Forget Me Not: A gripping, heart-wrenching thriller full of emotion and twists!. A. Taylor M.

more like her although she was much taller. The same fine features, with Katherine’s dark brown eyes and chestnut hair, rather than Nora’s deep-blue eyes and almost raven hair. We hugged silently and when she released me about a thousand different words remained stuck in my throat and all I could manage was: “I’m so sorry.”

      Katherine nodded and folded her arms across her chest. Her face was a strained white, with no make-up and purplish, bruised-like bags under her eyes.

      “Nate asked me to come sit with Noah. I think-I think he thought you guys might appreciate the help.” I inwardly cringed at the inadequacy of my words. Of all words.

      “Of course. Thank you, Maddie. We have to … we have to go to the police station. For questioning.”

      I raised my eyebrows and followed her into the house. “For questioning?”

      Katherine sighed heavily as she pushed through the door to the kitchen at the back of the house. Beyond the kitchen island there was a vast window that overlooked the snow-filled garden. It was quiet and white, with a cold, icy beauty. Completely untouched. Most backyards would bear some trace of the human—childish—touch. Piled up drifts of snow where snowmen have melted, dislodged snow on the climbing frame or swing set, the disintegrating outline of a playful snow angel. A trail of footprints at the very least. But there was none of that in the Altmans’ garden. I guess Noah wasn’t much for playing, despite being only ten years old.

      Katherine scraped a chair back along the tiled floor of the kitchen and sat down. She pointed towards the coffee maker to indicate that I could help myself, and I set about making us a pot.

      “They let us have the evening but they want us to come in and answer questions about when we last saw Elle. We’re not suspects,” she added, before saying even more quietly, “yet.”

      I turned to look at her, both of us clearly thinking about her eldest son, who had been arrested, although never charged, when Nora first went missing. He hadn’t been able to produce a solid enough alibi, or so the cops had claimed, but when no other evidence turned up, and no body either, he was released without charge.

      “Is Nate here?” I asked.

      “Downstairs, I think. He’s … we’re … we have to leave in a few minutes,” she said, finally finishing her sentence. Her mouth was straight and taut, pulled thinly against the pale skin of her face. “Thank you for coming, Maddie,” she said quietly, “it really means a lot.”

      I looked around the kitchen and noticed how bare, almost barren, it was. There were no bouquets of flowers, no letters or notes of condolence. When Nora went missing, someone inexplicably sent the family an enormous brown-furred teddy bear with a bright red bow tie proudly fixed around its chunky neck. It sat in the corner of the living room for a few days before migrating down to the kids’ basement rec room, its cuddly, warm presence too much of an incongruence for the family room. Maybe there simply hadn’t been enough time for the flowers and the cards and the inappropriate plush toys to begin to flood in. Or maybe they never would. Maybe no one knew how to react, how to express comfort and sympathy, compassion and condolence to a family that had already lost so much. Or maybe it was something else entirely. Maybe people had already started talking, hushed tones hiding dark thoughts and malicious accusations. Either way, I suddenly felt extremely empty-handed. When the aroma of fresh coffee began to fill the desolate kitchen I sighed with perceptible relief. It wasn’t much, but at least I could make Katherine a cup of her own coffee.

      “Thanks,” Katherine said as I handed her the mug. “Noah’s upstairs. I think he might still be asleep to be honest.”

      I raised my eyebrows at that; it was already well past noon.

      “You’ll be okay here with him?” she asked, hesitantly.

      I nodded. “Of course. We’ll be fine.”

      A door shut with emphasis somewhere in the house, and Katherine looked over at me quickly before leaving her chair and walking out of the kitchen, mug in hand. She squeezed my shoulder before leaving the kitchen, and I heard her call out Jonathan’s name, the shuffle of feet and rumble of voices and undercurrent of a murmured, urgent conversation. Before I knew it, Nate was standing in the doorway of the kitchen, looking in at me.

      “Mads,” he said, his voice hollow in that large room.

      I stared at him as though it was the first time I’d seen him in years, when in fact I’d seen him just two days before. Something burning began to build behind my eyes; something scratchy and insistent and all too familiar and all I managed to say was simply “Nate,” before his dad also called his name and he shrugged and made a face at me and left to join his parents at the door.

      I followed him, standing where he’d just been in the doorway, and said goodbye, watching as all three of them left and the front door slammed solidly behind them. I hadn’t been to the house in a while, so I let the quiet of it sink down into my bones before heading upstairs to say hi to Noah.

      That house was as deeply entrenched in my memories, as much a part of my childhood and adolescence as my own home, but ever since Nora went missing I hadn’t spent much time there other than for memorials. Then, just like my memories of Nora herself, my memories of the house were warped and tainted by time, and filled with all the spaces that she should have been in and instead was missing from. There were plenty of vigils held in her name when she first went missing, but it wasn’t until she’d been gone for a year that her family held their first memorial.

       ***

       Nobody knows what to say but everybody’s talking. It’s like a white noise machine, the sound turned way up, and then suddenly on mute as I drift in and out of conversations, as the crowd teems and seethes around me, and then suddenly I’m all alone in an aching well of silence. Every time I walk through the hall I see Nora’s face, and either I can’t help but stare even though all I want to do is look away, to forget, or I turn away, unable to take it anymore and feel guilt coil through me, even though all I want is to see her face.

       It’s been a year. A whole year.

       I’ve never seen the Altmans’ house so full of people, and I’ve spent half my life here, at the kind of parties where balloons are attached to the gate and you’re sent home with a party bag, and at the kind of parties where only the adults are really having any fun and you sit around in too-formal dresses, drinking luridly colored fizzy drinks and watching boys playing video games, and then at the kind of parties where vodka and rum are sneaked out of parents’ liquor cabinets and into empty water bottles, and used to spike cups full of diet Coke as you sit on the edge of the kitchen countertop and wonder how it is everyone seems to be having more fun than you.