Silence (4 page)

Maybe he wasn’t a police officer. Maybe he was trying to look like one. Anyone could get their hands on a Kojak light. Where was his squad car? From where I stood, squinting through his windshield, he didn’t appear to be in uniform.

All these thoughts tumbled through me in a hurry.

I stood at the foot of the sloping bridge, gripping the stone wall for support. I was sure the maybe-officer had seen me, but I moved into the shadows of the trees bowing over the river’s edge anyway. From my peripheral vision, the black water of the Wentworth River glinted. As kids, Vee and I had crouched under this very bridge, catching crawdads from the riverbank by inserting sticks speared with hotdog pieces into the water. The crawdads had fastened their claws to the hotdog, refusing to let go even when we lifted them out of the river and shook them loose in a bucket.

The river was deep at the center. It was also well hidden, snaking through undeveloped property where no one had forked out money to install streetlights. At the end of the field, the water rushed on toward the industrial district, past retired factories, and out to sea.

I briefly wondered if I had it in me to jump off the bridge. I was terrified of heights and the sensation of falling, but I knew how to swim. I only had to make it into the water …

A car door shut, yanking me back to the street. The man in the maybe-police car had stepped out. He was all mob: curly dark hair, and dressed formally in a black shirt, black tie, black slacks.

Something about him slapped my memory. But before I could truly grasp it, my memory slammed shut and I was as lost as ever.

An assortment of twigs and branches littered the ground. I
bent down, and when I straightened, I was holding a stick half as thick as my arm.

The maybe-officer pretended not to see my weapon, but I knew he had. He pinned a police badge to his shirt, then raised his hands level with his shoulders.
I’m not going to hurt you,
the gesture said.

I didn’t believe him.

He sauntered a few steps forward, taking care not to make any sudden movements. “Nora. It’s me.” I flinched when he spoke my name. I’d never heard his voice before, and that made my heart pound hard enough that I felt it clear up around my ears. “Are you hurt?”

I continued to watch him with growing anxiety, my mind darting in multiple directions. The badge could easily be fake. I’d already decided the Kojak light was. But if he wasn’t police, who was he?

“I called your mom,” he said, climbing the gradual slope of the bridge. “She’s going to meet us at the hospital.”

I didn’t drop the stick. My shoulders rose and fell with every breath; I could feel air panting between my teeth. Another bead of sweat slicked beneath my clothes.

“Everything’s going to be okay,” he said. “It’s all over. I’m not going to let anybody hurt you. You’re safe now.”

I didn’t like his long, easy stride or the familiar way he spoke to me.

“Don’t come any closer,” I told him, the sweat on my palms making it hard to grip the stick properly.

His forehead creased. “Nora?”

The stick wobbled in my hand. “How do you know my name?” I demanded, not about to let him know how scared I was. How much
he
scared me.

“It’s me,” he repeated, gazing straight into my eyes, as if he expected lights to coming blazing on. “Detective Basso.”

“I don’t know you.”

He said nothing for a moment. Then tried a new approach. “Do you remember where you’ve been?”

I watched him warily. I moved deeper in my memory, looking down even the darkest and oldest corridors, but his face wasn’t there. I had no recollection of him. And I
wanted
to remember him. I wanted something—anything—familiar to cling to, so I could make sense of a world that, from my vantage point, had been twisted to distortion.

“How did you get to the cemetery tonight?” he asked, tilting his head ever so slightly in that direction. His movements were cautious. His eyes were cautious. Even the line of his mouth was politic. “Did someone drop you off? Did you walk?” He waited. “I need you to tell me, Nora. This is important. What happened tonight?”

I’d like to know myself.

A wave of nausea rolled through me. “I want to go home.” I heard a brittle clatter near my feet. Too late, I realized I’d dropped the stick. The breeze felt cold on my empty palms. I wasn’t supposed to be here. The whole night was a huge mistake.

No. Not the whole night. What did I know of it? I couldn’t remember the whole of it. My only starting point was a slice back in time, when I’d woken on a grave, cold and lost.

I drew up a mental picture of the farmhouse, safe and warm and
real
, and felt a tear trickle down the side of my nose.

“I can take you home.” He nodded sympathetically. “I just need to take you to the hospital first.”

I squeezed my eyes shut, hating myself for being reduced to crying. I couldn’t think of a better or faster way to show him just how frightened I really was.

He sighed—the softest of sounds, as if he wished there were a way around the news he was about to deliver. “You’ve been missing for eleven weeks, Nora. Do you hear what I’m saying? Nobody knows where you’ve been the past three months. You need to be looked at. We need to make sure you’re okay.”

I stared at him without really seeing him. Tiny bells pealed in my ears but sounded very far off. Deep in my stomach I felt a lurch, but I tried to stuff the queasiness away. I’d cried in front of him, but I wasn’t going to be sick.

“We think you were abducted,” he said, his face unreadable. He’d closed the distance between us and now stood too close. Saying things I couldn’t grasp. “Kidnapped.”

I blinked. Just stood there and blinked.

A sensation grabbed my heart, tugging and twisting. My body went slack, tottering in the air. I saw the gold blur of the streetlights
above, heard the river lapping under the bridge, smelled the exhaust from his running car. But it was all in the background. A dizzy afterthought.

With only that brief warning, I felt myself swaying, swaying. Falling into nothing.

I was unconscious before I hit the ground.

I
WOKE IN A HOSPITAL.

The ceiling was white, the walls a serene blue. The room smelled of lilies, fabric softener, and ammonia. A cart on wheels pushed up beside my bed balanced two flower arrangements, a bouquet of balloons that cheered
GET WELL SOON
! and a purple foil gift bag. The names on the note cards seesawed in and out of focus.
DOROTHEA AND LIONEL. VEE.

There was movement in the corner.

“Oh, baby,” a familiar voice whispered, and the person behind it flung herself out of her chair and at me. “Oh, sweetheart.” She sat on the edge of my bed and drew me into a suffocating hug. “I love you,” she choked into my ear. “I love you so much.”

“Mom.” The mere sound of her name scattered the nightmares I’d just pulled myself out of. A wave of calm filled me, loosening the knot of fear in my chest.

I knew she was crying by the way her body shook against mine, little tremors at first and then great racking heaves. “You remember me,” she said, nothing short of deliverance welling up in her voice. “I was so scared. I thought—Oh, baby. I thought the worst!”

And just like that, the nightmares crept back under my skin. “Is it true?” I asked, something greasy and acidic churning in my stomach. “What the detective said. Was I … for eleven weeks …” I couldn’t bring myself to say the word.
Kidnapped.
It was so clinical. So impossible.

She made a sound of distress.

“What—happened to me?” I asked.

Mom dragged her fingertips under her eyes to dry them. I knew her well enough to know she was only trying to appear self-composed for my benefit. I immediately braced myself for bad news.

“The police are doing everything they can to piece together answers.” She put on a smile, but it wavered. As if she needed something to anchor herself to, she reached for my hand and squeezed it.
“The most important thing is that you’re back. You’re home. Everything that happened—it’s over. We’re going to get through this.”

“How was I kidnapped?” The question was directed more at myself. How had this happened? Who would want to kidnap me? Had they pulled up in a car while I was leaving school? Stuffed me in the trunk while I was crossing the parking lot? Had it been that easy? Please no. Why hadn’t I
run
? Why hadn’t I
fought
? Why had it taken me so long to escape? Because clearly that’s what had happened.
Wasn’t it?
The shortage of answers pecked away at me.

“What do you remember?” Mom asked. “Detective Basso said even a small detail might be helpful. Think back. Try to remember. How did you get to the cemetery? Where were you before that?”

“I don’t remember anything. It’s like my memory …” I broke off. It was like part of my memory had been stolen. Snatched away, with nothing left in its place but a hollow panic. A feeling of violation swayed inside me, making me feel as if I’d been shoved off a high platform without warning. I was falling, and I feared the sensation far more than hitting bottom. There was no end; just a constant sense of gravity having its way with me.

“What is the last thing you remember?” Mom asked.

“School.” The answer rolled off my tongue automatically. Slowly my shattered memories began to stir, fragments shifting back together, locking against one another to form something solid. “I had a biology test coming up. But I guess I missed it,” I added, the reality of those eleven missing weeks sinking in deeper.
I had a clear picture of sitting in Coach McConaughy’s biology class. The familiar smells of chalk dust, cleaning supplies, stuffy air, and the ever-present tang of body odor rose up from memory. Vee was beside me, my lab partner. Our textbooks were open on the black granite table in front of us, but Vee had stealthily slid a copy of
US Weekly
into hers.

“You mean chemistry,” Mom corrected. “Summer school.”

I fastened my eyes to hers, unsure. “I’ve never gone to summer school.”

Mom brought her hand to her mouth. Her skin had blanched. The only sound in the room was the methodical tick of the clock above the window. I heard each tiny chime echo through me, ten times, before I found my voice.

“What day is it? What month?” My mind spun back to the cemetery. The composting leaves. The subtle chill in the air. The man with the flashlight insisting it was September. The only word repeating over and over in my mind was
no
.
No
, it wasn’t possible.
No
, this wasn’t happening.
No
, months of my life couldn’t have just walked off unnoticed. I shoved my way back through my memories, trying to grasp anything that could help me bridge this moment to sitting in Coach’s biology class. But there was nothing to build on. Any memory of summer was completely and utterly gone.

“It’s okay, baby,” Mom murmured. “We’re going to get your memory back. Dr. Howlett said most patients see marked improvement over time.”

I tried to sit up, but my arms were a tangle of tubes and medical monitoring equipment. “Just tell me what month it is!” I repeated hysterically.

“September.” Her crumpled face was unbearable. “September sixth.”

I sank back down, blinking. “I thought it was April. I can’t remember anything past April.” I threw up walls to block the outbreak of fear banging inside me. I couldn’t deal with it in one great flood. “Is summer really—is it
over
? Just like that?”

“Just like that?” she echoed in a detached voice. “It dragged
on
. Every day without you … Eleven weeks of knowing nothing … The panic, the worry, the fear, the hopelessness never ending …”

I mulled this over, doing the math. “If it’s September, and I was gone for eleven weeks, then I went missing—”

“June twenty-first,” she said blandly. “The night of summer solstice.”

The wall I’d built was cracking faster than I could mentally repair it. “But I don’t remember June. I don’t even remember May.”

We watched each other, and I knew we were sharing the same terrible thought. Was it possible my amnesia stretched further than the missing eleven weeks, all the way back to
April?
How could something like this even happen?

“What did the doctor say?” I asked, moistening my lips, which felt papery and dry. “Did I have a head injury? Was I drugged? Why can’t I remember anything?”

“Dr. Howlett said it’s retrograde amnesia.” Mom paused. “It means some of your preexisting memories are lost. We just weren’t sure how far back the memory loss went. April,” she whispered to herself, and I could see all hope fading from her eyes.

“Lost? How lost?”

“He thinks it’s psychological.”

I plowed my hands through my hair, leaving an oily residue on my fingers. It suddenly dawned on me that I hadn’t considered where I’d been all those weeks. I could have been chained in a dank basement. Or tied in the woods. Clearly I hadn’t showered in days. A glance at my arms revealed smudges of dirt, small cuts, and bruises all over. What had I gone through?

“Psychological?” I forced myself to shut out the speculations, which only made the hysteria clamp down harder. I had to stay strong. I needed answers. I couldn’t fall apart. If I could force my mind to focus despite the spots popping across my vision …

“He thinks you’re blocking it to avoid remembering something traumatic.”

“I’m
not
blocking it.” I closed my eyes, unable to control the tears leaking from the corners. I sucked in a shaky breath and clamped my hands into tight balls to stop the awful trembling in my fingers. “I would know if I was trying to forget five months of my life,” I said, speaking slowly to force a measure of calm into my voice. “I want to know what happened to me.”

If I glared at her, she ignored it. “Try to remember,” she urged
gently. “Was it a man? Were you with a male this whole time?”