Cecily and Tom had renovated it several years back in anticipation of Cecily’s mom moving in. Only she hadn’t. Tom had been annoyed at the waste of money. Which Kaitlyn shouldn’t know. Because Tom was the one who told her. Any knowledge she had from Tom about his life with Cecily was contraband. Something to be cast off, forgotten. It was a nice basement, though.
Kaitlyn went to the bathroom. When she came out, Cassie was sitting on her bed.
“You probably shouldn’t be down here.”
“Probably not. But Mom didn’t say that.”
“Where is your mom?”
“She had to go out.”
“Work?”
Cassie shrugged. She was taller and slimmer than the last time Kaitlyn had seen her. She had a dancer’s body, though she’d never danced.
“Why aren’t you in school?”
“In-service day.”
“Ah.”
“Where’s your brother?”
“Mom dropped him off at a friend’s. It’s just the two of us.”
Kaitlyn felt strangely nervous. She couldn’t recall ever spending time alone with Cassie before. Cassie was so much older than her own girls. And though she remembered being fifteen, she didn’t know how to talk to a fifteen-year-old today.
Cassie patted the bed next to her. “I brought you some clothes to change into.”
“Thanks, but I have some of my own things.”
“Did you get them in Montreal or take them with you?”
“I bought them in Montreal.”
“So you didn’t, like, plan to leave?”
“Why would you think that?”
Cassie pulled at the end of one of her braids. “I just remember, sometimes, you’d stare off into space, and it took a few times for you to hear people calling your name. And I was thinking this morning that maybe you were planning on leaving, like that was something you thought about a lot because you seemed unhappy before.”
“You’re a pretty observant kid.”
“You look a lot like these girls in my school, especially this one girl, Charice, who tried to kill herself last year. Only they told us that she was sick, like with some kind of disease or something, but her best friend told everyone what happened, and she was so embarrassed when she came back to school.”
“I never wanted to kill myself.”
“That’s good. But life kind of did that for you, I think.”
“I’m not sure I can have this conversation without coffee.”
“There’s a machine upstairs. I know how to use it, but you can’t tell Mom.”
“I can keep a secret.”
• • •
“I’m not finding anything in Madison,” Cassie said hours later.
“Madison?” Cecily asked as she walked into the kitchen, bringing the cold inside with her. “What’s in Madison?”
“That’s where Franny’s from. Or where she says she’s from, anyway.”
Cecily gave Kaitlyn a sharp look. “You’re investigating Franny with my daughter?”
“It was my idea, Mom,” Cassie said. “I want to help.”
“What did you tell her?” Cecily asked Kaitlyn.
“That I was living in Montreal, and that I came back because of what Franny’s doing.”
“What else could she have told me?” Cassie asked.
“Nothing, honey.”
“You promised there wouldn’t be any more secrets.”
“I know, but some things aren’t about us. Some things aren’t things we should know.”
She turned away from the screen. “Like what?”
“Like grown-up things I wish I didn’t even know myself.”
“This is so unfair.”
“Probably. But trust me—you don’t want to know this.”
Cassie looked at Kaitlyn.
Kaitlyn felt as if she was being inspected.
“Is that true, Aunt Kaitlyn?”
“Definitely true.”
Cecily dropped a grocery bag onto the kitchen counter and began unpacking its contents. “Did you find anything?”
“Not yet,” Cassie said. “Franny doesn’t have Facebook or Insta or Snapchat or anything. Like, no social media at all.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“Also, I did a bunch of Google searches and even did a Google Image search, and, like, her picture isn’t online anywhere except for in that article.”
“What’s a Google Image search?”
“You can take a photograph and search online records for something that resembles it,” Kaitlyn explained. “Or so Cassie taught me.”
“Good thinking, Cass.”
“Thanks, but nothing, nothing, nothing. Then I remembered that she said a couple times that she came from Madison, so I looked that up. Did you know that’s in Wisconsin?”
“I did.”
“I haven’t ever been there, have I?”
“Nope.”
“I didn’t think so. We did go to Wyoming, though.”
“Yes. That’s where we used to go skiing.”
“That was so fun. Could we go again this year?”
“Maybe.”
Kaitlyn watched the easy banter between Cecily and Cassie and felt jealous. Cecily had always been such a natural mother. Making it look easy, too easy. She knew part of it was an illusion, but not all.
“So,” Cecily said. “Nothing in Madison?”
“No.”
“Did you try the local paper? Maybe they have archives that aren’t indexed?”
“Good idea.”
Kaitlyn took over the computer from Cassie. As Cecily and Cassie put food away and then got started on lunch, she searched for variations on local paper names. The Madison Record. The Madison Free Press. She found a site that listed all the local papers in Wisconsin, which brought her to The Capital Times. She tried several different searches, but nothing came up. She looked around but couldn’t find a good archive function, either. She flipped through various stories, but there wasn’t anything. Going through them all would take forever.
“Maybe we should hire a private detective,” Kaitlyn said.
Cecily looked up from where she was making a salad. “No luck?”
“None. Where did Cassie go?”
“Up to her room.”
Kaitlyn hadn’t noticed her leave. “She’s a great kid, Cecily.”
“I know.”
Kaitlyn looked down at the screen. At her fruitless search results. “She’s not anywhere. It’s like she doesn’t even exist. Now there’s a thought.”
“What?”
“Maybe she doesn’t. Maybe she made herself up. Or changed her name, at least.”
“That could explain a lot.” Cecily pulled a bottle of white wine out of the fridge and poured two large glasses. “I wouldn’t normally drink in the middle of the day, but I’m ready.”
“For what?”
“For the story. At least part
