Ghost Flower by Michele Jaffe Read Free Book Online

they had outfits for every sport from golf to boating, sometimes just the two of them, sometimes with theirparents, Bridger and Genette. I gorged myself on Aurora’s facts, her family, her favorite food, but what I really wanted—what I was starving for, I realized—was a photo of Aurora.
    There weren’t any. Not one.
    I kept returning to the picture that had captured my attention the first night. I couldn’t help thinking there was something hidden in it, a message, a clue. One afternoon while I was eating a tofu corn dog (Aurora had unfortunately decided to become a vegetarian before she left; I was planning to change that), I realized what felt off about it. It was the only photo with a matte around it. And unless I was mistaken, the matte had been used to crop something—or someone—out. I had it facedown in my lap, trying to remove the back when Bridgette came in.
    “What are you doing?” she demanded, nearly dropping the groceries she had in her arms.
    “I want to see who else is in this picture.”
    She snatched it from me and put it back on the piano. “What makes you think there’s anyone else in it?”
    “You can see the tip of a shoe next to Althea. And your father,” I pointed at the man in the polo shirt, “is looking in that direction. Who is standing there? Is it Aurora?”
    Bridgette kept her eyes and one hand on the photo. She nodded, with her back to me. “This picture was taken the weekend before she disappeared. There’d been a tennis tournament at the club and—” She shook her head.
    “Why did you cut her out? And why aren’t there any pictures of her?”
    “After she disappeared it just upset everyone to see pictures of her. So we got rid of them. Why are you so interested?”
    “I wanted to see what she looked like.”
    She rounded on me. “She looks like you. Exactly. Like. You.” With each word she took a step toward me. Her posture was tense, angry.
    I put up my hands. “She may look like me, but she’s not me. Whatever was between the two of you, it has nothing to do with me.”
    She stopped moving and stared at me, twisting the ring on her finger for a moment like she was calming herself down. When she spoke again, her voice was normal. “You’re right. It doesn’t. Sometimes it—you just startle me.”
    Bridgette was there for the next twenty-four hours, so I stayed away from the photo.
    I learned the names and identifying characteristics of the ten dogs Aurora had had in the course of her life (all dead) while devouring red velvet cupcakes with extra buttercream frosting (Aurora’s favorite). Everything I memorized about Aurora, every new fact, made me more eager to see a picture of her. Would people accept me as Aurora? Would this really work?
    There were no cards for Bain and Bridgette, but I made them up myself in my head. Bain Silverton [Alive, 23, working in the family real estate development business, capable but lazy, net worth unknown]. Bridgette Silverton [ostensibly Alive but only visible evidence of a pulse was twisting Cartier ring, 21, taking time off from University of Arizona to work on father’s campaign for Congress, only uses fake sugar, net worth unknown but apparently inadequate or wouldn’t be doing this because Bridgette didn’t do anything without a good reason].
    On my seventh night there, when I was eating frozen pizza (with pepperoni—Bain had slipped it to me when I’d begged for meat a few days earlier and it was our secret), a Sonora Heights Academy yearbook dropped onto the counter in front of me. “This is Bridgette’sfrom senior year,” Bain explained, taking a beer from the refrigerator and sitting on the stool next to mine. “She told me you wanted to see a picture of Ro. Ro was a freshman, so her class is in there too.”
    My heart began to pound faster. I flipped through, looking for the freshman class, missing it the first time and having to fan the thick pages back. “Aurora would have been a senior this year,” I