They’ve always had.
Growing up, I was the responsible one. Natalie was the magnetic one.
That was just how it was.
Not a painful dynamic, not a source of resentment, just the natural division that happens between siblings when their personalities are genuinely different.
I loved my sister completely and without condition.
She was Dylan’s aunt. She babysat him on Tuesday evenings when my shift ran long. She came to our house for Sunday dinners and sat at our kitchen table and laughed too loudly at Colin’s jokes and helped me wash dishes afterward while we talked about everything and nothing.
She was one of my closest people.
I want you to hold on to that, because it matters.
The closeness matters when I tell you what I found in her house that Saturday afternoon in October.
I should tell you about the shack. The doubt, because I was there. Small and quiet and easy to dismiss, but there.
3 months before that October afternoon, I had come home from a late shift to find Colin on the back porch on his phone.
He heard the door and ended the call immediately. Came inside, said it was a work call that had run long.
It was 11:40 at night.
I didn’t say anything.
Two weeks after that, I saw a text notification flash across Colin’s screen while he was in the shower.
I wasn’t looking for anything. I was just walking past the counter.
The name on the screen was saved as simply an one letter.
I stood there for a moment.
Then I kept walking.
I didn’t pick up the phone. I didn’t ask. I filed it somewhere in the back of my mind under the category of things I was not ready to examine, and kept moving.
That is the thing about doubt.
It doesn’t always arrive as a loud alarm.
Sometimes it arrives as a whisper so quiet you can almost convince yourself you didn’t hear it.
I heard it.
I chose not to listen.
Not yet.
Natalie’s birthday was October 14th.
I had been planning a small surprise for weeks. Nothing elaborate, just a visit. Her favorite candle, a card I had written out by hand, maybe a cup of coffee together while Dylan played in her backyard.
She worked from home on Saturdays.
I knew her routine. I knew she would be there.
Colin had told me that morning he had a property showing across town, a client who could only meet on weekends.
He left at 11:00.
Dylan and I had lunch together, just the two of us, and then I loaded him into the car with the gift bag on the seat beside me.
The drive to Natalie’s took 38 minutes.