A Bookmarked Death by Judi Culbertson Page B

We waited another minute, but there was no confirming buzz.
    “Try again,” I said. “Maybe she was in the bathroom.”
    When there was no answer a second time, Hannah said, “Let’s go up. She’s on the fourth floor.”
    The inner lobby was a collection of faded floral couches, porcelain lamps with tarnished brass bases, coffee tables with magazines that looked decades-old. The room could have passed as the set for a Tennessee Williams play.
    Hannah moved quickly to the elevator and pressed the button. The doors opened immediately as if it had been waiting for us.
    “Why did she want to live here instead of in her own apartment?” I asked as we reached the fourth floor and followed the frayed maroon runner.
    “She wanted to be like everyone else. All her friends live here.”
    The closer we got to her room, the more frightened I felt. Had I overestimated Elisa’s strength? Just because she had sounded calmer the last time I talked to her didn’t mean she had accepted the deaths. As a tiny girl she had been resilient, able to deal with setbacks. Though she would campaign tirelessly for what she wanted, disappointment never crushed her for very long. But being denied a trip to the playground was far different from losing both parents at the same time. They had been her world, Ethan especially.
    Her comments about guns and shooting that weekend at the house chilled me. What if we unlocked the door and found . . .
    “I don’t know what we’re going to learn if she’s not here,” Jane complained from behind me. “We should have tried harder to find her on campus.”
    “This was your idea,” Hannah reminded her.
    “Why don’t you let me go in first,” I said.
    Both my daughters stared at me.
    “What are you talking about?” Hannah said. “She’s probably left a note for me. She knew I was coming.”
    A note. A cheerful clue at the end of a treasure hunt, explaining everything. But that was Hannah. Magic or tragic.
    Elisa’s room was at the very end of the hallway, on the left.
    “Knock first,” I warned.
    “You think I don’t know anything?” Hannah gave me a furious look and banged on the door. We were all at the edge of the precipice.
    Hannah waited just a moment, then inserted the key and pushed the door back. But none of us stepped inside.
    “Liss?” Hannah called into the silence.
    When there was no answer, we did move inside. It was a typical college dorm room, though the layout with one window at the end made me think of a hotel again. There was also an unsettled feeling, as if someone had packed in a hurry. The closet door was ajar, showing gaps and bare hangers, but plenty of clothes were still hung inside. The desk chair was pushed askew as if someone had gotten up quickly to answer the door and never righted it. Yet the desk itself had been wiped clean of books, computer equipment, and photographs.
    No, that wasn’t completely true. As I moved closer to it, I saw that one photo in a tortoiseshell frame stood alone—the picture taken at our reunion weekend. Colin and I were in the center, with Jane, Jason, Hannah, and Elisa all crowded around us, laughing as we waited for the delayed timer to go off. The fact that Elisa had framed the photograph and displayed it on the desk as her family meant something, didn’t it? And yet she had left it behind.
    I studied the rest of the room, turning to the single bed that was neatly made. Moving closer, I caught my breath. Sitting as desolately as if he had been abandoned at a bus depot was Sheepie, Elisa’s pet lamb since babyhood. It was the stuffed animal I had pressed into her hands at our reunion.
    “I don’t get it,” Hannah cried. “She didn’t leave a note or anything!”
    I turned away from Elisa’s rejection of us. Evidently she believed what she had said on the phone. Because we had insisted on finding her, she had lost her family. We had taken away their lives. Perhaps their deaths had brought her to her senses and had