He was only eighteen months older than me, but when we were kids, that small difference seemed enormous. Everett was the person who walked me to school, taught me how to throw a baseball, and scared off a boy who made fun of my braces in seventh grade.
We fought, of course.
He stole food from my plate. I borrowed his sweaters without asking. He once told Mom I had broken a lamp when it was obviously him.
But we were close.
That was why I knew something was wrong the moment he didn’t come home from prom.
Mom had saved for months to buy his suit.
I still remember him standing awkwardly in our living room while she adjusted his tie.
“You look handsome,” she said, getting emotional.
“Mom, please don’t cry before I even leave.”
“I’m allowed one tear.”
“One.”
She kissed his cheek.
Everett laughed, then looked at me.
“Don’t touch my stereo while I’m gone.”
“I hope your date steps on your shoes.”
“That’s the love I expect from my little sister.”
He left around seven.
Before walking out, he promised Mom he would be home before midnight.
He never came back.
At first, everyone assumed something had happened on the road.
Police checked hospitals.
They searched the route between our house and the hotel where prom had been held.
His car was found the following morning in a parking lot near the bus station.
The driver’s door was locked.
His tuxedo jacket was inside.
So was the small corsage box his date had given him after the dance.
His wallet was gone.
But there was no blood, no sign of a struggle, and no note.
His prom date, Felicity, told police Everett had seemed distracted toward the end of the evening.
She said he left the dance early after receiving a phone call.
Nobody knew who had called.
Back then, cell phone records weren’t as easy to obtain as they are now, and Everett’s cheap prepaid phone was never found.
Police questioned everyone.
His classmates.
Felicity.
Our relatives.
My parents.
Me.
Nothing.
There were theories.
Maybe Everett had run away.
Maybe someone had picked him up at the bus station.
Maybe he had gotten involved with people we knew nothing about.
Mom refused to believe he had left willingly.
“He wouldn’t do this to us,” she said every time someone suggested it.
Dad agreed.
At least in front of us.
“He loved his family,” he said. “Something happened to that boy.”
For years, Mom kept Everett’s bedroom exactly as he had left it.
His baseball cap remained on the bedpost.
His schoolbooks were stacked beside the desk.
The tie he rejected before prom was still hanging from his closet door.
Every time the phone rang late at night, Mom answered on the first ring.
Every time a young man appeared on the news after being found alive somewhere, she leaned closer to the television.
Eventually, the calls from detectives became less frequent.
Then they stopped.
My father died nine years after Everett disappeared.
Mom followed eleven years later.
Neither of them ever knew what happened to their son.
After Mom died, I finally packed Everett’s room.
That was one of the hardest things I had ever done.
I kept his yearbook, some photographs, and the baseball glove he had given me when I turned ten.
Everything else went into boxes.
Life continued because life is cruel that way.
I married, divorced, built a career, and learned how to talk about Everett without crying every time.
But I never stopped looking at faces.
Airports.
Restaurants.
Crowds.
For twenty-three years, some part of me searched every room I entered for my brother.
Then I saw him.
Or at least I thought I did.
I was in Oregon for a business conference, nearly three thousand miles from the small Pennsylvania town where Everett and I had grown up.
Before an early meeting, I stopped at a neighborhood supermarket for coffee and something to eat.
There were three people ahead of me in line.
I was checking emails when the cashier laughed at something a customer said.
I looked up.
The coffee slipped in my hand.
He was young.
Seventeen or eighteen, maybe.
Soft blond hair falling slightly over his forehead. Gray-green eyes. A crooked smile. And a small dimple in his left cheek.
He looked exactly like Everett.
Not Everett as he would have looked at forty.
Everett as he had looked the year he disappeared.
For a few seconds, I couldn’t move.
Then the line moved forward.
The boy looked at me.
“Ma’am?”
I stared.
“Sorry?”
“Are you ready?”
I placed my things on the counter.
He scanned the coffee.
My hands started shaking.
His name tag said AIDAN.
I heard myself say, “This is going to sound strange.”
He gave me a polite smile.
“Okay.”
“You look exactly like my brother.”
His hand stopped over the register.
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