Chapter 1 - The SunflowerThe plate slipped out of my hand before I even understood why.
My Twin Sister Disappeared Wearing Her Sunflower Sweater on the Night of Our 16th Birthday in 1986 — Forty Years Later, My Granddaughter Walked Through My Door in the Same Sweater
It hit the tile and burst apart into a dozen pieces, and I barely flinched.
"Grandma!" Chloe jumped backward, one hand flying to her mouth.
I wasn't looking at the broken plate. I was looking at her sweater.
Cream-colored yarn, soft with age. A huge yellow sunflower stretched across the front, petal after petal in careful rows. And tucked among them, one single petal in the wrong color — dull brown instead of yellow, like someone's knitting needle had slipped forty years ago and nobody had ever bothered to fix it.
My chest went tight in a way I hadn't felt in decades.
"Sophie— " I caught myself. "Chloe, honey. Take that off. Right now, please."
She blinked at me, confused, one hand already tugging at the hem. "What? Why?"
"Just — take it off. Please, sweetheart."
Her face crumpled a little, the way it always did when she thought she'd done something wrong. "But Dolly gave it to me."
That name landed in my stomach like a stone. "Who's Dolly?"
"The new cleaning lady. At school."
I felt my pulse pick up in my throat. I crouched down in front of her, careful to keep my voice gentle even though my hands weren't cooperating. "Chloe, listen to me. Did this woman ask you to go anywhere with her? Did she tell you to keep the sweater a secret from me?"
"No." Chloe shook her head hard, her ponytail swinging. "I was cold in the hallway after gym, and she just gave it to me. Mrs. Alvarez was standing right there the whole time."
Some of the panic in my chest loosened, just slightly. If her teacher had seen it happen out in the open, this wasn't what I'd first feared.
Chloe pulled the sweater over her head and held it out to me, her small hands hesitant. "Did I do something bad?"
"No, sweetheart. You didn't do anything wrong at all."
I took the sweater from her and turned the collar inside out with fingers that wouldn't stop trembling.
There they were. Two initials, stitched in red thread gone faded and soft with age.
L.M.
May you like
The room seemed to tilt sideways.
Forty years disappeared in the space of a single breath, and I was sixteen years old again, standing in our kitchen while my mother pinned this exact sweater against my sister's shoulders and laughed about the crooked petal she'd never bothered to fix.
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