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though I’m not sure why. She’s not secret. She’s just… gone.
    Sophia looks at me, eyebrow raised. “Vanished?”
    I speak without meaning to, as if the words are finding their own way past my lips. “In the forest. Something chased us, and when Ansel and I stopped, she was gone.”
    Where’s your sister?
    Words still want to spill from me—I slam my jaw shut to keep from letting everything out, all the memories, the search parties, the nothingness they found among the trees. It was as though the little girl who was half of me never existed at all, as if my family had just been seeing double all these years instead of actually having twins.
    “That’s so sad,” Sophia says, and her voice cracks a little. She hurries over to the sink and pours a glass of water, but I can tell it’s mostly to busy her hands and hide her eyes. It’s not strange for people to cry for my sister, but Sophia barely knows me. “When was that? Recently?” she asks over her shoulder.
    “No. We were just kids, but it didn’t stop people from blaming us for her disappearing. My sister and I were six, Ansel was seven. Twelve years ago, I guess.”
    Sophia’s hands freeze; her eyes jump up, find mine. “You’re eighteen?” She walks back over to me.
    I nod. “My birthday was a few weeks ago. That’s why our stepmother threw us out—she can finally do it legally. She hated us. Dad married her a year after Mom died. I think he just wanted to start everything over again.”
    Sophia slides the glass of water toward me quickly, as if it’s a lifeline. She looks alarmed, and I feel my cheeks heating up over telling this near stranger my family history in detail. I take a gulp of water and it cools the warmth that was building inside me. I feel as though I’m just waking up, as if the words spilling from me moments ago were just the result of some kind of stupor.
    “I’m sorry,” I mutter. “I don’t know why I told you all that.”
    “It’s okay,” Sophia answers hurriedly, smiling—although her smile has a certain sort of nervousness around the edges. “People say I’m easy to open up to.”
    “Right.” I nod, taking another drink of water. I’ve hardly had a bite of chocolate since my sister—usually all I can think of when I’m around it is little yellow candies on the forest floor. Is this how it’s supposed to make you feel? As if you’re happy, as if you’re safe?
    Sophia drops the orange slices into a cooking pot before speaking. “My dad is gone too. That’s why I came back here, actually, to run the chocolatier after he… left.” Her final word is heavy, but she looks away so fast that I can tell she doesn’t want to talk about whatever the truth about her family is—and I understand entirely. I move on.
    “Where did you come back from?”
    “College. I was studying philosophy,” she says, teasing herself a little in the phrase. “Big money in that, you know. I’m the only one in twenty-three years to leave Live Oak and come back.” She pauses to pull a glass jar of sugar from a wooden cabinet and proceeds to sprinkle half the jar over the oranges, then looks up at me. Her eyes look the same way they did earlier outside—as though she thinks I can help her, as if she’s desperate for me to help her. “It’s hard, losing your parents. Right when you think it’s getting better, it starts to hurt again,” she says softly, her voice wounded.
    I smile a little. “I know. I understand.”
    Sophia’s eyes fill with water and gratitude almost instantly. She sniffs and nods at me. “You know what it’s like.” I don’t say anything as Sophia takes a moment and collects herself, staring intently at the stove as she does so. When she looks back up at me, she’s grinning, all signs of sadness gone. “But at least I can make some badass candy oranges,” she says.
    The afternoon passes quickly—Ansel hauling heavy things by the open door, poking his head in to ask Sophia little questions,