He nods. “I feared as much—she was always very private. We did not live together, but we were in a relationship for a year before . . . before the shooting.”

Hearing the words in person drives reality home in a way that was missing while processing details alone in San Diego. I let down my guard a little. “You know, your emails were pretty confusing at first. You said Angela disappeared in a shooting at the university, then you wrote that she died. I thought she’d been shot, but the police said they found her in the river. Is that right? Did the shooter take her?”

“You did not have an English speaker discuss with you?”

“The inspector spoke English, but the connection was pretty bad each time.”

Seb turns an ancient key in a gray door, the only door in this blunted hallway. “I see. I was so distraught when I wrote to you, my English must have translated poorly. She disappeared during the chaos, and the shooter killed himself. Her body was found ten days later in the Seine, unidentifiable but for her tattoo. The police still do not know who is responsible for her death.”

“Tattoo?”

“The one on her ankle.” He stoops to lift his pant leg, revealing a Gemini astrology symbol on his own ankle. Two vertical pillars are bookended by horizontal curves—a Roman numeral two, bent at the top and bottom. The symbol for twins. “We got them together one day, after she said I was her other half. Her twin. Figuratively, of course,” he adds, checking my reaction.

The hurt I feel throbs all over, pierces my jaw. Angela refused to come home for Mom and Dad’s memorial service. Then she had the nerve to replace me, her only family left, with this yahoo—even figuratively.

A cold wave of remorse replaces my outrage. I will never have the chance to bicker with her again. To make up and apologize for my own self-absorbed actions years ago. My sister is gone.

Fresh tears prick my eyes. “Are we going inside?”

Seb doesn’t move. Instead, he places a hand on my shoulder. “You will identify the remains, then help me clean out her apartment, yes? I would also like to recount her last steps together if you think it is possible. The police do not know how she got from campus to the river. No other student was removed from school property in this sense. We must find out who targeted her and what happened. I could never replace the knowledge of a true twin,” he adds, lowering his head.