The day after what should have been the happiest night of her life, my sister disappeared. No note, no farewell — just gone. For a decade, we lived in that silence. Until I opened an old attic box last week… and found a letter. Dated the morning she vanished.
There Were Signs — But I Missed Them
The last time I saw Laura, she was twirling barefoot on the makeshift dance floor our dad built earlier that day — plywood slick with spilled beer and patched with soft dirt.
The bottom of her wedding dress, once creamy white, was streaked with barbecue sauce, sweet punch, and good Iowa dust.
She didn’t care. She looked like joy stitched in lace.
String lights glowed over the backyard, leftover from Mama’s old Christmas bins. Lilacs scented the breeze, tangled with smoke from Uncle Randy’s grill. Kids darted through the grass chasing fireflies, and old country songs drifted from the radio like summer fog.
“You’re a married woman now,” I said as we leaned over the lemonade table, our cheeks flushed, our skin sticky with heat.
Laura giggled, eyes dancing.
“I know. Isn’t that crazy?”
Luke, her new husband, waved from across the yard, laughing with his groomsmen. He looked like a man who had everything.
Laura waved back — but then, just for a second, looked down. Her smile dimmed. It was brief. I missed it then.
Too caught up in the celebration, in the perfect chaos of family and summer and love.
But now, looking back, I can see it clearly. That flicker in her eyes. Like something was weighing on her. Like she was already slipping away.
The next morning, she was gone.
She Left Without a Sound
The motel room where they’d spent their wedding night looked untouched.
Her dress had been folded neatly on the bed.
Her phone sat quietly on the nightstand.
No note. No text. No explanation.
We called everyone. The police. Neighbors. Friends. Search teams scoured the woods. The pond was dragged. Twice.
Luke was questioned again and again. But there were no leads. No clues.
Laura had vanished like a whisper on the wind — there one moment, gone the next.
And after all the noise of searching, came the silence.
Deep. Hollow. Unrelenting.
She became a ghost in our family.
Mama stopped humming in the kitchen. The old gospel songs she used to sing while stirring gravy or flipping pancakes — they died the day Laura disappeared.
The house changed. It felt thinner somehow. Like something had been stolen from the air and never returned.
Daddy still worked the fields, but he didn’t stand as tall.
And Luke… Luke clung to hope. For a while. He brought flowers, fixed things around the house
