country.” Justin sounded angry but seemed to be losing steam. I ignored him and responded directly to Harry.

“Do you think he’s lying about not knowing anything?”

“It’s hard to tell. Luis tells me not much happens around here that gets past him. And he and Ben were into some very shady business. That doesn’t mean he was in on whatever was going on with your sister. But the part about not seeing Stella for months seems strange to me. Does that sound like her?”

That part of Adelmo’s story had puzzled me, too. “Honestly, I’m not sure what Stella might have done.”

The truth was the Stellas described by Ben and Adelmo were both different from the woman I’d known. Being discontent with the luxury Ben had provided, protecting her family from him—neither sounded like the Stella who had no qualms about marrying the man I loved. And the garden museum didn’t fit into the type of place my sister would want to hang out. Even eating cookies with Eva wasn’t something she would enjoy. Was it possible she had changed, or had I never recognized what she could have been?

Once in high school she got wasted at a party, somebody called the cops, and they took everybody in. I was at college but offered to come talk to my errant sister. Mom told me to stay put. She said Stella needed to face up to what she’d done and if I came home, I would shift the responsibility to someone else. She said I was like predictive text for her, always completing her words and thoughts to make her into the person I wanted her to be. Maybe being on her own in a strange place, away from me, let her become her own person.

The weight of my loss pressed down on me, and I could think of nothing more to add.

Justin slumped back in his chair, then leaned toward me.

“I hate that we have to talk about our conversation with Harry’s source right now, but we’re running short on time.”

Our return tickets were open-ended, but we planned on wrapping up our business in no more than a week. It seemed the more we found out about Stella’s life, the less we understood. Maybe she left the important clues behind with her body.

“You have the pictures?”

“We do,” Harry responded. “But we’re not sure it’s a good idea for you to see them.”

My stomach turned at the implication behind those words. “Is it that bad?” I whispered.

Justin rose from his chair and sat beside me. He put his hand on my knee. “It’s not that. It’s just once you see it, you can never unsee it. When you think about your sister, all the memories you have will fade into the background. Instead of Stella when she was a little girl or at her first dance or even when you were the maddest at her, it will be the Stella in these photos.”

I imagined Justin had seen quite a few last images during his stint in the service, and a part of me wanted to tell him to put the pictures away. But if I didn’t see for myself what had happened to my sister, it would be too easy to give up and go home. To pretend I believed Stella’s death had been an accident.

“I have to, Justin.”

He walked to his room.

“He’s right, you know,” Harry offered. “Why don’t you let us take things from here? The photos might be enough to insist on further investigation.”

“I want to. I do. But ever since Mike called about them finding her body, I’ve kept waiting for someone to say it was a terrible mistake. That a young woman washed up on shore, and she looked like Stella, but it wasn’t her. I’m very sorry for the family of the real accident victim, but what a relief to discover my sister had been hiding from Ben. Or she had gone into rehab. Or a hundred other happy endings. Then I could tell her I forgive her.” Tears trickled down my cheeks, and I wiped them away with the back of my hand.

Justin returned with a