PART 1 — THE MARK I COULD NEVER FORGET

I had raised Ruth for eight years after my sister, Joan, supposedly died.

From the time Ruth was one, I became the person who signed her school forms, stayed beside her during fevers, planned her birthdays, and answered questions about the mother she barely remembered.

I believed Joan was gone.

Then one afternoon at the beach, Ruth noticed something impossible.

I was helping her pull a dry shirt over her wet hair inside a changing cubicle when she suddenly froze.

“Aunty Jess,” she whispered.

“What is it?”

She pointed toward the narrow gap beneath the divider.

Only the legs of the woman in the next cubicle were visible.

Then the woman moved her towel, revealing a small butterfly-shaped birthmark on the outside of her calf.

Ruth looked up at me.

“She has my butterfly.”

My hands turned cold.

Ruth had inherited that mark from Joan.

It was not similar.

It was exactly the same.

Before I could think clearly, the woman grabbed her bag and hurried out.

I pushed open our curtain.

“Stay with Andy,” I told Ruth.

Andy, my boyfriend, was waiting nearby.

“But, Aunty Jess—”

“Please, Ruthie.”

I followed the woman toward the boardwalk.

“Wait!”

She kept walking.

Then I called the name I had not spoken to a living person in eight years.

“Joan!”

The woman stopped.

For one second, she stood completely still.

Then she began walking faster.

I caught up near the rinse station.

“Turn around.”

She kept her face angled away.

“You have the wrong person.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Please, Jess.”

The sound of my name in her voice nearly brought me to my knees.

I stepped in front of her.

Her hair was shorter. Her face was thinner, and scars ran along one side of her neck and collarbone.

But the eyes were the same.

My sister’s eyes.

“You were dead,” I whispered.

Joan covered her mouth.

Behind me, Ruth called my name.

Andy approached with her towel and our beach bag. He looked from me to Joan and immediately understood that something was terribly wrong.

“Take Ruth closer to the water,” I told him.

Ruth grabbed my wrist.

“Is that lady my mommy?”

Joan turned away.

I crouched in front of Ruth.

“Sweetheart, I need to speak with her first.”

“But is she?”

I swallowed.

“I think she might be.”

Ruth’s eyes filled.

I kissed her forehead and promised I would tell her everything once I understood it myself.

After Andy took her away, I faced Joan.

“You let us believe you were dead.”

Eight years earlier, Joan had taken one-year-old Ruth to an old farmhouse for the weekend.

A fire broke out during the night.

Ruth was found almost fifty yards from the house, sitting beside the family dog and crying.

A body was recovered inside.

The authorities identified it as Joan.

The coffin remained closed.

I buried my sister and went home with her little girl.

Now Joan stood in front of me, alive.

“You let me raise your daughter while she cried for you,” I said.

“I saved her,” Joan replied.

I stared at her.

“What?”

“I carried Ruth out through the side door. I left her in the grass, and the dog stayed with her.”

That answered the question that had haunted me for years.

“Then why did you disappear?”

Joan looked toward Ruth.

“Because when I finally came back, she already had you.”

Anger rose inside me.

“Do not make that sound like a sacrifice.”

Joan lowered her eyes.

Then she said something that changed the story again.

“There was another woman inside the house.”

Continue reading