Nora
Can Eve tell by looking at me that is has been days since I’ve managed any personal hygiene more than a cold splash of water? I assume sitting in close quarters like we are, she can. I am tired and irritable.
“How was it?” she asks, while navigating traffic.
“It was fine. I don’t know why I bother. It won’t fix me.”
Eve chances a glance at me. “It might help you. How can you know, unless you try it?”
“Are you liking the house, okay?” I steer the conversation away from me.
Eve’s face wrinkles up. I find myself wondering if Holden found it endearing like I do. “Yes. It’s good. I feel a little guilt, though.”
“About what?”
“About being so far away from Lotte.” She keeps her eyes on the road.
“I told you, Lotte will come to us.”
Eve slams on the brakes and I lunge forward.
“Stop that. You don’t know if that’s truth or not.” She grips the steering wheel until her knuckles turn white. “You’re done with the past but it is not done with you.” She glares at me. “Lotte still needs you.”
I clamp my mouth shut. No one has any faith in me and it is beginning to grate on my nerves. We spend the next forty minutes driving in silence. Everything seems narrow. Choices have been made and I’m here and can only continue on as I am. The car beneath me shakes. Or maybe it’s me shaking. A heartbeat of guilty judgment but I don’t know why. There’s a whisper that echoes through my mind—Go to him, he waits for you.
When we arrive home, Eve switches on the TV. The local news station mentions my name. Calls the situation a miracle. I ask Eve why anyone would call it a miracle. Eve laughs joylessly and says that because they found me alive after nearly twenty four weeks, the reporters are calling it a miracle.
“But you were found alive after longer than that.”
She shoots me a look I can’t quite figure out. “Yes. I was.”
“Was there news coverage like this for you?”
“Sort of. No one had reported me missing. Not my friends, no one.”
Her eyes are full of sadness. “So, the media didn’t pick up the story like they are now.”
She nods. “Right. I did everything I could to make people listen. To make people think about Charlotte. But it just didn’t catch.”
I reach out my hand to her. She hesitates but soon takes it. “I’m sorry, Eve.”
She drops my hand and mumbles something about being thirsty, before disappearing to the kitchen. I switch the TV off and hobble to my bedroom. When the door is shut and locked, I undress myself. Standing before the full-length mirror, I stare at myself for the first time in many, many months. My hip bones show. My collarbone, too. There are lingering bruises, whether from the accident or Holden, I cannot be sure. My hair is dull and ugly. I turn slowly. The reflection of my back is the last thing I look at.
A map.
A map carved in my skin. I wish it wasn’t constellations. I wish it was a map to point me back to Holden, but it is not. It is a patchwork quilt of slices and scars connecting my freckles. I angle my head over my shoulder to get a better view.
It is not art. It is a reminder. There is no beauty in it. He hasn’t come for me. I am not special. I pivot on my good foot and hurl a crutch at the mirror. It shatters. Glass littering the carpet under it. Maybe one day I will be strong enough to get through this mess but right now, I want Lotte to see her sister and Holden to wrap his arms around me.
Eve knocks at the door. “Are you alright? Nora? Nora?”
I sigh and bend to pick up my crutch. “I’m fine.”
“Can you open the door, please?”
I eye a shard of glass and momentarily think how easy it could be to pick it up and draw my blood to the surface.
“Nora?”
“I’m naked,” I say.
There is no response from Eve. On the edge of my bed, I pull on my bathrobe and stand again. I unlock my bedroom door but do not open it. I can hear Eve release a breath from the other side. She does not come in, instead her soft footfalls grow quiet as she walks away. I gimp to my bed and lay down. I do not clean up the glass. I do not do anything, except think of what a mess my life is.
I jam my hand into my nightstand drawer and retrieve a journal. As I flip to a blank page, I skim old musings written by my hand. They are meaningless and trivial now. What could I have possibly known about life before? I tear out a blank page and put it on the closed journal to write on. My hand moves furiously across the page as I write a letter to Holden that he will never read. When I finish and read it, I am struck by the fact that it looks like the musings of a woman gone mad. The chicken scratch on the page is angry and harsh. The words run the gamut of emotions. I love you, I hate you, I need and want you, I wish we’d never met. I am split in two. Each side wars to slay the other. What has happened to me?