Not my sister, p.17
Not My Sister, page 17
“Yeah. Every week or so. Always cooks me something healthy. Kale, green stuff. That kind of crap.” He chuckled. “But I eat it. Don’t want to break her sweet little heart, do I? ‘Sides, it’s good for us. We both smoke too much.”
He picked up a brush and studied his canvas.
I stepped closer to the side of his wheelchair. “Do you know she has been commissioned to design the stamp for the queen’s birthday?” I asked.
“Really?” He dabbed his brush in alizarin crimson and raised the tip to paint a dog howling at the moon. “I didn’t.”
“She calls herself Rosa,” Angie added.
“News to me.” He concentrated on filling in the space surrounded by a black line.
I watched him, mesmerized by the way he pulled the thick red paint around the black outline. I followed the movement of his big, angular hand, as if he were a hypnotist and I were his subject. The seductive fragrance of oil paint and linseed oil wafted upward, reminding me of the days my mother used to paint portraits in our family room. Joe’s hand swept me back to younger, less traumatic times.
All too soon, however, he pulled away the brush and turned to squint up at me. “But what’s with the twenty questions? You’re her sister. Don’t you know how to find her?”
“No. We haven’t exactly kept in touch.”
His pale regard raked over me, from my shoes to my hair. I stood tall, sure that he was comparing me to my sibling, as the world had compared us since she had made her debut and eclipsed me.
“You say your name is Jessica?”
“Yes. I’m the older one. We used to be close. But Olivia and I drifted apart at the end.”
“Well, now, that puts a certain spin on things, don’t it?”
“Yes.” I didn’t break my stare. “And I don’t mean for you to violate your friendship with her, but I would really like to talk to her. And I can’t seem to find her.”
“Good lord, girl. Just call. She has a phone.”
“I don’t have the number.”
He pressed his lips together and took a deep breath, as if trying to decide whether I merited further information.
“We lost touch for a reason,” Angie put in. “Two years ago, we were told she was dead.”
“What?” Joe dropped his brush on the palette. “Told by who?”
“The police. Her boyfriend. The American consulate.”
“But then we saw an artist on TV here,” I continued. “Her. Posing as a Dutch artist. And we came to find her.”
“Jesus H. Christ.”
“I just want to talk to her, Joe. To find out what happened. And why.”
“She may have her reasons. Olivia is one heckuva private senorita.”
His stare locked with mine. I felt my heart twist with anguish.
“I just want to talk to her. See her again. Hug her.” I turned away, overcome by the words I had just uttered. Weirdly, inexplicably, and without warning, my anger at Olivia had morphed into longing, confusing me. I no longer knew if I were mad at her or desperate to rekindle our relationship.
I only knew I wanted to hug Olivia and tell her that nothing mattered—the past, present or future—nothing. Only our sisterly connection mattered—a bond that should have been stronger than steel but had ended up being pitted and brittle.
Standing there by the wheel of Joe’s chair and caught in a swirl of smells from my childhood, I felt an intense yearning sweep over me. I ached to wrap my arms around my little sister and hug her until we melted away each layer of heartbreak—until we annealed our differences into something older, stronger and wiser.
If I could just talk to her, I knew I could get through to her. We could start over. Fresh and clean and whole.
But then again, who was I kidding? A normal sisterly relationship with Olivia was pure fantasy. I knew how futile such a dream could be. I was a big girl now. I had gone through so much since her death—because of her death. I knew dream from reality.
Or so I told myself.
I felt Joe’s palm pat my wrist.
21
Unearthing Elena
“Hang in there,” Joe murmured. “Hang on.”
I nodded my head and swallowed hard. But I remained silent. I didn’t trust my emotions enough to pull away and claim to be fine as I usually did. I felt Angie and Joe staring at me like everyone did when the monster wave hit. I heard Martijn’s voice in my head, telling me to dive through.
Dive through the monster wave. Maybe I could…
Angie moved closer to me, lending her much-needed moral support.
“Can you please ask her to call us?” Angie said. “Just call?”
“I can try.” He pulled out a drawer of his taboret and shuffled through the jumbled contents.
“Here,” he handed me a slip of paper and a stubby pencil. “Write down your number.”
I swallowed again and bent to scratch numbers on the tattered paper while my eyes brimmed with tears. I could feel Joe and Angie watching my hand, as if they were afraid to witness the grief in my expression.
“Thanks,” I blurted, handing the paper to him. He stuffed it in his Hawaiian shirt and patted the pocket. I worried that he would forget it was there.
“It’s gonna be okay, Jessica,” he said, forcing a sad smile. “Just you wait and see.”
“I know. I know.”
Joe glanced at Angie, as if searching for help with the distraught stranger before him. She draped an arm around my shoulders.
“C’mon,” Angie said. “We’ve taken enough of Joe’s time.”
“I know. I know,” I said again. I couldn’t think of words right now. I wiped my eyes.
“She sometimes hangs out at a bar called The San Francisco.”
“Really?” Angie retorted. “How ironic.”
“You know the place?”
“We’ve been there,” I managed to reply without my voice cracking. “The place with the painting of the Amsterdam ghost.”
“Yeah. I think Olivia goes there to be alone, if you know what I mean. Not many locals hang out there. Mostly tourists and ex-pats. Folks that don’t know her.”
“That’s what Lt. Daan said about that bar.” Angie snaked her arm down to my elbow. “The locals steer clear of it, he said. Let’s head over there, Jess. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
I sighed. “Thanks, Joe. I really appreciate your help.”
He gave me a grave smile and nodded as he watched us turn to leave. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him rotate his chair to track our departure.
His voice stopped me. “Oh, there’s one other thing.”
I turned.
“I don’t know if I should tell you this, but there’s a guy.”
My blood ran cold. “A guy?”
“Yeah, this old boyfriend of hers. The last time we talked, she mentioned him. It’s been worrying me.”
“Why?”
“Because from what she’s told me, the guy’s bad news for her.”
“Is his name Carlo, by any chance?”
“Yeah, that’s the one. Carlo. The Italian guy.”
“What did she say about him?”
“That he got in touch recently. And she didn’t know what to do. She’s got an unhealthy penchant for that one, if you ask me.”
“We think so, too.”
“But then I say to myself, what do I know?” He tilted his head and shrugged. His shoulders poked up like two corners of a picture frame under the floral shirt. “That’s what put me in this chair, don’t you know? Love.”
* * *
In the morning, I woke up and checked my messages. I had missed two calls. Surprised, I examined the side of my phone and discovered I had accidentally turned off the ringer.
I slid the switch back on and went to voicemail. There was a call from my agent and one from Joe. I pressed play on the one from my agent. Angie looked my way as she did her daily yoga routine and listened as well.
“Hey, Jessica,” my agent’s voice grated. “It’s Molly. I’m just touching base about the Roger thing. I know it’s tough, but that’s the business. There’s nothing we can really do about it. I checked the contract. Besides, you don’t want people thinking you’re a diva, right? Keep your chin up, and I’ll keep my eye out for more work for you. ASAP. Oh, and that self-tape you did in Amsterdam was fabulous. I sent it to my director friend. Fingers crossed. Bye now.”
I exchanged a glance with Angie. She gave me a thumbs up.
Next, I tapped Joe’s message and gazed down at my phone as the audio played through the speaker.
“Hi there, Jessica. It’s Joe. The guy with the really large…paintings?” His dry chuckle made me smile despite myself. “So, I talked to your sister. She doesn’t want to talk to you. Or anyone from the States. Claims it’s a matter of self-preservation. She asked me to tell you to quit following her, too. I know. I know. Kinda harsh, huh? if you want to know more, she said to read the letter your mom wrote to her on her birthday. Does that make sense? And sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings. I really am. I feel for ya, Jessica. I do. My own family isn’t exactly a bed of roses either. That’s why I live in Amsterdam. If you wanna talk, you know where to find me. Oh, and it’s Joe. The guy from the studio.”
Frustration washed over me, burning away Joe’s kind words at the end of the message.
Angie drifted close to the side of my bed, her routine forgotten. “I can’t believe it. She’s cutting us off? Really?”
“Why, though?” I stared into Angie’s serious dark eyes.
“Maybe the letter will tell us.” She sank to the mattress beside me. “Do you know what letter he was talking about?”
“I think it was one we found in her journal.” I thought back to the day we went through Olivia’s meager belongings that Ren had retrieved from her apartment. That afternoon remains in my memory as one of the most difficult days of my life, as we sifted through her few possessions. She had lived and died like a nomad.
But all such memories had to be adjusted now. Even erased. Panic and fatigue washed over me. I wasn’t sure I had the energy to reframe the last two terrible years.
“I remember something she said in her journal,” Angie commented, hanging her head. “I could disappear, and no one would notice. Remember that?”
“Yeah.” I heaved a sigh, knowing how alone Olivia must have felt to have put such a pitiful thought in writing. “But we all think that at one time or another, don’t we?”
“Maybe she believed it. At the end.”
“You think she staged her own death, Ange? To shut us out? And what about the other young woman who died with Basia? Who was that?”
“That’s the weirdest thing ever.”
“I know.” I stared at the wall, my thoughts swirling.
Angie stood up. “Why don’t you call your mom? Have her send us a photo of that letter if she still has it. I mean, that’s the only thing we have to go on, right?”
“Good idea.” I didn’t phone my mother, though. I texted her. I didn’t trust myself to call her. She might be an emotionally distant person, but she was perceptive. If she heard my voice, she would guess something was wrong and probe me with questions until I cracked. I didn’t want to divulge what Angie and I were doing. Until I knew everything, I couldn’t tell her a single fact.
I only hoped she was lucid and capable of texting.
“Hi Mom,” I typed. “You know that letter you wrote to Olivia on her twenty-sixth birthday? Could you take a photo of it and text it to me? I want to adapt it into a monologue for an audition.”
“The one we found in her journal?” My mother texted back.
“Yes.”
“I’ll see if I can find it.”
“I need it today, if it isn’t too much trouble?”
She sent a thumbs up image.
“Are you working while you’re over there?”
“In my down time.”
“Rob’s talking rehab,” she texted.
“Maybe that’s a good thing,” I replied.
“For now, they’re making me take an antidepressant. I can barely see straight.”
“It might help.”
“I hate it. But I just don’t care.”
I paused, not sure how to respond.
She texted back. “It was a joke, Jess. LOL.”
It wasn’t funny to me as I was sure it wasn’t all that funny to her, either.
“Try to relax,” I urged. “I’ll be back soon. Love you, Mom.”
“Please find her,” she wrote. She sent a heart.
For a long while I stared at my phone, worried about her and what the future held for us once I got back to Seattle.
* * *
While Angie and I were at breakfast in the hotel dining room, my phone dinged, and I picked it up, expecting to see a copy of the letter. I was surprised to see a message from Greta Macheski instead.
Angie noticed my expression. “What is it?” she asked, a forkful of omelet near her mouth.
“A text from Basia’s mother.”
“Really?” Angie put down her utensil and leaned forward. “What does it say?”
I opened the message. “That photo looks like Elena Visser, Basia’s roommate during college.”
“What the heck.” Angie’s mouth hung open with surprise.
I texted back. “Thank you so much.”
My phone dinged a second time.
“Please do not contact me again.”
I glanced up and met Angie’s raised eyebrows. “Should I respond?”
“Probably not. I’ll google the Visser person.” Angie grabbed her phone, while I picked up my spoon to finish the poached eggs on my plate. I watched Angie google the name “Elena Visser.” Her eyebrows rose even higher.
“What?” I asked.
“You won’t believe this.” Angie turned her phone toward me. “Take a gander, chica.”
I looked at the item showing on Angie’s phone: Elena Visser on Facebook. Blond hair, blue eyes, attractive young woman. About the same age as Olivia.
It was like seeing her twin.
“Fuck,” I muttered.
“Can you believe it?” Angie flipped around her phone again and read through the info. “Elena Visser. Lives in the UK, from the Netherlands. She’s a doctor, apparently.”
“A physician doctor?”
“Says MD. Radiologist.”
“Where does she work? Does it say?”
“St. Mary’s Hospital, London.”
“London, England?”
“Duh, Jessica.”
“When was her last post?”
I choked down my breakfast, not even tasting the eggs and toast, as Angie scrolled for information.
“Private info,” she said, frowning.
“Try Twitter.”
Angie’s fingers flew as she searched the web for Elena Visser’s Twitter account. She paused and then gazed up at me. Her brown eyes glowed black with intensity.
“You won’t believe this, Jess.”
“Try me.”
“Last tweet? Something silly about cats. September 28, 2014.”
“Fuck,” I said again. The date of the tweet was the day before Olivia and Basia had lost their lives. I lifted my coffee cup. My hand shook so much, I had to put the cup back down. It clattered onto the saucer. The sound seemed to fill the room. My ears rang.
I grabbed my phone. It wobbled in my hand. I took a deep breath to center myself and typed in: “missing person Elena Visser 2014”. Nothing. I tried a more general search. Nothing. I could see Angie searching on her phone as well.
“Could no one have reported her missing?” Angie asked. “Is that even possible?”
“Maybe. If she didn’t have family.”
“Wouldn’t her employer file a report?”
“I don’t know.” I stared down at my phone. “I don’t know how that works.”
“Maybe if she was a flake, you know, if she didn’t show up for work sometimes, they wouldn’t have a reason to report her missing.”
“I don’t think a person who chooses medicine could ever be a flake,” I shot back. “That field of study is so rigorous. You have to be really dedicated.”
“Stereotype, Jess,” Angie warned.
“Yeah, maybe.” I went back to my phone search. I typed in: “2014 st mary’s hospital staff london.” A newspaper article popped up.
“Hmm,” I commented, scanning the article.
“What did you find?” Angie leaned on the table and stared at me.
“A newspaper article.” I went back to the headline. “From 2014.” I read the headline out loud. “Local hospital to lay off 200 employees as x-ray unit is outsourced.”
“St. Mary’s?” Angie asked.
“Yep. Let’s see.” I scrolled up. “This was from June 2014. Interesting.”
“So little orphan Elena gets laid off. Goes to Amsterdam to see her old roommate and gets killed.”
“That pretty much sums it up, doesn’t it?”
Angie let out a snort of disbelief. “So, this person just drops off the planet. Just like that. Nobody knows? Nobody cares?”
“Sad, isn’t it?” I put down my phone. “But I think it might have been what happened.”
“They cremated Elena Visser. Not Olivia. Jesus, Jess. You have Elena Visser’s ashes in your apartment.”
“Yeah.” I shook my head in disbelief as the truth incinerated the past two years of my life. I felt as if my inner being had begun to disintegrate as well. I sat there in my chair in the dining hall in the Krapolinsky Hotel, shell-shocked, as a strange hollowness devoured all the energy from my bones.
I heard Angie’s voice from far, far away.
“Jessica, are you okay?” Angie put a hand on my forearm just as my phone dinged.
“Jessica?”
22
The Letter
I sat like a lump, one breath short of a nervous breakdown. I could see Angie and hear her, but I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t move. I knew my phone had just alerted me to a new text, but I didn’t have the strength to respond. All the care and grief I had once harbored for my sister had been wiped away in this huge betrayal, leaving me blank.
He picked up a brush and studied his canvas.
I stepped closer to the side of his wheelchair. “Do you know she has been commissioned to design the stamp for the queen’s birthday?” I asked.
“Really?” He dabbed his brush in alizarin crimson and raised the tip to paint a dog howling at the moon. “I didn’t.”
“She calls herself Rosa,” Angie added.
“News to me.” He concentrated on filling in the space surrounded by a black line.
I watched him, mesmerized by the way he pulled the thick red paint around the black outline. I followed the movement of his big, angular hand, as if he were a hypnotist and I were his subject. The seductive fragrance of oil paint and linseed oil wafted upward, reminding me of the days my mother used to paint portraits in our family room. Joe’s hand swept me back to younger, less traumatic times.
All too soon, however, he pulled away the brush and turned to squint up at me. “But what’s with the twenty questions? You’re her sister. Don’t you know how to find her?”
“No. We haven’t exactly kept in touch.”
His pale regard raked over me, from my shoes to my hair. I stood tall, sure that he was comparing me to my sibling, as the world had compared us since she had made her debut and eclipsed me.
“You say your name is Jessica?”
“Yes. I’m the older one. We used to be close. But Olivia and I drifted apart at the end.”
“Well, now, that puts a certain spin on things, don’t it?”
“Yes.” I didn’t break my stare. “And I don’t mean for you to violate your friendship with her, but I would really like to talk to her. And I can’t seem to find her.”
“Good lord, girl. Just call. She has a phone.”
“I don’t have the number.”
He pressed his lips together and took a deep breath, as if trying to decide whether I merited further information.
“We lost touch for a reason,” Angie put in. “Two years ago, we were told she was dead.”
“What?” Joe dropped his brush on the palette. “Told by who?”
“The police. Her boyfriend. The American consulate.”
“But then we saw an artist on TV here,” I continued. “Her. Posing as a Dutch artist. And we came to find her.”
“Jesus H. Christ.”
“I just want to talk to her, Joe. To find out what happened. And why.”
“She may have her reasons. Olivia is one heckuva private senorita.”
His stare locked with mine. I felt my heart twist with anguish.
“I just want to talk to her. See her again. Hug her.” I turned away, overcome by the words I had just uttered. Weirdly, inexplicably, and without warning, my anger at Olivia had morphed into longing, confusing me. I no longer knew if I were mad at her or desperate to rekindle our relationship.
I only knew I wanted to hug Olivia and tell her that nothing mattered—the past, present or future—nothing. Only our sisterly connection mattered—a bond that should have been stronger than steel but had ended up being pitted and brittle.
Standing there by the wheel of Joe’s chair and caught in a swirl of smells from my childhood, I felt an intense yearning sweep over me. I ached to wrap my arms around my little sister and hug her until we melted away each layer of heartbreak—until we annealed our differences into something older, stronger and wiser.
If I could just talk to her, I knew I could get through to her. We could start over. Fresh and clean and whole.
But then again, who was I kidding? A normal sisterly relationship with Olivia was pure fantasy. I knew how futile such a dream could be. I was a big girl now. I had gone through so much since her death—because of her death. I knew dream from reality.
Or so I told myself.
I felt Joe’s palm pat my wrist.
21
Unearthing Elena
“Hang in there,” Joe murmured. “Hang on.”
I nodded my head and swallowed hard. But I remained silent. I didn’t trust my emotions enough to pull away and claim to be fine as I usually did. I felt Angie and Joe staring at me like everyone did when the monster wave hit. I heard Martijn’s voice in my head, telling me to dive through.
Dive through the monster wave. Maybe I could…
Angie moved closer to me, lending her much-needed moral support.
“Can you please ask her to call us?” Angie said. “Just call?”
“I can try.” He pulled out a drawer of his taboret and shuffled through the jumbled contents.
“Here,” he handed me a slip of paper and a stubby pencil. “Write down your number.”
I swallowed again and bent to scratch numbers on the tattered paper while my eyes brimmed with tears. I could feel Joe and Angie watching my hand, as if they were afraid to witness the grief in my expression.
“Thanks,” I blurted, handing the paper to him. He stuffed it in his Hawaiian shirt and patted the pocket. I worried that he would forget it was there.
“It’s gonna be okay, Jessica,” he said, forcing a sad smile. “Just you wait and see.”
“I know. I know.”
Joe glanced at Angie, as if searching for help with the distraught stranger before him. She draped an arm around my shoulders.
“C’mon,” Angie said. “We’ve taken enough of Joe’s time.”
“I know. I know,” I said again. I couldn’t think of words right now. I wiped my eyes.
“She sometimes hangs out at a bar called The San Francisco.”
“Really?” Angie retorted. “How ironic.”
“You know the place?”
“We’ve been there,” I managed to reply without my voice cracking. “The place with the painting of the Amsterdam ghost.”
“Yeah. I think Olivia goes there to be alone, if you know what I mean. Not many locals hang out there. Mostly tourists and ex-pats. Folks that don’t know her.”
“That’s what Lt. Daan said about that bar.” Angie snaked her arm down to my elbow. “The locals steer clear of it, he said. Let’s head over there, Jess. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
I sighed. “Thanks, Joe. I really appreciate your help.”
He gave me a grave smile and nodded as he watched us turn to leave. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him rotate his chair to track our departure.
His voice stopped me. “Oh, there’s one other thing.”
I turned.
“I don’t know if I should tell you this, but there’s a guy.”
My blood ran cold. “A guy?”
“Yeah, this old boyfriend of hers. The last time we talked, she mentioned him. It’s been worrying me.”
“Why?”
“Because from what she’s told me, the guy’s bad news for her.”
“Is his name Carlo, by any chance?”
“Yeah, that’s the one. Carlo. The Italian guy.”
“What did she say about him?”
“That he got in touch recently. And she didn’t know what to do. She’s got an unhealthy penchant for that one, if you ask me.”
“We think so, too.”
“But then I say to myself, what do I know?” He tilted his head and shrugged. His shoulders poked up like two corners of a picture frame under the floral shirt. “That’s what put me in this chair, don’t you know? Love.”
* * *
In the morning, I woke up and checked my messages. I had missed two calls. Surprised, I examined the side of my phone and discovered I had accidentally turned off the ringer.
I slid the switch back on and went to voicemail. There was a call from my agent and one from Joe. I pressed play on the one from my agent. Angie looked my way as she did her daily yoga routine and listened as well.
“Hey, Jessica,” my agent’s voice grated. “It’s Molly. I’m just touching base about the Roger thing. I know it’s tough, but that’s the business. There’s nothing we can really do about it. I checked the contract. Besides, you don’t want people thinking you’re a diva, right? Keep your chin up, and I’ll keep my eye out for more work for you. ASAP. Oh, and that self-tape you did in Amsterdam was fabulous. I sent it to my director friend. Fingers crossed. Bye now.”
I exchanged a glance with Angie. She gave me a thumbs up.
Next, I tapped Joe’s message and gazed down at my phone as the audio played through the speaker.
“Hi there, Jessica. It’s Joe. The guy with the really large…paintings?” His dry chuckle made me smile despite myself. “So, I talked to your sister. She doesn’t want to talk to you. Or anyone from the States. Claims it’s a matter of self-preservation. She asked me to tell you to quit following her, too. I know. I know. Kinda harsh, huh? if you want to know more, she said to read the letter your mom wrote to her on her birthday. Does that make sense? And sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings. I really am. I feel for ya, Jessica. I do. My own family isn’t exactly a bed of roses either. That’s why I live in Amsterdam. If you wanna talk, you know where to find me. Oh, and it’s Joe. The guy from the studio.”
Frustration washed over me, burning away Joe’s kind words at the end of the message.
Angie drifted close to the side of my bed, her routine forgotten. “I can’t believe it. She’s cutting us off? Really?”
“Why, though?” I stared into Angie’s serious dark eyes.
“Maybe the letter will tell us.” She sank to the mattress beside me. “Do you know what letter he was talking about?”
“I think it was one we found in her journal.” I thought back to the day we went through Olivia’s meager belongings that Ren had retrieved from her apartment. That afternoon remains in my memory as one of the most difficult days of my life, as we sifted through her few possessions. She had lived and died like a nomad.
But all such memories had to be adjusted now. Even erased. Panic and fatigue washed over me. I wasn’t sure I had the energy to reframe the last two terrible years.
“I remember something she said in her journal,” Angie commented, hanging her head. “I could disappear, and no one would notice. Remember that?”
“Yeah.” I heaved a sigh, knowing how alone Olivia must have felt to have put such a pitiful thought in writing. “But we all think that at one time or another, don’t we?”
“Maybe she believed it. At the end.”
“You think she staged her own death, Ange? To shut us out? And what about the other young woman who died with Basia? Who was that?”
“That’s the weirdest thing ever.”
“I know.” I stared at the wall, my thoughts swirling.
Angie stood up. “Why don’t you call your mom? Have her send us a photo of that letter if she still has it. I mean, that’s the only thing we have to go on, right?”
“Good idea.” I didn’t phone my mother, though. I texted her. I didn’t trust myself to call her. She might be an emotionally distant person, but she was perceptive. If she heard my voice, she would guess something was wrong and probe me with questions until I cracked. I didn’t want to divulge what Angie and I were doing. Until I knew everything, I couldn’t tell her a single fact.
I only hoped she was lucid and capable of texting.
“Hi Mom,” I typed. “You know that letter you wrote to Olivia on her twenty-sixth birthday? Could you take a photo of it and text it to me? I want to adapt it into a monologue for an audition.”
“The one we found in her journal?” My mother texted back.
“Yes.”
“I’ll see if I can find it.”
“I need it today, if it isn’t too much trouble?”
She sent a thumbs up image.
“Are you working while you’re over there?”
“In my down time.”
“Rob’s talking rehab,” she texted.
“Maybe that’s a good thing,” I replied.
“For now, they’re making me take an antidepressant. I can barely see straight.”
“It might help.”
“I hate it. But I just don’t care.”
I paused, not sure how to respond.
She texted back. “It was a joke, Jess. LOL.”
It wasn’t funny to me as I was sure it wasn’t all that funny to her, either.
“Try to relax,” I urged. “I’ll be back soon. Love you, Mom.”
“Please find her,” she wrote. She sent a heart.
For a long while I stared at my phone, worried about her and what the future held for us once I got back to Seattle.
* * *
While Angie and I were at breakfast in the hotel dining room, my phone dinged, and I picked it up, expecting to see a copy of the letter. I was surprised to see a message from Greta Macheski instead.
Angie noticed my expression. “What is it?” she asked, a forkful of omelet near her mouth.
“A text from Basia’s mother.”
“Really?” Angie put down her utensil and leaned forward. “What does it say?”
I opened the message. “That photo looks like Elena Visser, Basia’s roommate during college.”
“What the heck.” Angie’s mouth hung open with surprise.
I texted back. “Thank you so much.”
My phone dinged a second time.
“Please do not contact me again.”
I glanced up and met Angie’s raised eyebrows. “Should I respond?”
“Probably not. I’ll google the Visser person.” Angie grabbed her phone, while I picked up my spoon to finish the poached eggs on my plate. I watched Angie google the name “Elena Visser.” Her eyebrows rose even higher.
“What?” I asked.
“You won’t believe this.” Angie turned her phone toward me. “Take a gander, chica.”
I looked at the item showing on Angie’s phone: Elena Visser on Facebook. Blond hair, blue eyes, attractive young woman. About the same age as Olivia.
It was like seeing her twin.
“Fuck,” I muttered.
“Can you believe it?” Angie flipped around her phone again and read through the info. “Elena Visser. Lives in the UK, from the Netherlands. She’s a doctor, apparently.”
“A physician doctor?”
“Says MD. Radiologist.”
“Where does she work? Does it say?”
“St. Mary’s Hospital, London.”
“London, England?”
“Duh, Jessica.”
“When was her last post?”
I choked down my breakfast, not even tasting the eggs and toast, as Angie scrolled for information.
“Private info,” she said, frowning.
“Try Twitter.”
Angie’s fingers flew as she searched the web for Elena Visser’s Twitter account. She paused and then gazed up at me. Her brown eyes glowed black with intensity.
“You won’t believe this, Jess.”
“Try me.”
“Last tweet? Something silly about cats. September 28, 2014.”
“Fuck,” I said again. The date of the tweet was the day before Olivia and Basia had lost their lives. I lifted my coffee cup. My hand shook so much, I had to put the cup back down. It clattered onto the saucer. The sound seemed to fill the room. My ears rang.
I grabbed my phone. It wobbled in my hand. I took a deep breath to center myself and typed in: “missing person Elena Visser 2014”. Nothing. I tried a more general search. Nothing. I could see Angie searching on her phone as well.
“Could no one have reported her missing?” Angie asked. “Is that even possible?”
“Maybe. If she didn’t have family.”
“Wouldn’t her employer file a report?”
“I don’t know.” I stared down at my phone. “I don’t know how that works.”
“Maybe if she was a flake, you know, if she didn’t show up for work sometimes, they wouldn’t have a reason to report her missing.”
“I don’t think a person who chooses medicine could ever be a flake,” I shot back. “That field of study is so rigorous. You have to be really dedicated.”
“Stereotype, Jess,” Angie warned.
“Yeah, maybe.” I went back to my phone search. I typed in: “2014 st mary’s hospital staff london.” A newspaper article popped up.
“Hmm,” I commented, scanning the article.
“What did you find?” Angie leaned on the table and stared at me.
“A newspaper article.” I went back to the headline. “From 2014.” I read the headline out loud. “Local hospital to lay off 200 employees as x-ray unit is outsourced.”
“St. Mary’s?” Angie asked.
“Yep. Let’s see.” I scrolled up. “This was from June 2014. Interesting.”
“So little orphan Elena gets laid off. Goes to Amsterdam to see her old roommate and gets killed.”
“That pretty much sums it up, doesn’t it?”
Angie let out a snort of disbelief. “So, this person just drops off the planet. Just like that. Nobody knows? Nobody cares?”
“Sad, isn’t it?” I put down my phone. “But I think it might have been what happened.”
“They cremated Elena Visser. Not Olivia. Jesus, Jess. You have Elena Visser’s ashes in your apartment.”
“Yeah.” I shook my head in disbelief as the truth incinerated the past two years of my life. I felt as if my inner being had begun to disintegrate as well. I sat there in my chair in the dining hall in the Krapolinsky Hotel, shell-shocked, as a strange hollowness devoured all the energy from my bones.
I heard Angie’s voice from far, far away.
“Jessica, are you okay?” Angie put a hand on my forearm just as my phone dinged.
“Jessica?”
22
The Letter
I sat like a lump, one breath short of a nervous breakdown. I could see Angie and hear her, but I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t move. I knew my phone had just alerted me to a new text, but I didn’t have the strength to respond. All the care and grief I had once harbored for my sister had been wiped away in this huge betrayal, leaving me blank.
