Ange and I met for breakfast at CJ’s the next morning. It had taken me a little while to get out of bed; my limbs heavy, my brain sticky. I’d almost given up and texted Ange to cancel, but I didn’t want to do that to Elle. I lost so much time, so much of myself after Nora went missing. Days, weeks, months had slipped by, sometimes with me barely even noticing, at other times with a heaviness and a slowness so thick it spread itself all over everything, smothering me. I couldn’t be sure that wouldn’t happen again; I never could be, but I wanted to do my best, my very, very best to ward it off for as long as possible. I felt as though I owed Elle that. At the very least.
The door stuck a little as I pushed it open, making a gentle sucking sound as it finally gave way and I walked into the overheated diner. The windows were temporarily frosted with condensation and I immediately started to unwind my scarf as I looked around the room, trying to find Ange. CJ’s wasn’t a chrome ‘n’ leather kind of diner. Just a wooden box by the side of the road with vinyl booths and a slightly off-putting plaid and taxidermy theme. The sloped roof met in a point in the middle of the building, atop which spun a slowly revolving sign that just said “waffles.” Ange was sitting in the booth furthest away from the door by a window overlooking the road rather than the parking lot, and she already had a cup of coffee in front of her when I sat down. The diner was quiet despite the hour; it was just before nine in the morning and normally it would have been busy, but there were only three other booths full of people and there was a general hush over the place that pricked at my skin.
“Morning,” I said to Ange.
“Hey. You sleep okay?”
“Once I popped a couple of pills, sure.”
Ange’s lips pursed just as she was raising her mug to her lips and she put the mug down before even taking a sip.
“How about you?” I asked.
“Not great. I spent most of the night emailing my editor and trying to write up an article about Elle’s death that he deemed printable.” She stared down into her coffee. “This is my fourth cup of coffee this morning.”
I raised my eyebrows and said: “I should probably catch up then,” while signaling to a dyed-blonde waitress I didn’t recognize that I was ready to order. “Is the paper sending anyone else up to help you?”
“No, I managed to convince them that I could handle it myself. They wanted to send up Elise who works for the crime desk but, in the end, I told them just to send up a photographer and I’d handle the rest.”
“Are you sure that’s such a good idea?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, this isn’t just some random crime. This is Elle. You knew her. We were there when Katherine and Jonathan brought her home from the hospital, Ange. Are you really going to be okay writing in detail about her murder? Not to mention writing about Nora.”
“I’ll be fine,” she said shortly, looking up to smile at the waitress who’d just appeared at our table.
“Can I get you girls anything?” the waitress asked.
“Coffee,” I said before looking down at the plastic-encased menu, although God knows why I did; I already knew what I wanted. “Plus waffles, side of bacon, two eggs over easy. Bacon extra crispy though. Like, carcinogenic.”
The waitress kind of chuckled but Ange gave me an edgy look.
“Sure thing. And for you, Ange?”
“Just more coffee, waffles and a fruit cup, please.”
“Should I know who that is?” I asked Ange once the waitress had gone to place our order.
Ange shrugged. “She’s been here about a year. Ruby. She’s nice. Never charges for maple syrup.”
Before Nora disappeared CJ’s decision to start charging for maple syrup was one of the most controversial things to ever happen there. Ruby returned with a mug for me and poured me a cup of coffee before topping up Ange’s.
“Your food will be right out,” she said before leaving us be.
“I went by to see Willard Knowles before coming here,” Ange said. “Do you remember him?”
“Yeah, of course I remember him.” Willard Knowles was the editor of the local newspaper, and both Ange and I had done work experience with him while we were still in high school. “Is the paper still going?” I asked, unable to keep the surprise out of my voice. It had always been on the edge of collapse, even ten, eleven years ago.
“Yes and no. He’s gone online and he’s working out of his basement but the Forest View Examiner still lives. I went over to see if he knew anything about what happened to Elle. I’d been hoping to work out of his office, but when I saw his new setup I thought better of it.”
“Depressing?”
Ange shrugged. “Just a little weird. His photocopier is on top of his tiki bar.”
I let out a short snort of laughter despite myself, and reached for my coffee.
“He didn’t know much more than me; the police are keeping pretty quiet on this one. Willard thinks they’re waiting on the state police before they officially announce anything. But he did have some photos.”
“Photos?” I asked, barely able to get the word out. I wanted to press pause, to catch my breath; everything was moving so fast, too fast. Two days before I’d stood in front of Elle, talking to her, watching her, worrying over her, and now Ange was talking about crime scenes and photos and I couldn’t quite figure how we’d got here.
“Yeah. He went up to the scene as soon as he heard about it. I must have just missed him yesterday when I was there. They wouldn’t let him take any until the scene had been cleared and the body—”
There were those words again. The body.
The color drained from the room around me and I was drowning in silence.
It was impossible for me to reconcile those two words with Elle. I didn’t want to slip into such anonymity so quickly and so easily. I wanted to hold onto her, as I knew her, for as long as possible, because I knew, so very well, and so very, very painfully, how quickly and easily that whole person would soon turn into an image, an idea, a talking point, and finally, just a memory.
One of the strangest things about when Nora disappeared—around the time of the media furor, anyway—was how present and not-present she was. She was everywhere. In every article, on every TV news show, she even made it into Us Weekly for Christ’s sake. But she was nowhere as well. There were no photos of a crime scene because there wasn’t one. The photo that got circulated to the media was the one taken in junior year for the school yearbook. She was just simply—gone. But Elle was being referred to as “the body” now. Stripped down to her most basic function. When I thought of Elle I thought of her either laughing while sucking on a milkshake aged sixteen, or staring me down hard-eyed while playing board games aged six. I didn’t want to replace that with this new image that was coalescing in my mind, based on scraps of information and an overworked imagination.
“Maddie?” Ange was saying, reaching over to lay her hand over my forearm. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” I said, swallowing, “I’ll be fine.”
“So, Willard managed to get a picture of something that was left at the scene.”
“What was it?” I asked, suddenly sharp.
“It was this kind of symbol. In the snow.”
“Do you have a photo of it?” I asked.
“Not a good one, but Willard emailed it to me so that my paper could use it.”
“Can I see it?”
“Are you sure you want to?”
I swallowed,