by Wendy Walker
Locking shut.
2
Day thirteen
The phone rang. Stopped. Rang again.
Nicole Clarke awoke, felt a body beside her. It didn’t stir.
The ringing was loud. The daylight bright, even through closed eyes. Remorse crept in as her hand reached toward the sound.
She pulled the phone to her ear, eyes pinching tightly together, then moved herself closer to the edge of the bed so she was no longer touching the stranger she’d brought home.
She managed a hello. Her voice was hoarse.
“Nicole Clarke?” a woman asked. She seemed nervous. “I’m calling about the disappearance of a woman in Hastings.”
The name of that town. Adrenaline, nausea. Nic didn’t answer.
Then came the flashes from the night before.
Vodka shots … the man at the end of the bar … now in her bed.
She’d told him to leave in the early morning hours. Or maybe she’d passed out before she could.
The woman continued.
“My name is Edith Moore. I hope this is the right thing to do, but I may have something … I may know something about that woman—your mother, right?”
The man groaned, draped a heavy arm over her chest. Nic pushed it aside.
There had been a moment last night when his arms couldn’t hold her tight enough. Now they repulsed her. It was always the same.
She rolled onto her side and pulled her knees to her stomach. “Hold on,” she said, waiting for the nausea to recede.
The calls about her mother had begun to slow. Most of the crazies had moved on to other things. Other ways to feed their appetite for attention. The psychologist had explained it to them, why people feel drawn to these stories, to other people’s grief, and why they seek ways to get involved even if they muddy the search for the truth with their lies. Their made-up stories. Their bullshit.
There was also the reward money. A million dollars for her mother’s safe return. Five hundred thousand for tips leading to her “whereabouts.” Nothing brought out a liar like cash. Her father had hired an investigator to manage the tips.
The woman continued.
“I live in Schenectady, which is two hours from Hastings—over the border into New York. I was on my way home from a trip to Manhattan. I met some girlfriends there. That’s why I was on the road.”
Nic began with the questions that would likely end the conversation. What day? What time? What road?
The callers never did their homework. They usually got the town right. Sometimes the make and model of her mother’s car—an Audi Q5, light blue. Stopped just before the gas station.
Edith Moore rattled off the answers. It was the last one that made Nic pay closer attention.
Hastings Pass.
Most people said they’d seen Molly Clarke on Route 7. That was where her car was found. That was the road that led to the casino where her credit card was used. It was always the best guess for the crazies. And the liars.
This was something new.
“What were you doing on Hastings Pass?” Nic asked. Her tone was harsh. “It’s completely out of the way if you were heading to Schenectady from Manhattan.”
Nic knew every inch of that town. Hastings. She knew every road, every field, every abandoned well her mother might have fallen down as she sought cover from the hurricane.
“I was trying to stop for the night because of the storm. There’s a place there, the Hastings…”
“Hastings Inn.” Nic was sitting up now.
“Yes—the Hastings Inn. I got to the inn around seven, but it was already boarded up. I knew I had to get out of the storm path, so I turned around, back toward Route 7. I was on Hastings Pass and I think I drove right past your mother.”
Now came another voice. The man in her bed who’d overstayed his welcome. Who’s on the phone?
Nobody … you need to go.
Nic waved at him, then toward the door, then to his clothes littered across the carpet of her bedroom. When he looked at her with confusion, she made it clearer.
“Please—just get out.” But then, “I’m sorry.”
She said it again. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, until he started to move.
And she was sorry. For last night and the nights before and the nights to come. She was sorry for so many nights since Annie died.
Back to the woman on the phone.
“Why didn’t you come forward sooner? It’s been two weeks.”
“Like I said, I don’t live in the area. And I don’t really follow the news. But then a few days ago, I was catching up with one of the friends I met in the city and she asked me if I got caught in the storm, and then she mentioned a woman who went missing.”
Nic listened carefully as she watched the man move about the room, grabbing a shirt, pants, underwear. These nights had to stop.
She knew they wouldn’t.
Edith Moore continued, her voice trembling with excitement. “I looked up the story on the Internet and I just knew it was her! I saw her on that road. Hastings Pass—not Route 7. She was about a mile down the road. The rain had begun. She was soaking wet.”
Nic rested her head in one hand as the facts from the case flooded out.
The car abandoned just before the gas station.
Out of gas.
Nothing inside but her cell phone, attached to the charger.
Every field, every home, everywhere searched and searched.
Then, two days later, her credit card used at a nearby casino resort.
And her clothes, still wet, found in the hotel room—along with the note.
The note which explained everything—and nothing.
“And you didn’t stop? You didn’t help her?” Nic asked.
The woman rambled on about how she slowed to a crawl, but then a truck came from the other direction.
“A truck?”
“Yes. It was a pickup truck. Dark color. It stopped and she got in.”
Nic was on her feet, then quickly buckled over.
“I read everything I could find,” the woman said. “About the car found the next morning and the gas station closed and then the winds and blackout. Oh, and how the town searched for her everywhere until they found that gut-wrenching note in a hotel room. Your poor mother and everything she’d been through. And then the case was closed, or reclassified, I think it said. They were calling it a ‘walk away’ in the press.”
That was exactly how things had gone down.
Nic and her father had been there with the search parties. Four days in Hastings that had become a blur of images. Rough sketches of cold air and stiff cornstalks, stale bitter coffee on folding tables brought by the local residents. The bar across from the inn. Vodka. Tequila. A stranger in the back hallway—the bartender. It had not been pretty.
Then came the slow reveal of the family’s bad behavior on the day of the disappearance.
Nic’s cruel words in the kitchen overheard by the cleaners. Evan’s shunning of his mother’s visit witnessed by the kids on his team. And Molly Clarke’s husband, John, who didn’t even notice that his wife hadn’t come home because he’d fallen asleep.
And why would that be? He had a million excuses. It took everything inside Nic not to give them the real one—that he didn’t love his wife anymore. That he was having an affair. Nic had seen his car in town when he said he was at the office. She’d seen the way he avoided looking at her but then was suddenly polite and considerate, covering his tracks. There were so many changes, and they were recent. They were new, subtle changes. Except for the one that screamed out to be noticed. For the first time since his wife killed his daughter, he seemed happy.
All of this bad behavior had come on the anniversary of Annie’s death five years before.
It was against this ugly and unforgivable backdrop that her mother’s note was interpreted. Chicken-scratch words on a page from the hotel notepad found in the room. Words Nic had read just once, though she could still clos
e her eyes and see the shape of each letter.
My beloved family, I am so very sorry. I couldn’t make it home, and then I thought maybe you are better off without me. I pray you don’t look for me. I pray for your happiness.
She signed it with her full name. Molly Clarke. The police said she had probably done that to make sure it found its way back to them—so the hotel would know who’d left it.
But she’d paid for the room with her credit card. It was in her name. And the words, the phrases—they didn’t sound like her mother.
The note was sent to a handwriting expert. It matched the samples they’d provided. It matched the writing of Molly Clarke.
Still, she had fought against them. The local police. The state troopers. Even her father. They’d given her the statistics which supported the walk-away theory. Most adult women who disappear were trying to leave their lives behind. They came home when, if, they were ready.
What did she have to fight with? Remnants from the past, fragments of memories about a devoted mother who could never cause her children to suffer by leaving them? The truth was, Nic had no idea what was in her mother’s head, what was even in her heart, or what narrative had been taking shape inside her—that she was a burden to them and they would be better off without her.
Nic had said as much to her face the morning before she left them.
The belief in her mother’s betrayal had come as a shock, but then settled in quietly, burrowing into the hollow spaces alongside the grief and the guilt that Annie’s death had carved. They were amorphous, covering every inch of her, living in every cell. And they had an insatiable yearning to be filled. The men and the alcohol were barely touching them anymore.
Evan had fared better. There’d been tears, but then his quick return to school. Her father had done his duty by wearing a somber face and taking care of his wife’s elderly parents. They lived in a home and were already in the throes of dementia. Nic envied them. Now, nearly two weeks later, friends had stopped bringing casseroles. Everyone was returning to normal life because it was unbearable to remain in a state of grief and loss. Evan at school. Her father back to work and his after-work activities. And Nic, back to her nights.
Only they’d been getting worse.
Now the woman again. “The driver of that truck may know where she went.”
Yes, Nic thought. The driver might know why she left us.
“Is there anything else you can tell me? Any details about her that you noticed? I have to ask.”
“Yes, of course,” Edith Moore said. “Let me think … well—there was something she did, and I don’t know if it helps…”
“What?” Nic asked, suddenly desperate to have this be real. “What did she do?”
“When she waved at the truck—she used both arms, over her head, crossing back and forth. She had her purse in one of her hands, so it was odd, you know? That she didn’t just wave at the truck with one hand. I remember thinking that it was strange.”
Nic closed her eyes and saw her mother from years ago. At a cross country meet, standing at the finish line. Waving just like that—two arms overhead. She did it at Evan’s games too. And when she was trying to get their attention at a pickup, or when they ignored her walking through the kitchen and she asked them how their day was.
They had all poked fun at her. And yet, they had all found it endearing.
Years ago—when there was still room for endearment.
“What about the purse?” Nic asked.
“It was orange. Very bright—oh, and there were letters on it. NEA. At the time, I assumed it was a monogram, but after I read about your mother and saw her name, I thought maybe it was the name of the designer.”
“They’re our names,” Nic said. “The names of her children.”
Her mother had ordered the purse herself. No one else would have been that morbid. And that’s exactly what it was. A bright, bold, daily reminder that she had three children. Nicole. Evan. Annie. Three children, not two. And that one was dead. The giant gold “A” to punch her in the gut as she went about her day. That purse followed her everywhere.
Nic opened her eyes and let the truth find her.
This is real. This woman saw my mother.
“Why don’t you come and meet me?” Edith Moore asked. “I can show you exactly where she was when the truck picked her up.”
The thought was unbearable. Hastings …
“Maybe you can meet with the local police,” Nic offered.
But the woman insisted. “I don’t think that will go anywhere now, given what they believe.”
Silence then. Nic closed her eyes and tried to chase away the sickness in her gut.
Hastings …
“The thing is,” the woman said next, “no one is going to care about that poor woman on the road as much as her family.”
Ten minutes later, Nic was throwing clothes in a duffel bag. Jeans, shirts, sweaters, sneakers. What else? Pajamas, underwear.
She went to the bathroom for her toothbrush, shampoo.
A voice crept in, whispering, Is this just more running away?
The grief counselor had her theories about Nic’s behavior.
Don’t run from the pain. You have to feel it before it will get better.
But she did feel it. And it never did get better.
There were things she’d said that morning to her mother that she hadn’t told anyone. She couldn’t even think them. Things about Annie.
She’d wanted to see misery on her mother’s face instead of love. And she had succeeded. Now she had the image in her mind, placed there by Edith Moore—her mother standing in the rain, soaking wet. In the storm. A storm Nic had put her in with those horrible words.
And now, too, there was someone out there who knew where she’d gone. Someone who owned a truck. Someone who could help her get to her mother and tell her she didn’t hate her, and God, take back the other things she’d said that morning. She chased the voices away. The good advice. The well-meaning guidance she knew would be coming. She doesn’t want to be found. Take care of yourself, Nicole. But Nic knew things they didn’t, things she’d said to drive her mother away.
This was her fault and now she had to make it right. She had to find her mother.
3
Day one
The girl wears a mask. She pulls it up after I enter the truck.
It’s some kind of medical mask which I can see now only in the reflection from the side mirror. The man wears a wool hat, pulled down low.
We drive through sheets of rain. A violent wind pushes against the truck.
“Thank you for stopping,” I say. “I ran out of gas.”
The girl turns around.
“That wasn’t very smart,” she says. Her voice is perky, like she’s just stating the obvious and not rendering a judgment. Still, it is odd for a child her age not to know that she’s done just that.
“You’re right,” I say.
The man smiles. “No harm done. The town’s not far.”
I notice his eyes dart up into the mirror so he can see me. He quickly looks away and glances at his daughter.
Daughter … I wonder now. I am making assumptions.
The girl keeps talking.
“I’m allergic to everything so I have to wear a mask when I’m outside the house. Does it make my voice sound funny?”
Her words pass through me. I look out the window wondering where we are, exactly how far from town. I can see nothing but the small pieces of road where the headlights strike the pavement. The sky is a canvas of black.
I smell gasoline and notice three plastic cans on the floor beside me. Otherwise, the truck is clean but old. The leather on the seats is cracked, worn all the way through in places.
“Hey!” the girl says, annoyed with me now. “Answer my question!”
My concern shifts quickly from the road and the black sky and the gas cans to the girl with the mask who has just admonished me for not paying attention and answeri
ng her question. I somehow pull the question from my immediate memory. Something about the mask and her voice … I take an educated guess.
“It sounds just fine to me,” I say. She looks at me through the side mirror with folded eyes and I imagine her whole face is in a scowl.
So I smile. A big, warm smile through lips that tremble from the cold and now, also, from the realization that I am locked inside a truck with strangers.
“What’s your name?” I ask. I try to be friendly. I just need a ride to town.
The girl looks at the man before answering. He nods and says, “Go ahead! Don’t be shy,” which is strange because she seems anything but shy to me.
She spins all the way around this time, smiling so wide I can see the creases of her cheeks poking out from the sides of the mask.
“Alice!” she says. I take a moment because the name sounds out something else in my mind. She says Alice but I hear Annie. And my heart skips just one long beat.
Alice again turns back to face the road, this time with a little bounce and the man tousles her hair. It’s playful but awkward, like he doesn’t do this often.
The truck slows.
I look through the windshield to where the headlights are shining and see storefronts with boarded windows. As we pass, they fade back into the darkness.
The truck rolls down the street. The man keeps his eyes ahead.
“Is that the town?” I ask.
We pass a building that looks like a diner from the shape of the gray silhouette and the large sheets of plywood that cover a row of windows. Beside it I see a sign on a lawn. It’s merely a flash as our lights pass. It says The Hastings Inn.
“Maybe there—at the inn. You could just drop me…”
The man looks carefully out the window, scanning the street.
“Looks like it’s closed. Everything’s boarded up … and gosh—looks like the whole town’s lost power.”
My voice cracks as I ask the next question. “Can we go back to my car? Maybe I can use some of the gas you have here? Even just a gallon. There’s another station about half an hour away—at the casino, right? I saw a sign for it on Route 7…”
