When I was five, my twin sister walked into the trees behind our house and never came back. The police told my parents her body was found, but I never saw a grave, never saw a coffin. Just decades of silence and a feeling that the story wasn’t really over.

I’m Dorothy, 73, and my life has always had a missing piece shaped like a little girl named Ella.

Ella was my twin.

We were five when she disappeared.

We weren’t just “born on the same day” twins. We were share-a-bed, share-a-brain twins. If she cried, I cried.If I laughed, she laughed louder. She was the brave one. I followed.

The day she vanished, our parents were at work, and we were staying with our grandmother.

I was sick.

Feverish, throat on fire. Grandma sat on the edge of my bed with a cool washcloth.

“Just rest, baby,” she said. “Ella will play quietly.”

Ella was in the corner with her red ball, bouncing it against the wall, humming.

I remember the soft thump, the sound of rain starting outside.

Then nothing.I fell asleep.

When I woke up, the house was wrong.

Too quiet.

No ball. No humming.

“Grandma?” I called.

She rushed in, hair mussed, face tight.

“Where’s Ella?” I asked.

“She’s probably outside,” she said. “You stay in bed, all right?”

Her voice shook.

I heard the back door open.

“Ella!” Grandma called.

No answer.

“Ella, you get in here right now!”

Her voice climbed.

Then footsteps, fast and frantic.

I got out of bed. The hallway felt cold. By the time I reached the front room, neighbors were at the door.

Mr. Frank knelt in front of me.

“Have you seen your sister, sweetheart?” he asked.

I shook my head.

Then the police came.

Blue jackets, wet boots, radios crackling. Questions I didn’t know how to answer.

“What was she wearing?”

“Where did she like to play?”

“Did she talk to strangers?”

Behind our house, a strip of woods ran along the property.

People called it “the forest,” like it was endless, but it was just trees and shadows. That night, flashlights bobbed through the trunks. Men shouted her name into the rain.

They found her ball.

That’s the only clear fact I was ever given.

The search went on.

Days, weeks. Time blurred. Everyone whispered.

No one explained.

I remember Grandma crying at the sink, whispering, “I’m so sorry,” over and over.

I asked my mother once, “When is Ella coming home?”