Mrs. LaTrobe nods hesitantly.
"Yes," she offers. "The lab results are back. But the DNA doesn't match anyone with a criminal record."
"And the address? On Sterling?"
"You were right," she answers. "It's just an empty lot. Apparently it accesses a basement, but the police found nothing there either. As I understand it, the basement was completely empty. There was evidence that someone had recently scrubbed it clean, but nothing else. I'm Sorry."
I nod, disappointed. "Okay."
"But you've heard about the other girls?"
I have no idea what she's referring to. "What other girls?"
"Well, it wasn't just Shanna who re-appeared a few days ago," Mrs. LaTrobe explains. "Five other girls who had been reported missing also returned to their homes that night, all of them with no memory whatsoever of what happened. It'll be in the news tonight."
Whatever Shanna had gone through, then, had happened six times over. I try not to imagine the horrors the other girls all must have lived through while held captive. But at least, now, their ordeal was over.
Mrs. LaTrobe sets down her tea. She leans toward me.
"Do you know what I think happened?"
I'm not sure what to say to her, but I'd give anything to know what actually happened to me during the two nights that were blacked out of my memory.
"I think you must have finally remembered what happened to you when you first disappeared," she says carefully. "I think you must have remembered who had taken Shanna captive, and where. My guess is that you must have had reason to believe that your sister could still be alive, so you went straight to her. I think when you arrived you must have been subdued and sedated just like your sister and all of those other girls, which is why you can no longer remember what you'd recalled about the night you disappeared a year ago. But I think, somehow, you must have fought your way free. I think it was you who freed your sister and all of those girls. I think it was you, Celeste."
Outside, Autumn has finally begun to arrive. The sultry summer air is gone, the sky has turned a clean blue, and the first yellow leaves are at last appearing on the trees.
As I leave the school, I think about what Mrs. Latrobe told me.
It's hard to imagine that I ever could have had the courage or audacity to leave my appartment in the middle of the night, alone, in attempt to rescue my sister. Unless, possibly, I was somehow responsible for my sister's disappearance and I was trying to right some wrong. But it's even harder to imagine how I ever could have been responsible for something like that. And I have no idea how I ever could have found her and set her free.
But I guess it's nice to believe I could have.
I guess it's nice to believe that if something else ever happened to either of us, I'd do the same thing again.
— THE END —
