Stevie and Taylor were sisters. They were close; no one knew Stevie better than Taylor, and no one knew Taylor better than Stevie. But Taylor had never expected her sister to run away. Nor, once Stevie had run away, had Taylor expected to get a call from a pay phone telling her to come to Prospect Park, to the “secret place” of their shared childhood.
And yet, there she was, sitting on a bench by a waterfall that the public could no longer get to, sipping tea from a paper cup to avoid telling Stevie that she was crazy.

“Our mother abandoned us when I was three, when you were only an infant,” Stevie told her, “But she did for a good reason.”

“What good reason is there for a mother to abandon her children? To leave them before they could know her?”

“Daddy knows. Ask him.” Stevie left her sister’s side, climbing down the hill and disappearing among the trees before Taylor even had a chance to stand.


Taylor grumbled to herself as she stalked angrily to the bus stop. Stevie was supposed to be with Taylor. Protect her, guide her, advise her. Instead Stevie had left her little sister to twist in the wind, alone.

At home, Taylor curled into a ball on her bed and cried for hours, tears wetting her blouse and her pillows. Outside of her window Taylor saw a sparkle, but when she went to investigate she saw nothing, and she blamed her tear-blurred eyes for playing tricks on her, never suspecting that something had truly been there. Never suspecting that it had anything to do with her long-lost mother or her disappeared sister.