Chapter 12 - The Second Girl

My mother was awake when I came home, listening to rain against the bedroom window.

I sat where Elena usually sat.

"Ma, was another girl at the pier with Camille?"

Her eyes widened. The pencil fell from her hand.

Elena picked it up but didn't give it back immediately.

"You can stop this conversation anytime," she told Teresa. "Nobody here gets to force you."

My mother reached for the pencil. She wrote LENA, then crossed it out. Underneath she wrote LINA.

"Lina who?" I asked.

She drew a small bird, then pointed at Elena.

Elena's face drained of color.

"My dad used to call me Little Bird," she whispered. "I was eleven."

She opened the wallet she always carried. Behind her father's photograph was a faded picture of two children at a waterfront picnic: Elena with missing front teeth, and Camille, taller and grinning, her arm around Elena's shoulder.

"I forgot her last name," Elena said. "After the fire, my mother took us away. I didn't remember that girl was your sister until you said Camille's name."

"You were there?"

"I was supposed to meet Dad after his shift. Camille came to the gate to get me. There was yelling inside. Dad ran in when he heard her scream."

Elena stared at the photograph.

"I remember a woman putting me into a car. She covered me with her coat and told me not to look back."

My mother reached out and touched Elena's cheek.

"Teresa," Elena whispered. "Was it you?"

One shaky nod.

For seventeen years, my mother had carried two children out of danger: one in her arms, and one only in her prayers. She had saved Elena and lost Camille.

I couldn't imagine the weight of that choice.

Elena stood abruptly.

"I have spent my whole life wishing I could ask the woman who saved me why she never spoke."

Teresa covered her face.

"You don't have to answer now," Elena said. "But one day I need the truth. All of it."

Outside, tires crunched across the gravel.

Miles called from the gate. "Detective Bell found a phone left in Victor's car. It has a picture from inside Pier Nine."

I opened the image.

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Lucy was alive, sitting behind a locked wire partition.

Beside her stood a second figure holding a familiar silver bracelet.