Chapter 1 - The Diary Under the Mattress
Sterling locked the bedroom door behind me and left me pounding on it while I called my sister's name.
"Elise!" I shouted. "Are you here?"
There was no answer.
The room smelled of cedar and dust. The curtains were closed, the bed neatly made, and a suitcase sat open on the floor as though someone had started packing and been interrupted. This was the room Elise had slept in while her husband remodeled the master suite. Sterling had told our family she'd left him five months ago and didn't want to be contacted.
He had also told us she was alive, happy, and somewhere in Oregon.
I had come to his house to ask why her phone was still connected to his account.
He'd smiled, told me to wait upstairs, and turned the key in the door.
I had brought a folder of the messages our family had sent since Elise supposedly moved west. Most had been answered by Sterling, never by her. He told me she was taking a break from social media and from people who made demands on her. Until that afternoon I had struggled to explain why every answer sounded reasonable by itself, yet all of them together made my sister seem to have vanished.
"Sterling! Open it!"
I checked the window. It was three stories above a paved courtyard. There was no safe way out that I could see.
I picked up the bedroom phone. The line was dead.
Then I noticed the edge of the mattress had been pulled away from the headboard. Something narrow and dark showed beneath it.
I reached underneath and found a small red diary with a bent metal clasp.
"What is this?"
The handwriting inside belonged to Elise. I'd recognized the long loop in her capital E since we were children. The first pages described ordinary things: groceries, a doctor's appointment, a problem with the heating. Later entries grew shorter and frightened.
Sterling changed the code again. He says I keep forgetting. I know I don't.
He took the blue folder out of my bag. I need to remember what I put in it.
The final entry was dated three weeks ago.
I have to leave before he finds the spare key. Ana will come if I can reach her. I hope she believes me.
My knees went weak.
Three weeks ago.
Sterling had told me Elise left five months earlier and never returned. Yet she'd written in this room, on this bed, with the same pen she used to mark birthday cards.
The lock clicked.
Sterling stepped into the doorway, his charcoal sweater immaculate, a set of keys hanging from his hand.
He stopped when he saw the diary.
"Put that down."
I held it against my chest.
"Where is she?"
His face hardened.
"Your sister is sick, Ana. She invents things when she's frightened."
"She wrote this three weeks ago."
"She came back for her things. She was gone before morning."
"Then why did you lock me in here?"
Sterling opened his mouth but didn't answer.
I glanced toward the landing behind him. His housekeeper, Mrs. Reed, stood beside the staircase holding a basket of laundry. She looked from the diary to Sterling and lowered her eyes.
"Let me leave," I said.
Sterling stepped to one side.
As I walked past, he reached for the diary. I pulled away. He caught my sleeve, then let go when Mrs. Reed cleared her throat.
"That belongs to my wife," he said.
"Then she can tell me whether she wants it back."
I hurried down the stairs and out to the street, where my car was parked beneath an old sycamore tree.
My hands were shaking too badly to start the engine.
I called the police nonemergency line, reported what had happened, and asked how to document my concerns about Elise's welfare. Then I called our mother.
Mom answered after two rings.
"Did you find anything?"
May you like
I looked at the date on the diary's last page.
"She was there three weeks ago," I said. "And Sterling doesn't want me to know why."
