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I nodded, staring into my coffee cup. I could feel the grief building in me. The small round rock of loss that lived somewhere around my abdomen and rose through my stomach and lungs, and up through my esophagus until it stayed somewhere right at the back of my throat, threatening tears and an inability to breathe. Sometimes it rose even further and lived for days inside my head, growing moss, clouding my thoughts and vision. Those were the days my limbs felt too heavy to get out of bed. Those were the days that had taught me that sometimes it was easier to say nothing at all. I had to be careful here, to maneuver myself around all the ways I might trip up, or fall down, or however you want to put it, because if I didn’t, if I didn’t look for the signs and pay attention, that rock would get bigger and bigger and heavier and heavier and I wouldn’t make it out of the house, let alone back to Madison.
“You want me to make you breakfast?” Dad added gently once it became obvious I didn’t have it in me to reply.
I shook my head again, this time a little more forcefully and said: “I’ll just have cereal.”
I was sitting in the breakfast nook eating my cereal when Ange called me again.
“Hey, I’m just finishing up my breakfast,” I said on picking up, assuming she was parked outside somewhere waiting for me to come out, “you want to come inside and wait for me here?”
“Maddie,” she said, her voice a breathless straight line.
“Yeah?” I said, suddenly sitting up a little straighter. There was something about the shape of her voice that instantly shook me, old memories rattling around in my ribcage making my heartbeat pick up.
“I … I—”
“Ange, what’s going on? What’s happened? Are you okay?” My voice was snappy and sharp, but I couldn’t help it, I knew where conversations like that went and my fear translated to frustration all too easily.
“I was just driving through town to come get you and all these police cars passed me.”
There was no way I could have possibly known, so of course I thought of Nora, blindly following my memory back, racing those cop cars as fast as they could go to a morning so vivid it could have happened yesterday.
***
I wake up slowly, one side of my face still smashed into the cool blue of my pillow case. When my eyes open the room is an even, cold grey. Ange is already up, the bed empty and the curtains opened halfway, not that it’s made much difference. Outside the world is one single color. White.
I reach for my phone, checking to see if there are any calls or texts from Nora, but there aren’t any. There’s one from Nate but I don’t read it, not yet anyway. I can smell hot butter and coffee, and I pull on my bathrobe and slippers before heading downstairs to the kitchen. Cordy is sat in the breakfast nook, her back to the window, feet on the bench and knees pulled to her chest while she texts someone feverishly and almost completely ignores me as I walk into the room. Instead of my mom at the stove, Ange hovers over the skillet, spatula in her right hand, waiting to turn the French toast over. She’s still dressed in her pajamas, one of my hoodies pulled over her T-shirt to keep her warm. Mom walks in through the garage door, waving a bottle of maple syrup triumphantly in one hand.
“I knew we had more somewhere,” she says, closing the door behind her, “disaster averted.”
“Since when do we put guests to work?” I ask, waving my hand towards Ange, and then staring pointedly at my sisters.
“Ange isn’t a guest, honey,” Mom says, squeezing Ange to her side, and kissing her on the side of her head, “she’s family.”
“Yeah, she’s family. And family makes family breakfast,” Cordy says.
“You’re all disgusting. And Ange, I apologize.”
Ange laughs and flips over four slices of bread in the huge cast iron pan, one by one.
“Have you heard from Nora?” I say to her, helping myself to a cup of coffee from the machine.
She shakes her head. “No, nothing. Have you?”
“Not since before I left work last night. You think we should be worried?”
“I dunno. It’s not like her, but maybe she went up to the lake house and forgot to take her charger or something?”
“Yeah, maybe.”
Just then I hear the sound of the front door opening, and my dad’s low chatter as he welcomes whoever it is that’s just appeared. They walk into the kitchen together, Dad hanging back in the doorway as Bright enters the room. He’s running the rim of his hat through his fingers as Mom smiles at him.
“Michael, what are you doing here? You know Serena’s back in Chicago, right?”
Bright nods his head but doesn’t answer my mom, instead looking from me to Ange who’s still studying the progress of her French toast.
“Maddie, Angela, have either of you heard from Nora today?”
We look at one another, Ange’s face suddenly slack, and I shake my head at Bright. “No, we were just talking about her. Neither of us have heard from her since last night. Why?”
“When last night?” Bright asks.
“Um, she left a voicemail on my phone.” I pull out my phone from the pocket of my bathrobe and head to recent calls. “At about 7:30. 7:27 to be exact.”
“What’s this about, Bright?” Ange asks.
“Nora took her dad’s car last night, and it was found earlier this morning, unlocked, keys in the ignition, just off Old Highway 51.”
“Yeah, so?” I ask. “Where’s Nora?”
“We don’t know.”
I could feel the same grip of panic and loss that had folded and tightened itself around me ten years before when I said to Ange: “Where were the police cars going?”
“They were headed towards the old highway, so I turned round and followed them because—” Because that was where Nora’s car had been found, and Ange was a reporter and certain habits are hard to break.
“Are you there now? What’s going on? Is it Nora?”
“Mads, it’s not Nora. It’s not Nora, but there’s a body and I think … I think it’s Noelle.”
All the air I had in my body was pulled out of me and replaced with lead, or granite, or concrete, or something heavy and immovable that dragged me down, down, down. My vision swam, images of Elle rising to the surface. She’d looked so young at the memorial and yet so weary, the weight of the world crowding her shoulders. How could this be happening again? A little over a week earlier I’d met her at CJ’s, treating her to a hot chocolate which had always been her favorite. She’d been filled with a razor-edge energy, cracking jokes and telling me stories about her girlfriend, Jenna, but then something had shifted in her and she’d started asking me questions about Nora. I’d put it down to the anniversary coming up so soon and had been happy to answer them. Normally when anyone talked about Nora I clenched up, went into lockdown, but it was different with Elle. I didn’t have to guess what her motives were when she brought Nora up, unlike with so many other people who just wanted to indulge in their morbid curiosity, to gossip about a missing girl as though she were a celebrity spiraling out of control.
I closed my eyes and tried to keep that picture of her in my mind: sitting in a booth at CJ’s, skimming the edge of her mug with her forefinger so that a pile of whipped cream and mini marshmallows appeared there before she stuck it in her mouth, while I groaned in faux disapproval and she grinned wickedly at me. I wanted to hold it there forever, but I knew how quickly that memory, that moment, would be eroded, degraded, twisted and turned into something else. I knew how quickly she’d go from Elle—the girl I’d helped teach how to ice skate and rollerblade and who’d hated to lose at Scrabble but still tried her best to win every time—to yet another person I’d be forced to mourn.
I was struggling to keep my head above the water when Ange said: “Mads, are you there?”
“Yeah,” I gasped. “I’m here.”
She talked me through what she was looking at: two cop cars and an ambulance. She recognized most everyone at the scene, including Bright and Leo and Leo’s father, Chief Moody. She knew better than to ask me if I was okay, and I knew better than to ask her. She spoke slowly, taking her time, but each word was weighed, freighted down and heavy. She’d spent a couple of years on the crime desk of a Milwaukee paper when she first graduated, but had since moved to the news desk, where if a grisly or interesting crime came up, it was invariably scooped up by one of her colleagues still working on crime. Every time she’d had to cover the death or murder of a woman or girl she saw Nora was all she had said to me at the time; it was all she needed to say. But she was clearly trying to pick up the pieces of her training there, still a reporter at heart, even as she tried to make sense of something that would never make any sense.
“And you’re sure it’s Elle?” I asked eventually, my voice small and young-sounding in the enveloping warmth of my parents’ kitchen.
“I don’t know for sure obviously, but I overheard the cops talking. They all know her, Mads, they know what she looks like. It must be her.”
I nodded, even though she couldn’t see. There wasn’t a single officer on our police force who wouldn’t know who Noelle Altman was.
“I have to go, Leo’s coming over. I think he’s going to ask me to leave.”
“Okay,” I said.
There was a small beat and then, “Should I still come over?”
“Yes,” I said, even though both of us knew we wouldn’t be leaving Forest View anytime soon.
I sat there for a long time, the morning seeping away from me until Ange arrived and told me what had happened after we’d hung up. Leo had been very proper, apparently. Refused to give her any details, saying they couldn’t confirm anything until the forensics team arrived from Wausau. When she’d asked him if it was really Elle, he’d glanced back towards the body—the body—and said he couldn’t say, but she said she knew.
I was having trouble getting to grips with what she was saying though, and although I could barely trust myself to speak, I said: “You’re sure? You’re really sure it’s Elle?”
Ange took a deep breath and seemed to steady herself. “I can’t be 100 per cent sure, but I heard them say her name. Why would they do that if it wasn’t Elle?”
I didn’t have an answer for her but my mind was a storm of other possibilities, other reasons, any other reason but that one which was so impossible I just couldn’t contemplate it. After everything that had happened, after ten years of missing Nora, of Nora being missing, how could it possibly be happening again? As we sat there I felt the past ten years diminish, shrink down to nothing so that we could have been seventeen again, Ange and I, stood in this very same room, as Bright explained to us that Nora was missing and we had to tell him anything and everything—every last detail—of the last time we’d seen or spoken to her, because every little thing mattered now. I thought about Elle’s pale face the day before, her quiet voice. She’d looked sick, or sickened by something, and I hated myself for not having pushed her more, dug deeper, delved further and figured out what—beyond the obvious—was wrong. And I realized then that I’d already accepted it, that I was already thinking of her in the past tense, and the steady pounding of guilt and grief began to build and build until it filled up the whole room.
Eventually, Ange looked down at her phone, which she’d been passing from hand to hand, twirling it distractedly between her fingers. “I need to call work,” she said, her voice strained, and I realized I needed to do the same.
“To tell them you won’t be coming in?”
“To tell them … to tell them about this.”
I don’t know why I was so shocked. She was a reporter after all, but still I could feel my eyes involuntarily widen, and watched as Ange bit down on her lower lip, maintaining my gaze.
“This is big, Mads. This is going to be really, really big.”
“You mean for your career?” I said, wishing as soon as the words had come out that I could take them back.
Ange slammed her phone down onto the table. “You know that’s not what I meant. Jesus Christ, Mads, could you at least give me some credit?”
“I know, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.”
Ange looked at me warily. “You meant it a little.”
“No. I didn’t. I think after everything that happened with Nora with the press, my natural instincts kicked in, that’s all.”
Ange took a deep breath, and sighed heavily, weighing down the air between us. “If I don’t call in about this, I’ll be made to look like just about the worst, most inefficient reporter of all time. We’re talking about the younger sister of Nora Altman being found dead ten years to the day, and in the same spot that Nora’s car was abandoned.”
“I know, Ange,” I said nodding, really trying to mean it.
“And if I’m writing about it, then maybe it could be just that little bit better this time?” she said, although it came out sounding like a question, as if she herself didn’t quite believe it.
“It’s possible,” I said slowly, although I too didn’t believe it. When Ange first told me she was going to major in journalism I couldn’t help but see it as a kind of reaction to everything that happened when Nora went missing.
The first time a reporter knocked on my door Nora had been missing for just under a week. The local paper had been covering the disappearance since the beginning, but it took a while for a bigger paper to take notice. But once they did, they didn’t let go. Not for a long time. She’d been a reporter for a Madison daily—Ange worked for its rival now—and she’d tried to get out of me whatever it was the Altmans had refused to give her. When I too had refused to talk, she’d described me as “pained and pale” and had questioned why it was that Nora’s best friends weren’t willing to talk about her disappearance. What were we hiding? What did we know? Didn’t we want to help spread the word about our missing friend?
It would be worse this time: I already knew that much. Ten years was a long time and not only would there be reporters and well-meaning chat show hosts pondering over this sad, tragic mystery, but now anyone with an internet connection could join in the fun too.
I wondered if Elle’s family knew yet, if their day of remembrance had been interrupted by something so familiar the remnants of it were still strewn around their lives. I didn’t even have to imagine their faces as they were told the worst; I’d seen it before. The image of Nate with red-rimmed, sleepless eyes, his shoulders shaking uncontrollably reared up at me and I looked down at my phone, almost convinced that, despite everything, there would be a message from him, but there was nothing. I could hear the hollow knock at their front door as the Chief stood outside in the gently falling snow and could see as Nate answered, already knowing the worst from Leo and yet still unable to quite believe it. Katherine would be in her bathrobe still, knuckles white as she gripped the hallway bannister, refusing to break down, unable to speak, her wide brown eyes drowned in exhaustion, all color drained. The only one I couldn’t see in all of it was Noah. It was only in his mind that the memory of Nora’s disappearance wouldn’t be playing in full technicolor, reliving the same moments again and again, trying to make sense of how it was all happening again.
My heart clenched, a cold, iron fist squeezing tight, the shock of it no less bright, no less big because I’d felt it before. We’d all been there before and yet familiarity doesn’t always mean comfort. Sometimes what we fear the most is the unknown. But other times, knowing what’s coming, the shape of it, the taste, the smell, is so much worse. How it sets the world on edge, blurs the edges of your vision, peels back layers of skin only to reveal more and more of the same damn thing. Sometimes, knowing what’s coming doesn’t save you, it just sets your heart pounding as you teeter on the edge, waiting for that rush of air before the earth rises up to greet you.
CHAPTER FOUR
I didn’t make it back to Madison of course. I went to bed early, not because I thought I’d be able to sleep the day away but because retreat has always been my first and last form of defense. I chose something on Netflix that I’d watched a thousand times before and didn’t have to think about at all, so that when my phone gently buzzed beside me I was only dimly aware of what Lorelai and Rory Gilmore were saying to one another. You would have thought that upon seeing it was Nate texting me I would have read and replied to the message immediately, but instead it stilled me, froze me even, and I had to wait a few minutes before shoring up enough courage to read it in full.
You awake?
he wrote.
My thumb hovered over the keyboard for a few seconds before I replied:
Yeah.
A few more seconds passed and then my phone started ringing in my hand. I didn’t answer immediately, I couldn’t. I just stared as his name lit up my phone screen and desperately tried to think of something to say when I picked up.
“Maddie?” Nate said, as soon as I answered, not waiting for me to say anything.
“Hi, Nate.” There was a pause and I looked around at my room, squeezing my eyes shut in an attempt to block everything out. I got the feeling, even from down a phone line, that Nate was figuring out what to say too, how to speak. I took a deep breath and did the decent thing and spoke for him.
“I heard about Elle,” I said, practically whispering in the dim bedroom light. “I’m so sorry.”
I could hear his breath catch, words getting caught in his throat. Words were always getting caught, trapped, in my world. There were just some things that couldn’t be said, couldn’t be heard out loud, not because that would make them more real but because sometimes sharing certain pieces of you makes them less real. Or maybe it was a combination of the two, I don’t know. I just know that there are times when language is made impotent.
“Nate,” I said, “is there anything I can do? To help?”
I heard that catch of his breath again and then the release. “Yeah. Yes, thanks. We have to go down to the station tomorrow, to the police station, but Mom doesn’t want Noah to come with us. Could you come round to sit with him?”
“Of course.”
“Thanks … thank you, Maddie.” There was another short pause before he added a little stiffly, “I know my mom will appreciate it.”
If I hadn’t already been stunned into submission by Elle’s death, I would have been heartbroken over the formality of Nate’s request. It was better, although only marginally, than the outright hostility I’d gotten from him the day before; but Nate talking to me as if he barely knew me, as if I barely knew him, was a special kind of heartbreak. The kind that had already begun to heal years before. It was like brushing your fingers over the remnant of a scar; your skin was raised, changed, marked and when you took the time to remind yourself of it the ache was still there, but only just. But Elle was an open wound, blood still pumping to the site of the injury, demanding all my attention just to keep it from hemorrhaging. Hearing Nate’s voice, however briefly, however stilted and formal, made that stupid old scar throb with pain though, however much I didn’t want it to. The last time I’d spoken to Nate over the phone, the last time I had called him, I’d still been living in New York. I was twenty-three, over a year out of college and finding it increasingly difficult to get out of bed every morning.
***
It happens the way it always happens; shutters screaming shut over everyday life. I pull on my running shoes because they’re the first pair of shoes I find, even though I haven’t run in months—since I got to New York, really—and even then it was only ever something I did because my therapist and all my doctors told me I should. Exercise, they all say, as if it’s some kind of magic word. Abracadabra. I grab my keys and my cell and as I’m slamming the door behind me I pull the hood of my gray sweatshirt over my head. I have to walk up the basement steps just to get to street level and when I do I can smell it, despite the city smell: the engine exhaust and the trash cans, the Chinese takeout and the pizza place a couple doors away, the dog shit and probably the human shit too. Snow. Not yet. It’s not snowing yet, but it will. I shiver, from anticipation mostly but also regretting not putting on a coat warmer than my leather jacket. I start walking, hands stuffed into my jacket pockets, not even looking where I’m going, but still feeling the too-huge feeling in my chest. It’s grown in the last couple days to the point that I can barely breathe. Even now, with the cold stinging my eyes, they’re already smarting from almost crying anyway. I try not to cry, I really do, but I do it anyway.
The brick wall keeps rising up no matter how hard I try to knock it down, or stop it from building up in the first place, and I haven’t left the apartment in days. It has taken me the last fifteen hours just to force myself out now, and the only reason I’ve been able to do so is because it’s night, the middle of the fucking night, and no one will care who I am or where I’m going, or why I’m doing what I’m doing, or why I am the way I am. Every time I think about seeing anyone, or speaking to anyone, or having to stand at an ATM, or in line at a coffee shop, or make eye contact, or purchase milk, the scratching feeling starts up at the back of my eyes and it’s as if I can actually feel my retinas. The block of granite gets bigger and bigger inside my chest, and the brick wall builds itself up again, as if I never managed to knock it down in the first place.
I take a deep breath to steady myself, and even stop, my hand resting on a black iron railing in front of a brownstone. I almost lean over, head between my legs, about-to-faint-style, but I just keep a hold of the freezing iron and let that reassure me. After a couple of seconds, or maybe even minutes, I’m able to look around me somewhat and I notice that there’s a guy on the other side of the street walking in my direction. He’s wearing what looks like a magenta shell-suit jacket, and corduroy trousers and shoes without socks and he kind of looks right at me, but not as if he’s seen me. Just as if he were watching a movie and I was a secondary character he wasn’t really all that interested in. Blank look, then move on. I feel warm relief spread through me, as though I’ve just done a killer pee, and begin to walk on again. I don’t stop until I get to the East River.
I hunker down in my sweatshirt and jacket, trying to make myself as small as possible, hoping that it’ll also make me feel warm as well. The snow smell is even stronger here, the wind whipping it up along the river and mixing with that almost-salty metallic smell you get from the water as well. I sit down on a bench and it takes me a while to realize that there are people lying under some of the other benches, presumably because it’s got too cold to lie on the actual benches. One, two, three, four flakes of snow hurl themselves at my face, but if you ask me, they’re not trying hard enough. I lean back on the bench and, suddenly, my hands still stuffed in my pockets, my right hand curls around my cell and then, as if it’s not four o’clock in the morning, or damn close, I’m calling Nate.
He picks up on the seventh ring when I’m about to give in and hang up.
“’Lo.”
“Nate?”
I can practically hear him sit up in bed, even across half—more than half—the country, across one time zone, thousands and thousands of miles of night, and black sky, and farmland, and mountains, and rivers, and road, and motels, and tollbooths.