See Jane Run

Part 2

When the doorbell rang, she sat bolt upright, not immediately recognizing the slow, melodic chimes.

No one had ever come to visit yet.

Heart thumping from the start, she picked her way down the stairs carefully, turning on lights as she went, each splashing a wash of yellow over the few family pictures that lined the walls.

“Who is it?” she called as she reached the door. No one answered.

Riley paused, half crouched, her hand on the doorknob. She breathed hard before rolling up on her toes and squinting through the peephole.

There could have been someone there, but Riley couldn’t tell through the blackness. She couldn’t remember if the porch light had a bulb yet.

Had someone taken it? Had it ever been there to begin with? Her heart started to pound, her mind throbbing, clogging with images: a police officer, come to take her away; Seamus and Abigail O’Leary, wringing their hands while looking for their daughter Jane; a lackey for her parents, certain they knew what Riley had found.

Stop being a paranoid freak, she commanded herself.

She was breathing hard now, her runaway mind pretzeling her body into a panic attack. She felt the telltale beads of sweat on her upper lip and at her hairline. Her chest felt as if it had been wrapped tight, every breath she tried to take an exhausting effort.

“I’m OK, I’m OK.” She spat out the mantra Dr. Morley had told her to say, and concentrating on the words did calm her, slowly, each syllable carefully chipping away at the block that held down Riley’s lungs. She paced the front room, peeking out the long window there to see that there was no one on the porch, no one parked on the streets.

A glitch, Riley decided. The bell had rung due to a mechanical glitch.

When she was breathing normally again, deep breaths in, long breaths out, she double-checked the lock on the door. It was locked. Riley had initially liked the thick, heavy bolt on the door, but that little niggling voice in the back of her head was suddenly wondering whether it was there to keep the bad people out—or in.

Back upstairs, Riley shoved the birth certificate aside and yanked her biology book closer. She was done being Nancy Drew—an errant doorbell had nearly made her pee her pants—but it was what was on her computer screen that caused the blood in her veins to run ice-water cold.

The headline letters were thick, an almost throbbing red. HAVE YOU SEEN ME? The picture underneath was a grainy black and white of a chubby, round-cheeked baby girl. There was no name, no contact number, no additional information.

“Oh my God,” Riley breathed. “My God.”

Riley didn’t recognize the baby—nothing about her seemed familiar—but her black eyes were round and wide.

Trusting.

My sister?