When Norah’s mom forgot last week’s counseling appointment, Norah didn’t say anything. Instead, she fell asleep in the middle of the day, listening to The Smiths under the hazy, heavy comfort of a blackberry drop.
Norah wonders when she’ll have to go back to school. Or go back to counseling. Could she refuse?
Norah shuts the laptop and glances at the empty key holder in the kitchen. Her dad is still at work. Her mom might be at the police station. Or her aunt’s house. Or the moon. The house, as usual, is quiet except for the burbling of the aquarium in the living room. Norah hasn’t looked at the fish lately.
Suddenly aware that she is actually hungry, Norah gets up and wanders downstairs into the kitchen. When she opens the cupboards, she’s surprised to see a few new groceries on the splintering shelves. It’s been more than two weeks since anyone has cooked dinner, let alone eaten a meal together. Every interaction revolves around the logistics of press conferences, police updates, and news articles. Which is slightly better than funeral plans, flowers, and burial plots.
The people who texted last week all said the same thing. That they “couldn’t imagine” what Norah was going through. Norah remembers saying the phrase herself more than once. Before. When the phrase sounded like, “I’m so sorry this happened to you.” Now all she hears is, “I’m so glad this happened to you, not me.”
Honestly, what’s to imagine? It’s a black hole.
She hesitates then picks up a jar of spaghetti sauce. The fridge is stacked with casseroles and leftovers that have trickled into the fridge after the funeral. Some of them are definitely still edible. But the mishmash of half-eaten, unfamiliar pans and trays in her fridge fills Norah’s stomach with a queasy feeling.
She decides she’ll make pasta. It’s one of the few meals she feels confident in making without asking for instructions.
A few minutes later, there’s a pot of water boiling on the stovetop and a saucepan bubbling beside it, sending waves of steam across the peeling black plastic of the microwave above it.
Norah moves through the kitchen on autopilot, salting the water, pulling plates from the cupboard for her mom and dad.
When the noodles are cooked, she drains them in the sink, carefully ladles them onto a plate, and pours the sauce and a sprinkle of parmesan on top.
She closes her eyes and tries to live in the smell of the warm food. To be present, like the counselor talked about. And for a moment, it works. When she opens her eyes, she considers calling her mom’s cell phone to ask where she is and if she’d like some dinner. Or at least a saved plate.
But just like the curls of steam wafting from the hot plate, the notion disappears.
Sometimes, Norah feels like her family members are living in different dimensions. Or maybe different circles of hell. She doesn’t feel abandoned. Or resentful. She just accepts that they can’t reach each other right now.
Norah listens for the garage door for a few seconds as if her mom might arrive on cue. The ice maker hums in the quiet, in tune with the aquarium pump. Outside, the wind has picked up, and she can hear dead leaves scatter across the deck in a soft, brittle rasping sound.
Norah pulls a fork from the dishwasher and sits at the table by herself. The willow branches are scraping back and forth across the fence, a sound like sandpaper.
She peers out the sliding glass door. But in the glare of the Tiffany lamp over the kitchen table, all she sees is her own reflection. She studies her bare face and limp hair then turns away.
After a couple bites of pasta, Norah stands up, covers her plate with plastic wrap, and shoves aside two casserole dishes in the fridge to make room for it.
Norah’s mom has been calling about the autopsy report for the past two weeks. First asking. Then demanding. Then threatening to speak to the press. She’d threatened to bring it up in her interview with Channel Two. And in the press conference with the police.
The Rupert PD were already taking heat for their failure to identify the man in the security footage at the Thicket. They had him on camera, for god’s sake. So after two weeks of threats, they finally relented and agreed to send the portions of the autopsy that weren’t critical to the investigation.
When Norah saw the thick envelope clutched in her mom's hands yesterday, she knew what it was. And when Norah was alone in the house, she spent an hour searching until she found the envelope. Because she needed to know.
Massive blood loss due to laceration of the C1 vertebrae aggravated by asphyxia.
Sharp force trauma to the base of the skull.
That was the official cause of death. There were no defensive wounds. Either the guy who did it had come up behind him. Or Brandon had tried to run away. Either way, he hadn’t stood a chance.
Because he was alone. The autopsy doesn’t say that, of course. It doesn’t need to.
Norah had read the entire autopsy. Twice. And snippets of the clinical phrases had permanently committed themselves to a loop in her mind. She’d finally used up the last of her stash of pot to make them stop so she could fall asleep. She won’t be able to avoid texting Aaron soon.
The lingering smell of the spaghetti sauce suddenly makes Norah queasy, and she retreats to the basement. As she walks down the stairs, she’s unable to stop herself from glancing at the carefully constructed gallery of photos in the stairway. The wall is packed with Norah and Brandon’s chronological school pictures. His hair was too long in this year’s photo, curling over his ears in blunt blonde tufts. He hated having it cut.
Norah tries to find the sadness. The grief. Even the anger she felt when she was looking at the Facebook event earlier. But it’s like trying to pull a too-big anchor aboard into a too-small boat. It will capsize her, where the ocean will swallow her whole. So all she feels are the few bites of spaghetti she took roiling in her stomach. And a whisper that reminds her at every turn: Your fault.
The basement smells musty and undisturbed. The carpet is original to the house, and so is the peeling floral wallpaper her parents always talked about ripping out. They moved here the year Brandon was three and Norah was ten. In the corner, behind one side of the couch, is an ancient treadmill her mom found at a garage sale in Burley two summers ago. To Norah’s knowledge, none of them have ever actually used it.
She plugs the machine in and is surprised to see the display light up. As the conveyor begins to move, Norah hesitantly steps on it with her bare feet. It takes all of two minutes before she is breathing heavily, her lungs burning. She turns the speed up and adjusts the incline until the machine maxes out with a thin groan. She wouldn’t say it feels good. But it’s better than doing nothing. Better than feeling herself take easy breaths.
Asphyxiate.
Norah turns up the speed on the treadmill. In her search for the autopsy report yesterday, she found another thick manila folder on her mom’s desk. It contained every article that had been published about the Thicket over the past three weeks. There were forty-three in total. The first one had been published the day after the murders. A sticky note on the first folder had a phone number and the name “Officer Albright” written in her mother’s neat handwriting.
The articles had titles like, “10 of the Most Haunted Places in America.” and “25 Real Haunted Houses in the Northwest.” The Thicket was featured as number one in that particular article, with a photo of the caution tape and an ambulance inside the main plaza. Norah recognized most of the titles. She’s made anonymous comments on most of them.
Before Norah hits the red stop button on the treadmill, she promises herself she won’t check anyone’s Facebook page. Or refresh the RSVPs to the Thicket’s “Double Dog Scare” event. For someone who deleted her own Facebook account, she spends a lot of time there. If she stays on the treadmill long enough, she might even be able to fall asleep without texting Aaron for more weed. Her feet are blistering under the rubber.
Twenty minutes later, she can hear the faint rumble of the garage door opening. Her dad is home. She hea
rs him open the door and set his keys on the counter. Then the quiet whoosh of the refrigerator door, the clank of glass, and the chirp of the microwave. She slows the treadmill down to a normal pace.
A few minutes later, she hears footsteps in the kitchen again. They hesitate at the landing. “Norah, honey?” she hears over the whir of the conveyor belt. “Did you make the spaghetti?”
When she doesn’t answer, the footsteps slowly retreat. She thinks she hears him add, “Thank you.”
Relief, then guilt, then apathy wash over her in waves that disappear as quickly as they arise.
When she hears the bedroom door shut upstairs, she finally presses the stop button on the treadmill. The machine whirs to a stop, and the room is quiet again.
Sweaty and shaking hard, Norah steps off the treadmill and moves toward the closed bedroom door down the hallway before she can think too much about it.
His bed still isn’t made. The red-and-blue flannel comforter is rumpled, pushed all the way down to the bottom of the bed, and the sheets are dirty.
She doesn’t lay down on the bed, though.
Instead, she pulls the neatly folded quilt from the top closet shelf. The one their nana made for Brandon when he was born. It has bright yellow tractors, excavators, graders, and bulldozers crisscrossing the fabric.
Norah turns off the bedroom light, unfolds the quilt, and settles into the cushions of the overstuffed brown recliner in the corner of the room.
She can’t smell his smell anymore in the room. There is just the musty basement aroma. For a moment, she considers walking to his bed to lay her head on his pillow to inhale and reassure herself that she’ll still be able to find him here. But the thought that he might not be there anymore either keeps her where she is.
Sometimes it’s better not to know.
She should shower. Or at least change her clothes. Her T-shirt is damp, and her feet hurt. But her eyes are closing. And the clammy goosebumps on her arms barely even register.
CHAPTER 19
October 19th
He meets Janet’s smile as she hobbles along the sidewalk toward the breezeway entrance. He opens the door a little wider to accommodate the width of her walker.
“Now, you didn’t have to stand there in the cold like that, with me moving like molasses,” Janet titters, the corners of her eyes creasing so deeply that her dark brown eyes are nearly hidden.
He shakes his head in a gesture that is both gracious and humble as she inches the walker past him.
She pauses her amble to pat his arm. “I’m always telling my oldest granddaughter about you, you know. Sharice. Such a pretty thing. Well-endowed too.” She winks and nudges his arm conspiratorially. “Just graduated from college. Needs a nice young man in her life.”
Her smile obscures her eyes again, and he chuckles obligingly. “Oh, I don’t know about the young part, Mrs. Tanner. And you know me, I’m a lone wolf.”
She swats at him and calls to the petite redhead walking up the path to the apartment building. The redhead is carrying a sack of groceries in the crook of one arm and a squirming baby on her hip. “Lisa, tell our handsome neighbor that he’s selfishly denying my granddaughter of a baby like that.” Janet takes one hand off her walker to gesture at the baby, who is reaching for her mother’s hair. “Or least a date.”
The redhead—Lisa—sets the bag of groceries in a heap at their feet and laughs, casting a sidelong glance in his direction. She extricates a fistful of hair from the baby’s chubby hand. “Janet, if your granddaughter is half as sweet as you are, he’d be crazy to turn you down.” The baby squirms harder, porpoising in her arms, reaching for that red hair again.
On a whim, he hunches down, placing himself at eye level with the little girl’s tiny face. She studies him with wide, blue eyes for a moment, assessing him.
When her face breaks out in a gummy grin, he reaches out to gently stroke her cheek, grazing the soft skin near her temple. He can see the blue blood rush in and out of the veins beneath her tissue-thin skin.
He wonders how hard he would have to press to break the surface.
Beside him, Janet coos at the two of them softly, clucking over what a wonderful father he would be. As Lisa bends down to retrieve the sack of groceries, the baby arches back against her mother’s shoulder and succeeds in seizing another fistful of hair, ignoring him again.
He straightens and smiles. Just as well. Too close to home.
Lisa picks up her groceries and starts up the stairwell, patiently working to extricate the lock of hair from her baby’s grip. “I swore I’d never cut my hair after having kids. So typical. But I’m calling uncle.” She laughs at her own joke and waves goodbye. “Have a good day, you two. And let Janet set you up!”
He smiles. Lisa is about the same age as the blond news anchor. Caroline. And she’s just as clueless. Oh, Caroline. You think you’re so savvy. But you’d let the perpetrator kiss your baby, too.
Taking the opportunity to exit the building without seeming rude, he waves back at Lisa and pats Janet gently on the shoulder as he walks out the breezeway.
The sky is cloudless, and the air is crisp and electric. He feels good as he walks the five blocks to the second-hand home improvement store and buys what he needs. He’s pleased he thought to come here. There are no security cameras. And even if there were, there is nothing remotely unusual about a customer buying rope, Gorilla tape, and a utility knife.
The high-school-aged girl at the counter, wearing a green vest, doesn’t even look up as he studies the hand-labeled prices.
He smiles as he gives her the crisp bills he withdrew from the ATM yesterday, then strides back out the door.
He’ll be home in time to watch the six o’clock news. Now that the Thicket has reopened without incident, the top breaking stories aren’t about him anymore.
He gently touches the utility knife inside the brown paper sack.
That’ll change soon enough.
CHAPTER 20
October 21
RealityTV has just announced that it will be releasing a made-for-TV docudrama about the “Thicket Tragedy.”
This morning, the producers called to ask if Norah’s family would be willing to be interviewed.
Norah’s mom said yes.
Norah squeezes her eyes shut and tries to turn off the static in her mind.
They didn’t ask to interview Norah. Because nobody aside from the police actually knows she was there that night. Let alone that she’s the reason Brandon is dead. That she left him to wander through the Thicket alone. To be attacked from behind. Because she was annoyed with him.
Norah squeezes her eyes shut again, and tries to visualize the stretch of trail where she left him. The staff exit she took back to the plaza through the woods. But there is only blank static. Norah isn’t sure whether that’s because she really can’t remember or because her brain is hiding some dark truth from her.
The feature image for the RealityTV documentary shows a partially open door to Cabin Twelve. There’s crime scene tape surrounding the entire structure. It’s the same image the Internet has passed around. If you zoom in and increase the resolution, you can see that the threshold of the doorway is stained red.
Norah closes the tab and refreshes the “Double Dog Scare” Facebook event, which is happening on Saturday. There are a couple hundred more RSVPs.
She imagines showing up at the Thicket’s event the way she sometimes imagines tipping her body over the edge of the railing at Shoshone Falls.
She would never do it, of course.
But would she?
A lifetime ago, while the Thicket was still closed and still surrounded by caution tape and red-and-blue lights, Norah had made the drive out to Declo.
She had parked near the far end of the corn maze, on a narrow gravel road that ran beside a weed-choked canal. Just ahead, she could see a dilapidated farmhouse, a trailer, and a barbed-wire fence where a few chickens ducked in and out, picking at weeds.
Fro
m this border of the Thicket, it was all cornfields, waving gently in the early October sunlight. The sky was so cloudless and blue it hurt to look at. When she craned her neck, she could just see the top of one of the bigger cabins. Nothing else.
Norah wasn’t sure why she went back. Wasn’t sure what she expected to feel. Or to see. But after fifteen minutes, a police car had pulled up behind her on the canal road. The officer rested his hand lightly on his hip, above his holster, tapping on the trunk of her Buick as he motioned for her to roll down the window.
For a horrifying moment, Norah was worried he would know who she was. That his expression would soften in pity and remorse. But of course, he didn’t recognize her. Why would he? She nodded when he chastised her for parking on the private access road near the crime scene. Hadn’t she seen Snake River’s “no access” sign on the main road?
Like every year, the Thicket will close the day after Halloween. When the cleanup crew is finished, there will be nothing but dead cornfields, empty cabin shells, and acres of hiking trails marred with the occasional checkered wrapper.
The room where Brandon died will be locked and fenced off like all the other cabins, until next year.
She knows from several different articles that the room where it happened has been basically gutted. Scoured. Redecorated.
She also knows from the articles that have popped up all over Facebook that several groups of kids walked through Cabin Twelve before Brandon died—but after the other staffer had been killed. The person who did this was waiting for someone to enter the cabin alone. He was waiting for someone vulnerable.
Someone who wouldn’t have been alone if Norah had stayed with him.
When the police asked Norah why she left Brandon, she had a hard time remembering the conversation that had sent her stomping through the exit trail to the plaza. And that was when she felt the numbness spread through her body like insulation.
Norah closes the tab on the “Double Dog Scare” event and opens Messenger. She’s not Facebook friends with Aaron. Or anyone else, really, on this fake account. But “Ashlyn Palmer” has a profile photo of a dimpled brunette who appears to attend Burley High School. She’s totally Aaron’s type.
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