NORA
THE DOOR WAS OPEN, the narrow gap dark as a wound, and that scared Nora even more than the silence. It was eerie, the quiet. The night was hot and sticky, stagnant when it should have been alive with the chirp of crickets, the low whine of cicadas in the trees. But the world seemed to be holding its breath, waiting for the first few raindrops of the storm that swelled on the horizon. Even the house was still, the shades pulled, the windows black.
Nora had stood on these steps dozens of times. More. But she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was in the wrong place. Where was the tinny soundtrack of a show turned up too high on the TV? Sometimes the radio played tug-of-war with sitcom stars, and sometimes Tiffany’s voice drowned it all out. The bark of her laugh or belted show tunes that filled the farmhouse with a warm luster. Tiffany loved to fill up space with sound, to talk, laugh, sing, and Nora was used to hearing the muffled noise through closed doors. Tiffany believed in shutting the world out. In padlocks and chains. And she never turned from a door without securing it behind her.
Not this time.
Nora put her palm on the door and squeezed her eyes shut. She wanted to walk away, to call 9-1-1 and let the authorities handle whatever had happened inside. But she couldn’t. The tug of responsibility—and something much more complicated—forced her to swallow a steadying breath and call through the crack: “Tiffany? Tiffany, honey, are you in there?”
Nothing.
The door creaked when Nora pushed it open, a scream that split the night so violently her heart thudded in her chest. She felt sure that Donovan was gone—he spent most evenings at the Cue and his car was nowhere to be seen—but if anyone was inside they would surely come running. Nora held her breath for a heartbeat or two, but nothing interrupted the sleep of the decaying farmhouse.
Nora was surprised at the sudden stab of anger that caught her square in the chest. When she found Tiffany she was going to smack her.
Nora balled her fists. She was jumping to conclusions. Tiffany would be okay. Everything would be just fine.
Her sneakers squeaked on hardwood as she walked fully into the house and fumbled for the light. “Tiffany?” she called again. “It’s Nora. You haven’t responded to any of my texts . . .”
She trailed off as her fingers found the switch. The bare bulb in the living room sputtered to life and Nora blinked in the dim half-light.
The house looked as if the storm had blown through already. Chairs were overturned and the television screen smashed to blistering spiderwebs that glittered strangely in the dull light. Nora stepped over an old pizza box with only one slice missing and righted a lamp that had been knocked off a scarred end table. But the bulb was shattered, and Nora’s heart splintered like the jagged edge of glass when she realized what was dusting the worn tabletop. It was nothing really, a fine sprinkling. The residue of dirty white powder.
Tiffany hated needles, wouldn’t have anything to do with them, but the powder was powerful enough to send her on a trip for nearly a day. Once was never enough. She binged when she started and tweaked hard when she came down. Nora had raced Tiffany to the hospital on more than one occasion, raw from the drag of her own fingernails and convinced that Nora, her only friend in the world, was a demon sent to torture her.
But that was then. Nora shuddered and tried to push down memories that were so close to the surface they bled through all her defenses. It was too late. Her nostrils filled with the scent of old eggs and cat urine, the telltale signs that Donovan was cooking meth in the kitchen. Nora pushed down a wave of revulsion at the memory. That had been the worst. Rock bottom. Tiffany had forgotten to eat for nearly a week, at least nothing of substance, and the skin beneath her cheekbones had caved until she was shadow and bone, a wisp of angry ghost that grabbed at Nora with crooked fingers when she ventured close enough to touch. When Nora threatened to take Everlee away, Tiffany had agreed to rehab.
Now, Tiffany was a changed woman. Her brown eyes clear, her frame thin but not skeletal like it had been when she was so out of control her days blurred into one. Less than two weeks ago Nora had treated Tiffany to a manicure, a little happy-twenty-sixth-birthday treat, and had relished the way her friend’s hands glowed smooth and whole beneath the light of the lamp. They had both gotten acrylic nails with squared French tips and felt so elegant they spoke in bad accents all the way home.
“How are you?” Nora had asked, twisting in her seat when they pulled up to the farmhouse and Tiffany reached for the door handle. “I mean, really. How are you doing?”
Tiffany couldn’t hold her gaze, but her eyes flicked to Nora’s and she smiled self-consciously before staring out the windshield. “I’m fine. Really.”
Nora studied her profile, the sharp angle of her slender jaw and the way her skin looked scrubbed clean. Tiffany seemed much older than her age, her eyes and mouth crisscrossed with lines too deep for someone so young. But there was an innocence about Tiffany, too, a vulnerability that always made Nora want to shield her from the world. To protect her.
Nora had failed. On more than just this occasion.
She tripped on an overturned laundry hamper, its dingy contents spilled across the living room floor, and knocked her knee on the edge of an antique chest. The lid was open, the hinge ripped and hanging crooked from the rotting wood. There were toys inside, a stained Raggedy Ann doll and a deflated purple ball amid a rainbow of colors and plastic. “Tiffany?” Nora called again, the name fracturing on her lips.
Maybe Tiffany was gone. Maybe she had left in search of another hit. But Tiffany’s rusty Ford truck was parked where it always was in the gravel drive beside the house. And the little farmstead surrounded by cornfields was too far away from anything for Tiffany to take off on foot. Especially on a night like this. A night with clouds roiling in a slow boil, the radio broadcasting a tornado watch. Tiffany would be tucked in her house, the doors locked tight around her.
Adrenaline was a drug, too, and Nora found herself stumbling through the detritus of the living room with a panicked urgency. She flicked on the lights in the kitchen. Cupboards were open, soiled dishes piled so high in the sink that half of the window was obscured. Something smelled overripe, sickly sweet and nauseating, but in spite of the mess and the stench, Nora felt a pang of relief that Tiffany wasn’t sprawled facedown on the floor. The room was empty of everything but the rebellious artifacts of her sad life.
The rest of the house was equally wrecked, a labyrinth of discarded magazines, toys, clothes. There was a serving bowl in the upstairs hallway, a little striped sock hanging from the banister. A window air conditioner hummed in the dim light, drops of condensation making dark Rorschach blots on the pale carpet. An angel. The thought flicked through Nora’s mind so quickly she had to glance back at the wet spot to orient herself. It did look like an angel, the stain, and Nora prayed it was an auspicious sign.
She wasn’t looking for Tiffany anymore.
Closets. Corners. Under the queen bed where Tiffany’s unwashed laundry had been scattered across the faded sheets.
There wasn’t a proper bed in the little closet under the eaves that Tiffany had turned into the prettiest nook in the house. Walls the color of cotton candy, a twin mattress on the floor covered with a quilt in hues of the softest green. Nora had refinished a squat bookshelf for a birthday present and it contained a treasure trove: the entire collection of Olivia and all the original Curious George, Richard Scarry with his willowy Lowly Worm and a hidden Goldbug like a secret on every page. Nora’s favorites were the dog-eared procession of Anne of Green Gables paperbacks, but they were simply biding their time, waiting on the bottom shelf for the day when the picture books would be set aside.
Thank God the little girl was gone. Thank every celestial creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth that at least she was safe. As for Tiffany . . . ?
Nora put a finger on the spine of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and slipped it from the bookshelf. They had chosen the book purposefully, deciding that a trip through the wardrobe was exactly what they needed. A fresh start, a clean break, a new beginning. But when Nora felt for the manila envelope they had hidden, it was gone. She started yanking books, dropping them to the floor as she searched for the packet. It was no use.
Nora sank to her knees on the floor and forced herself to breathe. To think. But her mind was blank and aching. She didn’t know what to do or where to turn. She had never felt so betrayed in her entire life.
Why? Where was she?
Suddenly, it hit her with the force of a lightning bolt. She knew. She knew what Tiffany had done. Nora scrambled to her feet and raced back through the house, down the stairs, and out the back door where she slipped across the wet grass on her way to the leaning detached garage. It had started to pour, thunder rumbling in the distance and promising that there was so much more to come. Nora shielded her face from the fat drops with her hand, but by the time she hit the shelter of the garage she was soaked.
Nora had left her phone in the glove compartment of her car, but she knew that there was a Maglite on the workbench. It was thick and heavy as a billy club—it had occurred to her more than once that it could be used as a weapon. But now, she just needed it for light.
The board she was looking for was beneath the workbench and half hidden by the support beam for the long counter. Tiffany had shown it to her long ago, back when she was still trying to prove that Donovan was a good man. The sort of man who could make an honest woman out of her and be a loving daddy to Everlee.
“See?” Tiffany said, wedging back the board and shining the flashlight into the depths of the recess beyond. Nora could just make out a brown paper bag folded up inside.
“What is it?”
“Money.” Tiffany sounded smug, I told you so ringing in that one simple word. “I counted it a couple days ago when I knew he would be out for hours.”
“And?”
“There’s got to be over ten thousand dollars there.”
“You said you counted it.”
Tiffany laughed. “I gave up! There were too many bills.”
Back then, Nora hadn’t asked all the questions that were burning on the tip of her tongue. Where did it come from? Why is he hiding it in the garage? Who else knows about it? She didn’t trust herself to because she knew that she’d start to yell. To tell Tiffany what to do and how far to run. Tiffany never responded well to demands. Instead, Nora just pushed herself up and walked away, swinging Everlee into her arms as she left the garage.
But now. Now Nora wished she knew the answers to all those questions. She wished that she’d screamed at Tiffany, told her to get out before it was too late.
Because all at once her every fear was justified.