by Nicole Maggi
He kissed the length of my scar and covered my bare skin with his mouth. I tugged his shirt over his head and held him against me. I wanted to melt into the heat of him. I wanted to dissolve into his flesh. I wanted…I wanted… I had never wanted so badly. I shifted so the full weight of him was on me and wrapped my legs around his hips. For a moment that was sheer bliss, he moved against me, our bodies molding into one. Yes…yes… I reached between us and began to undo his belt.
He stopped.
My whole body shuddered with disappointment. Nate sat back on his knees and I scrambled up. “What’s wrong?”
He ran his hand over his face. “We can’t do this,” he said, his breath ragged.
“Why not?” I reached my arms around his waist and tried to draw him down to me again, but he was immovable.
“Because you’re upset,” Nate said. His voice was becoming stronger, his breathing normal. “You’re not in the right frame of mind to make a decision like this. It would be wrong.”
All the warmth he’d generated inside me went cold. That wrongness he felt… It was Annabel. He could sense her even as he held me in his arms. I shrank away from him.
“Hey,” Nate said, reaching for me. “Hey, hey, hey. It’s not that I don’t want to. Trust me, I want to.” He tried to pull me in to him, but I pushed him away. “Georgie…”
“Don’t.”
I wanted to tell him that it wasn’t him, it was me…that I was a monster with someone else’s heart. That the part of me he wanted didn’t belong to me at all. But my mouth wouldn’t form the words. We stared at each other, a sudden gulf between us where just a moment before we had been melded together. My brain was all jumbled, my body firing messages that my mind couldn’t compute.
Nate rubbed his face with his hands. “Look—”
A loud buzzing cut him off. We both looked around wildly for a moment before I realized it was my phone. I dug into my bag and pulled it out; it was a number I didn’t recognize. More to avoid Nate than out of curiosity, I answered it. “Hello?”
“I’m looking for…George?” said a gravelly male voice from the other end.
“Do you mean Georgie?”
“Oh. Yeah. Yeah, that’s right.”
“That’s me.”
“You left me a note. About the apartment.”
I scrunched my face up. “Apartment?”
“At 826 Emiline Way.”
I bolted to my feet, the confusion in my brain blasted away. “Yes. Yes, I did leave you a note.”
“Are you still interested?”
“Yes—definitely,” I said. Nate got to his feet and nudged me, but I ignored him. “Can I come see it now?”
“Now? Uh, yeah. I’ll be there in fifteen.”
“Great. See you soon.” I tossed my phone back into my bag and pulled my sweater over my head.
“What was that about?” Nate asked.
I didn’t answer as I put my coat on. I could feel Annabel creeping back in, grappling for my heart again, and I let her. It was easier to deal with than whatever I was feeling for Nate.
“I have to go,” I said and turned to the door. It was only after I was in the hallway that I heard the door close and his footsteps behind me, and I let him follow me out into the cold, darkening night.
Chapter Eighteen
I called Manny to pick us up in his cab. His friendly chatter covered the tense silence between me and Nate. I also called Mom to tell her I wouldn’t be home for dinner, and I actually told the truth. “I’m out with Nate,” I said when she asked who I was with.
“Well, I guess that’s okay,” she said. “You took your meds this morning, right?”
“Yeah. I feel fine.”
“Alright. Be home by ten.”
Nate watched me as I hung up the phone and stashed it back in my bag. “Where are we going?”
“Someplace near All Saints,” I said, peering out the window. Long streams of headlights flashed by. In the reflection of the glass, I saw his eyes on me, his pupils dark and unreadable.
Manny pulled up in front of 826 Emiline Way. I paid him the fare and climbed out. Nate grabbed my arm halfway up the litter-strewn path.
“This is where it happened, isn’t it?” His voice quivered; with anger or sorrow, I couldn’t tell. I met his eyes and didn’t say anything, but I didn’t have to. “This is where she died,” he whispered.
I pulled my arm out of his grasp and continued up the stoop. A shadowy figure moved inside the door and pulled it open. “You Georgie?”
“Yes.” It was dim inside the vestibule, lit only by a single bulb that swung naked with the rush of wind from outside.
“I’m Harvey,” the landlord said. He pulled a ring of keys out of his kelly-green Celtics jacket and clicked through them with his pudgy fingers. “The apartment’s upstairs.”
A handwritten sign on the elevator read “Out of order.” Harvey led us to the stairwell. “It’s five flights,” he said, “but you two are young. You can handle it. Me, on the other hand…” He patted his sizeable gut. “It’s probably good for me. Wife keeps telling me to exercise.”
At the third-floor landing, I put a hand on the wall, my breath short and shallow. My scar burned. “Wait,” Nate said, and Harvey turned. “She needs to rest.”
Harvey squinted at me. “You okay?”
“She had surgery recently,” Nate said. I flashed him a pinched look, but he ignored me. His shoulders were hard set, his jaw tight. I could feel the anger just beneath his surface. Whatever happened on the fifth floor, whatever we found, I’d have to tell him something. Something real.
“Let’s go,” I said.
As we rounded the landing on the fourth floor, Harvey glanced at me over his shoulder. “How’d you know there was a vacant apartment in the building?”
“Uh, I didn’t.” I gulped in air. “I was just, uh, passing by, and the building looked nice so I left a note.”
He stopped and faced me, his hands on his hips. “This place is a shithole.”
“Yeah, she’s lying,” Nate said. I stared at him, my mouth open. “We’re friends of the girl who died here. We need to see it.”
Harvey shifted so that he blocked the last set of stairs we needed to climb. “Hey, I ain’t running a sideshow here.”
“For fifty bucks, you are,” Nate said and fished a few bills out of his wallet. Harvey stowed them in his pocket and moved aside.
A creeping blackness stole into me with every step upward I took. When we reached the fifth floor, tremors overtook my body. Nate grasped my arm. “Are you okay?” he muttered.
I shook my head, my teeth chattering. A terrible ache spread across my heart, reaching its fingers out until every inch of my body was in pain. It wasn’t a physical pain; it was deeper than my skin and muscles, deeper even than the marrow of my bones. I followed Harvey to the door of the apartment, each step an effort.
He unlocked the door and stood aside for us to enter. “I gotta fix the place up,” he said. “Apparently she was squatting for a while before she… Well, you know.”
“And you didn’t know she was staying here?” Nate asked. He stood just inside the door, taking in the room.
“I ain’t here much,” Harvey said. The two of them moved deeper into the apartment, leaving me on the threshold.
Deep down, I knew if I walked through that door, everything would change. There was something in there that I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. But I had to know it. I lifted my foot and stepped into the room.
The memory washed over me like the sea. I closed my eyes to take it in. I place the picture on the little mantel against the wall, where a fireplace would be if this apartment were nicer. I touch the picture, tracing my five-year-old face as I lean forward to blow out the candles on my huge strawberry shortcake. My gut twists as I move my finger to touch Mama and
Daddy’s faces. I drop my hand and turn to look at my new domain. A sleeping bag and a duffel with my clothes…that’s all that’s mine in this borrowed home. But it’s more mine than any other home I’ve ever been dumped in…
I open my eyes. And there were windows. Not like the dank basement at the Suttons’. Windows that she looked out of every night, searching the stars for a future that would never come.
A bittersweet taste filled my mouth. It wasn’t that Annabel was happy here—she had never been happy, not since her mother killed her father—but this was the first place she’d ever lived where she didn’t have to answer to anyone else. The small joy of that independence echoed inside the Catch as I walked in her footsteps. I stood in the place where she put her high heels on every night, where she sat next to her little space heater and ate ramen noodles.
From across the room, I felt Nate’s eyes on me as he let Harvey lead him around. I looked toward the one place I had avoided—the balcony. My heart beat quickly. If I stepped out there, would it all be over? Would I remember the night she died? Would she let me go? I moved until I was right at the glass door to the balcony, until my fingers could just reach the knob. I stretched my hand out.
“Oh, you can’t go out there.” Harvey’s voice was right behind me. I became aware that he and Nate had followed me to the door. The Catch crescendoed inside me as I turned the knob. “It’s still loose. It’s too dangerous.”
His voice was muffled, drowned out by the Catch. I could hear nothing else but Annabel’s whisper. Open it. Open it.
She wanted me to know. She wanted to let me go.
Two pieces of crime-scene tape crossed the doorway. I tore the tape aside and stepped out.
“Georgie,” Nate said, his voice sharp.
He sounded far away. The cold air slapped me, whipping my hair across my eyes. The moon was clouded, the stars veiled. I tasted moisture on my tongue. It would snow soon.
The wrought iron creaked beneath me as I took another step. Nate said my name again. I barely heard him. I was listening, listening, listening inward…trying to pull forth the memory that I wanted, the one that would release me from her hold…
But no memory of Annabel’s came. It was just out of reach, like the Warehouse. I had come to this place too early, before she gave me the other memories that she needed me to know.
I pressed my hands to the side of my head, trying to squeeze the memory out. The Catch ripped through me, its insistence almost violent. Another memory rose to the surface, but it wasn’t Annabel’s.
It was mine.
A great big push, two invisible hands shoving me back into consciousness.
I gasped, sending a shot of icy air to my lungs. The very first thing I’d felt when I woke up after my surgery. A great big push. Like someone pushing me back into life.
I reached out and touched the rail lightly. “Georgie!” Nate’s voice was right behind me. “Stay back!”
“No,” I breathed. The frozen iron burned beneath my fingertips. My heart swelled with the force of the Catch. And then, like the nickname I’d given it, I caught on.
I hadn’t been pushed into life.
Annabel had been pushed out of hers.
The heart was made to be broken.
—Oscar Wilde
Chapter Nineteen
My fingers curled around the rail. I looked up into Nate’s face. His nose and cheeks were bright red in the cold. “I get it,” I whispered. “I get it now.”
“Get what?” He gripped my elbow. “Come back inside.”
“Don’t you see?” I resisted him, forcing him to look down at the rail. “She didn’t jump, Nate. She was pushed.”
Nate stared at me. I marched past Harvey and out of the apartment. Warmth and light spread through me, taking over all the bittersweet darkness that had seeped in. When I got down to the street, I turned my face up to the sky. Snow was coming.
I should’ve been angry that Annabel had given me a mystery that I now had to solve. But all I could feel was a sweet sense of triumph that I had figured it out. Now I knew why she couldn’t let go. She hadn’t chosen to die. She’d been forced into it.
This was her purpose all along, the reason so much of her still echoed inside me. If I solved her murder, if I brought her killer to justice, she’d release her hold on me. The memories would stop…and maybe my own would even come back.
Nate joined me on the sidewalk, his face a wordless question that I couldn’t quite answer. A few flakes of snow drifted down between us. I dug out my phone, activated the location search feature, and found a diner a few blocks away where we could at least be warm and fed while I figured out what to say to him.
“Come on,” I said to Nate and walked in the direction my phone told me to.
Nate fell into step with me. “Georgie,” he said, “you can’t seriously think that Annabel was murdered.”
I glanced over at him. “Yes, I can. I know it.”
His breath puffed out in white mists. “How? How can you possibly know that?”
I didn’t answer. A block ahead, I saw the neon sign of the diner and sped up. But I was certain, with every ounce of everything that I had ever known was right, that Annabel had been pushed. The feeling in my heart, the resonance of certainty, told me I was right.
Bells jangled overhead as I pulled open the diner door. Red leather booths lined the interior. A bored-looking waitress barely looked up from her post at the counter as we entered. “Anywhere you like,” she said.
I led Nate to a booth in the corner, far away from anyone that might overhear us. The exhilaration over getting this huge piece of Annabel’s puzzle was dissipating, replaced with anxiety. I was going to have to tell Nate the truth. There was no way out of it now. I dug my fingernails into my palms as I took my coat off. What if he didn’t believe me? What if he walked out of this diner and out of my life forever?
We avoided each other for several minutes by examining our menus. I kept peeking over the top of mine to look at Nate, to drink him in if this was the last time I was ever going to see him. My heart hammered against my ribs. Maybe I could talk my way out of it.
The waitress sauntered over. “I’ll have the meatloaf,” I told her. “With mashed potatoes.” Dr. Harrison would not approve, but if there was ever a time to forego the diet for comfort food, this was it. Nate ordered a grilled cheese with fries and the waitress shuffled off, tucking her pen behind her ear.
“Listen,” I said before he could open his mouth. “It makes sense. You even said yourself that despite her situation, she never seemed suicidal.”
“I did say that, but why was she murdered?” Nate said. “Who would do that to her?”
“Jules. Someone in his network. Maybe even one of the other girls.” I pressed my palms flat on the table. “There are any number of suspects. Maybe she found out something about the Warehouse that she shouldn’t have.” I reached for his hands. They were freezing. “We have to at least look into it.”
“Don’t you think the cops would’ve found something when they went over the crime scene?”
“Not if they assumed it was a suicide.” I squeezed his fingers. “On the surface, it was so obviously a suicide.” Without thinking, I touched my scar, as though I could speak to her through all the muscle and bone and consciousness that separated us. “You knew Annabel and the world she lived in. You have to help me figure out who killed her.”
Nate opened his mouth, but the waitress came over with our food. The meatloaf smelled like a childhood memory restored, but my appetite slipped away as I waited for Nate to speak. The waitress left. Nate didn’t touch his food either.
“I will help you,” he said, “but first you have to tell me why you care so much. Why you are so invested. And I don’t buy that it’s for a school newspaper article. And—and—” He swallowed. “You may love me, but that’s not the reason eit
her. Not the real one. I need the real reason before I can go any further.”
I threaded my fingers together, kneading my palms. I couldn’t talk my way out of this. I had to tell him the truth. The words were stuck in my throat. I looked away from him, out the window where snow had started to fall. I moved my hand to my chest, to the place where he knew the scar was hidden beneath my sweater, and swung my gaze back to him.
“My heart,” I whispered, my eyes on his. “My heart. It’s hers. It’s Annabel’s.”
• • •
Time froze, like the diner was inside a large snow globe and we were just two little figurines, stuck in this booth forever. Nate’s jaw worked. I could see all the words and sentences and questions churning on his face, but all he managed to get out was, “What?”
“It’s anonymous,” I said. “Organ donation. Except, you know, like when your brother gives you his kidney or whatever. But most of the time, it’s anonymous. I didn’t know who she was. But I had to. She’d saved my life by dying. I had to know who she was.”
Nate’s chest moved up and down with short, jerky breaths. I went on. “I found out she was a Jane Doe. No one knew who she was. I started to do some research. That’s what led me to 826 Emiline.”
His eyes were still on me, but they were seeing something past me. “You—Annabel’s—heart is—in you?”
I nodded. He blinked fast. I laid my hand on top of his. He jerked his hand away so fast that I gasped. “Nate, please—”
“How could you not tell me this?” Nate ran his shaking fingers through his hair. “All this time you’ve been lying to me? About some goddamned article that never existed?”
“Because I didn’t think you’d believe me—”
“Why? Why wouldn’t I believe that you wanted to know who your heart donor was?” He slammed his hands down on the table. The waitress looked over. “I get that, Georgie. Who wouldn’t want to know? Now I get it, why you care so much. But why couldn’t you trust me with that? After everything that’s happened—between us—”