by Nicole Maggi
“Because…” I swallowed hard, my throat like sandpaper. “There’s more.”
“More than—”
“I remember things.”
His eyes narrowed. “What things?”
“I remember things…about her life.” Nate’s mouth opened but I rushed on. “That’s how I knew who you were. And that’s how I know, without a doubt, that she was murdered.” I balled my hands into fists so tight my knuckles turned white. “Nate, there’s one more thing. Every time I remember something from her life, I lose a memory from my own.”
He flattened his palms on the table and took a deep breath. “Georgie, I’m sure having a heart transplant is a traumatic thing to go through—”
“And what? You think I’m going through some sort of post-traumatic stress disorder?”
“Maybe.” His voice was gentle, like he was talking to a scared child. “And maybe you do have Annabel’s heart, and you think you’re remembering things—”
“Think?” I leaned across the table toward him. “I am getting her memories. How else can you explain how I knew your name before you told me, or where the cemetery was, or that Annabel loved strawberries—”
“Those are all things you could’ve found out.”
The softness of his voice made me want to punch him. “How?” I demanded. “How could I know all those things?”
“Georgie—”
“And I know about your sister.”
The blood drained from his face.
“You told Annabel about her. Isn’t that right?” I went on. He sat still and silent, staring at me. “To get her to trust you. Didn’t you?”
He was still frozen, but at last he spoke. “You could’ve found it out some other way.” His voice was like a wolf’s, more animal than human.
“How? You’ve never told anyone, and I’ve never met your parents. Annabel was the only one who knew.”
“She must’ve told someone.”
“Who? When she wouldn’t even tell anyone her real name?”
Nate slid to the edge of the booth and pushed himself to standing. “I–I can’t—process this. I don’t know how you know about my sister, but it is not because you have Annabel’s heart. If you even do.” He grabbed his coat and hustled toward the door.
I snatched my coat off the booth seat and dashed after him. “You kids still need to pay!” the waitress yelled. I ignored her and followed Nate into the cold, snowing night. Flurries blustered all around us, muffling the world except for the tense snow globe that he and I seemed to exist in.
“Nate, I’m telling the truth. You have to believe me—”
“Why should I? When you’ve been lying this whole time?” The tip of his nose shone bright red, but whether it was from cold or anger, I didn’t know. “Who the hell are you? How do I know you’re not after something else?”
“What? How could you think—”
“Do you know how many crackpots came after my family after my sister went missing?” He stalked toward me. I could feel his rage just below the surface, ready to explode. “I give you points for creativity, using Annabel’s heart to get close to me—”
“I’m not lying!” My voice shattered the peaceful snow falling around us. I struck my fist against my chest. Pain shuddered down my scar but I didn’t care. “I have Annabel’s heart. I know things about her no one else does. She was murdered, Nate. That’s why she’s hanging on. Why she’s giving me her memories. She wants us to figure out who killed her.”
Nate held up his hand. “This is insane—”
“I am not crazy!” That word…that word…I wanted to strike it from the dictionary of my life. “I have to find out what happened to her. And I need your help.” I reached out toward him, but he backed away, his eyes wide and wild on me. “Please, Nate. You’re the only one I can talk to about this. Remember when you said you only know the post-op Georgie? You get me. You’re the only one. Please.” My voice was thin and scared, coming from that place inside me that was desperately trying to hold on to all my memories before Annabel took them. “Please. I need you.”
Nate covered his face with his hands. His knuckles were red and raw from the cold. I touched him lightly on his wrist. He jerked away with such violence I almost fell over.
“Don’t, Georgie.” The danger in his tone sent a shiver down my spine that had nothing to do with the cold. He dropped his hands and his gaze froze the world around me. “I liked you. I think I could’ve fallen in love with you. But I don’t know who you are now, and I don’t think I want to know.”
He turned and walked away so fast that within seconds, the snow had swallowed him from view. I think I called after him once, twice, or three or a hundred times, but the wind tore my voice into shreds. He never turned back, and soon I was all alone on the sidewalk, drowning in a storm of snow and tears.
Chapter Twenty
I stumbled back into the diner to pay the bill and made my way home. Nate’s words kept twisting and turning around in my head. Every time I heard them, I closed my eyes in red-hot shame. I should’ve been honest from the beginning. I should’ve told him I had Annabel’s heart. I should’ve told him the truth about her memories.
He wouldn’t have believed you then either, my brain reasoned.
But it wouldn’t have hurt so much, I answered. Not back then before I knew who he was, before he’d kissed me, when the only feelings I had for him were Annabel’s. Now my own were tangled up inside with hers, and my own heart was broken.
• • •
When the dawn finally broke the next day, a foot of snow blanketed the world, making my street look like a row of sugar-covered gingerbread houses. I sat on my windowsill, looking down at the still, silent world. I’d sat there most of the night, watching the sky change from dark to light.
My heart hurt, a fierce ache that I knew was my own and not Annabel’s. But whatever the pain or the cost, I’d decided on something in that long, long night: I had to go on.
I’d lost Nate, but I’d gained the real reason why Annabel was still imprinted on my heart. I knew my direction now, and I couldn’t stop just because Nate had left my side. I wasn’t angry at Annabel anymore. It wasn’t her fault she had died, and she’d gotten my attention the only way left to her. She’d hijacked my memories to get me to piece together her own. Once I did, once I solved the puzzle, she’d give me my memories back. I had to believe that.
Next to me on the pink cushion, my phone buzzed. I picked it up to read a text from Toni. Hillcoate had a snow day, and she and Ella were going to our favorite brunch place. Did I want to join them?
My fingers hovered over the keyboard, about to type no effing way—I mean, what kind of passive-aggressive game was Ella playing, putting Toni in the peacemaker middle?—but I froze. I couldn’t go back to All Saints. I’d confided in Nate and he’d rejected me. A fresh wave of heartache twisted through me. Ella and Toni were all that I had left. Maybe I could trust them with this.
What time? I responded.
My bedroom door burst open. “No school! Best birthday ever!” Colt crowed and did a silly little jig all around my room. “Mom says I can do whatever I want today. Within reason, of course. I’m thinking that within reason means skiing up at Gunstock. It’s only a two-hour drive.” He vaulted onto my bed, sending the pillows several inches into the air. “What do you think?”
“I can’t go skiing, silly,” I said. “No strenuous activity, remember?”
“Aw, crap.” Colt’s face fell. “I guess I could just stay home and play Skyrim.”
“Don’t be a dummy,” I said, punching his arm. “You should go. Enjoy your snow day. It’s the first one this year, isn’t it?”
“First snow day and my birthday all in one. I am a lucky boy.” Colt bounced off my bed and started poking through the stuff on my desk and dresser. “Wonder what the big sis got me this y
ear.” He shot me a wicked little grin. “Is it in the closet?”
“Is what in the closet?” My heartbeat jolted my rib cage.
“Duh. My present.”
I looked wildly around the room, my eyes settling on a primly wrapped package with a bright blue bow on my dresser. “That’s it,” I whispered.
Colt snatched up the box and shook it. “Ooooh. Is it a an Xbox 360 with 4GB Kinect?”
I forced a laugh. “Yeah.” And for all I knew, it could’ve been.
“The anticipation is killing me,” Colt said, clutching the package under his arm. He bolted out the door, calling back, “Mom’s making pancakes!”
I pressed my hands against my chest, fighting for breath. I had no idea what was in the box. I must’ve bought it days ago and set it out yesterday to give to him today…but in that span of time, I’d gotten the memory of Annabel’s days at the Sutton house, of her apartment at 826 Emiline…and now Colt’s birthday was gone. Not just the date. I scrambled backward to the day my parents had brought Colt home from the hospital as a baby. It must’ve been there at some point…but now it was gone. Another fragment of my life removed. Another reason why I had to solve Annabel’s murder.
Heat crept up the side of my neck, anger and fear and sorrow stealing through me. Couldn’t you at least have told me something useful in exchange for taking my brother’s birthday away from me? I thought at whatever was left of Annabel inside me. Like, who pushed you off the balcony?
There was no answer, of course. There never was. There were only more questions.
• • •
Colt went skiing with Dad and Grandma. At breakfast, my parents had reminisced about the night he was born, that it had snowed that night too, and my dad had been stuck at the airport waiting for my grandmother’s delayed flight for hours and hours. I had been very young, but I should’ve remembered. And I didn’t.
Colt loved the present I’d gotten for him, but that seemed like a very meager reward for the fact that I didn’t remember the day he was born anymore. I sat at the window in the living room and watched them pack the car up, pile in, and drive off to Gunstock. I wished I could go with them. I wished I could forget everything for a day and fly down the side of a mountain, the wind at my back.
“What are you going to do today?” Mom asked, squishing in next to me at the window. “I’d love to spend the day together but my damn deadline is in a week.”
“It’s okay. Ella and Toni want to meet at Zaftig’s, if that’s okay.”
“Sure.” She put her arm around my shoulders and squeezed. “Don’t worry—you’ll be skiing again next year.”
Yeah. If I hadn’t lost the memory of how to ski by then. I leaned into her for a moment, also wishing that I could tell her what had happened with Nate, that I could spill everything over our favorite comfort food. But it was going to take more than homemade mac-and-cheese and a pint of chocolate chocolate chip to make this go away.
“I’d better go lock myself in the office,” Mom said, peeling herself away from the window. “Are you going to practice for a while before you meet the girls?”
I shrugged, ignoring the underlying suggestion of you should be practicing in her tone. “Maybe.” I felt her eyes on me for a minute longer before she headed upstairs to her office.
Once I was sure she was safely ensconced in her cocoon of writing, I went to my room and stood in the middle of it. I was all twisted up inside and it made me twitchy. I had a couple of hours before I had to meet Ella and Toni, and I should’ve been practicing, but when I reached for my oboe, I just couldn’t make myself put it together and play. There was something else I needed to do instead, another decision I’d come to in the night, and Nate was no longer around to discourage me from it.
I got dressed fast, told Mom I was heading out to run errands before brunch with the girls, and left the house. The snow had stopped and it was now just cold. That otherworldly quiet that comes after a snowstorm still hovered over the streets, and I breathed it in as I made my way to the heart of Brookline.
The stately brick building on Washington Street was practically empty when I walked inside. A couple of cops milled around and barely looked up as I opened the door. Somewhere inside one of the offices, a phone rang over and over. The chair at the reception desk was empty so I wandered past it, checking names on the offices along the corridor. File cabinets lined the wall opposite the offices, and halfway down the hall, I almost tripped over an open drawer.
“Oh, sorry about that!” A woman kneeling on the floor in front of the drawer got to her feet. Her black hair was neatly braided and pulled tight at the top of her head, emphasizing the strong cheekbones that cut across her cocoa skin. Though she was dressed in plainclothes, a badge flashed from the inside pocket of her blazer when she moved. “Can I help you?”
“I’m looking for Detective Lowell.”
“He’s two offices down.” She pointed and bent over to pull open another drawer.
Lowell’s door was closed, so I knocked lightly and waited. From inside, I heard papers rustling and the rumble of Lowell’s voice, although I couldn’t make out what he was saying. I glanced up the hall. All the other detectives’ doors were open; Lowell’s was the only one that was closed. I knocked again, louder this time in case he hadn’t heard the first one.
“Just a minute!” His voice sounded harried.
The female detective straightened, her rich brown eyes narrowed at his door. When the door opened, she bent back over her filing. But the person at the door wasn’t Detective Lowell. It was Michelle.
“Georgie?” Her eyes narrowed as she looked me up and down. That same heavy feeling that I’d felt around her at the party settled in the pit of my stomach. Inside my chest, the Catch slithered awake. “What are you doing here?”
“I came to see your dad. I didn’t realize you’d be here.” I tried to look casual and unconcerned. “Were your classes canceled today too?”
“Yeah. I brought my dad breakfast.” She jerked her head and I saw the desk inside the office littered with coffee cups and an empty bag from Kupel’s. “Why do you need to see him?”
“Let her in, Michelle.” Detective Lowell appeared in the doorway behind Michelle. He opened the door wider and stepped back to let me into the office. I had to sidle beneath Michelle’s gaze to get into the room, and I felt her eyes hot on the top of my head.
I turned and gave her a smile that didn’t reach my eyes. “Actually, I have something for you too.” I dug into my bag and pulled out my dad’s letter of recommendation that I’d had the presence of mind to grab before I left the house. “What’s it for, by the way?”
“An internship,” she said, taking the envelope from me. “Some big corporation that’s building a hydroelectric power plant in Maine. They came recruiting to my engineering class last semester.”
“Cool.” I rocked on my heels. “I hope you get in. Maine’s really pretty in the summer.”
“Never been.” She slid the letter into her back pocket. “Tell your dad thanks.” She darted a glance to her father. “So did you just come here to deliver that? Your dad could’ve mailed it.”
I pressed my lips together for a moment and sucked in a breath through my nostrils. I hadn’t forgotten what she’d said to me at the party about things coming so easily for me, and my tolerance level for her attitude was in short supply.
“I came to talk to your dad, actually. About an article I’m writing. For the Banner.” I waved my hand toward the breakfast remnants. “But maybe I should’ve called first. I’m sorry I interrupted daddy-daughter time.”
“No problem!” Lowell cleared his throat and started to clear some of the trash off his desk. “You know you’re welcome here any time. Unless you’re in trouble,” he added, wagging his finger at me.
“Oh, Georgie’s not in trouble.” Michelle leaned against the door frame, her
arms crossed. One side of her mouth curved in a half-smile that I couldn’t quite read. “In all the years I’ve known her, Georgie’s never been in trouble.”
I met her half-smile with one of my own. “Maybe I’ll use that as my yearbook quote. ‘Never been in trouble.’” I cocked my head. “What was your yearbook quote, Michelle? Something about bringing joy and light to the world?”
She straightened, dropping her arms at her side. Lowell cleared his throat and sat in the big chair behind his desk. “So, Georgie, you said you’re writing an article. What’s the topic?”
I turned my back on Michelle and sat opposite him. I could feel Michelle’s presence as she hovered in the doorway, like a black cloud on the horizon threatening rain. I wasn’t too keen on talking about Annabel with her around, but I couldn’t very well kick her out of her own dad’s office. “Sex trafficking.”
Lowell’s eyes widened and a little tick started at the bottom corner of his left eye. “That’s a pretty heavy issue.”
“I guess.” I reached into my bag and laid the printout of the article on Annabel’s suicide from the BPD website onto the desk. “See, I started writing about teen suicide. I was going to use this case as the focus, but then I found out this girl was trafficked so I decided to write about that instead.”
Lowell took the paper from me and read through it, his lips pressed into a thin line. “How do you know she was trafficked?”
“Well, I went to the address mentioned there and found this church nearby where this organization, FAIR Girls, has a chapter. And they knew her—she, you know, worked near there.”
“So she was a prostitute.” Lowell put the paper down and gave it a slight shove back to me across the desk.
“No,” I said and pressed my palm flat over the article to keep it from drifting onto the floor. “She was trafficked.”