Silence

“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.

CHAPTER 2

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.