by Diane Hoh
Nora stared at her. “Sabra … you said you were older than me by two years. If you were five years old when you were kidnapped, then I was only three. Three, Sabra! What could I have done? I probably didn’t even know what was happening.”
It came back then, one more memory, painfully vivid, of her distraught mother shouting at her, “Why didn’t you do something?”
Which, she realized now, was why she had thought forever after that her mother’s bouts with illness were her fault. And blaming herself had started very young. She’d simply forgotten that, as she’d forgotten so many things. To protect herself, maybe. Wasn’t that usually why people forgot bad things?
She could think of nothing more to say. What was there to say?
She was looking at her own sister, and the eyes that looked back at her were filled with hate and anger.
“Is that why you hate me?” Nora asked then. “Because you think I should have stopped it somehow? Even though I was only three?”
Sabra threw the bear, heavy with water, at her in disgust. The blow hurt. “That’s not why!” she shouted, brushing a lock of dark hair away from her face. “It’s because you had everything I never had, everything I was supposed to have. A nice house, a wonderful life, two loving parents, a happy home …”
Nora laughed. It was just a small laugh, bitter and harsh, at first. But any control she had had over her emotions had been destroyed by the incredible news that Sabra had presented her with, and the small laugh escalated into peal after peal of high, shrill, humorless laughter, and as Mindy looked up at her in concern and Sabra stared at her, Nora threw her head back and laughed and laughed until tears spilled down her cheeks, burning like acid.
Chapter 22
IT WAS THE HORRIFIED look on Mindy’s face that snapped Nora back to reality and interrupted her hysteria in mid-laugh.
Swiping at her eyes, she hugged the child and gasped, “It’s okay, honey. I’m okay. I just thought something that Sabra said was really funny, that’s all.” To Sabra, she said, “Why did you do all of this? Why did you take Mindy? And try to hurt me? What does all of this have to do with what happened then?”
Sabra had backed away, returned to lean against the stove, and was staring at Nora with uneasy eyes. “You are acting really weird. What was all that crazy laughing about?”
In a weary voice, Nora told her. Explained that Sabra had been wrong, so very wrong. Told her that after the kidnapping, nothing was ever the same. Her mother had been ill repeatedly. They had moved, more than once. No more big, white house with the pony in the back yard, rabbits in the pen, no gardens, no familiar faces, everything different. From that day on, the life they had known when they were little disappeared completely. Then the parents’ deaths, so close together, the unfriendly aunt taking an orphan into the cramped, dreary apartment, the stay in the hospital, the loss of memory. “It wasn’t what you thought it was at all,” Nora finished without emotion. “Not even close.”
There was a stunned, blank look on Sabra’s face.
“Are you okay, honey?” Nora asked Mindy, who sat in her lap, humming contentedly, not even nagging about when her daddy was coming to get her. “You’re not hurt, are you?”
“She’s not hurt!” Sabra said sharply, snapping out of her shock. “I took good care of her.” Then, “I suppose you think that sob story you just told me makes a difference, don’t you? Not that I believe a word of it.”
“I can prove it,” Nora replied defiantly. “Go to the phone right now and call my Aunt Colleen. I’ll be happy to give you her number. And yes, I do think it makes a difference. You hate me because all this time you thought I had such a wonderful life. Well, I didn’t. It wasn’t horrible, but it wasn’t the way you pictured it. So yes, it should make a difference.”
“The woman is my aunt, too,” Sabra said angrily, clearly flustered by the drastic alteration in the fantasy she had bitterly nurtured for so long. “Don’t forget that. You said ‘my’ Aunt Colleen, as if she was your private, personal property.”
“Sorry. Is that why you did all of this? Kidnapping Mindy, trying to remind me of your kidnapping, is that what you were doing? And then trying to hurt me, just to make me suffer the way you did? Was that it? And planting those things of Mindy’s in my room. You were planning to frame me, weren’t you? You did all of that because you thought I lived such a wonderful life?”
“Don’t you think it’s appropriate? A kidnapping ruined my life. I wanted this one to ruin yours.”
“How?”
“Well, for one thing, I knew you’d care. I knew how attached you were to Mindy, so her kidnapping would certainly hurt you as much as it would anyone except her parents. And second, yes, I did want to remind you. All those years, I just assumed you remembered. And that you’d just put it out of your mind and gone on with your life as if it hadn’t happened. That made me really mad. That day we all talked about our families, you never mentioned having a sister who had been kidnapped. That made me so furious! As if it had never happened.”
“I didn’t know that it had,” Nora reminded her.
Disgust flooded Sabra’s face. “How could you forget something so horrible? I was more determined than ever after that day. And yes, I was planning on making it look like you’d done it. It hasn’t worked so far, or you’d have been arrested by now, but it still could. I could say I found you here with Mindy, we struggled, and I had to kill you to save her.”
Sabra said the words so matter-of-factly that Nora almost failed to grasp the meaning. When she did, an involuntary gasp escaped her lips. “That would never work,” she protested weakly. “Mindy would tell. She’d tell them I hadn’t kidnapped her.”
“Well, yeah, I get that now. I’d have to make a few minor changes, that’s all. I thought she’d be as useless as you were when you were three, but she isn’t. I know she could hang me. She’s very bright. But I could always make more adjustments.”
Nora’s heart turned over. “Like?”
“Like, the new plan could be, I don’t show up until you’ve already eighty-sixed the kid, maybe with a pillow over her face. Then I find you out, go for the phone to call the cops, you attack me, etcetera, etcetera.” Sabra smiled slyly. “In case you haven’t noticed, we are now more than halfway through that scenario. Just a few more loose ends to tie up, and that won’t take long.”
When Nora didn’t say anything because her mind was racing, struggling to figure out a way to circumvent Sabra’s plan, Sabra added, “But it would never work. I would love to see you in prison for the rest of your life. The way I was in prison. But that’s not going to happen. The police aren’t going to buy a frame, or they’d have arrested you by now. Anyway, your little cop friend, Reardon, certainly wouldn’t buy it.”
Nora felt a rush of warmth that helped, just a little, against the full body chill she was feeling, listening to Sabra. “No, Reardon wouldn’t buy it.”
“There are other solutions.” Sabra thought for a minute, then said calmly, “You’ll just have to die, that’s all. There’s no way around that.” Thought for another minute or two, ignoring Nora’s gasp of horror, before adding, “I didn’t know you’d been in the hospital. That’s definitely a bonus. People wouldn’t have any trouble believing you went off the deep end. They’re already very suspicious of you.” She fixed dark, empty eyes on the ceiling. “But never mind. I don’t care anymore what they think when they find us. It won’t matter then.”
Nora clutched Mindy harder. “When they find us?”
And then, still staring blankly at the ceiling, Sabra told Nora, in a flat, unemotional voice, the same story she had shared with Mindy over the long hours in the apartment. Mindy hadn’t understood it.
But Nora did.
“I’m … sorry,” was all she could manage when Sabra had finished talking and fallen morbidly silent. “I’m really sorry. It sounds horrible. But I can’t believe you blame me. A three-year-old?”
“If they hadn’t had you,” Sabra sai
d, turning toward the stove, “they would have kept looking for me.” Then she reached over to turn on all four gas burners.
Alarmed, Nora sat up straight up in her chair, nearly spilling Mindy to the floor. The soaking-wet bear, still in Nora’s lap, suddenly seemed to weigh a ton and she was vaguely aware of a large, uncomfortable, wet spot on her shorts. “What are you doing?”
Gas began to hiss from the jets.
“You need a match to light the burners on this stove,” Sabra said, smiling vaguely. “Trouble is, I just don’t happen to have any matches. Sorry about that.”
The apartment was not that large. The unmistakable odor of gas was already perceptible.
Sabra reached into her pocket and pulled out a match. “Well, whatya know?” she said, still smiling. “I found one, after all.”
Terrified, beginning to shake, Nora said, “You’ll kill us all!”
The match still unlit in her hand, Sabra turned and her smile now was different. Not the least bit vague or dreamy-eyed. This was a cold, empty smile, without feeling, and her eyes held the same emptiness. “I died a long time ago. At least, Nell Mulgrew did. It’s Sabra Nicks who will go up in flames, and Sabra Nicks has no life. Won’t have a life, ever. Did you know I’m not really a student here? Never could be. I never went to school, did I tell you that? Yeah, I guess I did. I wanted to, but … I just pretended to be a student here. No one ever checked, although I suppose they would have once the fall semester started. I’m smart enough, from reading. But I don’t even have a high school diploma.”
Although her voice still held no emotion of any kind, Nora, sitting on the edge of her chair, her body tensed and frozen, thought she saw a glittering in Sabra’s eyes that could easily have been the beginning of tears.
“Sabra … Nell …” Nora tried, “you can’t do this. You cannot do this. I’ll help you do whatever you want with your life, I promise. Anything I can. I didn’t forget you on purpose, it was the medication, at least partly. Please, please, think of Mindy. None of this is her fault. Please, Sabra. You can have a life now, if you want it. You can!”
The big, stuffed bear, saturated with water, suddenly shifted position, slid heavily down Nora’s thighs and came to rest on her knees. But she never took her eyes off the girl standing at the stove, match in hand.
This can’t happen, Nora told herself, her body so tense her joints ached. This cannot be allowed to happen. Not to Mindy. Not to me. Not even to Sabra … Nell. She hadn’t killed anyone. She didn’t deserve to die. None of them did.
This could not be allowed to happen.
The door was useless. The key was in Sabra’s pocket. Nora tried to judge the distance between her chair and the stove. Impossible. She’d never make it in time.
She glanced wildly about the room, her eyes frantic. Something to throw, something to use as a weapon …
The bear pressed down hard on her knees.
“It’s too late,” Sabra announced calmly. “I can’t have anything now. Not ever.” And she turned back to the stove, extending her arm to strike the match against it.
Nora snatched up the waterlogged bear, jumped to her feet and, taking just one tiny fraction of a second to steady her arm and aim, flung the toy at Sabra.
It caught her on the side of the head, just above the temple, and sent her sailing away from the stove and into the wall. Her head hit hard, leaving a dent in the wallboard. Her knees buckled. She remained upright for just another second or two, a look of acceptance on her face, as if she wasn’t at all surprised to find that even this last desperate plan had failed. Then her eyes closed and she slid to the floor.
Nora rushed to the stove to turn off the jets. She stooped to yank the door key out of Sabra’s jeans pocket, then ran back to a bewildered Mindy, scooped her up, and ran to the door to unlock it and fling it open.
The fresh air felt wonderful.
But there was no time to rejoice. Sabra was still inside, the gas stove was still there, she still had the match, and thought she had no reason to live. If she came to …
Mindy in her arms, Nora staggered down the wooden staircase and stumbled to Reardon’s car. The window was still down, the way Sabra had left it and for one terrible moment, when she saw him sitting limply behind the wheel, his head tilted to one side, she thought he was dead.
But when she called to him, reached in through the window to shake his shoulder, he murmured and began coming around.
“Jonah, wake up!” she shouted, setting Mindy down on the ground, telling her not to move one step. “You have to use your radio to call for help. Get an ambulance. Hurry! Jonah, wake up”
He came around, gingerly rubbing the lump on the back of his head. “A rock!” he mumbled. “She hit me with a rock!”
Becoming aware of his surroundings, he glanced anxiously at Nora. “You okay? You’re not hurt? I feel like such an idiot, trusting that girl.” Then he spotted Mindy and his expression brightened. “That’s her? You found her?”
“Never mind that now,” Nora said frantically, “you’ve got to call for help. She could blow up the whole garage if we don’t hurry.”
He did as she asked, and that done, joined her on her race back to the garage.
They were almost there when a figure, one hand to its head, staggered through the door.
“Oh, God, that’s her,” Nora whispered as she and Reardon stopped in their tracks, looking up.
“I guess she changed her mind,” Reardon said. “If she was going to blow up the place, she’d have done it by now.”
The figure moved to the railing surrounding the small platform at the top of the steep staircase.
“Sabra?” Nora called. “Nell?”
Sabra looked down. And although Nora couldn’t see her face through the darkness, she could feel the expression of hopelessness there.
“I forgot you, too,” the voice said with just a hint of defiance. “I would never have remembered you if it hadn’t been for the newspaper clippings.”
It sounded like a he.
Then Sabra climbed up on the railing and without a moment of hesitation, jumped, her long, yellow raincoat flying out around her like a cape.
It wasn’t her scream of terror that filled the humid night air.
It was Nora’s.
Epilogue
THE PROMISED RAIN HAD finally arrived, falling lightly and gently.
Nora sat on the bottom step of the garage staircase, Reardon’s light blue jacket around her shoulders, her hair damp with raindrops, watching as the ambulance attendants loaded the unconscious Sabra onto a stretcher.
“I’m glad she’s not dead.” Nora’s voice was soft. She didn’t want Mindy, sitting happily in the front seat of a nearby police car waiting for the arrival of her father, to hear what she was saying. The child seemed unharmed by her ordeal, and Nora didn’t want to upset her. Not that Mindy seemed at all upset. Annoyed, remarking when the policemen arrived on the scene that her daddy hadn’t picked a very good “baby-sitter” for her this time. But not upset or frightened. That was a big relief.
So maybe hearing the conversation about Sabra … Nell … wouldn’t have upset her. Still, Nora kept her voice low. “I know she did some terrible things, really terrible. But from what I know so far, she’s had an awful life. Wouldn’t what she went through make anyone crazy? I don’t blame her for hating me, either. All that time, she thought my life was so very different from what it really was.” She fell silent, then added with awe in her voice, “I still can’t believe I forgot I had a sister. How could I forget that? How could anyone?”
“You were only three, Nora,” Jonah reminded her. “Most people don’t remember anything that happened before they were five. Not consciously, anyway. And you said your parents never, ever mentioned her, right?”
Nora nodded. “I suppose my father was afraid it would set my mother off again, talking about Nell. There were no pictures, no scrap-books, no nothing. No sign of her anywhere in the house. That is just so weird.”
“Maybe not. If she’d died, they probably would have kept memorabilia of her around the house. But the way she was taken, and the fact that they searched and searched and then finally gave up, was probably so depressing that they couldn’t bear to be reminded of it.”
Nora looked at him with a steady gaze. “That makes them cowards, doesn’t it?”
He shrugged. “In a way, I guess. But some people just can’t face reality, especially an ugly reality. That doesn’t make them bad people.” He shook his head. “Speaking of forgetting things, I just remembered tonight where I’d seen that stuffed bear. But you already know, right? It was in Sabra’s car. I had to give her a speeding ticket in town a couple of weeks ago, and the bear was sitting on the front seat. But I completely forgot that was where I’d seen it. Until tonight. Until it was too late.”
“Even if you’d remembered,” Nora pointed out gently, “you would never have connected that bear or Sabra with Mindy’s kidnapping. Why would you? You’d have thought it was just a coincidence that she had an animal like the ones I gave Mindy, right?”
Amy and Fitz, who had been sitting upstairs in the apartment talking to the policemen, came outside and joined Nora and Reardon on the stairs.
“I bought her story about being from a big family,” Amy said bitterly. “She made it sound so real. And I was jealous, I remember that. Growing up an only child, like Lucas, only not liking it as much as he did, I remember wishing I’d had lots of brothers and sisters, like Sabra … Nell, I mean. But,” she added quickly, “I wouldn’t want a sister like her. Doesn’t that scare you, Nora? Having someone like that in your family? She’s very unstable …”
“So was my mother,” Nora answered quietly, lifting her rain-streaked face to Amy, who sat one step above her. “But now I know why, and I understand. I thought she was just crazy, and I was always afraid I’d be like her, especially after I went into the hospital when I was fifteen. That scared me half to death. But now I know that what my mother really suffered from was intense grief. Grief over a missing child, with no closure for her loss. She never knew what happened to my sister, and that not knowing affected her mind. I think it would any mother’s. That kind of grief isn’t inherited. So now I know I’ll be okay.”
