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My fingers slide across the laptop’s power button, and when the screen lights up, asking me for the password, I don’t think at all. I type Claire, and the welcome screen appears.

I stare at it. All this time, and the password was right in front of me. All this time and Tess—her real story, who she really was—was right in front of me.

And I never saw it.

I take a look around her computer, checking out her files. I should feel guilty, but I don’t. I want to know the real Tess, the sister I never met, but there isn’t much to see. I find some papers Tess wrote, some music she downloaded, and a folder labeled “photos” that has pictures of her and Beth. No guys in them, no pretense.

I can see they are a couple in these photos, see them with their arms around each other, Tess smiling broader and with more joy than I’ve ever seen. I think about the photos she brought home for us to see, and how she laughed whenever I asked about the guys in them.

These photos, the ones with Beth, hold the real Tess, and I decide I’ll copy and transfer them to my computer. Then I’ll print one out and take it with me when I see Tess again tomorrow. I want to—I want to let Tess know I see her for who she really is, and not who I made her out to be.

But when I try to select the files, I get a message that there are two hidden ones.

Hidden files?

I open the menu that controls file viewing options and make all files and folders visible. Two more folders pop up on screen within the “photos” folder I’m looking at. One is labeled “beth messages,” and the other “over.”

I can guess what the “over” folder is about, think of Beth telling me Tess had decided they shouldn’t live together anymore.

I click on it anyway, expecting something that will tell me what went wrong. That will show me how Tess lost something—someone—I never even knew was in her heart.

But it’s not what I see.

thirty-nine

There are pictures and online message conversations in the folder, jumbled together as if Tess had copied them from somewhere else in a hurry. Like she had to have them but hadn’t wanted to see them, not even to organize them in any way.

I click on one of the saved messages, and a huge, pages-long conversation opens.

It’s not … it’s not from Tess’s time in college. It’s from when she was in high school. I can tell because she’s talking about teachers I have now.

At the end of the message, Claire—and I know it’s her, because I know her screen name, like I know Tess’s, like I used to know everything about them, or thought I did—has typed:

sigh. dinner time find u later xo always

I look for Tess’s reply but there isn’t one. Just that last line, from Claire. xo always

I don’t—what is this?

I close the message and click on one of the photos. It’s of Tess, and was taken before she was a senior. I can tell from her hair, which is long, practically down to her waist. She only wore it short her last year in high school, cut it so it barely reached her shoulders right after—

Right after she found out about Claire.

In the picture, Tess and Claire are lying on Tess’s bed, grinning up at the camera and snuggled against each other like … like friends, but more. You can see it in how one of Tess’s hands rests on Claire’s leg, lies curved familiar above her knee.

You can see it in how Claire is turned toward Tess, one hand tangled in Tess’s hair as the other holds the camera above them. Both of them are smiling, and they look …

They look happy.

They look like they’re together.

I click through a few more photos. Some of them are like the one I just saw, and some of them make everything even clearer, show Claire’s bare back shielding Tess’s front as Tess grins up at the camera she’s holding, eyes half closed.

In the last one I look at, Tess’s head is resting in the crook of Claire’s neck as her hands cover Claire’s breasts, and Claire has her eyes closed, her mouth turned toward Tess, seeking.

I have to sit and look at the floor for a little bit after that one.