Silence

CHAPTER 5

I WOKE UP THE FOLLOWING MORNING WITH A KINK IN my neck and a distant memory of strange, colorless dreams. After showering, I buttoned myself into a zebra-print shirt-dress and pulled on cropped tights and ankle boots. If nothing else, at least I appeared put together on the outside. Smoothing out the mess on the inside was a bigger project than I could tackle in forty-five minutes.

I breezed into the kitchen to find Mom making old-fashioned oatmeal in a pot on the stove. It was the first time I could remember since my dad’s death that she’d made it from scratch. Following last night’s drama, I wondered if this fell in the ballpark of a pity meal.

“You’re up early,” she said, and paused in her slicing of strawberries near the sink.

“It’s after eight,” I pointed out. “Did Detective Basso call back?” I tried to act like I didn’t care what her answer was, and got busy brushing nonexistent lint off my dress.

“I told him it was a mistake. He understood.”

Meaning they’d agreed that I’d hallucinated. I was the girl who cried wolf, and from now on, everything I said would be brushed off as an exaggeration. Poor thing. Just nod and humor her.

“Why don’t you head back to bed and I’ll bring up breakfast when it’s finished?” Mom suggested, resuming her slicing.

“I’m fine. I’m already up.”

“Given everything that’s happened, I thought you might want to take things easy. Sleep in, read a good book, maybe take a nice long bubble bath.”

I couldn’t remember my mom ever suggesting I play it lazy on a school day. Our typical breakfast conversation usually included rushed exchanges along the lines of, Did you finish your essay? Did you pack your lunch? Is your bed made? Can you drop off the electricity bill on your way to school?

“How about it?” Mom tried again. “Breakfast in bed. Doesn’t get better than that.”

“What about school?”

“School can wait.”

“Until when?”

“I don’t know,” she said lightly. “A week, I guess. Or two. Until you’re feeling back to normal.”

Clearly she hadn’t thought this through, but in just a few short seconds, I had. I might have been tempted to take advantage of her leniency, but that wasn’t the point. “I guess it’s good to know I have a week or two to get back to normal.”

She set down the knife. “Nora—”

“Never mind that I can’t remember anything from the past five months. Never mind that from now on, every time I see a stranger watching me in a crowd, I’ll wonder if it’s him. Better yet, my amnesia is all over the news, and he must be laughing. He knows I can’t identify him. And I guess I should be comforted that because all the tests Dr. Howlett ran came back fine, just fine, probably nothing bad happened to me during those weeks. Maybe I can even make myself believe I was soaking up rays in Cancún. Hey, it could happen. Maybe my kidnapper wanted to set himself apart from the pack. Do the unexpected and pamper his victim. The truth is, normal might take years. Normal might never happen. But it’s definitely not going to happen if I lounge around here watching soaps and avoiding life. I’m going to school today, end of story.” I said it matter-of-factly, but my heart did one of those dizzy spins. I pushed the feeling aside, telling myself this was the only way I knew to get any semblance of my life back.

“School?” Mom was fully turned around now, the strawberries and oatmeal long forgotten.

“According to the calendar on the wall, it’s September ninth.” When Mom said nothing, I added, “School started two days ago.”

She pressed her lips together in a straight line. “I realize that.”

“Since school is in session, shouldn’t I be there?”

“Yes, eventually.” She wiped her hands on her apron. It looked to me like she was stalling or debating her word choice. I wished that whatever it was, she’d just spit it out. Right now, hot argument felt better than cool sympathy.

“Since when do you condone truancy?” I said, prodding her.

“I don’t want to tell you how to run your life, but I think you need to slow down.”

“Slow down? I can’t remember anything from the past several months of my life. I’m not going to slow down and let things slip even further out of reach. The only way I’m going to start feeling better about what happened is by reclaiming my life. I’m going to school. And then I’m going out with Vee for doughnuts, or whatever junk food she happens to crave today. And then I’m coming home and doing homework. And then I’m going to fall asleep listening to Dad’s old records. There’s so much I don’t know anymore. The only way I’m going to survive this is by clinging to what I do know.”

“A lot changed while you were gone—”

“You think I don’t know that?” I didn’t mean to keep pouncing on her, but I couldn’t understand how she could stand there and lecture me. Who was she to give me advice? Had she ever been through anything remotely similar? “Trust me, I get it. And I’m scared. I know I can’t go back, and it terrifies me. But at the same time—” How was I supposed to explain it to her, when I couldn’t even explain it to myself? Back there was safe. Back then I was in control. How was I supposed to jump forward, when the platform beneath my feet had been yanked out?

She blew out a deep, frazzled breath. “Hank Millar and I are dating.”

Her words drifted through me. I stared at her, feeling my forehead crease in confusion. “Sorry, what?”

“It happened while you were gone.” She braced a hand on the counter, and it looked to me like it was the only thing holding her up.

“Hank Millar?” For the second time in days, my mind was slow to throw a net around his name.

“He’s divorced now.”

“Divorced? I was only gone three months.”

“All those endless days of not knowing where you were, if you were even alive, he was all I had, Nora.”

“Marcie’s dad?” I blinked at her, bewildered. I couldn’t seem to push through the haze strung ear to ear inside my brain. My mom was dating the father of the only girl I’d ever hated? The girl who’d keyed my car, egged my locker, and nicknamed me Nora the Whore-a?

“We dated. In high school and college. Before I met your dad,” she added hastily.

“You,” I said, finally pushing some volume into my voice, “and Hank Millar?”

She started speaking very quickly. “I know you’re going to be tempted to judge him based on your opinion of Marcie, but he’s actually a very sweet guy. So thoughtful and generous and romantic.” She smiled, then blushed, flustered.

I was outraged. This was what my mom was doing while I was missing?

“Right.” I snatched a banana from the fruit bowl, then headed for the front door.

“Can we talk about this?” Her bare feet thumped on the wood floor as she followed after me. “Can you at least hear me out?”

“Sounds like I’m a little late to the let’s-talk-it-over party.”

“Nora!”

“What?” I snapped, spinning around. “What do you want me to say? That I’m happy for you? I’m not. We used to make fun of the Millars. We used to joke that Marcie’s attitude problem was mercury poisoning due to all the expensive seafood their family eats. And now you’re dating him?”

“Yes, him. Not Marcie.”

“It’s all the same to me! Did you even wait until the ink on the divorce papers was dry? Or did you make your move while he was still married to Marcie’s mom, because three months is awfully fast.”

“I don’t have to answer that!” Apparently realizing how red in the face she was, she composed herself by kneading the back of her neck. “Is this because you think I’m betraying your dad? Believe me, I’ve already tortured myself enough, questioning if anything short of eternity is too soon to move on. But he would have wanted me to be happy. He wouldn’t have wanted me to mope around feeling sorry for myself forever.”

“Does Marcie know?”

She flinched at my sudden transition. “What? No. I don’t think Hank has told her yet.”

In other words, for the time being, I didn’t have to live in fear of Marcie taking our parents’ decisions out on me. Of course, when she did figure out the truth, I could guarantee the retribution would be swift, humiliating, and brutal. “I’m late for school.” I rummaged through the dish on the entryway table. “Where are my keys?”

“They should be in there.”

“My house key is. Where’s the Fiat key?”

She applied pressure to the bridge of her nose. “I sold the Fiat.”

I directed the full weight of my glare at her. “Sold it? Excuse me?” Granted, in the past I’d expressed just how much I hated the Fiat’s peeling brown paint, weather-beaten white leather seats, and untimely habit the car’s stick shift had of popping out of the shifter. But still. It was my car. Had my mom given up on me so quickly after my disappearance that she’d started hocking my belongings on Craigslist? “What else?” I demanded. “What else did you sell while I was gone?”

“I sold it before you went missing,” she murmured, eyes lowered.

A swallow caught in my throat. Meaning once upon a time I’d known she’d sold my car, only I couldn’t remember it now. It was a painful reminder of just how defenseless I really was. I couldn’t even conduct a conversation with my mom without looking like an idiot. Rather than apologize, I flung open the front door and stomped down the porch steps.

“Whose car is that?” I asked, coming up short. A white convertible Volkswagen sat on the cement slab where the Fiat used to reside. From the look of it, it had taken up permanent residence. It might have been there yesterday morning when we’d pulled in from the hospital, but I’d hardly been in the frame of mind to soak up my surroundings. The only other time I’d left the house was last night, and I’d gone out through the back door.

“Yours.”

“What do you mean, mine?” I shielded my eyes from the morning sun as I glowered back at her.

“Scott Parnell gave it to you.”

“Who?”

“His family moved back to town at the beginning of summer.”

“Scott?” I repeated, thumbing through my long-term memory, since the name provoked a vague recollection. “The boy in my kindergarten class? The one who moved to Portland years ago?”

Mom nodded wearily.

“Why would he give me a car?”

“I never got the chance to ask you. You disappeared the night he dropped it off.”

“I went missing the night Scott mysteriously donated a car to me? Didn’t that set off any alarm bells? There’s nothing normal about a teenage guy giving a car to a girl he hardly knows and hasn’t seen in years. Something about this isn’t right. Maybe — maybe the car was evidence of something, and he needed to get rid of it. Did that ever cross your mind?”

“The police searched the car. They questioned the previous owner. But I think Detective Basso had ruled out Scott’s involvement after hearing your side of the night’s events. You’d been shot earlier, before you went missing, and while Detective Basso originally thought Scott was the shooter, you told him it was—”

“Shot?” I shook my head in confusion. “What do you mean shot?”

She closed her eyes briefly, exhaling. “With a gun.”

“What?” How had Vee left this out?

“At Delphic Amusement Park.” She shook her head. “I hate even thinking about it,” she whispered, her voice breaking. “I was out of town when I got the call. I didn’t make it back in time. I never saw you again, and I’ve regretted nothing in my life more. Before you disappeared, you told Detective Basso that a man named Rixon shot you in the fun house. You said Scott was there too, and Rixon also shot him. The police looked for Rixon, but it was like he vanished. Detective Basso was convinced Rixon wasn’t even the shooter’s real name.”

“Where was I shot?” I asked, my skin crawling with an unpleasant tingle. I hadn’t noticed a scar, or any indication of a wound.

“Your left shoulder.” It seemed to pain my mom just to say it. “The shot was in and out, hitting only muscle. We’re very, very lucky.”

I tugged my collar down over my shoulder. Sure enough, I could see scar tissue where the skin had healed.

“The police spent weeks looking for Rixon. They read your diary, but you’d ripped out several pages, and they didn’t find his name in the rest of it. They asked Vee, but she denied ever having heard his name. He wasn’t in the records at school. There was no record of him at the DMV—”

“I ripped out pages in my diary?” I cut in. It didn’t sound like me at all. Why would I do such a thing?

“Do you remember where you put the pages? Or what they said?”

I shook my head absently. What had I gone to such great lengths to hide?

Mom made a deflated sound. “Rixon was a ghost, Nora. And wherever he went, he took all the answers with him.”

“I can’t accept that,” I said. “What about Scott? What did he say when Detective Basso questioned him?”

“Detective Basso put all his energy into hunting down Rixon. I don’t think he ever spoke to Scott. The last time I talked to Lynn Parnell, Scott had moved on. I think he’s in New Hampshire now, selling pest control.”

“That’s it?” I said in disbelief. “Detective Basso never tried to track down Scott and hear his side?” My mind cranked at full speed. Something about Scott wasn’t sitting right. According to my mom’s account, I told the police he’d been shot by Rixon too. He was the only other witness that Rixon existed. How did that fit with the donated Volkswagen? It seemed to me that at least one crucial piece of information was missing.

“I’m sure he had a reason for not talking to Scott.”

“I’m sure he did too,” I said cynically. “Like maybe he’s incompetent?”

“If you’d give Detective Basso a chance, you’d see he’s actually very sharp. He’s very good at his job.”

I didn’t want to hear it.

“What now?” I said tersely.

“We do the only thing we can. Do our best to move on.”

For one moment, I pushed aside my doubts of Scott Parnell. There was still so much to deal with. How many other hundreds of things was I in the dark on? Was this what I had in store? Days upon days of humiliation as I relearned my life? I could already envision what would be waiting for me inside the walls of school. Discreet looks of pity. The awkward averting of eyes. The shuffling of feet and drawn-out silences. The safe option of shying away from me altogether.

I felt indignation boil up inside me. I didn’t want to be a spectacle. I didn’t want to be the object of rabid speculation. What kinds of shameful theories involving my abduction had already spread? What did people think about me now?

“If you see Scott, be sure to point him out so I can thank him for the car,” I said bitterly. “Right after I ask him why he gave it to me in the first place. Maybe you and Detective Basso are convinced he’s innocent, but too many things about his story aren’t adding up.”

“Nora—”

I thrust my hand out. “Can I have the key?”

After a moment’s pause, she unhooked a key from her own key chain and laid it in my palm. “Be careful.”

“Oh, not to worry. The only thing I’m in danger of is making a fool of myself. Know of any other people I might smack into today and not recognize? Fortunately, I remember the way to school. And would you look at that,” I said, tugging open the car door and dropping inside. “The Volkswagen is a five-speed. Good thing I learned how to drive five-speed pre-amnesia.”

“I know now isn’t the best time, but we’ve been invited to dinner tonight.”

I met her eyes coldly. “Have we.”

“Hank would like to take us to Coopersmith’s. To celebrate your return.”

“How thoughtful of him,” I said, ramming the key into the ignition and revving the engine. By the noisy sputtering, I assumed the car hadn’t budged since the day I’d vanished.

“He’s trying,” she called above the whine of the engine. “He’s trying really hard to make this work.”

I had a snide retort on the tip of my tongue, but decided to go for more impact. I’d worry about the repercussions later. “What about you? Are you trying to make it work? Because I’ll be up front. If he stays, I go. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to figure out how to live my life again.”