A local woman missing- Mary Kubica

LEO
NOW
To be straight, I never thought they were going to find you. I gave
that up a long time ago. In all honesty I kind of wish they hadn’t
’cause Dad and I were getting along just fine without you. It took him
long enough to get over you in the first place. Now you’ve gone and
reopened the wound, made him mourn for Mom all over again as if
she’s only just died.
The truth is, Dad was never much of a dad to me until he got over
missing you. But now you’re back and, in his eyes, you’re all that
matters.
That’s not to say I didn’t think about you. I thought about you a lot
when you were gone, though all I ever knew was the absence of
you. I knew I was supposed to have a big sister, but didn’t. I knew
that compared to you, I was second-tier.
There’s a room in our house that’s yours. I don’t ever remember
anyone living in there. It’s pink, that’s all I know, ’cause I’m not
supposed to go in there and mess it up. It’s off-limits. Dad pretends
it’s something sacred and holy, but all it is, is an old dusty room.
At school they treat me like some special-needs kid because of
you. Everyone’s supposed to be nice to me because I’m the kid
whose mom is dead and whose sister is gone. The truth is, nobody’s
nice to me. They treat me like a freak instead.
I don’t remember having a sister. I can’t be sad about it. When you
were gone, I tried to remember. I wanted to remember. But turns out,
kid memories are weird. I spent probably too much time trying to
learn about implicit and explicit memories, like why I can’t remember
us playing together when we were little, or Mom singing me to sleep,
but the smell of bacon always comes as a punch to the gut, and I
don’t know why.
Dad tells me you used to push me on the swing in our backyard.
We still have that swing. It’s no ordinary swing but is instead a scrap