Madison Journal
Ten Years Gone: Family Mourns Missing Daughter
By Angela Cairney
January 7, 2018
Ten years ago, the family and friends of Nora Altman woke up to find themselves living in a nightmare. Tomorrow marks the anniversary of her disappearance when the 17-year-old’s car was found abandoned by the side of Old Highway 51 on the road between Forest View, WI, and nearby Stokely in the early hours of January 8, 2008. The car was locked, with no sign of a struggle; the only indication that anything was wrong with the car was the empty tank of gas that had presumably halted the teen’s drive.
The case has long since gone cold, and the local police department have been criticized both by members of the community and Nora’s family for not acting quickly enough when she was first reported missing. But Chief of Waterstone Police Department Patrick Moody claims he hasn’t given up. “We’re always on the lookout for anything relating to Nora’s disappearance. This is the kind of case that defines your whole career, but its impact has been much more far-reaching than that. It’s affected the whole community and I feel the full weight of that responsibility daily. Even now.”
Three years after the teen first went missing, her father, Jonathan Altman, almost launched a civil suit against the Waterstone Police Department. “There are no hard feelings,” Moody said, “he was just doing everything he had to do to find out what happened to his daughter. As a father, I would have done the same.”
Chief Moody was planning on joining the family and close friends of Nora today to mark the ten-year anniversary of her disappearance. “We’ve done it almost every year since Nora went missing. It’s good to get together and remember her, and also to remind ourselves that there’s still work to do.”
For the family, though, the nightmare still goes on. “We’ll never have closure,” Nora’s younger sister Noelle said. Only 7 when Nora went missing, Noelle regrets not having had a big sister to grow up with and guide her along the way. “My brother Nate tries his hardest, but it’s not the same. Even though I know I barely really knew her, I still really miss her. I just know she would have been the best big sister.”
I was dreaming of the sheet of glass again.
I was carrying this huge plate of glass that was beginning to crack, tiny spider webs of distortion spreading fast, and as it did the pane shifted in my heavy arms and slipped from my grasp. I woke just as it should have been shattering into a million pieces on the floor below me. I carried that great big sheet of glass everywhere I went, my arms straining with the effort, my forehead shining with sweat, the glass itself slowly, slowly cracking as I shifted it slightly from hand to hand, arm to arm. It was exhausting and debilitating, cumbersome and controlling and, I thought, so, so obvious to everyone I met that I was struggling. People recognized the struggle of course, just as I knew they would, gave it a name, and either pushed it to the back of their minds or worried about it endlessly depending on who they were and what they were to me. They all made the same mistake, though: thinking that pane of glass made me weak. You try carrying something like that around with you wherever you go. You get tired, sure; but you also get strong.
There was nothing particularly special about waking up to that shattering glass. I’d done it a thousand times before and no doubt it would continue to haunt me after; it wasn’t a portent, or an omen, I didn’t have to write about it in my dream journal, or put a black mark in my diary so that in the years to come I’d be able to look back and say “ah yes, the dream. I should have known something terrible was going to happen.” Because there was no way anyone could have known.
Because when the worst has already happened, you don’t expect it to happen again.
But this story doesn’t start with a dream. What story ever does? No, this story starts with Nora.
Nora’s parents had chosen Sunday for the memorial because more people were available. The day was white and gray, the sky thick and heavy even though the snow didn’t come until nightfall. It had been the same on the day Nora disappeared but then that should have hardly come as a surprise. January has a way of making every day look and feel the same, the month lasting forever and then suddenly over. I don’t know why we gathered at the lake house rather than at the Altman home, although I was glad we weren’t huddled around the trees by the side of the road where her abandoned car had been found that morning, so many years ago. Too many impromptu vigils had happened there in the days and weeks following Nora’s disappearance for me to feel anything other than nausea when I drove past. At least the lake held some happy memories, long gone but still just about holding on. So, Nora’s dad, Jonathan, spoke, and then her older brother, Nate, did, and then we all just stood looking at the lake for a while, no one really knowing what to do, what we were expected to do. That’s something I’ve learned over the last ten years; no one ever tells you what to expect or what’s going to happen next because no one knows. You’re on your own.
I waited for a while, wanting to get Nate on his own, but Leo and Bright were stood with him, their faces pale and maybe even a little drawn but talking to each other as animatedly as you can at a memorial. They were trying to draw Nate into the conversation, trying to coax him out, but wherever he was it wasn’t with them. I had a feeling he hadn’t been with them for a while.
“Hey, Maddie,” Leo said as I approached. “Nice to see you.” Leo had just graduated from the police academy when Nora went missing. Three months on the job and he was investigating the disappearance of his best friend’s little sister. Whenever I saw him back then the image of him in his brand-new uniform would shock me all over again; he looked so young, too young to be in a position of such authority, as though he’d put the uniform on for Halloween and never taken it off.
Bright, or Michael Brightman to give him his full name, was a year older than Nate and Leo; the same age as my older sister, Serena: They’d gone out for a while, in fact, back in high school. He’d had a year longer on the job than Leo, a year or so to prepare for something neither of them could ever have seen coming when they decided they wanted to be cops in the same small town they’d grown up in, where nothing ever seemed to happen. I could still see his face, stark, stretched and stunned, when he told me they’d found Nora’s car but that there was no sign of Nora.
“Nice to see you too,” I said, leaning in for awkward hugs with both Leo and Bright before stopping at Nate whose eyes were turned towards the lake, or where the lake would have been if it weren’t blanketed with snow. I had lain my hand on Nate’s arm in an attempt to get his attention, and he finally turned towards me.
“Hey, Mads. Good of you to come,” he said, his voice scratching the cold air around us.
I looked at him, trying to make sense of what he was saying before just nodding my head slowly and saying: “I wouldn’t miss it.”
Nate sucked in a breath, still not really looking at me, and I turned back to Bright and Leo, the latter of whom met my gaze and shrugged. “Can you guys give us a minute?” I asked, the two of them sharing a look before wandering off towards the lake house without another word.
“How’re you doing, Nate?” I asked.
Nate shoved his hands into his