No, I typed, because there could be no other answer.

 I was pissed, but now that I’m a mum, I figure that whatever happened must’ve been extremely traumatic. If she does ever contact me, I’m ready to talk. I’ll be her friend again—I mean, it had to have been BAD. Especially since Diana all but raised her. Look, I go to church twice a week and read my Bible every morning, but Sarah and Diana’s parents were the wrong kind of religious—they took the “spare the rod and spoil the child” thing as a license to harm.

I hadn’t known that tidbit, but it just solidified my impression of the sisters being a tight unit.

 You have any idea where she might’ve gone? I was planning to play peacemaker, try to help heal the break.

 That’s so nice of you, Aarav. But no, I don’t have anything. Sarah dropped all her friends when she left, even that loser druggie boyfriend she fought with Diana over. I tried to stalk her online last year after I had my second child—feeling nostalgic while sleep-deprived—but I got nothing. My husband’s an online ninja and he says she’s a literal ghost. Sarah really doesn’t want to be found.

I leaned back in my chair.

 Thanks anyway. What’s your ninja husband do in real life?

The ensuing conversation was the kind you have with people you haven’t seen for a while, and I managed to keep up the act for a few minutes. I was trying to think of a way out when Olivia said her month-old baby was ready for a feed and signed off.

I sat there in the semidarkness, staring out into the night.

She’s a literal ghost.

The words kept tumbling around in my head. What the hell was I thinking?

That Sarah hadn’t left at all?

56

Jesus, my paranoia was getting worse. It wasn’t like people couldn’t vanish if they felt like it. And I was looking online. If Sarah had chosen a strictly offline life, she might not have a digital footprint.

I’d check the electoral roll tomorrow at the library. Unless she’d never registered to vote. Why would a woman leave behind her whole life and vanish? The more I thought about it, the more it didn’t make sense. Unless . . . What had Olivia said?

Loser druggie boyfriend.

I vaguely remembered the guy. Mostly because I’d been jealous he got to be with Sarah; being a teen boy, crushing on Olivia hadn’t stopped me from admiring Sarah, too. The boyfriend had ended up in jail a year or so after Sarah disappeared and it had caused a minor scandal in the Cul-de-Sac, given that he used to come by to pick Sarah up in his patched-up death trap of a car. Margaret had said she’d caught him loitering outside her and Paul’s place.

“Probably casing it, thinking we’re doddery oldies.” She’d snorted. “I’d like to see that wasted prick try.”

Hunching over the keyboard, I began to hunt. It took a while to find him given the scant information I had, but there he was, at last, in a short news article, older, his blond hair graying and his pale skin more inked, but still with the mean-dog look I remembered.

. . . sentenced for grievous bodily harm against his de facto partner.

A man who beat his women might do more than that. He might turn into a dangerous stalker who terrified a young woman into cutting all ties with her previous life. Diana could’ve been protecting Sarah all this time, helping her beloved sister stay under the radar so no one could find her. If so, my meddling might expose her to a predator.

“Shit.”

I reached for more sweets, popping each new bite into my mouth at rapid speed as I considered my next step. Leaving Sarah alone for now, I began to search for more information on the abusive boyfriend now that I’d found his name. He’d broken the jaw of one girlfriend, threatened another at gunpoint, and beaten a third into a coma. None of which came close to his biggest crime: Daniel “Big Man” Johnson had been jailed five years ago for a horrific double murder.

I remembered the case—it had been all over the media—but I hadn’t made the connection to Sarah at the time because the guy looked different from when he’d been dating her. Gone was the long hair, a buzz cut in its place, and he had plenty more tattoos than when he’d swung by the Cul-de-Sac.

Johnson hadn’t only been jailed, he’d been handed a sentence of life with a minimum non-parole period of thirty-two years. Technically, he might gain parole after that lengthy period, but given the comments of the trial judge on the danger he posed to society, it wasn’t a realistic possibility.

If Sarah had run out of fear, why hadn’t she come back after the justice system worked as intended and put him away for good? There were also other oddities in the whole situation. Even if I accepted that she was terrified of Johnson, that didn’t explain why she refused to talk to Mia on the phone.

All those gifts, sent from various places in the world.

Chewing on my lower lip, I did a search for Venetian glass. Multiple hits, all the online storefronts of glass boutiques based in Venice. Most delivered worldwide. Mia had indicated Sarah had brought the gift back for her, but if I was remembering wrong and it had been shipped from Venice, that wasn’t a problem, either.

If you’d like to purchase one of our exquisite pieces as a gift, chirped the FAQ section of one site, rest assured of our discretion. We will email the receipt to you. Your recipient will only get their gift, and your message—printed on our complimentary signature cardstock.

Many online shops had such systems in place, especially if you went higher end. No need to travel anywhere. No need to even use your own name, since you could type whatever message you wanted onto any included card.

“You’re losing it, Aarav.” Shoving back from the desk, I decided I needed to take a walk before I talked myself into total paranoia. Prior to that, however, I sent a message to Mia’s account asking if I could have Sarah’s email address.