For most people, a birthday is supposed to be a celebration.
A day marked by candles, laughter, photographs, and wishes made quietly before blowing out the flames.
For me, birthdays became something else.
They became reminders.
Of an empty chair.
Of a missing voice.
Of a face that looked exactly like mine and yet disappeared from my life so completely that, after enough years had passed, I sometimes wondered whether I had imagined having a twin at all.
Her name was Laura.
She was born seven minutes before me.
And on the night we turned sixteen, she vanished.
For nearly forty years, I lived with one question that never stopped following me:
What happened to my sister?
I searched for answers in old photographs, in half-remembered conversations, in the expressions on my parents’ faces whenever her name was mentioned.
I searched in newspaper clippings.
In police reports.
In memories.
I searched in dreams.
