Just like that, out of the blue. As if Noelle wasn’t even worthy of a name.
It had been a particularly awful dinner even before that. The wine had been strong, which cast a brooding pall over the darkened room as everyone drank more than they should have in light of the sparse dinner. But at Ben’s words, Nadine had laid her spoon down and said, “What?”
“Yes,” Odessa had sighed. “I think you’re probably right. And we may as well do it while we have Nadine here. Just so we have the closure.”
Something inside her snapped. Closure?Closure?He and Odessa toyed with her like cats with a mouse, and she tolerated it because she had to because she was living off of their largesse. But they had done barely anything to find Noelle and they wanted to talk aboutclosure?
She couldn’t stand hearing her sister’s husband acting like his wife’s disappearance was just another inconvenience to his privileged fucking life.
“Nadine,” Odessa had said. “Are you all right? You look upset.”
“You’vebarelylooked for her,” she had snarled, surprising even herself with her anger. “At least do a fucking search first before you decide she’sdead!”
Cal had been with them for that dinner and had looked up, his glance sharp and surprised. His loss of composure had offered her a strange glimpse beneath the playful façade that she was starting to suspect was a mask, and having him look at her then, with such naked surprise glazing his usual froideur, was both a reminder of how much his presence affected her and how little she knew him at all.
“As I said before, where do you propose I start?” Ben had responded, already in bad spirits because of his brother’s presence. “I already told you how difficult it would be to search in these woods. It’s beenweeks, Nadine. If she is alive—she clearly doesn’t want to come back.”
“And whose fault would that be?” Nadine shot back, feeling as if her body were no longer under her control. “Why don’t you try searching beneath the hellebore in the garden? Isn’t that where Caledon Cullraven buriedhismissing wife?”
There had been a terrible, deadly sort of silence. Odessa looked both scandalized and entertained; Ben, boiling with a quiet, seething fury; and Cal, like he had never seen her before and was startled to find her sitting at his table.
He was also the first to speak. “Nadine, what the fuck?”
“No,” Ben said, with a strangely satisfied smile. “This is the most honest she’s been since coming here. Your little sparrow is showing her true colors at last.”
“He’s got you there, Baby Cal,” Odessa said to her youngest brother, who had gone very still.
“Why do you all keep calling me that?”
“Because that’s what he thinks you are, darling,” Ben had responded, and the tone of his voice was nearly seductive as he shot his brother a coldly knowing look. “A frightened, flapping little bird. Asparrow.”
“And what do you think?”
Nadine blinked, startled to find herself not beneath that chandelier made from the severed racks of deer antlers, but here, beneath these flickering fluorescent lights.
(like a wounded)
“I looked it up.” She flashed a wavering smile. “She has to be missing for five years before the authorities would agree, but there’s nothing to stop him from having his own ceremony.”
“Oh, honey,” said Deena. “You need to get out of that house.”
(little bird)
Every fiber in her being burned to do exactly that. But that note—he scares me—had pierced her down to her very soul. She had nearly torn those ancient curtains apart looking for more diary entries, letting out a muted scream of frustration when all she turned up was a cascade of dust.
There had to be something else. Something she was missing.
Despite what Ben believed, Noelle couldn’tjust disappear from the face of the earth without leaving a part of herself behind.
Shecouldn’t.
“It just isn’t fair,” she said aloud, her voice wrenched by frustration.
“I know,” Deena said, even though she couldn’t possibly.
Don’t you dare cry, she told herself. Bad enough that she had cried in front of Cal—twice. She would not do it in front of this calm adult woman, with an adult’s job and an adult’s composure.Get it together, you fucking child.
“I’m—sorry.” Nadine turned to stare at the books, which was safer, because the concern in Deena’s face made the lump in her throat feel like it was about to burst right out of her skin. She knew how quickly pity could become scorn, and she did not want to see it. “I’m not usually like this.”
