“This isn’t exactly the first time she’s done something like this,” I say. “But it’s the first time since she had Sam.”

Dinah grimaces.

“Right, she has a kid. How old is he?”

“Ten, I think. I haven’t seen him in a while.” No answer, I text Mom, and drop my phone back onto the counter with a slightly shaky hand. I’m thinking about Sam now, and what must be going on in his head.

Back when my sister and Dennis lived on the West Coast, she’d usually bring Sam back in the summers to spend a couple of weeks with our parents. But the last few years, she and Dennis started sending him to some expensive summer camp instead. I conjure up Sam as I last saw him—a bright-eyed kid with my sister’s striking, almost Scandinavian looks. His hesitant laugh and wide eyes.

“That poor kid,” I say aloud. I think of my sister, casually conceiving him a mere month after her wedding, and now casually walking out of their home, apparently without a backward glance.

And meanwhile, me with my bathroom drawer full of pregnancy tests and my kitchen cabinet full of overpriced prenatal vitamins.

She’ll come back, I tell myself. Of course she will. She always comes back.

Right?

“Here.” Dinah pushes a re-filled glass my way. “I think you’re going to need it.”

*

My sister was eighteen when she disappeared the first time. It wasn’t like we thought she’d been kidnapped: she’d taken a duffle bag and all her favorite sweaters and CDs. She left just a few days after graduation.

It was a pretty bad time for my parents. It seemed to age my father by years, and my mother barely spoke to either of us during that time. As for me, all I felt was guilt, like I’d wished this on us. Because I had, really.