As Tenley felt the touch on her shoulder, she flinched, spooked. She turned to see Ward Dahlstrom, boss man, big shot, GQ wannabe, who had all the other office girls swooning. Not her, of course, not ever. Ticktock, in four hours she’d be home.
“Miss Siskel? Are we ready for lunch in fifteen minutes?”
Dahlstrom smelled like peppermint and, she swore, scotch, even though it was barely lunchtime on a Monday. She hated his hands, his manicured fingernails. His preppy checked shirt. His show-offy watch. She and Lanna met him first when they came to visit with Mom, him and his stupid jokes, and even Lanna thought he was cool, “so much power” and “a real man” and “so handsome.” Tenley never understood that. Plus, she completely loathed when he said “we” when he meant “you.”
“I guess so,” she said.
She felt Dahlstrom standing there, felt him walk away. He didn’t like her. So what? Maybe at lunch she should head down to the park, see what was going on in real life, not sit here and watch the movie of it.
Tenley tugged her hair into a knot, looped the long strands twice, then stuck in a yellow pencil to hold it off her face. Blinked at the screen of Curley Park in front of her. Like a … movie? That made it, somehow, kind of different.
Watching her computer monitor was kind of like watching a movie. A movie of people’s lives. Weird that it was her, a college student and the only remaining Siskel daughter, watching this Curley Park story—whatever it was—unfold.
The monitor was the only good thing about this job. It let her look for Lanna. Lanna, who she knew was gone, impossibly and unbearably gone. She watched for Lanna in crowds, in the audience at concerts, looked for her ponytail and shoulders at Starbucks. Sometimes thought she’d caught a glimpse of her just around a corner. She’d even—she was embarrassed to admit—run after a few girls, Lanna’s name on her lips, but soon skidded to a halt, remembering her older sister would never return.
Lanna was dead. No one could bring her back.
But watching for Lanna was a way of keeping her alive. Thinking just the next moment, in the next screen, her darling sister would appear. She’d recognize her walk, or that way she stood, one foot on her knee like a stork, her ponytail bobbing outside her Newton North High School baseball cap.
It couldn’t happen, of course. Dead, and buried, funeral and everything. She’d been there. There was no mystery, no suspense. Lanna, almost twenty-two, and cool, and beautiful, had “met” someone online. But one night she’d gone out late, no one knew why, and tripped, hitting her head on a log in Steading Woods, the expanse of pine trees and underbrush behind their house in Forest Hills. She was found the next day, just off the path. No trace yet of the “boyfriend,” police said, after taking Lanna’s computer. Looked like an accident, the police said. She’d had no suitcase, no purse.
Did Tenley know the boyfriend’s name? Where her older sister might have been going? No, she’d said, and that was true.
But Tenley knew Lanna had been planning to run off with him. Someday, though. Not that night. She’d promised Lanna never to tell. And hadn’t. Until it didn’t matter anymore. She never forgot the way her mother had looked at her then, and her father, and even the cops. And everyone. Everyone. Could she have saved her?
Tenley had been eighteen. A kid. She’d loved her sister. Every cool sister has some cool boyfriend, and Tenley only wanted Lanna to love her. Sisters don’t tell, Lanna insisted. There was nothing bad, Lanna promised. How was Tenley supposed to know? Anyway, maybe it really was an accident.
Tenley had hidden in her room for … she didn’t remember how long. Looking up “missing sister.” Looking up “runaways.” Maybe Lanna had simply gone for a late-night walk, wrong place, wrong time. Maybe, maybe, maybe.
How could she have—Tenley closed her eyes, imagined the Cape Cod beach where they all used go, imagined the seagulls swooping overhead, the whoosh of the waves. Tried to get calm, like her shrink Dr. Maddux tried to teach her.
How could Tenley explain she was just—looking for Lanna. Not expecting to see her. Not even, really, hoping. Just looking.
If Tenley ever had another sister, she’d never let her out of her sight.
Curley Park was still on her screen. She should click to the next one, but she had to admit things were getting a little interesting down there. She could kind of see, but not too well, there seemed to be someone lying on the ground, and they’d put up that yellow crime scene tape. Tenley was getting better at making things out in surveillance video, maybe her brain was getting used to it, but since this was a traffic room, the cams were focused on the street.
But there wasn’t any traffic. Looked like the cops had stopped all the cars. Screens five and six were so empty, they were like still lifes. Seven, where the ambulance waited—she could see the doors open now—was getting more and more crowded. Now they were—what was going on? The shape of the crowd was changing. She poised her finger over the green button labeled RECORD TWENTY SECONDS.
Should she record?
Should she, um, talk to someone?