The Lost Sister Read Online Free Page B

grounds of the Balgay cemetery, and I felt a strange sense of loneliness. I was the one living person in a field of the dead.
    I crouched in front of the headstone, traced the dates that marked Elaine’s life with my index finger. Closed my eyes.
    Tried to conjure up her face.
    Wished she was here with me. To answer my questions. Offer reassurance. Remind me what it was to be in love with life again.
    Here was the reality: she wasn’t coming back.
    I was alone.
    In the end, that was the one inescapable truth of my life.
    Maybe I was alive. Had moved to a place of understanding, after all.

    In the car, I read through the files again. Looking for something I had missed. Drinking in the details.
    Working it like a real case and not just a favour for a friend.
    I was parked near the cemetery gates; had turned the interior lights of the car on as the day darkened considerably. Grey light made it hard to see, and I was grateful for the shelter as rain started to whip down over the car. The winds got up enough that I could feel a gentle rocking motion.
    Reading the files I kept coming back to one name: Burns.
    Susan had told me she didn’t suspect the disappearance had anything to do with Mary’s Godfather’s more unsavoury connections. Can’t say that I was so sure.
    The thing I had to figure, why was I drawn to this case? It wasn’t about doing Connolly a favour.
    And could I say that the girl’s disappearance affected me that much? Maybe reminded me of someone I used to know. Some girl at school, perhaps.
    Or was I looking for some closure with Burns? Some way of taking revenge by tying him into the girl’s disappearance. By making him the bad guy. By exposing the bastard once and for all.
    Was I looking to make this my case for all the wrong reasons?

Chapter 5
    The Neighbourhood Watch had been out in force. Every lamppost had a laminated poster stuck on it. Colour picture: head and shoulders of Mary smiling coyly at the camera. Not really wanting her picture taken, but knowing it was going to happen anyway.
    When I parked the car outside the Furst house, I stopped to look at one of the fliers – a pixellated printout – and felt something that might have been longing or sadness. Possibly both. A longing for something I could never have had and a sadness that even if Mary were to return, she would never again be that girl in the picture.
    It’s funny how pictures can affect us that way. Light and angle and expression give us these impressions. Snapshots make us think we know a whole person.
    But I didn’t know this girl.
    Maybe never would.
    I turned away, opened the front gate of her mother’s house, walked up to the door, knocked fast. Too late to double back.
    No choice, then, but to wait.
    After a while, if only to keep myself standing there, I knocked again.
    The door opened. A woman slipped her head out, nervous, not sure what to expect. In her late thirties, but her daughter’s disappearance had added years. Her hair was flat and lifeless, her skin smooth but dull, and her eyes seemed heavy with the kind of knowledge no one should ever have. She might have been attractive if it wasn’t for the fact she appeared so close to death; a look in her eyes as though she wished she could feel that bony hand upon her shoulder.
    Jennifer Furst. Mary’s mother.
    She wasn’t past thirty-five. Looked so damn tired.
    I introduced myself.
    People joke a lot about the “foot in the door” methods employed by door to door salesmen. Truth of the matter is, putting your foot in the door doesn’t really change anyone’s mind, although it usually does result in bruising or broken bones. A guy I knew used to be a salesman, said he had a real method of getting sales; figuring who were the chumps and who the timewasters. It worked pretty well, I found. Not just for salesmen.
    As I gave my name, I took my hand out my coat pocket as though to offer it, dropped