“So . . . tomorrow?” Casey asked.
Violet couldn’t tell if she was asking because she felt bad for what she’d said, or because she really wanted to hang out with her. She didn’t care. She did her best to sound nonchalant as she said, “Sure.” But she felt like Casey could feel the weight of the word, just as much as she’d felt the weight of whatever Casey hadn’t said as she sat on Violet’s bed, tracing the flowers with her finger from sepal to petal to stamen to carpel, over and over again.
Nico
October 8
He parked in the driveway of Norah Ramsey’s house, feeling like an interloper, knowing he was not welcome yet compelled to return, if not to get answers, then to keep the scent that told him he was close to his brother. Ever since he’d linked Norah to the spa that Matteo had been talking about on the last day he had seen him, Nico had been convinced that she was the key, that she would lead him to his brother. In Norah Ramsey’s house, he could smell Matteo as if he had only walked out the door moments before. He knew that Matteo had likely never been to Norah Ramsey’s house, but the two of them were linked in his mind now. When he was at her house, he felt closer to Matteo. The longer the investigation dragged on—the longer his brother stayed missing—the harder it was to differentiate between the real and the imagined.
When Matteo first disappeared last spring, Nico saw his brother everywhere. He was a face in every crowd, the driver in the car next to him at the red light, the busboy at the table across the restaurant. More than once, he’d called his brother’s name aloud, startling his wife, her back going ramrod straight, her mouth an O of surprise.
At first, Karen was patient, kind about it. But as the months went on, and he got more, rather than less, obsessed with his brother’s absence, her sympathy dried up, curling and shriveling like a dead flower. They started to fight about it, snipey, snippy words exchanged with increasing frequency and fervor. She said he needed to face reality, to accept that it was likely that Matteo wasn’t coming back. He hated her for saying it, though he knew she was only voicing what everyone else was thinking. But he couldn’t forgive her for it, and he responded by staying away more often—always in the name of the case. For her part, Karen seemed to stop noticing he was gone.
It had taken surprisingly little time for his marriage to become a casualty of Matteo’s disappearance. By the time Nico had left their home, his leaving had merely been a formality. He’d felt next to nothing as he’d packed his things, only letting himself shed tears that night when he’d said goodnight to his children over the phone and laid his head on a flat pillow in a cheap efficiency hotel that rented by the week. Still, it didn’t change the fact that before he drifted off, he gazed at the unfamiliar ceiling and asked aloud the same question he’d been asking for months: Where are you, Brother?
Before he went to Norah Ramsey’s door, Nico reached for his phone to check for any texts he’d missed while driving, but all he’d missed was a notification from his family’s security system. Though he no longer lived there, he still tracked his family’s comings and goings, their average moments on ordinary days. That was, after all, what he missed most. He could watch his son carry a soccer ball outside to kick it around. He could watch as his daughter rushed out the door to school carrying the coffee she insisted on drinking in spite of Nico’s protestations. He could watch as his wife retrieved packages from the porch. But there were other moments he’d seen lately, ones that were not average or ordinary, ones that involved his wife and daughter that increasingly concerned him. But how to bring it up when that would mean admitting how he’d come upon the information? He could hear Karen now: You’re spying on us?
He decided not to click on the notification just yet, no sense seeing something he could do nothing about. He looked through the remnants of dead bugs and bird poop on his windshield, staring at Norah Ramsey’s house and thinking instead of the thing he could do something about. Inside that house, he was convinced, were answers about his brother. Answers he’d yet to find. It was clear to him: find Matteo, fix his family.
He tucked the phone into the clip on his belt and got out of the car. He paused for a moment, debating whether to go around back, where he could possibly see something new and revelatory going on in the kitchen. Or maintain a sense of decorum by going to the front door like any other visitor. Though he felt a claim on the house, a right to access it, the people inside knew nothing about that. He had to be careful with Norah Ramsey’s mother. Though she claimed to be estranged from her daughter, she could be lying. People lie all the time. He thought again of the notification on his phone. Even the people you thought you could trust. Nico didn’t trust Norah Ramsey’s mother. Fair or not, by being related to Norah, her scruples were questionable as far as he was concerned.
He knocked on the door, and the sound of a dog barking surprised him. Norah Ramsey didn’t have a dog. Other than a daughter, from what he’d learned, Norah Ramsey had no attachments whatsoever. She seemed impervious to connection, maybe incapable of it. Nico guessed that in her line of work, this trait came in handy. He listened to footsteps approaching and thought about the people in Norah Ramsey’s life. He made a note to take a stab at Norah’s ex-husband, the kid’s father. Perhaps he’d talk about her. Perhaps he had guilty knowledge he didn’t know was guilty knowledge.
The door opened to reveal a slightly older version of Norah Ramsey. Two words flashed through his mind: teen pregnancy. He wondered just how much older than her daughter Polly Cartwright could be. It couldn’t have been much. Always inclined to conduct an interview, he had to stop himself from asking. Instead he just said, “You must be Polly.”
She nodded, distracted as she pushed the dog, a large muddy-brown mutt of indiscriminate origin, out of the way of the door with her foot and scolded him. “Down, Barney.”
He flashed his badge. “I’m Nico Rinaldi. We spoke on the phone a few days ago.”
Polly nodded again, this time pushing the insistent dog out of the way with a bit more force. “I know who you are,” she said, her tone not friendly.
“I just wanted to come by and make sure the two of you are getting settled in OK.” He gave her his kindest smile, the one he reserved for women, children, and the very guilty. “I told my guys to try to tidy up. Hope they didn’t leave you with too much of a mess.”
Polly furrowed her brow. “If that was cleaned up, I’d hate to see what messy was.” She leaned against the door, creating a bigger opening from her weight pushing against it. The dog saw his moment and bolted between them, right out the open door. He bounded down the porch steps and loped across the front yard, his longish ears flying behind him like pigtails. Stunned for a moment, both Nico and Polly just watched him go.
Polly came to her senses and turned toward the stairs behind her. “Violet!” she yelled, already sounding right at home in the role of caretaker. She looked back at Nico and waved her hand in a shooing motion. “Why are you just standing there?” she hollered at him. Violet came to the top of the stairs and Polly hollered again, “Barney got out! You’ve got to come help us catch him!”
Us? Nico thought. He started to argue, but when he saw the urgency on Polly’s face, he didn’t think taking the time to debate whether dog chasing fell under his job description was in his own best interest. He just turned and ran in the direction the dog had gone. Perhaps, he thought as he ran, his efforts would ingratiate him with Polly, make Violet see him less as a threat and more as a friend.