Sister, Missing

by Sophie McKenzie

  And now, my father . . . my second father was telling me he wasn’t my birth dad either?

  Still barely able to take it in, I read on.

  I was unable to have my own children. Annie and I knew this three years into our marriage, after a year of trying for a baby and a series of fertility tests. The sperm donor did not legally have to give his name and Annie and I know nothing about him, other than that he was a medical student with colouring as close to mine as we could manage. We had to explain this to the police and the FBI, of course, when we were required to undergo DNA testing to prove we were your parents. It was easy to produce the sperm donor paperwork to show the true circumstances of your conception and those involved were extremely sympathetic. More than anything, we didn’t want to overload you with information when you were already having to adjust to us as your birth parents.

  I stopped reading again. Annie and Sam had lied over my DNA test? It felt like the world as I knew it had been turned on its head.

  Shelby’s father is another story. By now I imagine you girls will have confided in each other and she will know her heritage as you know yours. I know you will do your best to help her with the inevitable pain she will experience. Hers is a heavy burden to carry.

  Madison is still very young and I’m not sure she is ready to learn that she was conceived through the same sperm donor as you. Perhaps we could discuss that? I’m happy to give you any further information I can, though I have to stress the donor sperm we used was from an anonymous hospital source. He has no idea of your existence and we know nothing about him.

  Please believe that I could not love you more if you had been born from my blood. I hope you will feel able to talk to me and Annie about all this but, however you respond, we will always be your loving parents.

  Sam

  My mind reeled. This was too much . . . too overwhelming to cope with. I shoved the letter in my pocket. How could Sam and Annie have kept this huge piece of information from me?

  Not just me. Shelby’s letter, lying unopened on the bed, caught my eye. I picked it up and glanced towards the bedroom opposite. I could hear her in there, banging drawers and cursing.

  I stared down at the envelope in my hand. If Sam couldn’t have his own kids and Madison and I were the product of a sperm donor then who on earth was Shelby’s dad?

  I know you will do your best to help her with the inevitable pain she will experience. Hers is a heavy burden to carry.

  Sam’s words careered around my head. The way things were between Shelby and me, I couldn’t see her asking for my help over anything.

  Which meant Shelby dealing with whatever was in this letter on her own.

  That wasn’t right.

  And it wasn’t what Sam wanted.

  No, if I was really going to help Shelby I needed to know what ‘heavy burden’ Sam had been talking about.

  I hesitated for only a second, then I took out Shelby’s letter.

  What I read shocked me to the core.

  11

  The Boy

  I was so caught up in what I was reading that I didn’t hear Jam come into the room until he sat down on the other side of the bed.

  I looked up. ‘Oh, Jam.’

  ‘I haven’t found anything,’ he said. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘You’re not going to believe this,’ I whispered.

  He frowned. ‘What?’

  I opened my mouth to speak, but it was hard. I still couldn’t quite believe it was true and saying it would make it real.

  ‘What?’ Jam said impatiently.

  I handed him the letter addressed to me.

  ‘None of us are really Sam’s kids,’ I whispered.

  I turned back to Shelby’s letter. Much of it was written in a similar style and expressing similar feelings as my own. Again, it assumed an important conversation had already taken place and stressed how proud Sam was of her. But one paragraph stood out.

  Your mother was finding it hard to be a full-time mom to your older sister and still struggling with the fact that I wasn’t able to give her a child. We even separated for a while under the pressure. The affair just happened, Shelby, it was one of those things. Your mom was vulnerable. Simeon Duchovny, as I know she will have explained, represented a different world. She never stopped loving me and neither of us have ever loved you any the less because of the circumstances in which you were conceived.

  I read it again. Shelby was the product of an affair. Annie had slept with someone else. Some other man – not Sam and not the anonymous sperm donor who’d fathered me and Madison – was Shelby’s actual dad.

  I couldn’t take it in. And yet it made sense. Shelby looked so different from me and Madison. Her colouring was different . . . and her body shape. And it was certainly easy to imagine neurotic, emotional Annie finding it impossible to cope with life and running away from her responsibilities for a while.

  It all fitted.

  ‘This is heavy.’ Jam looked up, his eyes full of shock. ‘Sam isn’t your birth dad?’

  I pressed my finger to my lips and handed him Shelby’s letter. ‘Or Shelby’s,’ I whispered.

  Jam’s eyes widened as he read. ‘Oh, man,’ he breathed. He looked up and shook his head. ‘This is addressed to Shelby,’ he said quietly. ‘We shouldn’t be reading it.’

  I stared at him. ‘I know, but—’

  Jam turned away. ‘I’ll give it to her.’

  ‘No!’ I reached across the bed and grabbed the letter off him. ‘Wait a sec.’

  ‘Lauren, it’s not your decision. Sam wanted her to know.’

  ‘Well, I bet Annie didn’t,’ I whispered. ‘In fact, I bet Annie doesn’t even know these letters are here.’

  ‘Well, they aren’t from Annie, they’re from Sam, and—’

  ‘That’s not what I mean,’ I said. ‘It’s just that this is a huge deal . . .’

  Jam raised his eyebrows. ‘D’you think I don’t know that? That’s why we have to—’

  ‘I just think we should wait,’ I whispered. ‘Think about it. Shelby’s already upset about Madison. Her dad only died last year. She hates me. And now this . . .’ I pointed to the letter. ‘Of course she has to know, but if we show her now she’ll have, like, total hysterics. We’ve got to stay focused on getting Madison back . . . which means we have to keep looking for the things Sam hid.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Jam looked at me as if I were mad. ‘Where did you find these letters?’

  I pointed to the little metal box. ‘They were locked in there,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t you get it?’ Jam hissed. ‘These letters are the things Sam hid. I mean, you had to break into that box to get them out. And Holtwood said the words he’d used about what he’d hidden were: something of huge value. Well, what could be of more “value” to Sam than letters telling you and Shelby the truth about your parentage after so many years?’

  ‘Wait.’ My head was spinning, trying to take in what he was saying. ‘Even if Sam saw a value in the letters, they still aren’t worth any money. The kidnappers won’t be interested . . . jeez, what are we going to tell them? What’s going to happen to Madison?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Jam said, ‘but I’m going to let Shelby know about her letter anyway.’

  ‘No,’ I persisted. ‘Not now. We have to make finding Madison the priority right now. Showing Shelby . . . it’s not the right thing to do.’

  ‘Here we go again.’ Jam’s eyes hardened. ‘You always know what the right thing to do is, don’t you, Lauren?’

  ‘That’s not fair. Please, Jam.’

  Jam hesitated, his hand on the door handle.

  At that moment, Shelby appeared. She stared suspiciously at me. ‘What’s going on?’ she said. ‘Have you found anything?’

  Jam was still holding Shelby’s letter in his hand. She hadn’t noticed. All her focus was on me.

  ‘Just a bunch of papers.’ I indicated the pile I’d taken from the bedside drawer earlier. The maga
zines were still strewn across the bed. The open metal box, now empty, lay on top.

  Shelby groaned. ‘There’s nothing valuable in this place,’ she said. ‘Maybe Sonia Holtwood was wrong.’

  Jam looked over at me. I could see the struggle in his eyes.

  I offered a silent prayer. Please, Jam.

  With a sigh, Jam slid Shelby’s letter into his jeans pocket. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Maybe Sonia Holtwood was wrong.’

  ‘Which means we have to find another way of getting Madison back.’ I stood up. ‘We’re going to have to track her down ourselves.’

  Shelby and Jam stared at me.

  ‘How?’ Shelby said.

  ‘Where would we start?’ Jam added.

  ‘Well, we know she’s been taken by Sonia Holtwood whose real name is Marcia Burns. And we know the guy who is helping her is Frank, who she worked with two years ago when they took me and Madison on the boat.’

  ‘How does that help?’ Shelby asked. ‘Knowing who they are doesn’t mean we know where they are.’

  ‘But it means we can describe them,’ I said. ‘When it comes to Sonia, we can easily find pictures if we look online. Maybe there’ll be a photo of Frank from the trial too.’

  Jam nodded. ‘OK, but who do we ask? Madison just vanished from the beach . . . you said no-one you spoke to had seen her – or seen anyone with her.’

  This was true. I frowned, thinking back to the moments just before Madison had gone missing. I’d been watching her all the way to the ice cream kiosk. I hadn’t taken my eyes off her, until . . .

  ‘There was a boy.’ My pulse quickened as the memory – and what it meant – fell into place. ‘A boy on the beach. He came up to me just, like, seconds before Madison disappeared,’ I said.

  ‘So what?’ Shelby said.

  ‘He deliberately distracted me,’ I said, thinking it through and realising it was true. ‘He came right up to me and asked me if I knew some girl called Cassie.’

  ‘Who’s Cassie?’ Shelby asked.

  ‘No-one. That’s the point. I’m sure he was just trying to get my attention, so I wouldn’t notice if someone approached Madison.’

  ‘But why would a random boy on the beach do that?’ Shelby frowned.

  I shook my head. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘OK.’ Jam rubbed at his forehead. ‘OK, well, we need to track this boy down and find out.’

  ‘How will we track him down?’ Shelby asked. ‘Just because he was on the beach on Monday . . . he could be anywhere now.’

  ‘He was wearing a Boondog Shack T-shirt, so maybe he works there. I saw him later, outside the Boondog,’ I said, remembering. ‘He was chatting to a group of people. He looked like the sort of person who’d be popular. Someone might remember him there.’

  Jam looked at me sideways. Was he wondering why I’d paid this guy quite so much attention? I blushed, remembering how good-looking the boy had been.

  ‘What’s the Boondog Shack?’ Jam asked.

  ‘It’s a surfer-style café,’ I explained. ‘Near the beach. Teenagers hang out there.’

  Shelby nodded. ‘I went down there every day last week.’

  Really? ‘I didn’t know that,’ I said.

  She shrugged. ‘What else was I gonna do? Stay home with Mom? You and Madison were off doing stuff together all the time. I didn’t have much choice.’

  ‘You know, Shelby, if there’s a college that does a degree course in whining you’ll get in, no problem,’ I snapped.

  Shelby threw me a fierce look.

  ‘Lauren, please.’ Jam glared at me, then checked his watch. ‘It’s almost 2 pm. Holtwood’s calling again at 4. What are we going to tell her?’

  ‘We’ll tell her we need more time,’ I said, feeling nettled. Why did Jam have to behave as if I was the one in the wrong. Shelby was the snitch who’d gone behind our backs to the police and stopped us getting Madison back. ‘We’ll tell Holtwood we’re still in London, looking for whatever Sam hid.’

  Jam looked sceptical. ‘But instead we’re going to Norbourne? We’re going to attempt to find some surfer boy who may or may not know something?’ He paused. ‘It’s not much of a lead, is it?’

  ‘It’s all we’ve got,’ I said.

  ‘Come on, then,’ Shelby said.

  ‘Not you,’ I said. ‘You can come back with us to Norbourne, but you’re not helping us look for Mo.’

  ‘Why not?’ Shelby said indignantly.

  ‘Because I don’t trust you.’ I put my hands on my hips.

  Honestly, how could Shelby expect us to include her when she had betrayed us just hours before?

  ‘That’s not fair,’ Shelby said. ‘I want Madison back as much as you.’

  I opened my mouth to tell her that I sincerely doubted that, but before I could speak, Jam patted his jeans pocket . . . the one containing Sam’s letter to Shelby.

  ‘Lauren,’ he said, a warning tone to his voice, ‘I think we should let Shelby help if she wants to.’

  I bit my lip, resentment mingling with fear that if I didn’t agree Jam would show Shelby the letter and then all hell would break loose and we’d be further away than ever from finding Madison.

  ‘Fine,’ I said.

  Shelby smiled triumphantly and marched out of the room.

  Jam shouldered the backpack with the two million and turned to me. ‘Thanks, Lauren.’ He lowered his voice. ‘You know, I can think of a lot better things to spend money on than cross-country train journeys and insane treasure hunts.’

  ‘Yeah?’ I felt for the wooden oval on its string round my neck. ‘Well, I guess that’s what you get if you go out with me.’

  I smiled, hoping Jam would smile that crinkly smile of his back at me, but he just rolled his eyes and headed after Shelby.

  I picked Sam’s letter to me off the bed, folded and pocketed it and followed them. What with everything else going on, the knowledge he wasn’t my biological dad hadn’t begun to sink in. It didn’t feel real. Which was fine – worrying about that stuff was the last thing I needed right now.

  We got back to Norbourne in record time and made straight for the Boondog Shack. The place was buzzing. I’d only seen it from a distance before, but it was cool. A great track was playing, there was nobody in there over twenty-one and the staff were all fit and very smiley.

  A couple of the waiters recognised Shelby and threw her a wave. She looked extremely pleased with herself as she led the way to a table by the window.

  I described the boy who’d spoken to me on the beach to our waitress. ‘I think he knows someone called Cassie who comes here?’ I said, remembering the name the boy had asked about.

  The waitress said she didn’t know either of them. It was the same with the next two waiters I asked. I checked the time. Holtwood was due to ring me in twenty minutes.

  It was starting to look like we’d made a terrible mistake in coming here. And then a girl with curly brown hair and freckles beckoned me over. She’d been sitting close to the door, watching me ask the waiters if they knew the blond boy. I’d described him as tall and good-looking, trying to ignore the quizzical look Jam had given me when I did so.

  I left Jam and Shelby still chatting to the waiters and went over to the girl with the freckles.

  ‘The boy you’re looking for?’ she said with a frown. ‘Why d’you want to find him?’

  I hesitated. The freckly girl knew him . . . that was obvious . . . and she didn’t look that thrilled to be talking about him. But I didn’t get the impression she was annoyed with me for asking – if anything she seemed sympathetic.

  I took a deep breath. ‘He asked me out,’ I lied. ‘Told me to meet him here.’

  Freckles raised her eyebrows. ‘He’s such a loser.’

  ‘Yeah?’ I said. ‘So . . . so does he work here or not?’

  Freckles shook her head sorrowfully. ‘He just hangs out here. Right now he’s with his latest girlfriend.’ She pointed through the Shack’s window, towards a restaurant further alon
g the promenade. ‘They’ll be in there.’

  ‘Thanks.’ I turned away.

  Freckles grabbed my arm. ‘Don’t waste your time on him,’ she said. ‘I wish I hadn’t.’

  We hurried out of the Shack and along the promenade. As we neared the carousel, the faint strains of its usual music drifted towards us – a brass band version of ‘The Teddy Bear’s Picnic’. It had been playing the same tune when Madison and I had walked past . . . was that really only a day ago?

  We left the carousel behind and headed towards the restaurant. It was a large pizza place filled with customers.

  I spotted the boy as soon as I walked in. He was leaning back in his booth, clearly flirting with the heavily-lipsticked girl sitting opposite him. I checked the time. 3.45 pm. Sonia Holtwood would be calling in fifteen minutes. What on earth was I going to say to her?

  This boy had to have some information.

  He looked up as Jam, Shelby and I walked over. His face was as chiselled and model-like as I remembered, though he showed no sign of recognising me.

  ‘Hi.’ He looked from me to Shelby to Jam. ‘Did you want something?’

  ‘You came up to me on the beach yesterday,’ I said. ‘You asked if I knew a girl called Cassie.’

  The boy’s eyes widened. Now he was remembering. I could see it.

  ‘Who’s Cassie?’ the pink-lipsticked girl opposite him said suspiciously. She looked at me. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘My name’s Lauren.’ I turned back to the boy. ‘All I want to know is who told you to speak to me.’

  ‘No-one told me to,’ the boy said.

  ‘Yes, they did,’ Shelby said.

  ‘I bet they paid you to do it too,’ Jam added shrewdly.

  ‘What is all this?’ whined Lipstick Girl. ‘What’s going on, Matt?’

  Matt stood up, a lock of blond hair falling over his forehead.

  ‘Go away,’ he said viciously.

  We glared at each other. He was a lot taller than me. Taller even than Jam. But I stood my ground.

  ‘The people who paid you have kidnapped our sister,’ I said, lowering my voice so the girl at the table couldn’t hear. ‘They’re capable of killing her. They will kill her if we don’t find her first.’