“Six years ago.”

I circle back to the start of our conversation. “So what’d you do to disappoint your parents?”

Sylvie puffs hot air onto her window. Without looking, she somehow draws a perfect barn in the fog with the tip of her finger. It quickly fades. “They didn’t want me to go to SF. They wanted college, preferably University of Oregon to study agriculture, or Cornell, if I could get in, and then a speedy return to High River to help run the orchard and eventually take over.”

“Why go to college at all?” Sylvie breathes on the window again, draws a tree. I steel myself, ready to grab the wheel if a gust hits.

“Do you know anything about fruit orchards?”

“No.”

“My folks grow pears. In today’s economy a pear grown in Chile and shipped to Oregon, that’s over six thousand miles, is cheaper to buy than one grown in the Pacific Northwest. Worldwide markets, foreign competition, and increasing production costs will put most orchardists out of business in the next decade unless something changes. They wanted me to study agriculture and business, learn, and help our orchard survive.”

“But you left.”

Sylvie turns to meet my gaze. “Yes.”

“Eyes on the road,” I say as she gets dangerously close to the car in front of us.

Sylvie jerks into the passing lane and speeds up. “Backseat drivers have control issues, you know.”

“I have stay alive issues. You didn’t want to be a farmer?”

She passes two cars then returns to the right lane without using her blinker. “Orchardist. And no. It never fit.”

“But being a psychic does? Fit?”

She corrects, “Psychic-medium. And yes, more than anything ever did.”

“Can you explain?”

Sylvie’s mouth twitches sideways. “Have you ever felt like something was missing in your life?”

“Not really.”

She looks over at me. “Doubting Thomas, you’re lying.”

“Okay. I guess I’m missing a girlfriend. Eyes forward, please.”

“Chill,” Sylvie says. “I went through this phase around nine; it made Mom nuts. There was a story in a Reader’s Digest at the pediatrician’s office about vanishing twin syndrome.”

“I’m not familiar.”

“It’s a miscarriage of a twin fetus early in pregnancy. I got it into my head that I’d been a twin and my sibling had been lost. Asked Mom a zillion questions—I thought that’s what was missing.”

“Is that why you left High River?”

“Thomas, I wasn’t nine anymore and that was a metaphor to explain that there was a hole in my life from an early age. I left High River to find a way to fill it.”

I notch an arrow, sending it flying. “So just like Holly and Danny, you ghosted your adoptive parents, too?”

Sylvie chuckles. “Maybe you should write fiction instead of being a journalist.”

Somehow, my arrow missed its mark. “Why’s that?”

“You have a very overactive imagination.”

She smiles and I register the way the corners of her mouth curve and the fullness of her lower lip. Despite the train ride, I’m no closer to figuring out just who the real Sylvie is. All I know is that I’m increasingly drawn toward finding out.