Don't Look for Me(22)

She would come to understand that the hollow spaces had been carved out by the grief, and the guilt, and the self-hatred—the fallout from Annie’s death. But on that Sunday, they had felt like a wild beast writhing with hunger. For the first time in her life, she’d understood why people jumped from bridges, and when she’d found herself thinking about the bridge over the river downtown, she’d gone to the liquor cabinet and poured a glass of vodka.

Within minutes, she was crying. And then laughing. And then bingeing some inane show on her laptop. She’d woken up Monday morning still in her clothes, the laptop dead beside her.

And she’d thought—thank you, God. Thank you for vodka.

By the end of senior year, she’d been caught four times with alcohol at school. Expelled. Her college acceptance revoked.

And still, she thought—thank you, God. Thank you for vodka.

As she lay in the bed now with her pounding head, she muscled back the craving, the hunger of the hollow spaces, and let herself go down the path that she had to consider. If her mother hadn’t walked away, and two weeks had now passed, she was likely dead. Dead in a field that they didn’t search. Or dead at the hand of a stranger.

Maybe that’s why her father was so eager to believe the note was real. Maybe he couldn’t bear to lose her this other way. It would be hard to hold another woman with this thought in his head.

Vodka … the bar across the street …

Nic grabbed her phone to check the time. Shit. It was just past four. The bar closed at two.

There was a red dot above her email. A message from her father. She sat down on the edge of the bed.

The email had an attachment, a document that included clips of things her mother had written in her correspondence. He had been the one to read through them when she first disappeared. Her password was stored on the key chain of a computer they shared.

The message now said only FYI—thought you should know.

A new hour followed, then another, reading her mother’s words, but then going into the account herself and reading them firsthand and for the first time. Every word her mother had written going back in time, month by month.

Most of it was insubstantial. Small talk, planning for lunch dates and holiday gatherings. But some of it was more than that. Like after the days she had sessions with her shrink or meetings with her grief support group. Those people had a way of teasing things out of her, keeping her immersed in her self-analysis. Lost in the past. Drowning in it.

You have to feel it all before it goes away. They said this repeatedly—Nic knew firsthand because her counselor had said it to her.

But does it? Does it ever go away? her mother had asked. One of them had given an honest reply. It goes away enough.

She wrote things about Annie, and the depth of her grief. The depth of her torturous guilt. Then about her husband and the extent of her love but also her inability to embrace that love. She felt unworthy. I killed his child, our child. I can’t stand for him to hold me … I would sooner he punch me in the face.

Nic had to read that twice.

Then there were things about Nic and her behavior. They had all given it a name—survivor’s guilt, they called it. She can’t enjoy her life because it feels wrong. Her mother was terrified about the path she was on.

Sound advice was given. Maybe your husband is right, tell her she has to leave if she doesn’t go to college … cut off the money … tough love … but what if it pushes her too far?

Fuck them. Fuck all of them and their therapy shit.

Nic didn’t feel guilty about being alive. She felt guilty about the role she’d played in Annie being dead. Some things just were what they were.

At the end of that particular exchange was the summation of her mother’s terror.

I can’t lose another child.

She would never be able to unsee those words.

Those words were never going to leave her head.



* * *



Officer Jared Reyes was waiting for her in the diner at nine-thirty—as promised. He looked at her with familiarity, like an old friend, though Nic hardly recognized him.

“Hey!” he said with a smile.

“Hi,” she said back. She was too exhausted to wonder if she knew him better than she was remembering. Those four days had been brutal.

“Thanks for meeting me.”

He touched her shoulder, gave it a squeeze. It felt good. Good enough to make her worry.

“Yeah, no problem. Want to grab a coffee?”

“Do I look like I need one?”

He smiled again and Nic found herself smiling back. It was a reflex with attractive men, and Reyes was attractive. She couldn’t decide what it was about him, but it was there. His face was average. Height, average. Not overweight. Some muscle tone, or just bulk, filling out the uniform in all the right places. No ring.

There was something between him and the waitress, a past maybe. Or anticipation about a future. She seemed irritated when Nic walked in and drew his attention.

Nic got a coffee to go. Reyes waited.

Outside, the officer stopped as they walked to the squad car—his eyes catching the blue Audi parked by the inn.

“I’m driving it now,” Nic said. “It’s nicer than mine.” But that was not the reason she’d been driving her mother’s car, which still smelled of her mother’s perfume and held her mother’s lipstick in the console.