Nowhere Girl

by Susan Strecker

  Gabby stood up too and pulled me into a hug. “You did not do anything wrong. Savannah wasn’t an angel.” Her face was hard. “Remember how she stopped eating lunch with us to hang out with the seniors? And how when she got invited to parties, she wouldn’t bring us?” Gabby’s voice was tight. “I’m sorry, Cades, but Savannah was kind of all about Savannah.”

  “What?” I backed away from her. “She was my sister, Gabby. And someone killed her.” I squatted down and pulled a few more notebooks out. Two of them appeared to be more diaries, and the third one had the words Slam Jam written across it in green Magic Marker.

  Gabby saw the books in my arms. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. Savannah was an amazing girl and a great friend. But she was human, like the rest of us.” She reached for the notebooks in my arms. “Why don’t you give those to me, and I’ll go through them for you?”

  I shook away the notion that Gabby had had mean thoughts about my sister. “Remember this?” I asked. “Our slam book. We used to keep tabs on people in this one, especially the mean girls. I bet you Emma’s mentioned in here a million times.”

  Gabby laughed, a forced sound. “Here, let me take that.” When I wouldn’t let go, she tried to tug it out of my hands.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I’d rather go through these.”

  She sighed loudly. “Okay, but we should remember that high school was a long time ago, and we all said things we didn’t mean.”

  There were only four boxes left, so we packed them in my car, and I told Gabby I’d go through them later. We locked up the storage unit, and I hugged her good-bye, just wanting to go home and take a shower.

  CHAPTER

  31

  I came home to a dark house and the darker thoughts that my sister had a secret boyfriend and my best friend kind of hated her. For once, I would have liked it if Greg had been home. We couldn’t talk about the pregnancies that I’d lost, one after the other, or that there was a distance between us that was like trying to reach through glass, but he was always good at analyzing other people.

  I poured myself an inch of Grey Goose, which I almost never drank, and moved the boxes one by one into my office. I’d found one of the crocheted baby blankets that Gramma Martino had made Savannah and me before we were born. Mine was light yellow, and hers was a minty green. Mine had gone to college with me and made the move from the gingerbread house to this one. It was dry-cleaned and folded in the antique trunk at the foot of my bed.

  I settled on the love seat with Savannah’s blanket on my lap and began reading. I finished the vodka, poured myself another, and read page after page of sentences that were all the same.

  I’ve never felt this way about anyone. He makes me feel so loved. I can tell him anything.

  As I sat for hours reading, I found myself jealous of a boy I’d never met. Yet, somehow, I was also comforted by him. Whoever he’d been, he clearly loved my sister. There were entries about the silver toe ring he’d bought her. And how their secret code was 1 + 1 = 1 because they felt like the two of them together equaled one whole person.

  The night wore on, and I got a text from Greg saying he was stuck at the hospital with an emergency placement. I’d been sleeping with the third notebook on my chest when the ding of my cell phone woke me. It was after two in the morning, but I wanted to make a pot of coffee and keep reading. Savannah had had a love in her life by the time she was sixteen years old that I still hadn’t experienced. All at once, it made me sad for myself, but I was somehow so comforted to know that she had someone who loved her before somebody else took her away.

  I got up to make coffee, but I was so tired I lay back down on the couch, pulled up the worn blanket that still faintly smelled of my sister, and closed my eyes. I woke up to Greg sitting beside me quietly saying my name.

  “What’s all this?” he asked when I startled awake.

  I bolted up, panicked with the thought that I hadn’t found the guest book. “What time is it?” I took the notebook and threw it on the floor as if it were nothing.

  “Ten after seven. Did you sleep in here last night?”

  “Yeah, I was doing research, and I must have dozed off.” He glanced at the boxes, and I was terrified he was going to ask me what was in them, where they came from. I was having a hard enough time processing what I’d learned about Savannah and that Gabby had seemed so angry the night before. Now that I’d spent the night alone reading, I wasn’t ready to talk about it yet.

  Greg kissed my forehead and said, “I made a pot of coffee. I need to take a quick shower and get back to the hospital. Last night was a cluster.”

  I waited until I heard his footsteps on the stairs before I unpacked the rest of the boxes. Most of the contents were stuff my parents could have thrown out—torn-up jeans, old sneakers, makeup bags. But I understood why they’d kept everything. Stashed between two yearbooks, I found the guest book from Savannah’s funeral.

  The gold letters on the cover had faded, but the ink inside was not smudged and was as bright as it had been on that cloudless November day when we’d lowered my sister into the ground. I sat on the floor and flipped through the pages. Anyone in that book could be Savannah’s murderer. Any of those students, administrators, janitors, the teachers with their black-and-white headshots and bad haircuts. And maybe one of them had been her boyfriend.

  “I want to take you to dinner tonight,” Greg said from the doorway.

  “Holy shit.” I dropped the book. “I didn’t hear you come down the stairs.” He was dressed in a suit and tie. Ever since we’d started therapy, he’d been grinning at me in this forced, sort of scary way that was meant, I guessed, to show me he really cared.

  “You up for it?”

  I came out into the hall, closing the office door behind me. “You know I have dinner at David’s tonight.” I thought of Brady and me sitting in front of the liquor store, trying again.

  “I know,” he said, smiling. “And this time, I’m going to go.”

  “Oh!” I tried to sound bright, happy. I had too much to think about to deal with Greg right then.

  He followed me down the hall to the kitchen. “Is that okay?”

  “Yes, yes, of course. Everyone will be thrilled to see you.” Even as the words were coming out of my mouth, we both must have known that was a lie.

  Greg stopped short of the kitchen, and I went around the island and started washing my hands. I had no idea why I was doing this other than to get away from him.

  He was handsome standing there in his suit without a patient file or a yoga mat under his arm, and I felt suddenly horrible about myself. There was my husband, his curly hair so neatly combed and his tie a little crooked and those cuff links he worked on every day slightly askew.

  “You don’t want me to go, do you?” he asked.

  “What?” I dried my hands on the dish towel beside me. “Of course I do. It’s just that, you know, we’ve been doing this dinner for a hundred years, and I’m surprised, that’s all.” I came around the island, and Greg did something really weird: he grabbed me around the middle and kissed me, open mouthed and soft. And the world rested for a minute, like a carnival ride that stops right before it throws you around again.

  “I’m going to try, Cady,” he said when we both came up for air. “I really want this to work.”

  I felt kind of stunned, and for some reason, I thought of Patrick in the orchard, showing me a picture of his son. “So do I,” I told him. “I really want it to work too.” My voice sounded unnatural in that big echoey space, because what really took my breath away was that I’d felt way more kissing Greg than I’d felt kissing Brady, the hot crush of my high school years.

  After Greg left for work, I went back into my office to get my cell phone, and I noticed the slam book on the floor next to the couch. I knew I should get in the shower and work on Devils, but I picked it up and brought it into the kitchen with me. I poured a cup of coffee I was still trying to convince myself I liked and opened i
t to a random page.

  “She thinks she’s better than us,” someone had written in pink ink.

  Now that she’s the new It Girl with the seniors, she barely even talks to us. It makes me want to kill her.

  The word kill was underlined three times. I knew that handwriting. It’d been on my birthday cards and notes left on my car for almost my entire life. It was Gabby’s.

  * * *

  Of course, no one minded that Greg was coming to a Thursday dinner. Chandler made more risotto, David said he’d thawed too many steaks anyway, and Gabby’s salads were always big enough to feed a fraternity. But the night was awkward. David had finished his model Mustang, and we all stood around asking questions like how long did it take and how many pieces there were. And at dinner, Gabby kept sending Duncan snarky texts, trying to pick a fight because she was thinking about breaking up with him. She said he’d gotten clingy and needy. But poor, dopey Duncan kept responding that he loved her. Odion and Chandler brought Madelyn, who refused to eat the steak or the risotto and then spilled her chocolate milk across the table while her parents fought about how little Odion was studying for his citizenship test. I was hoping no one would say anything about last time when Brady had come and we’d stayed away at the liquor store too long. We couldn’t discuss the things we usually talked about—mainly my marriage and whether it was working out. And Brady. Of course Brady.

  Finally, Gabby said we were going outside for a smoke, even though I never smoked, and I sat on the front porch next to her while she filled the air with lopsided circles.

  “Thanks for going with me yesterday,” I said. I wanted to ask her if she hated Savannah or if she was mad at her right before she died, but I didn’t know how.

  “No problem. Did you find the funeral book?”

  I picked up the pack of cigarettes and smelled them. I crinkled my nose and put them in between us. I didn’t understand their appeal. “I did. This morning. And how about our old rag book? I’d forgotten all about that thing.”

  “Did you read it?” She ground out her cigarette while she spoke. “You did.”

  “Gabs,” I said tentatively. “I thought you and Savannah were friends.”

  “Fuck,” she said loudly. “Fuck. I was hoping you didn’t read that part.” Her voice got high and tight. I’d almost never seen her upset. “We were friends. I loved your sister, but I love you more. And I hated the way she treated you. It was so obvious to everyone how much you loved her. I mean, it was like you practically thought you two were the same person. And then that stupid group of seniors took her in, and all of a sudden, she was too good for us. For you. I saw how much it hurt you, and I kind of hated her for it.” Hated her enough to kill her? I wondered. But I didn’t say anything. I didn’t answer her. I couldn’t think of anything to say. “Can we forget about it?” she asked. “It was so long ago.”

  “Sure,” I said, rubbing my arms like I was cold. But really, I needed to get away from her. “No problem.”

  We played Cranium, each of us paired up, and Mads finally sacked out on the living room couch. Greg and I lost, and I got slowly drunk. Whenever I drank too much, I also got strangely quiet, so that everyone around me got louder and louder, and I could tell Greg was psychoanalyzing it all, when what I really wanted him to do was loosen up and have fun.

  On the way home, I watched the sleeping houses of Stanwich sail by. “Well,” Greg said. “So that’s what you do every Thursday night.”

  The car was spinning a little bit. “It’s usually more fun than that.”

  He turned up the heat. “I should hope so.” He shifted gears, and my stomach felt like it was in my throat. “Are things okay with you and Gabby?”

  I supposed I should have known he’d pick up on that. He was a shrink, after all. “Sure. Why?”

  “I don’t know. It felt like you were avoiding each other a little. I thought maybe you’d gotten into an argument on the porch.”

  “Maybe we need a break,” I blurted before I could think about it.

  “But she’s been your best friend since you were seven. You’ve never needed a break.”

  I turned away from him in my seat, feeling like I might cry. “Well, now we do.”

  “Does that mean you’re not going to Cookies on Sunday? I’d love it if you would come to yoga with me.”

  Did he say yoga? “Why would you want me to do that?” I asked. “To torture me?” I laughed, but he stared straight ahead, his hands gripping the steering wheel.

  “It’s very relaxing.”

  “Oh,” I said, and then I tried to stop thinking, because I felt so thoroughly confused.

  * * *

  Being drunk always made me feel slightly dirty, especially if it was martinis—which it had been—and when we got home, I stood in the hot shower until I thought I might fall asleep. When I got out, Greg was sitting up in bed, reading files, his rectangular glasses perched studiously at the end of his nose.

  “Hi,” I said, still feeling mildly drunk and sort of glad he was still up.

  He took off his glasses and set them on his lap next to the files. “Cady,” he said while I was pulling my nightgown out of the drawer.

  “What?” I turned around.

  “I want to see Dr. Mirando again.” Mirando. I never had been able to think of his name. I pressed the nightgown against my chest. It was flannel with roses across it, and I loved how soft it was.

  “Oh.” I could hear the surprise in my voice. “Weren’t we just there?”

  Greg closed his eyes briefly, and then with a lot of patience, he said, “We said we’d look at our calendars and get back to him. Do you have some resistance to going on a regular basis?”

  “Yes,” I wanted to say. I hated sitting in that cramped office with him and pretending I was actually telling the truth. “No,” I said, shaking out the nightgown. “I guess I’ve been busy.”

  Greg put his glasses back on his nose and picked up his file again. “With serial killers,” he said.

  “That’s research,” I told him defensively.

  He raised his eyes to me and then settled them back on the page. “Okay, Cady. So you’ve said.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I quickly pulled the nightgown over my head.

  “Nothing.” He pinched the bridge of his nose with two fingers. “I think it’s important to see Dr. Mirando as soon as we can. I’ll make an appointment tomorrow.”

  “Any day but Tuesday,” I said in hopes that maybe Brady would want to spend his day off with me.

  “I know, Cady, Tuesday, Tuesday, Tuesday.” I slid into bed. I felt myself reaching for his hand under the sheet, thinking I could make amends—for what, I wasn’t sure—but before Greg could turn to me, I was already slipping into dreamland.

  CHAPTER

  32

  I woke up the next morning with a headache that made me want to bash myself in the face with a hammer. While I was downstairs making coffee, my phone beeped. I picked it up. There were two missed calls and five texts from Hazel, who owned the barn where Bliss was stabled, saying something was wrong with him. “I’ll be right there,” I wrote. I ran upstairs, threw my pajamas on the bed, slid into a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, and was out the door in less than five minutes. I sped through yellow lights and got to the intersection of Rattling Valley and Burnt Mill faster than I ever had before. I was almost out of cell range when Brady called. “You coming?” he asked when I answered. I’d forgotten I was supposed to meet him this morning for breakfast to talk more about my book.

  “Bliss is sick.” I almost couldn’t get the words out. “I’m on my way to the barn.”

  There was a pause, during which I thought I lost him driving those winding dirt roads to the farm, but then Brady’s voice came on again. “Are you avoiding me?”

  Jesus Christ. “No, Brady. Bliss, Savannah’s horse, is sick. I have to go to him. I’m sorry I forgot to call; I’m hungover and—” but I heard the background noise go quiet, and the screen went
black.

  When I got there, Dr. Stewart’s old Denali was in the parking lot, and Hazel’s Subaru was parked at an angle to the door. Bliss was almost twenty-seven now, one of my last connections to my sister, and I didn’t know what I’d do if I lost him. I’d hardly put the car in park when I jumped out, and Hazel came to meet me.

  “He’s colicking,” she said, which she’d already told me in the texts. “We’re having a hard time keeping him up.” This she had not told me.

  “Shit.” I could feel the kick of my heart. Hazel was wearing denim overalls and a pair of ancient muck boots. Her hair was in one long braid down her back, even longer than the last time I’d seen her. “For how long?”

  “When I got here this morning, he didn’t eat breakfast and kept looking at his stomach. I listened for bowel sounds, and when I didn’t hear any, I gave him a shot of Banamine. I finished feeding the other horses and threw hay out to the yearlings in the field. When I came back to check on him, he was down and rolling pretty violently. I called Dr. Stewart, texted you, and have been walking him ever since.”

  I felt that panic again, the sky closing in on me like I might pass out.

  I rushed into the barn and to Bliss’s stall. Dr. Stewart had his stethoscope on and was listening to Bliss’s belly. He held up a finger, indicating I should wait. After a few seconds, he took the hard plastic ends out of his ears and wrapped it around his neck.

  “He has good gut sounds.” Dr. Stewart’s eyes were rimmed in red, and his hair hadn’t been brushed.

  “Thank God,” I said. “Are you okay?”

  Dr. Stewart yawned. “I was up all night with a horse at Market Street. Left that call to come here.”

  “Was it one of Anne’s?”

  “Customer’s,” he said. “That new girl who has the bright-pink coat and matching stirrups.”