Broken Glass (The Mirror Sisters 2)

I nodded, looking like poor trapped me. “There were weekends . . . we had Mother take us supposedly to a friend’s house or to a movie matinee, and we’d split up. I was going with someone I didn’t think Mother would like. Kaylee would go off on her own to give me time to spend with him.”

“Where exactly?”

“Mostly at the mall.” I brightened, acting as if a lightbulb had gone off above my head. “I suppose she might have met him at the mall and then used every opportunity to meet him elsewhere. She could never be with him that long, because we had to get back to where Mother had dropped us, just like she was supposed to do at the movie theater this time.”

“So she might have called him on her cell phone?” Lieutenant Cowan asked.

“I don’t know. I never saw her talking to anyone we didn’t know.”

“You said you left your cell phones home. Where’s your sister’s?” Detective Simpson asked.

“It should be in her room in the drawer of the nightstand by her bed. It’s where I keep mine,” I said. “Mother wanted us to keep our things in similar places. Our rooms are exactly the same, same furniture, everything.”

Detective Simpson smirked with skepticism.

“Go look for yourselves,” I said.

“I’ll go look for it,” Daddy offered.

“I’m sorry, Daddy. I believed her; otherwise, I would have told about my secret date. I’m not seeing him anymore, by the way,” I added, looking at Detective Simpson. “He told me he had broken up with someone, but he really hadn’t. It’s so hard to know who you should trust.”

Daddy hurried out.

“Is my sister’s abduction in the news yet?” I asked. “I haven’t turned on a radio or television. I’ve been sleeping most of the day.”

“We’re getting ready to release it and circulate her picture,” Lieutenant Cowan said. “We need a list of her friends. One of them might know something.”

“More than what I know? I doubt it. Normally, we’d never tell anyone else anything we didn’t tell each other.”

He stared at me. They were both looking at me skeptically again.

“It’s the way we were brought up,” I said, more adamantly. “But I’ll give you a list of names, even though we had the same friends.”

“Only the same friends?” Detective Simpson asked.

“Mother wanted us to have the same friends. If one of us didn’t like someone, the other wouldn’t have him or her as a friend. Mother insisted.”

They exchanged a look of amazement, and then Lieutenant Cowan handed me a pen and a small notepad. “Give us phone numbers if you can. Full names and addresses.”

I began to write names. “I don’t know everyone’s exact address, and I didn’t memorize all the phone numbers, but I can go up and get my cell phone,” I said.

“Please do that,” Lieutenant Cowan said.

“From what you’re telling us, you should both have similar lists of contacts on your phones,” Detective Simpson said.

“Very little is different, yes,” I said. “There was that boy I knew for a while, but he turned out to be disrespectful and a liar. He thought no was a foreign word.” I stood. “I’ll go get my phone.”

They sat back.

When I was on my way up the stairs, Daddy came to the top of the stairway and waited for me. “Her phone isn’t there, Haylee,” he said.

I stopped walking. “It has to be, Daddy. I mean, I thought it was there.”

“It isn’t anywhere in her room from what I can see. I looked in drawers, in her closet . . .”

My face trembled.

“Haylee?”