A Month After Our Family Said Goodbye to Our 12-Year-Old, I Found Nora's Missing Backpack Hidden Under Her Twin's Bed—and a Sealed Letter Inside Sent Me Screaming Through the House
Chapter 1 - The Girls Came Home Happy
My twin daughters, Nora and Claire, were twelve, and they had the kind of bond most people only read about. They fought over everything — whose turn it was for the front seat, who used all the hot water, who ate the last of the good cereal — and then thirty seconds later they'd be doubled over laughing at something only the two of them found funny.
When school started back up in September, I braced myself for the usual groaning. It never came. If anything, they were itching to go.
They'd spent the whole summer up at my mother's place in Wren Harbor, a little house three blocks from the water. Gran let them stay up past midnight, fed them ice cream for breakfast, and somehow convinced them that yanking weeds out of her flower beds was a "backyard treasure hunt." They loved every second of it. But by the last week of August, both of them were ready to sleep in their own beds again.
"I miss my friends," Claire admitted one night.
Nora smirked. "You miss Sophie because her mom packs two desserts."
"Same thing."
Nora laughed so hard she snorted.
Those first days back were easy. Good, even. After two months of a quiet house, I'd forgotten how much noise two preteens could make — slamming cabinets, arguing about a show, retelling every scrap of cafeteria gossip like it was breaking news. New teachers. Who'd gotten tall over the summer. Who wasn't speaking to who.
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I remember standing in the kitchen one evening, listening to them bicker about homework, feeling something close to pure relief. My family was whole and loud and home.
I didn't know how few of those evenings I had left.
