Nicole’s new love of acting was what had caused the silence between them to begin. Last spring, out of the blue, Nicole had decided to audition for the school play. But Violet had terrible stage fright, so there was no hope of them ever having that in common. Lately, Nicole had been opting to hang out with her theater friends more than with Violet. The parting had been gradual but certain. They hadn’t talked about it; they hadn’t said anything at all. If any good came from this, Violet decided, maybe it would be that with her in the same house, she and Nicole would spend more time together. It would bring them closer.
In her head, she could hear her mom’s voice: Look for the silver lining. There’s always one. Her mom, though gone, was still there. She was in her head and in her heart, and no frowning detective or search warrant or criminal attorney could take that away.
She could hear the adult voices murmuring from the doorway—Mr. Sheridan’s lower one in response to Bess’s higher one. She half wondered what they were saying, if perhaps she should be listening in. She and Nicole used to spy on her family members all the time when they were kids, she knew all the good listening-in spots in this house. But she was suddenly so tired. She took a half-hearted bite of an apple slice. (Bess had artfully arranged the wedges on a plate.) But the act of chewing it felt too monumental, the chunks of apple in her mouth making her gag. She got up, walked over to the sink, and spit them out, then turned on the spigot and watched the pieces disappear into the disposal.
She headed back toward the foyer to tell Bess she was going to go up to Nicole’s room to lie down for a bit. As she got closer, she heard Mr. Sheridan: “They’re using intimidation techniques to try to get her to talk. They want that file, and they think they can get her to crack.”
Bess gave a polite snort, if there was such a thing. “They don’t know Norah, then.”
When she approached, they stopped talking, both of their heads swinging around in unison as she came into view. They both looked guilty. “I’m pretty tired,” Violet said. “I think I’d like to go lie down.”
“OK,” Bess said, nodding her head too eagerly. “You know where the guest room is, right?”
The guest room? When she spent the night at Nicole’s, she had always slept in her room, in the trundle that attached to her daybed. It had been that way since they were seven years old. The only person who slept in the Stricklands’ guest room was their grandmother from Michigan when she came to visit. Bess must’ve seen the confusion on her face, because she rushed to explain. “Since you’ll be staying here over school nights, we thought it would be better for you girls not to be in the same room, so you can both get a good night’s sleep.”
We? Was this her and Nicole’s dad’s decision? Or her and Mr. Sheridan’s decision? Or, worse, her and Nicole’s decision? Bess and Nicole usually texted all during the school day, so Violet had no doubt Nicole was made aware of what was happening. That familiar feeling of panic she’d been having over the state of her friendship with Nicole came rushing back, but Violet tried not to think about it. She had bigger concerns than whether she and her BFF would in fact stay best friends forever. Concerns like investigation, evidence, and withholding information. If Mr. Sheridan sounded worried, did that mean she should worry, too?
She picked up the small bag she’d left just inside the front door—she’d refused to pack more than a few days’ worth of clothing—and trotted up the stairs, past Nicole’s sister Casey’s door, which stayed closed all the time now that she’d gone off to college, toward the guest room just across the hall from Nicole’s own bedroom. But first she peeked inside Nicole’s room, inhaling the familiar scent of the place she’d spent so much time in. In this room they’d played Barbies and dolls, My Little Ponies and Hannah Montana. (She’d always had to be Lilly to Nicole’s Miley.)
They’d made up dances to the latest songs and wore out the karaoke machine Nicole got for Christmas one year. They’d told each other’s fortunes, played video games, and daydreamed about what life held for them. They’d sworn to be there for each other through thick and thin. Now she was in a thin place, and she hoped those little-girl promises would somehow, miraculously, hold.
She backed away from Nicole’s doorway, walked across the hall, climbed into the unfamiliar bed, and fell fast asleep, hoping her absent mother would somehow come to her in her dreams and help make sense of all that was happening.
Casey
She took a taxi home from the airport, feeling very grown up and capable, yet childlike and afraid at the same time. She looked out the window as the cab driver navigated the vehicle through a part of the city she was unfamiliar with. Her life had primarily been spent in the suburbs, with the occasional trip into the city for various artsy events—a museum exhibit, a play, a concert. But mostly, she had existed within a much smaller space, with a select group of people. She wondered if that was why everything had happened the way it did. If her sheltered, small life had rendered her unprepared for the larger world.
Slowly, familiar street signs came into view, landmarks she recognized. There was the hotel where her senior prom had been held. (She’d gone with a boy she barely knew, one of her mother’s friend’s sons who had agreed to take her after she and Eli broke up so suddenly, the timing unfortunate with prom being weeks away.) There
