by Wendy Walker
Towns like this were littered all the way up the Housatonic River, into New York State, up to the Canadian border—left abandoned like a jilted first wife, trying to take care of its children with whatever resources it could find. Farming, mostly. And then unemployment and government jobs. Cops, clerks, construction workers.
Nic pulled into the small gravel lot at the police station and parked her mother’s car. She looked in the rearview mirror out of nothing more than habit, really. Her hair was in a ponytail and she’d stopped wearing makeup years ago. There wasn’t much to see, or to check, or to fix.
Not that she would bother if there was.
She closed the mirror, irritated with this relic from her former life.
She left the car and walked inside.
The department consisted of four people—a secretary, a chief, and two uniformed officers. The state provided troopers when additional resources were required, like the night of the storm. Like her mother’s disappearance.
Inside, the secretary, Mrs. Urbansky, was at a desk behind a tall counter.
“Nicole!”
She got up and lumbered her large girth around the metal corners. She reached her hands over the counter and grabbed Nic by the shoulders.
“Nicole,” she said again, her face contorting with sympathy. “How are you? How was the drive?”
Mrs. Urbansky had been nothing but kind to her during the search for her mother. It hadn’t been easy to let it in then. And it wasn’t now.
“Fine,” Nic answered.
Mrs. Urbansky let up on her hold and crossed her elbows on the counter. The soft flesh of her arms bulged out from the creases as she rested her chin on her knuckles.
“So, you think you have a new lead?”
Nic shrugged. “We’ll find out tomorrow.”
“So odd after all that searching, and the reward money…” Mrs. Urbansky said, apprehension in her voice.
She wasn’t wrong—the search parties had been thorough. They had begun at the edge of the dense fields that lined Hastings Pass and Route 7, and moved through the tall, sharp stalks until they ended. Some of the property bled right into other fields. Some was divided up by split-rail fencing. Others were met with lawns belonging to old farmhouses. When all was said and done, Nic, her father, the police, and volunteers, had covered thirty-two square miles of land. Which was a lot of land.
Houses were checked as well. Five miles in every direction from where the car was found. No one had seen Molly Clarke the night of the storm.
It all played on a loop now, a recurring bad dream.
Hastings. She’d spent much of those four days swinging between panic and sedation. She’d spent much of it in that bar. She could see the acknowledgment on Mrs. Urbanskys’s face.
“But you never know, right?” the woman said, smiling now. “Come around, sweetheart. I’ll take you back to see the chief.”
Chief of police Charles Watkins. Most people just called him “the chief.” Average height. Full head of hair. Nic remembered him better than the others because he had been in charge of things, or at least that was how it seemed.
Mrs. Urbansky had made a point to tell her about his dead wife—Died of heart disease, and at such a young age! She’d said it as though Nic might be interested, as a single woman herself. Never mind that Nic was just twenty-one and Watkins was old enough to have a dead wife, even if that wife had been relatively young when it came to dying.
She’d said it after the note was found, when the mood had lifted off the town just like the cloud cover from the storm. Hearing Mrs. Urbansky’s voice now brought it back—the feeling as everyone began to believe that this was not a tragic accident but instead a scandal. A fun story to tell at the bar, the wealthy woman from the southern part of the state, the richer part, the enviable part. Unhappy Housewife Leaves It All Behind; Walks Away from Kids and Husband … And with the fun story, relief that their misery hadn’t ensnared an outsider. A sign that their plight wasn’t as dreadful as it seemed.
But, yes, it was, Hastings. It was every bit as dreadful.
Chief Watkins was in his office. The smell was the same—carpet cleaner and printer ink. A hint of mildew from the dying leaves outside.
He got up, nodded in her direction. After the time they had spent together, they were somewhere between a hug and a handshake. The nod served the situation.
“Sit,” Watkins said.
Nic took a seat on a hard metal chair across from his desk.
“I’ll leave you two.” Mrs. Urbansky left, still smiling.
Watkins wore a beige uniform with short sleeves and a blue tie. There were patches sewn on the chest. A badge was pinned there as well. She had thought it then and she thought it again now, how he looked like a Boy Scout leader.
He leaned back and stretched his arms into the air, clasping his hands behind his head.
“Is this about the call?” he asked. “From the woman who says she saw your mother?”
“Yeah,” Nic answered. She went on then to explain about the truck and the letters on the orange purse, and about Edith Moore and how she’d been driving from town that night.
Watkins nodded as though taking in the information.
“Okay,” he said. “I get it. Why you came back. I would do the same if it was my family. Gotta sleep at night, right?”
“Something like that.”
“So how can we help?” Watkins asked. His tone was patronizing.
She rambled off the list she’d made, things about the DMV and dark pickup trucks in the area, and finding their owners and asking where they were the night of the storm, driving their trucks.
Watkins groaned, but he humored her, listening, nodding. Then he leaned forward, clasped his hands in front of him on the desk. He had the authority moves down to a nice little dance. This was something else she now remembered, how he had provoked her with the comfort he seemed to find in his position of power.
“You should have someone with you,” Watkins said then. “She could be after that money. It was too much for around here. That kind of money—makes people a little crazy.”
“I’m meeting her tomorrow at ten—at the Gas n’ Go.”
Watkins nodded, palms now pressed into piles of papers. “I’ll get Reyes to meet you. Remember him? Officer Reyes?”
“Yes,” Nic said. But not exactly. She remembered a lot of cops—the two local policemen and the state troopers. Their names, faces, had all melded together behind the uniforms.
“Are you staying at the inn?”
“I guess so.”
“All right. Meet Reyes at the diner next door—nine thirty? If she seems legit, we can run the registrations for dark-colored trucks.”
“Thanks,” Nic said. She stood to leave. Watkins stood as well, something clearly weighing on his mind.
“Hey,” he said, stopping her at the door. “Is this because of the handwriting analysis? Because, you know, an inconclusive report is not the same as a negative report.”
Nic had no idea what he was saying, and her face gave her away.
Watkins turned suddenly, finding a box in the back corner of his office. He sifted through it. Pulled out a thin bundle of papers stapled together.
“This,” he said, handing the papers to Nic. “It’s the handwriting analysis.”
Nic stared at the report, scanning each page quickly, reading things about slants of letters and spacing of words, turning them until she got to the end—and the word “inconclusive.”
“I thought it was confirmed—the note? That it was my mother’s handwriting?”
Watkins was at a loss.
“And my father knew about this?” she asked.
“Jeez, listen. I had no idea,” Watkins said now. “I assumed he told you. It came in a few days after you left.”
Nic sat back down, stunned by these new facts, but also her father’s lie. She knew why he’d done it—he wanted her to move on the way he had. The way he’d forced Evan to do by sending hi
m back to school. He’d said as much on the phone when he’d gotten her text earlier that morning, saying she was coming back to Hastings to follow a lead. This is absurd … I’m having my PI look into this woman, what’s her name? Why would you do this? Do you need me to come? He was in Chicago for a sales conference. I’ll be on the next flight. And then, after he’d relented, When you get back we are going to have a long talk about your life.
They’d been having this part of the conversation for days. With her mother gone, he’d suddenly taken up parenting as a new hobby, insisting she get on with her life. Stop her bad behavior. His favorite new expression—you’re not your mother.
She tried to explain this to Watkins. “My father thinks what you think—that this new lead is a scam. And that even if it’s not, my mother doesn’t want to be found. He wants me to come home.”
“I see,” Watkins said. “Well, I can’t argue with him. Everything supports that conclusion.”
“Is that why the case wasn’t reopened—after this report came in?”
Watkins shrugged. “The facts haven’t changed, that’s why. Look—the report is inconclusive. It’s not negative. The note was found in the hotel room she paid for. It was on paper from the notepad in the room. She was upset, nervous. Maybe her hands were shaky.” Then he said it again—“It wasn’t negative.”
Nic felt irritated now, and skeptical of everything she’d been told, or had assumed.
“What else should I know?” Nic asked. “Any more charges to her credit cards? Any communications on her cell phone account? And what about the casino? Are you still looking at the security cameras? It can’t be that hard to find someone there.”
The Laguna casino and resort was nothing more than a small cluster of businesses built on tribal land—exempt from the state’s gambling prohibitions. It wasn’t exactly a hotbed of tourism—more like an escape for locals looking to exercise their right to throw their money away in slot machines. Connecticut already had Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun. Laguna was their ugly stepsibling. A hotel. A gas station. A Jiffy bus stop with a ticket machine and a covered bench.
Molly Clarke had made one charge paying for two nights. No one recalled seeing her, but the place had been a zoo—people without power seeking refuge. The security cameras were set up high, looking down at heads, facilitating the identification of petty theft more than faces. They’d been through all of it, going back to the night of the storm—looking for her, her beige coat and jeans. Blond hair. A woman alone.
Watkins shook his head eagerly. “No, no. There’s nothing. And we have everyone on alert at Laguna. But, again, the absence of new evidence suggests she covered her tracks. That she doesn’t want us to find her. And, hard as this is to hear, that she doesn’t want you to find her.”
Nic let his words settle in place. She had no reason to doubt him. Or at least to doubt that he believed what he was saying. There was no point arguing until she met Edith Moore.
“Okay,” she said, finally. “Thank you for everything you’ve done. So—Officer Reyes? At the diner? I’ll be there by nine thirty.”
Watkins stood up. Nic did the same.
“I take it this means you’re not going home?”
Nic looked at him now, with surprise. She knew how all of this seemed. To her father. To Chief Watkins. To everyone. She didn’t care. It had never seemed right to her, even when she’d tried to force it down, and now this—the inconclusive handwriting report.
“No,” she said. “I’m not going home.”
She left the station with a pounding head and churning stomach. As she got in her mother’s car, still smelling of her perfume, she could hear the voices screaming out from the hollow spaces—begging for some kind of relief. For a drink. For her “friends” at the bar back home. For some loser who might stumble in.
And she told them what she’d just told Chief Watkins. She wasn’t going home. Not this time. Whatever anger she’d felt for her mother for what happened to Annie, the love was deeper, and it was in her bones. With her mother’s absence had come a powerful longing to reclaim those sweet moments that had been lost.
She could see the paths this new information would lead her down—conclusions of what may have happened if her mother hadn’t written that note. If she hadn’t walked away on her own. Two weeks had passed—none of the conclusions were good.
But for now, for right now, as she drove away, there was just one thought.
I’m not going home.
Not without my mother.
5
Day two
I awake startled. A body lies with me.
Nestled into the curve of my abdomen, head woven under one arm and resting on top of the other as I lie on my side in fetal position.
A little girl in my arms.
She doesn’t move even after my body jolts. Even after I lift my head to see her face.
“Are you surprised?” she asks. She asks this as though I’ve just opened a gift she’s presented to me.
Breath heaves in and out. The room is light. The bed is warm, but the air is cold against my face. Strange bed. Strange clothes. Strange house. It all floods back in.
And a dream lingers. A dream that I was holding Annie. The dream had lulled me into a state of bliss which now breeds despair.
I force myself to remain still.
“Yes!” I say. I don’t want to hurt her feelings, but I want to jump from this bed. I want to put on my clothes and run.
From where my head rests, I can see most of the room. And I can see that my clothes are gone from the places where I hung them to dry last night. And my purse—did I bring it into the house? Where did I leave it?
I give Alice a little squeeze but then I slide my arm out from under her head and sit up.
“I need to get some water from the kitchen,” I say.
She lets me go and I climb out from beneath the covers.
The lantern on the floor is off, or dead. My clothes are gone from every place. Every single place.
“How did you get under the covers without waking me?” I ask this with a playful tone because I don’t want her to sense the panic that grows.
She giggles and shrugs. “I’m good at sneaking,” she says.
Another smile and I make my exit. I close the door to the bedroom and walk down the hall to the kitchen. The house is dark. I try a switch but it’s dead. And that’s how the house feels with no power. Dead. I feel my heart beating in my throat. I hear my footsteps along the hard wood.
The kitchen is empty. I look farther down the hall into the living room. The part I can see is also empty. But through a window to the outside, I see the back of the truck. And blue sky.
The storm has cleared.
I step into the kitchen and search for a phone. It hangs on the wall near the stove and I go to it quickly and lift the receiver. I hear only silence.
Please.
I press down on the button again and again, but still, there is just silence. I place the receiver back on the wall mount.
A man’s voice stuns me. Stops me cold.
“I told you last night. The phones are out.” I turn quickly, instinctively. I do it before I have time to hide what is surely on my face.
The man stands in the doorway. He’s dressed in fresh clothing, but otherwise they’re the same. Jeans and a flannel shirt. He has a slight beard—thicker than last night—which tells me he doesn’t wear a beard. That he is just unshaven.
Beside him, clinging to his waist, is Alice.
She looks up at him. Tugs on his shirt.
“She told me she was going to get water,” she says. Then she looks at me like I’m the child and she’s the mother. And I’ve been naughty.
“I thought I would check the phone first,” I say. It’s normal, wanting to make a call. To call my family. Why do I feel defensive?
I see his eyes run up and down my body, and I remember that I’m wearing the clothes of another woman. A woman who used to live here. Or does live here. I
have to stop making assumptions.
“I hope it’s okay,” I say, looking down at the clothes. “They were in the dresser, like you said.”
“They belong to my wife,” he tells me. “But it’s fine. I’m glad they fit you.”
“Oh … well, I hope she won’t mind. I can change if you tell me where my clothes went.” I have a cheery voice now because I feel hopeful and because I want things to be okay in this room. In this house. In this family. I feel hopeful that there is a family now. He said my wife.
“They’re in the laundry room. Hanging on a rack,” he says.
I smile. “Oh! Okay. I’ll go see if they’re dry. Should I leave these clothes in the washer for your wife when she gets back?”
Alice buries her face in his side as though she’s watching a scary scene in a movie. A scene she knows is coming. Maybe because she’s seen this movie before.
“My wife is dead,” the man says. His tone is neutral. Maybe he’s been instructed on how to speak about this in front of Alice.
Maybe I feel better now. At least there was a wife. A dead wife, a dead mother and her death would explain some of the behavior.
“I’m so sorry,” I say. But I don’t ask questions. Alice peeks out from where she’s buried her face. “I’ll just leave the clothes in the laundry room.”
I walk toward the door slowly, thinking they will clear a path. But they hold their position. They hold me in place with their bodies, trapped in this room.
“They’re still a little wet,” the man says. “Give it a few hours. You’ll be more comfortable staying in dry clothes. Sorry if it feels strange—the house, the clothes.”
Again, he apologizes. I pause long enough to think.
“I suppose I can wear these to town,” I say.
He looks at me now, curious. “Town?”
“To make the call on your cell phone. We talked about that last night—about driving to town where there’s a signal. I need to call my family. I need to let the police know that I’m safe—I left my car … and my phone…”
“Oh, right,” he says. But he does not say yes. He does not move toward the door and the truck and the road that will take us to town.
