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Ivy was nowhere to be seen after the final bell, which meant Ruth got to drive home solo.

She liked driving, the smooth roadway slipping beneath the tires, the car leaning into the familiar curves of the route between school and home.

A slice of her mother’s apple cake waited.

One single slice, and since Ivy wasn’t with her, it was uncontested. As was the television. And the phone.

Lately, Ivy rolled her eyes at just about everything and sneered at the rest, and this had, Ruth thought, gone on long enough.

Everyone was tired of it. It reflected badly on Ivy, and she didn’t exactly need anything else reflecting badly on her.

And, because they were twins and people considered them some sort of combined organism, it reflected badly on Ruth as well.

Not that Ivy cared about that. Thinking of this, Ruth’s good mood had already deflated when she opened the door to their room and found Ivy’s pink sweater folded—with exquisite perfection—on her own pillow.

Bad enough having to share a room, but to have those closest to you—because who else but their mother or Grandma Adele would have put it there?

—confuse a sweater for yours, when Ivy had worn it a hundred times.

People always went on about how different she and Ivy were—how anyone who really knew them would never confuse one for the other.

Except, thought Ruth as she wadded up the sweater and tossed it onto Ivy’s bed, their very own mother and grandmother.

Only later did she realize what the sweater meant.

After dinner had passed with no Ivy. After Red Skelton had passed with no Ivy.

After George had called other mothers. “Oh, I’m sure it’s just some misunderstanding,” George said.

“Probably a club meeting she forgot to tell me about. You know teenage girls.” After Grandma Adele unpursed her lips and said, “Call Tom. And Vivian,” and Ruth’s mother replied that surely there was no need to alarm anyone.

After The Nurses had concluded, and Adele said, “If you don’t call Tom, I will,” only then did Ruth—who up to that point had assumed Ivy’s absence was just a bid for extra attention, as if Ivy never got enough of that—go to their bedroom and search through her sister’s things.

Nothing seemed out of place except the sweater she’d tossed on Ivy’s bed.

She turned to the curlicue-carved shelf their father had nailed up years ago.

She and Ivy used it to display knickknacks and china figurines and the painted ceramic piggy banks that Vivian had brought them from Mexico.

First she shook Ivy’s piggy. No jangle of coins, no rustle of paper.

Empty. Her own piggy held $12.82. Or had held it.

Ruth knew even before she picked it up that it no longer did.

Sure enough. No jangle. Just a faint rustle.

She pried the rubber stopper from the pig’s belly.

Maybe Ivy had left her a dollar. Nope. Just a scrap from the kitchen notepad.

She unfolded it and read: I’ll pay you back .

No I’m sorry. No Goodbye. Not even a signature. Though she could hear Ivy pointing out that a signature was unnecessary, because Ruth knew perfectly well who the note was from.