Nic was on her feet, then quickly buckled over.
“I read everything I could find,” the woman said. “About the car found the next morning and the gas station closed and then the winds and blackout. Oh, and how the town searched for her everywhere until they found that gut-wrenching note in a hotel room. Your poor mother and everything she’d been through. And then the case was closed, or reclassified, I think it said. They were calling it a ‘walk away’ in the press.”
That was exactly how things had gone down.
Nic and her father had been there with the search parties. Four days in Hastings that had become a blur of images. Rough sketches of cold air and stiff cornstalks, stale bitter coffee on folding tables brought by the local residents. The bar across from the inn. Vodka. Tequila. A stranger in the back hallway—the bartender. It had not been pretty.
Then came the slow reveal of the family’s bad behavior on the day of the disappearance.
Nic’s cruel words in the kitchen overheard by the cleaners. Evan’s shunning of his mother’s visit witnessed by the kids on his team. And Molly Clarke’s husband, John, who didn’t even notice that his wife hadn’t come home because he’d fallen asleep.
And why would that be? He had a million excuses. It took everything inside Nic not to give them the real one—that he didn’t love his wife anymore. That he was having an affair. Nic had seen his car in town when he said he was at the office. She’d seen the way he avoided looking at her but then was suddenly polite and considerate, covering his tracks. There were so many changes, and they were recent. They were new, subtle changes. Except for the one that screamed out to be noticed. For the first time since his wife killed his daughter, he seemed happy.
All of this bad behavior had come on the anniversary of Annie’s death five years before.
It was against this ugly and unforgivable backdrop that her mother’s note was interpreted. Chicken-scratch words on a page from the hotel notepad found in the room. Words Nic had read just once, though she could still close her eyes and see the shape of each letter.
My beloved family, I am so very sorry. I couldn’t make it home, and then I thought maybe you are better off without me. I pray you don’t look for me. I pray for your happiness.
She signed it with her full name.Molly Clarke.The police said she had probably done that to make sure it found its way back to them—so the hotel would know who’d left it.
But she’d paid for the room with her credit card. It was in her name. And the words, the phrases—they didn’t sound like her mother.
The note was sent to a handwriting expert. It matched the samples they’d provided. It matched the writing of Molly Clarke.
Still, she had fought against them. The local police. The state troopers. Even her father. They’d given her the statistics which supported the walk-away theory. Most adult women who disappear were trying to leave their lives behind. They came home when, if, they were ready.
What did she have to fight with? Remnants from the past, fragments of memories about a devoted mother who could never cause her children to suffer by leaving them? The truth was, Nic had no idea what was in her mother’s head, what was even in her heart, or what narrative had been taking shape inside her—that she was a burden to them and they would be better off without her.
Nic had said as much to her face the morning before she left them.
The belief in her mother’s betrayal had come as a shock, but then settled in quietly, burrowing into the hollow spaces alongside the grief and the guilt that Annie’s death had carved. They were amorphous, covering every inch of her, living in every cell. And they had an insatiable yearning to be filled. The men and the alcohol were barely touching them anymore.
Evan had fared better. There’d been tears, but then his quick return to school. Her father had done his duty by wearing a somber face and taking care of his wife’s elderly parents. They lived in a home and were already in the throes of dementia. Nic envied them. Now, nearly two weeks later, friends had stopped bringing casseroles. Everyone was returning to normal life because it was unbearable to remain in a state of grief and loss. Evan at school. Her father back to work and his after-work activities. And Nic, back to her nights.
Only they’d been getting worse.
Now the woman again. “The driver of that truck may know where she went.”
Yes,Nic thought.The driver might know why she left us.
“Is there anything else you can tell me? Any details about her that you noticed? I have to ask.”
“Yes, of course,” Edith Moore said. “Let me think… well—there was something she did, and I don’t know if it helps…”
“What?” Nic asked, suddenly desperate to have this be real. “What did she do?”
“When she waved at the truck—she used both arms, over her head, crossing back and forth. She had her purse in one of her hands, so it was odd, you know? That she didn’t just wave at the truck with one hand. I remember thinking that it was strange.”
Nic closed her eyes and saw her mother from years ago. At a cross country meet, standing at the finish line. Waving just like that—two arms overhead. She did it at Evan’s games too. Andwhen she was trying to get their attention at a pickup, or when they ignored her walking through the kitchen and she asked them how their day was.
They had all poked fun at her. And yet, they had all found it endearing.
Years ago—when there was still room for endearment.
“What about the purse?” Nic asked.
“It was orange. Very bright—oh, and there were letters on it. NEA. At the time, I assumed it was a monogram, but after I read about your mother and saw her name, I thought maybe it was the name of the designer.”
