by A. M. Taylor
I watched as he got out of the car and went around to the trunk to get some bags out before unbuckling my own seat belt and following him inside. Snow started to fall just as I got to the front door and I thought of those guttering candles by the side of the road, flickering bravely, about to be snuffed out.
Nate was moving around the kitchen when I walked in, looking right at home as he removed groceries from shopping bags and put stuff away in cupboards, opening and closing the fridge, his coat, hat, and scarf discarded on the living room sofa. I took mine off too, throwing them on top of his and then watched him, wary, confused.
“What are you doing? Moving in?”
“I’m making us dinner.” He suddenly turned towards me. “You haven’t eaten yet, have you?”
“No.”
“Okay, good.”
“Nate,” I said, taking a few steps towards him, “what are you doing? Why are you making us dinner?”
“We have to eat, don’t we?”
“Yes …”
“So, that’s what we’re going to do.”
He’d gone back to unpacking his goods, moving around the kitchen and I had to grab him to hold him still and make him look at me.
“Nate. This … this isn’t a normal evening. You can’t just come and pick me up and bring me here and pretend like everything’s normal and making dinner is just a regular thing to do. Elle died three days ago.”
“I know she did, Mads, do you think I’ve forgotten that?”
“I don’t know, I can’t tell.”
“I can’t believe you of all people would say that to me; do you really think I’ve forgotten what happened to Elle? You really think I could do that? She’s my fucking sister. My sister.”
I took a step backwards, blood pumping extra hard in my veins, my breath shallow, my mouth dry. “You can’t talk to me like that, Nate, it’s not fair. Not when you dragged me out here to supposedly make me dinner after months, years of no contact. I’m just trying to figure out what the fuck’s going on. You could barely look at me on Sunday, and now what, we’re best buds again? Just try and help me make sense of this.”
Nate took a deep breath, eyes trained on the ceiling. “I’m just making dinner, okay, Maddie? That’s all. I’m not doing cartwheels in front of the fucking police station. Please don’t try and make me feel guilty for needing and wanting to eat.”
He hadn’t answered my main question of why, exactly, I was there too, but I decided to back off, at least for now, and said: “Okay, okay. I’m sorry.”
“Because I’ve been there before. I’ve done all that before, and I can’t do it again. I thought you’d understand.” He was looking at me then, finally, eyes blazing, his voice a little loud, too much for the small cabin.
“I do understand,” I said, slowly, carefully, even though I didn’t. But there was a large enough part of me, a part I wasn’t particularly proud of, that was just happy Nate was talking to me at all. That on his way out there, he’d stopped to pick me up. Or perhaps happy isn’t the right word at all. Perhaps “relieved” would be better, or whatever German word exists to explain the feeling of finally being back home again, even when that home is haunted.
Nate passed a hand over his face, all the energy in his body suddenly drained away. He pulled his phone out of a pocket and after messing around on it for a few seconds passed it over to me. “I’m guessing you haven’t read this yet?”
The phone was open on a newspaper article:
Wisconsin Daily News
Tension Mounts in Unsolved Murder Case
By Gloria Lewis
January 10, 2018
Tension mounts and nerves are frayed in frozen Forest View this week, where local teenager Noelle Altman was found murdered just two days ago. The case is very closely related to that of missing girl Nora Altman, who is the deceased’s older sister. Waterstone Chief of Police Patrick Moody, who is overseeing the investigation into the 17-year-old’s death alongside Special Agents from the Department of Justice, released a statement today confirming that the girl had indeed been murdered. While they have yet to name any suspects in the case, Chief Moody did reveal that forensics investigators in Wausau were helping with the investigation and that they hoped to have important results from an object found near the body verified soon. He declined to comment on whether or not the object was the murder weapon or possible murder weapon.
Although it is still not yet two full days since Miss Altman’s body was found, the lack of information regarding her demise feels overly familiar and is frustrating for her family and community alike. Jennifer Childs, a teacher at the elementary school Noelle Altman attended said: “this is like a nightmare. None of us can believe this is happening again. How can someone have murdered Noelle? We need to know who did this and bring them to justice.” Another local, Jim Bent, declared that the town was “being terrorized. First Nora and now her sister. We don’t deserve this.”
While the case of missing Nora Altman has long fueled a lot of local mysteries in the town of Forest View, not everyone has always believed foul play was involved. However, with her younger sister now found murdered at the site where her car was abandoned, it is looking increasingly likely. Town members are clamoring for Nora Altman’s case to be reopened and long-held private suspicions are beginning to be aired in public. “You have to wonder what’s going on with that family, for this to happen again,” said one local who wished to not be named.
The Altman family has so far declined to comment or release a statement regarding the death of their daughter and sister, but that didn’t stop older brother Nate from hanging out at the local bar last night. One has to wonder, indeed.
“Jesus, Nate.”
“Yeah, so. Now you know. You’re having dinner with a potential sister killer. A serial sister killer.”
“Fuck, please don’t say that.” My hands had begun to tremble and I had to put the phone down on the kitchen table. I took a deep breath and stared hard at the air in front of me, at nothing. Nate’s arrest after Nora went missing meant that any time Nora’s name was mentioned in this town, Nate’s wasn’t all that far behind.
***
I hear the phone ringing, somewhere in the distance, but leave it for someone else to pick up. No good ever came from a ringing phone anyway. I’m in bed, staring at my ceiling, unable to sleep, just as unable to get up, but when Mom calls my name I hear the urgency in it, and somehow summon the energy to get out of bed.
“That was Katherine,” she says when I walk into the kitchen. It’s a thick, gray day, the sky heavy with snow, and the light is low. Mom is standing by the kitchen island, the cordless phone dangling from her right hand, as she rhythmically bangs it against her thigh, a nervous tic.
“What’s going on?” I ask, and my voice feels thick and heavy too. From disuse maybe.
“Honey,” she says, walking towards me, pained concern written across her face, but also something else. Something far more worrying: confusion, shock. She takes a breath, swallowing it down before continuing, “Nate’s just been arrested.”
“For what?” I ask, momentarily stupid, because what else could it be for?
“On suspicion of kidnap.”
“Of Nora?”
“Yes. Of Nora.”
“Why?” I ask, voice cracking in two. “On what grounds?”
“I don’t know the specifics, sweetie. Katherine didn’t really know herself, but Jonathan’s gone with Nate to the station, so hopefully they’ll know more soon.”
I stumble over to the breakfast nook, sitting down with a thump. “He’d never …” but I can barely get the words out, and have to start again. “Nate would never hurt Nora. Never.”
“You can’t know that for sure, Mads. They didn’t always get along,” Mom says.
I turn to look at her, but I don’t see her, don’t recognize her. If even my mother thinks that, what hope is there that anyone else will believe in Nate?
“They came to see me earlier. Th
e Special Agents,” I said, puncturing the silence that had fallen over us.
Nate’s face whitened a little. “What did they want?”
“Just to know where I was Sunday night, if I’d seen Elle at all, that kind of thing.”
Nate was nodding although I couldn’t be sure if he was taking anything in.
“Can we just talk about something else?” he said suddenly, as if he hadn’t been the one to show me the article, to come to my house, to cook me dinner, to bring it all up. As if there was anything else we could possibly have talked about.
“Okay,” I said slowly, “if that’s what you want.”
“That’s what I want.”
“Okay.”
I poured us both some wine, settling into the uncomfortable wooden dining chair as best I could. Nate started chopping vegetables, his back to me. It was easier that way. I turned to look out of the windows that looked out over the porch and towards the lake. It was dark and snow was falling, slow and lazy, glinting like gold dust in the buttery light that flowed out from the living room windows. Beyond that there was nothing, nothing I could make out at least. Just a dark, cold night.
“Mads?” Nate said softly, and I realized I hadn’t been listening to him.
“Yeah?” I said, as if coming out of a daze.
“Could you pass me that can of beans?” He was pointing to an area right next to my elbow on the kitchen table.
I nodded and passed the can to him, not daring to look at him. The lake house felt small suddenly, as small as it had done for Nora’s memorial on Sunday, just three short but incredibly long days ago. My hand gripped my glass of wine a little tighter, raising it to my lips. When I put it back down on the table I realized it was empty. I poured myself some more, almost spilling it when Nate said suddenly: “Emmaline and I broke up.”
“Oh,” I said around a mouthful of wine, “I’m sorry.”
He sighed, stirring slowly. “Yeah. Thanks.”
“Why?”
“It was before all this, don’t worry. Before Elle.”
“I … okay. So, when was it? When did you guys break up?”
“The office Christmas party if you can believe that.” He let out a bark of laughter and something about it made me cringe.
It was the same as when he’d said “you don’t count.” It had been too long since we’d talked like this for me to just slip right back into it. I wanted to, but there was something about the whole situation that made me feel trapped and a little wild, as if Nate was trying to transport us back to a time that simply couldn’t be revisited. I wanted to scream at him that we weren’t that anymore, that it wasn’t that simple and it never would be. That relationships, friendships were hard and required effort and you didn’t get to slip them back on like an old sweater you’d previously discarded because you needed comfort and familiarity.
But then there was Elle, still haunting the corners of that cabin, her fingerprints lingering over every item I touched, the image of her perched on the arm of the living room couch on Sunday afternoon burned on my mind. And then there was me, who wanted to sink down softly into the comfort Nate used to be able to give me too, but couldn’t. So, I didn’t say what I wanted to say which was why are you telling me this? and instead just drank some more wine.
It continued on like that while he cooked. We talked, a little about Emmaline but mostly about small, inane things and I held back everything I wanted to say while wondering what it was he was holding back. I tried to read between the lines to decipher what it was he was really saying, but I lost my ability to translate for Nate years ago and was left making small talk with someone I’d known for most of my life. Maybe he wasn’t saying anything else at all. Maybe he had nothing else to say to me. Or maybe he just needed distraction.
At one point I tried to raise the subject of the messages I’d found on Elle’s Facebook—although I wasn’t exactly looking forward to admitting to him that I’d hacked into his younger sister’s private account—but just the mere mention of her name caused Nate’s face to visibly blanche. His fork clattered onto his plate, food abandoned as he looked at me sternly, reminding me that he didn’t want to talk about Elle, didn’t want to talk about any of that.
“What made you leave New York?” he asked me instead. I’d just taken a mouthful of chili, the shock of its heat making me reach for my wine again. Nate looked up at me, raising an eyebrow. “Too spicy for you?”
I shook my head. “Just hot.”
“So … New York? Why’d you leave?”
I hadn’t lived in New York for years, hadn’t even really thought about my time there for years, but it had been the last time Nate and I were in anything that approximated regular contact, so I guess it made sense for him to ask. It still took me a while to answer though, muddling my way through the intervening years to try and remember exactly what had happened and why I’d left.
Like anything, there wasn’t exactly a simple answer, but I tried to find one anyway. “I couldn’t control anything, or I didn’t have a handle on anything or something like that. I don’t know. Sometimes it comes out of nowhere, you know? That drop. I was doing okay and then I just wasn’t doing anything anymore.” I still ended up talking in roundabouts though, using euphemisms and a shorthand I hoped he still understood so I didn’t have to say the word out loud: depression.
“Like in college?”
“Yes. Except it wasn’t guidance counselors and the dean telling me I had to get my shit together or get out, it was being fired via email because I hadn’t made it into the office for over a week.”
“They fired you just like that?”
“It was an internship,” I said, sighing heavily, “they didn’t even really have to fire me. They just told me not to bother coming in again.”
***
It’s Serena who comes to get me. It’s always Serena. She appears in her perfect brushed camel coat, subtle checked cashmere scarf, black leather gloves, and oatmeal-colored beanie on the doorstep to my dingy basement apartment, and she is, most emphatically, despite my having been living in New York for almost eighteen months, the most glamorous person to appear there, ever.
“Thanks for coming,” is all I say and she kind of tips her head at me.
“Of course.” She looks around the room, making the very short walk from doorway, to kitchen, to bed. “Well, at least you don’t have a lot of stuff. It’s messy but we can just throw most of it out.” She glances at my unmade bed, where, curled up amidst an unfurled duvet is my laptop, yet another episode of Gilmore Girls paused mid-scene and mid-sentence. “Turn Lorelai back on and we’ll get started.”
“So, is everything okay?” Serena asks, once all the packing is done. “I promised I wasn’t going to say anything until we each had a Bloody Mary in us, but what are you doing, Mads? Why are you moving back home?”
I shrug. “It’s just not working out,” I say.
“What isn’t working out?”
“Do the specifics really matter, Serena?”
“Of course they do! If you’re leaving because you haven’t found your perfect job yet, then I’d tell you to grow up and no one ever gets their ideal job when they’re twenty-three; if you’re leaving because you need money then I’ll offer to lend you some; if you’re leaving because you realized New York just isn’t the place for you and you’re finding it hard to meet people and make friends, I’ll say fine then, come live with me in Chicago and we’ll go from there; if you’re leaving because you’ve stopped taking your meds and haven’t been to a therapy session in months then I’ll say, don’t be an idiot about your own well-being; and if you’re leaving because of some other unknown, vaguely quantifiable reason that I’ll probably never be able to understand then I’ll say please, please don’t move home, because I’m scared of what will happen to you there.”
“You’re scared of what will happen to me there? Jesus Christ, you make it sound like we escaped from a cult. I’m just moving back in with Mom and Dad. It’s
not exactly the end of the world.”
“I’m scared you’ll backslide. You were doing so well.”
“No, Serena,” I say quietly, “I was not doing so well. I am not doing well. At all.”
She takes a deep breath, expelling it loudly. “Okay. I just want to be sure that this is something you want. That you haven’t just backed yourself into a corner,” she says.
“This is what I want, Serena. Just because you don’t understand it, doesn’t mean it’s inherently wrong.”
She furrows her brow which always makes her look like she’s pouting. “I didn’t say it was wrong. I just want to be sure that you’re sure.”
“I’m sure.”
“Okay then.”
It was also Serena who made me apply for my master’s that winter, convincing me that it wasn’t a terrible idea, that I could go back to school, that I could handle it. Ange had already made her move to Madison, so she’d be close by, and maybe the familiarity would do me good. Maybe New York had been too much, too soon. Who knows. Most of the time everything felt like too much, too soon. But Serena could be pretty convincing, and, in the end, I got in and then spent the rest of that year working at the local movie theatre before heading back to college. I still think that was my best job. The safety of a dark room. The gentle drone of whatever movie was showing filling my head with noise. The buttery warmth of the popcorn smell that met me every day.
“So, you just left?” Nate asked, bringing me back to the lake house, the chili, the glass of wine in my hand.
“It wasn’t the place for me,” I said. “Or maybe I wasn’t for it. It doesn’t matter anyway. Worse things have happened.” We were both quiet, the silence heavy, loaded. I drained my wine glass, emboldening myself. “Nate, come on, what are we doing? We haven’t spoken in years, you could barely look at me on Sunday and now you want to hear about everything I’ve been doing since I last saw you?”