Instead, he reaches across the table.
His hand closes over mine, warm and steady.
“Tell me,” he says.
The words shouldn’t undo me.
But they do.
I swallow hard. “Her name is Coral.”
He doesn’t interrupt. Doesn’t rush me. His thumb shifts slightly, grounding.
“She’s my sister,” I continue. “My big sister. She was… everything. Loud. Confident. Always ten steps ahead of me.”
My voice wobbles. I hate that it does, but I can’t help it.
“She started acting strange a few weeks before she disappeared. Jumpier. Tired. Like she was carrying something she didn’t want to share. I noticed. I tried to tell people. No one listened.”
I stare at the table. At the ring his glass left in the wood.
“Then she just… didn’t come home.” I force myself to look up at him. “It’s been three years. Even the cops couldn’t find her. Not that they tried very hard.” I shake my head. “They said she ran away, but I know her. She wouldn’t do that.”
“They didn’t look?” There’s a flash of something in Giovanni’s voice. For a second, I think it might be anger. “At all?”
“I think they tried, but it was beyond them. Whoever got to her knew what they were doing.” I suck in a breath. “I kept seeing this man, a few days before she went missing. A well-dressed guy in a red dress shirt and black suit. But when I told the cops, they dismissed me outright. Said I’d been imagining things.” I exhale shakily. “I think Coral got mixed up with him. And now she’s gone.”
Giovanni studies me for a long moment. Something dark flickers behind his eyes.
“I can look into it,” he says.
I almost laugh. “It’s been years.”
“That doesn’t matter,” he replies. “I have reach the police don’t.”
The words shouldn’t comfort me. But they do.
I nod once. “Okay.”
“Tell me about her.”
I immediately start to narrate all that comes to mind. I tell him what she looked like—bronze skin, like mine; hazel eyes, like mine; a spray of blink-and-you’ll-miss-it freckles on her cheeks and nose that I don’t have; the same shade of coffee-brown hair as me, but curly instead of straight—and he jokes, “Sounds like your twin.”
“We were often mistaken for that.” I allow myself a private smile. “Just one year apart.”
I tell him that she loved music. That she wanted to be a soprano when she grew up. That she did sports with me only because she was obsessed with growing a pair of lungs worthy of an opera diva.
That she was everything to me.
Giovanni listens intently. Interrupts only to ask clarifying questions or perk me up with a dry joke. Weirdly, it helps.
I’m not holding out much hope. Like I said, it’s been years. I’ve had to learn to live with Coral’s absence. To skirt around the hole that opened up in my world the day she left and try my damnedest not to lose myself in it. Like my parents did.
Once I’m done, Giovanni releases my hand and stands. I hate that I already miss his touch. “If someone took her, I’ll find her. But you have to promise me you won’t go looking yourself. Not until I know for sure what we’re dealing with.”
I force myself to nod. “Okay.”
“Good.”
