Don't Look for Me(37)

Kurt turned off the ignition.

“Veronica Hollander. I told you, we’re on state-owned land. Her father cleared the road, built the house. They lived here—all ten of them. Let me go first,” he said. “She doesn’t get a lot of visitors.”

Nic waited in the car. Kurt approached, carrying a brown paper bag. He knocked on the door. It opened a crack. He said a few words, then he turned and waved for Nic to join him.

A woman stood in the doorway as Nic followed Kurt inside. She was large and unkempt, wearing pajama bottoms and a short-sleeve shirt that curved around her loose breasts. Long, curly blond hair, and skin that did not appear to have seen the sun in quite some time.

She stared at Nic for a long moment, her face confused at first, then moving over her head to toe.

“I’m Nicole Clarke.” Nic extended her hand.

The woman blinked, shook her head quickly like a dog shaking off water.

“Veronica,” she said. “People call me V.”

Nic smiled. “People call me Nic.”

They sat at a small round table in the corner by a window. The window looked out at woods, barely five feet from the house. There was no grass, no garden. Just the small clearing for the four-room structure.

Four rooms. That was all. The bathroom and the living area—sofa, kitchen. Two bedrooms on either side of a short hallway.

Nic turned down her offer to make tea. There was hardly space for it. The table was covered with piles of clothing. A sewing machine sat nearby. V made a cup for herself. She had quite a collection of tins which sat on a small shelf above the stove.

“So you do tailoring?” Nic asked.

V nodded. “I do anything people need. Fix clothes. Make clothes. Take ’em in. Let ’em out. I sew draperies and slipcovers. Cushions. Whatever.”

She sat down with her teacup and the brown paper bag Kurt had brought. Inside was a bottle of apricot brandy, which she opened, pouring a shot into the cup. The smell of the brandy rose with the steam and filled the room.

“Must be quite a shock,” V said. “Seeing a place like this.”

Nic didn’t know how to respond. Did she mean her place or Hastings?

Kurt intervened. “Nic’s mother is that woman who disappeared during the storm.”

V’s eyes widened. “Oh!” she said, leaning back in her chair. “Chief came by and asked me about that. I was scared to death here. Thought a tree was sure to take this place down. I didn’t see a soul that night. Stayed huddled beneath the bed. No one did one thing to protect me. Can you imagine that? The government can’t be bothered with folks like us.”

V went on then, about the government and Medicaid and how her parents had to live in one of those places that makes old people wish they were dead, and makes them die faster to get them “off the dole.” Her mother was trying to outsmart them by suddenly taking an interest in her health after eighty-seven years. V said this part with admiration.

Nic went with it. “Your family sounds strong-willed.”

Now V shrugged, less sure. Less admiring. “I don’t know about that. My parents had their views. I think they liked having a hard life, liked the fight of it. But the rest of us, we got a little beat down by always fighting for things. My mother used to lock the refrigerator and the pantry. Padlocks. No money, no food, kids piled four in a room, boys and girls. One bathroom. If you really had to go, sometimes you just went outside. Middle of winter, pissing in the snow.”

She took a long breath, ready to tell more of her story. Kurt cut her off.

“She wants to know about Daisy,” he said.

V was surprised now. “Daisy? Why on earth do you want to know about her?”

“Because she also disappeared from Hastings,” Nic said. “Ten years ago.”

A loud, boisterous laugh filled the small space wall to wall. “Who told you that?”

V stared now, out the window into the woods. Thinking, maybe, about her sister.

“I did,” Kurt said.

V set her elbows on the table and leaned closer to Nic. She looked her in the eye, hard and without blinking, for a long moment.

“Daisy wasn’t like the rest of us. Plain folk. Making do. I know where all the others are. Some married. Some got kids. Others like me, just working to pay bills. We like living alone after how we grew up. But Daisy, she was a shining star. Smarter than the rest of us. Resourceful. Always fighting to get out. Get more. She used to use a stick to poke through the crack in the cupboard where the chains couldn’t quite pull them together right. She put sticky tape on the end and figured out how to drag boxes of crackers close to that crack. She’d pull out a few. Eat them all herself. Then she’d slide the box back. And she didn’t care when it was time for punishment.”

V shook her head.

“You think our mother didn’t know exactly how many crackers were in each box?”

Nic watched V tell this story of her sister, her mind spinning. There were girls like Daisy Hollander everywhere. Nic knew the type. Scrappy. Resourceful.

“And she finally found a way to leave for good?” Nic asked.

“Sure did. She told most people she was going to Boston to live with our sister. There were four siblings and my parents still here at the time. I knew she was going to disappear, at least for a while. She didn’t want to get dragged down.”