The Butterfly Sister by Amy Gail Hansen

feel her, Ruby. Here.” She placed her palm flat on her chest.
    I remembered how I’d felt the evening prior, reading Beth’s book in its entirety, looking for more clues about Mark. I’d felt Beth, even heard her voice, as if she was speaking to me not beyond the grave but perhaps just before it.
    â€œThen trust your instincts,” I told Janice.
    Beth’s mother clutched her mug like a teddy bear and stared into her tea. She looked so lonely.
    â€œDo you have other children?” I asked.
    She shook her head. “It’s just Beth and me. Ken—my husband, Beth’s father—passed a long time ago. Beth was seven. She was devastated. You know how little girls are with their daddies.”
    I did know, and yet I would have said I knew better how little girls were without their daddies. I told Janice then about my own father’s unexpected death, and that I too was an only child.
    â€œI never knew we had so much in common,” I said, suddenly reminded of why I’d come to visit Janice in the first place. Did Beth and I have more in common than family dynamics? I wondered. Had we both been in love with the same man?
    â€œDid Beth keep in touch with many girls from Tarble over the summer?” I asked, playing with the tea bag in my cup. I sensed Janice had met an emotional threshold on the subject of her daughter’s disappearance and would be up to changing the subject, a subject I so desperately wanted to indulge.
    â€œSure. She went there to visit some friends taking summer session.”
    I dropped the tea bag. “Do you remember any of these girls’ names?”
    â€œOne of them works for the college. Heidi. She was in your class.”
    Heidi Callahan. I’d thought my former best friend—the only Heidi in our class—was back home in Minneapolis. And yet all summer, she’d apparently been at Tarble, working for the college after graduation. But Heidi and Beth had never been friends; they were acquaintances, just like Beth and me. Was it possible they’d become friends after I dropped out?
    â€œHow often did Beth go?” I asked.
    â€œAlmost every weekend.”
    â€œShe went for the day?”
    â€œSometimes she stayed overnight, even though we live so close. It was fun for her, I think, staying in the dorms. Like she never graduated.” Janice set her mug down on the table then with a thud, as if she’d reached a conclusion. “Ruby, I see where you’re going with this. And I think you’re right.”
    I stared back at her in confusion. There was no way she knew my ulterior motive. “I am?”
    â€œWe need to tell people at Tarble about Beth.”
    â€œOh. Right. We do.”
    â€œThe detective talked to some students and professors at the med school, but I don’t think he has talked to anyone from Tarble. Except you. And there might be someone who knows something.”
    Could it be Mark? I wondered. Was he the someone who knew something ? Had Beth really been visiting Heidi Callahan all summer? Or was that just the excuse Beth gave her mother so she could spend weekends with Mark?
    â€œWhen was the last time she went to Tarble?” I asked.
    â€œI think it was the beginning of September. She’s been home every weekend since.”
    â€œWhy did she stop going?”
    â€œSchool started. Too busy, I guess. Plus, like I told you, she wasn’t feeling her best.” Janice set her mug down again. “You know, I’ve been meaning to call Sarah to tell her. But I don’t have her phone number.”
    â€œYou mean Beth’s roommate? Sarah Iverson?”
    Janice nodded.
    â€œShe doesn’t know Beth is missing?”
    â€œI wanted to call her, see if she’d heard from Beth, but the detective told me to wait. Like I said before, wait for what?”
    I didn’t understand why Detective Pickens was keeping a tight lid on Beth’s disappearance, why he