Diana stopped the water and stepped out into the steamy bathroom, toweling off and then wearing a different towel around her body as she moved through the apartment. It was cool outside of the bathroom, and her skin prickled into gooseflesh as she walked to the bedroom where she kept her laptop. She logged on, called up the web browser and clicked on her bookmarks bar.
There was no shortage of sites devoted to missing persons on the internet. There were non-profits run by organizations, sites run by parents turned advocates, and sites devoted to individuals who had disappeared or run away, usually maintained by a family member or friend and full of heartfelt pleas and grainy snapshots. Diana went to one of the national missing persons clearinghouses and typed in the name "Margaret Todd." Nothing came back, so she tried "Margie Todd." Again nothing, which didn't really surprise her. Diana had learned that people who disappeared prior to the internet age were much less likely to show up on any of the big missing persons sites. Someone had to post the information, and in the case of Margie Todd, that burden would have fallen on Kay. Diana didn't take her to be much of an internet user.
Diana went back to the search feature and typed Rachel's name. By this time, Diana had seen the details of her sister's profile so many times that she knew them by heart, right down to the pathetic little narrative—one paragraph long—that gave the details of the night Rachel disappeared:
Fifteen-year-old Rachel Janet Greene left her house sometime between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m. on the morning of August 22nd, 2004. She had been at a party the night before and had been involved in an altercation with another girl. A friend dropped Rachel at her house at approximately 1:30 am. Rachel was seen by her older sister at this time. In the morning, when her family went into Rachel's room to check on her, she was gone. A neighbor reported seeing Rachel walking away from the house some time during the night, but couldn't be certain of the time. It is not clear whether Rachel Greene met with foul play or disappeared of her own accord. Her family has not heard from her since that night.
Diana stared at the photo of Rachel that appeared on the screen. It was a high school portrait, taken during Rachel's freshman year, about a year before she disappeared. She looked wide-eyed and somewhat innocent, her hair straight and past her shoulders, her teeth slightly crooked since they couldn't afford braces. Diana ran her tongue over her own teeth, which were even worse than her sister's.
The photo and the narrative told so little of the story. They didn't reveal the depths of her sister's unhappiness and rebellion, the volume of the fights she'd had with her mother and Diana. They didn't explain the long nights waiting and pacing, the nights in bed staring at the ceiling, the gap left in the center of their lives that seemed to expand like a black hole, gobbling up large chunks of matter and nearly swallowing her mother whole. And Diana knew that if Rachel's entry didn't reveal the whole story of her life and disappearance—and how could it?—then none of the thousands of missing persons entries did.
And she knew that Kay Todd wasn't telling her everything. Not even close.
Diana clicked on another bookmark at the top of the page. This one took her to her own site, the one she had created in the weeks after Rachel's disappearance. It was a low-budget production, as most of them were, and featured more photos and information than the national sites. But not much more about the actual disappearance since Diana didn't really know anything else. Over the past few years, Diana had given serious thought to shutting it down, not renewing the domain name fee and letting the whole thing fade away into the vast reaches of cyberspace.
But she just couldn't bring herself to do it.
The website also had an added benefit. It allowed Diana to set up an email account, a tipline through which people could send information about the case to her, and then she could pass it along to the police if it seemed at all important. In the first months after Rachel disappeared, the tips came in fast and furious, and they helped Diana and her mother reconstruct the details of the last night Rachel was known to be alive. After a few months, the emails turned weird, as Diana expected they would. People claimed to have "seen" Rachel in every part of the country, doing everything imaginable. Working as a waitress at a truck stop in Utah. Working as a stripper in Texas. Diana tried not to let her hopes rise with each of these emails, but she couldn't help herself. A little thrill rose in her chest at each new piece of information—no matter how far-fetched—and she asked the police about it only to be told that there was no sense in checking these "leads" out. A few times she considered getting in her car and going herself, driving all the way to some out-of-the-way restaurant or strip club to lay eyes on the woman who might just be her sister, but when she wrote back to the people who provided the initial information, no response of any merit came. Just a strange joke, a strange sense of humor. Move along, nothing to see here.