gone

--6--

SIX DAYS SINCE ELODIE HAD BEEN HEARD FROM. I wasn't obsessing over the hourly countdown anymore, since it no longer meant anything. She'd technically been found. I knew I needed to tell Mom and Brad that Elodie wasn't coming back to us, but I justified not telling them as wanting to know for sure that body was Elodie's. I needed the DNA to match—but I didn't. I knew it was her, I just wanted to prolong telling them. Anything to delay the inevitable pain that was in store for them; pain that would last the rest of all of our lives. The second I said it out loud, I knew it would become that much more real. I wasn't ready for it. I didn't want to be the one to break that news.

I waited for a phone call all day. My mother had been texting me constantly throughout the past almost week. Week. One week without El. It didn't feel right. It felt like the longest week of my life, and this was how the rest of it was going to be for me. Boring and colorless and dull.

I decided to fill my time with cleaning. I put on my headphones and blasted music to silence the thousands of thoughts rattling around within me. I ran the dryer to de-wrinkle my clothes so I could fold them. I lit a candle to make the space feel less empty and I even hand washed the dishes, mostly to take up time, though. I could've used the dishwasher, but that would defeat the purpose of busywork. I swiffered my kitchen floor and the tile by the entry as well as my bathroom. I changed my gray comforter and sheets to a white one, tossing the old ones on top of the wash as if it were calling dibs on being cleaned next.

As I sat down to fold the laundry, I turned on some stupid lifetime show and dumped the basket onto the couch. As I was going through the things in the basket, I stumbled across a shirt that was Elodie's. She'd just worn it a week and a half ago when we went out to each at this little cafe on the beach. I wondered if I'd spend my entire life with this hollowness in my chest.

I hugged the shirt, imagining El in it. My phone rang, interrupting my moment. It was Mark.

"Hello, Mark," I said. I put so much force into my words, trying to hide the fact that I was on the brink of collapse.

"Hello, Elsie," His tone of voice was...off.

"Do you have news for me?" I asked. I just wanted him to confirm this goddamn body was my sister's so I could get the worst phone call I'd ever have to make out of the way.

"I do have news for you and you're not going to believe it. I can't discuss the full thing right now, so I want to go ahead and make plans for dinner tonight. How does an actual restaurant sound?"

"Sure," I didn't think I'd be up to the task after confirming it was my sister's body I'd come across, but my heart was starting to pick up in my chest. "Please go ahead and tell me what you can." He had to know I was dying for this to be over with.

"The body is not related to you. Elsie, that body was not Elodie's."

I felt my eyebrows curl into a frown and I cocked my head to the side. "What?" She was wearing El's clothes. Her shoes. "What do you mean? It wasn't my sister? Are you saying she could still be out there?"

I couldn't think straight. What the fuck did this mean?

"There's a lot more I want to pick your brain about," Mark said. "Tonight at six work? At Cicili's?"

"Okay," I said, stunned by the information I was just hit with. Was she still alive? "I'll see you tonight." We hung up, and all I knew at that point was that this entire thing had just gotten a lot more confusing. There were now so many more questions than I'd had before.

I suddenly was filled with relief I hadn't told Bradley or my mother that Elodie was dead. But here I was, completely dumbfounded and unsure of how to feel.