“Sorta, sometimes,” I said. “We were very respectful of each other’s opinions.”
The two detectives looked at each other and were silent for a while. Detective Simpson had been checking on the name I had given them.
“There’s no one with that name living in the vicinity. The closest one that’s come up lives in Cape May, but it looks like he’s in his seventies.”
“Predators don’t seem to be limited by age. Let’s see what we can get off her computer,” Lieutenant Cowan said.
Yes, let’s see, I thought, and smiled to myself.
Daddy and Dr. Bloom were at our house when we arrived. Mother had already been taken in quickly. Dr. Bloom had followed her up to her bedroom.
The moment I entered, Daddy turned to me. “What’s going on here, Haylee? Kaylee was involved with an older man on the Internet?” he asked, astounded.
Why would you be surprised? I wanted to ask him. For years now, you’ve known less about us than most of our neighbors. You were too busy trying to make a new life for yourself.
“That’s what she told me, Daddy. I told her it was wrong and dangerous. She kept most of it secret,” I added. “She made me promise not to say anything. I thought she would grow out of it, realize it was stupid, and that would be that.”
“But you worked out a sneaky way for her to meet him tonight?”
“I didn’t; she did. I wanted to go along to protect her when she met him, but she thought I was trying to compete with her for his attention or something, so I didn’t go. I was very worried, but she promised that if he was strange or anything, she would come right back to the movie theater.”
Daddy looked at the detectives. “What do we do?” he asked.
“We’ll continue a physical search of the vicinity, hoping to find a witness. In the meantime, we’ll need her computer,” Lieutenant Cowan told him.
“Sure,” Daddy said. “Show them, Haylee.”
“How’s Mother?” I asked.
“Dr. Bloom’s going to give her something to calm her, and we’ll see,” he said. “I’ll stay here tonight. Don’t worry,” he added quickly.
“She blames me, but I couldn’t stop Kaylee without her hating me, Daddy. It was hard,” I whined. “You don’t know how hard it was for me to go to sleep every night thinking about the trouble she might get into. I felt bad about it all the time, but I couldn’t have Kaylee hate me. I couldn’t just tell on her. I couldn’t!”
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll stay here until the situation is resolved.”
“I’m so glad, Daddy,” I said, and hugged him. I held on to him tightly.
“You’d better help the policemen,” Daddy whispered.
I let go, sucked back a sob, and led them up to Kaylee’s bedroom. They unplugged the computer, and Officer Donald took it.
“We just need the hard drive,” Detective Simpson told me. “Do you know how they communicated? Emails, Twitter, Facebook, what?”
I shook my head. “As I said, I never saw any of it. My sister wanted to keep everything secret. It was her thing, not mine. She had to share so much in her life with me, practically everything. I understood why she was upset about it, because it bothered us both. This romance with an older man was her own thing. She told me what she was doing, and I told her how worried I was, but she kept saying she knew what she was doing.”
My voice kept cracking when I spoke. I was on the cusp of more tears, but I thought I was doing well, explaining things well.
“I don’t understand when you say you two had to share everything,” Lieutenant Cowan said. “What exactly does that mean?”
“It’s just as I said, everything. We have the same clothes, shoes, games, dolls. Whatever I own she owns, and vice versa, and it has to be exactly the same. We even have identical toothbrushes. That’s why we were wearing the same thing tonight,” I said. “Mother likes it that way, even at our age now.”
The two detectives looked at me with expressions of amazement.
“Why?” Detective Simpson asked.
“We’re identical twins, monozygotic twins. We have the same DNA. There are very few like us. Mother brought us up to share. We’re two halves of her perfect daughter,” I added, and forced a smile as if I thought it was wonderful. Then I changed expression quickly. “That’s why she’s extra upset. Half of us is missing.”
They looked at each other with expressions that said, We’ve heard it all now. I knew they wouldn’t blame me in any way after hearing all this. Mother was the kook.