Bio Notes
The handle stopped turning. Whoever it was let go without knocking, without saying goodnight twice, and I lay there with my heart going like I'd run somewhere until my own clock said twelve-forty.
In the morning Junie was at the table eating cereal like nothing had happened, feet swinging under her booster seat, humming the number song from her preschool. I sat next to her and did the thing older sisters do, half investigation and half just wanting to touch her hair.
"Hey, Juju. You okay?"
She nodded at her cereal.
"Bad night?"
Another nod, smaller.
"You want to tell me?"
She looked toward the hallway first — checked it, the way you check a crosswalk — before she shook her head no. That checking was the answer. A three-year-old doesn't learn to scan a room before she talks unless someone taught her, hard, that it mattered who was listening.
I started keeping notes that week. Not dramatic ones — just times. 6:47, J skipped breakfast, said not hungry, ate half a granola bar in my room after. Tuesday, J flinched when C picked up a spoon at the sink, not near her, just picked it up. Thursday, C made lasagna, J wasn't allowed seconds, cried in the bathroom, C called it "an overreaction to a full stomach."
I told myself I was building something, though I still didn't know what shape it would take. My dad worked six days a week selling commercial HVAC contracts and came home too tired to notice that his younger daughter had started eating like she was rationing.
The Saturday after, I went looking for laundry in the garage and found Corinne's file box instead — the fireproof kind, tucked behind winter tires, unlocked because who breaks into their own garage. I wasn't hunting for anything specific. I was fourteen and nosy and scared, which is its own kind of detective.
Under the car titles and Junie's birth certificate was a manila envelope with someone else's photo paperclipped to the front. A woman who wasn't quite Corinne, and also completely was — same eyes, different hair, a name printed under a driver's license photo that made my stomach drop before I even finished reading it.
Deborah.