Chapter Two
I’d served a dozen customers before Anna, the second barista, arrived.
She was breathless and unkempt as she adjusted her apron, diving in to work on the coffee machine.
In my nearly full year working here, she’d never been on time.
I didn’t comment on that. As long as she didn’t pry into my life, I was willing to overlook her tardiness.
Together, we barely managed the morning rush, but by lunchtime, the chaos had subsided enough for one of us to leave the counter.
Anna cleaned and reset the tables while I wiped down the machines.
We both looked up when the little bell above the door jingled.
A young couple walked in: an emo-looking girl wearing a black fedora and a Ghostface T-shirt, and a guy with a buzzcut and a military bearing.
The girl scanned the semi-empty café before spotting me, then nudged the guy and tilted her head toward me.
He followed her gaze, his blue eyes meeting mine.
I froze. This was the typical reaction when people recognized me. Thanks to the careless media and my former best friend, Sarah, finding me wasn’t hard.
The guy approached the counter with a calm smile. "Nellie? Nellie Foster?"
"Who are you?" My ears began ringing as familiar pressure flooded my head.
Seeing my tension, he stepped back and raised his hands in a conciliatory gesture. "I’m Mitchell. This is my sister, June." He motioned to the girl in black. She didn’t look friendly.
I fidgeted, my eyes darting toward the door and then around to see if anyone else could hear us. Anna remained focused on the tables.
"What do you want?" I whispered.
"We’re looking for our sister," June said abruptly. "It might have something to do with your boyfriend’s disappearance."
Mitchell smiled apologetically and turned to her. "June, please, let me handle this."
My knees grew weak. I couldn’t do it. Not again. I clenched the counter so tight my knuckles turned white.
"Please leave." Tears pricked at the corners of my eyes, and I was terrified to blink, fearing they’d spill down my cheeks and betray my despair. "I have nothing to do with anything."
"We know," Mitchell assured me with a soft smile. "We’re just trying to find out what happened to our sister."
"I don’t understand. What does she have to do with my boyfriend? Did your sister go missing here, in Minneapolis?"
June huffed, rolling her eyes and turning away. "No, she went missing back in Kansas City."
"That’s where we’re from," her brother advised. "We—"
The door swung open with a chiming exclamation. The lunchtime crowd filed in behind the siblings, growing impatient after a minute. I barely noticed how they tapped their feet or shot annoyed glances my way, too fixated with June and Mitchell and their news of another missing person.
"Please, give us ten minutes," Mitchell pleaded. "I’ll explain everything, and if you tell us to leave, we will. We don’t want trouble. We’re just trying to find our sister." He studied my face earnestly. "Ten minutes," he repeated. "And we’ll go."
June glared beneath her tilted hat.
I wanted to tell them to leave now, but something about them held my tongue.
Despite June’s hostility, their presence felt sincere.
They didn’t seem like the usual roaches who sought to feed off tragedy.
It had been two years—two whole years of silence, wondering, and aching—but if there was a chance they knew something about Lucas, I couldn’t let it go.
"I’ll get my colleague to cover," I said, apologizing to the punters. "Anna?"
We settled at an outside table. The sun beat down like a furious God, and I winced beneath its fist. Across from me, Mitchell sat ramrod straight, his tall, broad frame casting a shadow that I ducked into. His sister slouched beside him. I wrapped my arms around myself, despite the warmth.
"Ten minutes," I clarified.
Mitchell began without hesitation, "Our sister, Amanda, went missing last September. No one knows what happened to her."
"She was heading home late that night. We saw the CCTV footage. The streetlamp flickered, then everything went dark. And then... she was just gone," June said, almost reluctantly.
"That’s why we wanted to talk to you. It’s kind of like what we read about your boyfriend—how he just disappeared," Mitchell added.
A chill coursed through me. Theories about Lucas’s disappearance abounded, including some that ventured into the supernatural, but that didn’t necessarily mean their sister was linked to it.
June pushed her phone toward me. I took it gingerly, studying the photo of a young woman in her late twenties. Her shy smile and blonde hair shared an unmistakable likeness to her siblings.
But I didn’t recognize this face. All I knew was that thousands of people vanished every year, some by choice. It was a hard pill to swallow, but anyone who’d ever had to deal with a missing loved one had to accept it at some point. I kept those thoughts to myself.
"I’ve never seen her, sorry," I said, empathetic.
Mitchell shook his head, with a faint, sorrowful smile. No worries, it said. And then, with a glimmer of hope, "Do you think your guy could’ve known her? Has he ever mentioned an Amanda?"
I thought about it for a second.
"Not that I remember. Sorry, but your sister went missing half a thousand miles away from here. I don’t think they’ve met." I started picking at my bracelet but forced myself to stop, not wanting to give away my nervousness or any personal information.
Mitchell hesitated. "We’re not sure if there’s a connection, but—"
"We found an article about your boyfriend when we were looking for Amanda," his sister interjected, "about people vanishing without a trace from public places. We thought it might be something. His case was kinda big."
She gave me a challenging glare, as if trying to elicit a reaction. I didn’t bite.
Mitchell let his sister finish her thought and said, "And there’s more: Amanda went missing around the same time, a year later. September of last year. I know how stupid it sounds now that I’m saying it out loud—" He trailed off.
The sun ducked behind a cloud, and we all visibly chilled.
Their motivation for speaking with me was questionable.
They could’ve gone anywhere in the country and spoken to anyone with a missing loved one, but why here?
How the hell did they come to the conclusion that I, of all people, was the one they had to speak to?
I swiped through more photos of Amanda until one caught my eye: a picture of a tree.
But it wasn’t the tree itself that drew me in.
It was the carving on its trunk. The symbol resembled an eye in a circle, intricately detailed and eerily occult.
It looked like something straight out of a horror movie.
As Sarah would say, it had a "very dark vibe.
" Yet, the carving felt strangely familiar.
"What is this?" I asked, turning the phone to Mitchell.
"I don’t know. It was just there." He looked between me and the screen. "Do you know what it is?"
"No, but I think I’ve seen it before."
"Where?" he asked.
"In Lucas’s things, drawn on a Post-It note." I recalled the wide, observant eye, the press of pencil so hard it had nearly pierced the paper. "I thought they were just scribbles. I’m not entirely sure."
I studied the carvings closer, but the more I looked, the more I doubted if it was the same. "They kinda look similar. Might be nothing, though."
"Or might be something." June’s tone was pushy. She looked very young, barely eighteen. The same age I was when I met Lucas. Probably just as naive. And she was eager to find connections, even where none existed.
"Sorry, guys, I’m not sure what you want from me. I really don’t know anything. Is there anything else?" Something was unsettling about this entire thing. Lucas’s obsession with his talismans was cute and quirky, but this made me deeply uncomfortable.
"Yes, actually. That’s why we came here to talk to you in the first place.
" Mitchell raised his head as if he just remembered an important detail. "The police took Amanda’s belongings and laptop when the investigation started, and we only got them back a month ago. She had been corresponding with a psychic online and had made a few purchases from their online store. It’s here. "
"A psychic?" I asked, incredulous.
"Yes, a medium or something," Mitchell replied. "It’s our only lead, so—"
My head was spinning. A second ago, they were asking me about Lucas, and now there was a psychic.
"And this psychic is here? In Minneapolis?" I asked, utterly confused. "Did Amanda come here?"
June chimed in, clarifying, "We found the online shop in Duluth. But we figured it was close enough. Same state."
"Why don’t you go to this psychic then?"
"We will," replied Mitchell, "but we thought you might want to come with us."
I almost choked on a breath. "Why?"
"Just to check it out? We’re trying to understand if these two disappearances are connected."
"What if we find them there? Isn’t that something you’d want?" June interjected. She was trying to guilt trip me.
I paused, weighing the thought. Duluth was roughly a two-hour drive, a route I’d taken with Lucas many times for hiking or skiing.
But none of that mattered now. It had been two long years, and he was gone.
I was about to leave this city behind. There were no revelations in this conversation, and I’d been down this path too many times, especially in the first months after Lucas’s disappearance, when I was desperate to cling to every detail and memory, searching for hints that weren’t there.
He didn’t leave a trail of breadcrumbs for me to find him.
He just vanished. And he wasn’t coming back.
"Shouldn’t the police be handling this?" I asked, trying to deflect their expectations.
June smirked but remained silent. Mitchell shook his head and pursed his lips.