Free Stay With Me by Alison Gaylin Page A

does she know that ?”
    “Who?” Alan said. “The credit rep from WeKeep?”
    She blinked. “No. I was talking about the person who was e-mailing you. The one pretending to be me.”
    “Oh.”
    “That stuff about her father.”
    “It’s true?”
    “It may be.” Brenna exhaled. She looked into the dark, sad eyes of the son of Clea’s . . . Lover? Abductor? Trusted friend? Killer?
    And it hit her that this man—not Nick Morasco, not Trent, not even her mother—this corporate lawyer from Sacramento, whom Brenna had met via a bag of her sister’s belongings, would be the first person she would say the words to out loud.
    “My father committed suicide when I was just seven years old,” she said. “I have the police papers.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “That isn’t the point, though. The point is, I only found out about it when I read the police papers. That was two days ago.”
    “I don’t understand.”
    “My mother lied to us. I’d always believed he’d just left home.”
    He frowned at her. “So this person . . . The one who’s been writing me—”
    “Knows more about me than I do,” Brenna said. “Or at least, she’s known it for longer.”
    “Or he.”
    Brenna cleared her throat. “It could be a he. Could be anybody.”
    Alan shook his head. “It’s a brave new world we live in.”
    “Huh?”
    “Internet hacking, identity theft . . . Heck, if that person could break into that Snapfish page and change your e-mail contact info, then who’s to say they couldn’t go into the police records and find out about your dad before you were ever able to read them?”
    “Snapfish page?”
    “Um . . .”
    “What Snapfish page?”
    “You’re joking, right?”
    She leveled her gaze at him. “I haven’t joked once since I got here, Alan.”
    “I’m talking about the missing persons Snapfish page,” he said, very slowly. “The one you posted the picture of your sister on.”
    Brenna stared at him. “ What? ”
    Without saying any more, he logged onto Snapfish and called up the page: a collection of personal photos titled, “MISSING LOVED ONES.” He scrolled down the page, photos of tiny children and smiling brides and strapping young men, the captions slipping fast up the screen like movie credits. So personal, so full of loss. Beloved Dad . . . Missing since 2001 . . . 1995 . . . Have you seen our daughter? We think about him every day . . . Gone from our lives but not our hearts . . .
    Alan stopped scrolling at a picture of a smiling blonde girl.
    Clea.
    Brenna couldn’t speak. Her eyes stayed fixed on the screen—on the picture of Clea, aged sixteen or seventeen, standing in their kitchen back in City Island, smiling in front of their mother’s light blue cupboards. Robin’s egg, their mother had called the color. She’d always been so specific about it.
    In the photo, Clea’s long hair was in a ponytail. She wore a red T-shirt with a pink heart on it, the collar cut off. She wore her favorite denim jacket with the black lace sewed on. Brenna felt the weight of the grocery bag in her lap, the weight of that same jacket. “My God,” she whispered.
    “I never went to the police to find out who she was. I was too . . . My dad . . .”
    “I understand.”
    “But I did go online a lot, looking for missing persons pages. There are hundreds of them. When I found this one, I recognized her immediately,” Alan said. “You could just imagine my reaction, especially when I saw what she was wearing.”
    There must be an explanation , Brenna thought. Something simple I’m overlooking. There has to be, please . . .
    “Brenna?”
    “I didn’t post that picture. I’ve never seen that page before.”
    He gaped at her, saying nothing.
    Brenna just nodded. Thanks for not asking me if I’m kidding .
    “Who could have done this?”
    “I wish I knew.”
    “So strange,” Alan said. “I never let . . . that person . . . know that I was coming to New York. It was