…alive. Or at least, she was the night she wrote this. But the truth of why she vanished was infinitely darker than any of the theories we had agonized over for the past decade.
The letter was dated the morning after her wedding. The ink was smudged, written in a frantic, heavy hand that tore through the paper in places.
“If you are reading this, it means I never made it back to you. I didn’t run away because of cold feet. I ran because of Greg. Last night, while he was sleeping, I was looking for my phone charger in his duffel bag. I found a hidden compartment. Inside were photos, journals, and a collection of drivers licenses. He isn’t who he says he is. The ‘tragic accident’ that took his first fiancée wasn’t an accident. He wrote about it. He wrote about how he did it. And worse, he wrote about his timeline for me.
I can’t go to the police. His uncle is the precinct captain, you know this. If I try to expose him, he will kill me, and he will come after you and Mom. I have to disappear completely to keep us all safe. Do not look for me. And whatever you do, DO NOT let Greg know you found this.”
I couldn’t breathe. The air in the attic felt heavy, suffocating.
My mind violently rewound through the last ten years. I pictured Greg sitting in our living room, weeping into his hands as my mother stroked his hair. I thought about the police investigation, led by his uncle, which conveniently concluded that she had suffered a “fugue state.” I thought about how Greg never moved on, how he still came to our house every Thanksgiving, playing the part of the devoted, heartbroken husband.
He wasn’t clinging to our family out of grief. He was keeping an eye on us. He was making sure the secret stayed buried.
A sudden creak from the floorboards below pulled me out of my spiraling panic.
“Hey, Sarah?” a voice called out from the bottom of the attic stairs. It was Greg. He had stopped by to help my mom with some yard work. “You up there? Your mom said you were digging through some old boxes.”
My blood turned to ice. I looked down at the letter in my trembling hands, then at the dusty trapdoor leading down to the hallway. Ten years of mourning a ghost, and the monster had been sitting at our dinner table the entire time.
I quickly shoved the letter down the back of my jeans and took a deep, shuddering breath to steady my voice.
“Yeah, Greg!” I called back, forcing a tired smile onto my face as I moved toward the stairs. “Just looking for some old college textbooks!”
I was going to find my sister. And I was going to destroy him.
