Page 34 of Last Seen
“You sound like a cop.” Her tone is wary now.
Go careful, Halley. She’s the only thread you have.
“I’m not a cop. I’m not a reporter. I’m a confused little sister who just found out about all of this, and I need to know what happened to her.”
The tenor has changed, though. “I really don’t know more than that.”
“I understand. It’s just that we seem to be living in two different worlds—mine where she died when she was sixteen, and hers where I don’t exist. I’m baffled by this, and I’d like to get to the bottom of it.”
“You’ll have to talk to the police, then. They never seemed to think Tyler hurt her.”
“Do you?”
There is such a long pause that Halley thinks she might have dropped the call. “Hello? Are you still there?”
“I am. I don’tthinkso. He’s a blowhard, but not a murderer. And she was several states away. I got the sense that he was as surprised as I was when she never came back.”
“Several states away ... Do you know where, exactly?”
“Tennessee. It was this really important artist-colony writing retreat. Cat was thrilled to get in. She applied religiously the entire time I knew her, every year, and then she finally got accepted. Thought she’d become a world-famous writer. She might have, she was pretty good. I read a few of her stories. They were great. A little dark, but well written. Not like her, actually. Cat was such a bubble of joy. She lit up a room.”
Halley is having serious cognitive dissonance. This woman talks so lovingly about a monster. Clearly, she doesn’t know the truth. Should she tell her? That her bubble-of-joy friend went to jail for murdering her mother?
She decides to hold off. She needs this information, needs this connection.
“Do you remember what the retreat was called? Or where it was?”
“Yes, Brockville. It is somewhere in the mountains.”
Halley writes this down and circles the name of the idyllic-sounding little town three times.Brockville.
“Let me ask you a strange question. Was my sister in therapy?”
“God, yes. We all were. Prozac nation.”
“Do you happen to know her therapist’s name?”
“Sure. Jana Chowdhury. I think she’s still practicing. Used to work at school, actually, then left and opened a private practice to focus on couples work. Still saw individuals. We all went to her.”
“We?”
“My husband and I, Cat and Tyler, a few more friends. She’s really empathetic, a super couples therapist. She saved a lot of marriages.”
“But not Cat’s?”
“Hard to save a marriage when you’re just going through the motions. The love of Cat’s life was her writing, and Tyler knew it. That’s why he strayed. He was just trying to get her attention.”
“Thank you. You’ve been really helpful.”
“Please let me know if you find out anything. I miss my friend.”
Alison’s wistful tone makes Halley squirm. She promises to and hangs up, trying, and failing, to put together Cat the adult with Cat thechild. Halley does not remember Cat lighting up a room. If anything, she was the opposite. Dark, moody, sharp. Always dragging around, wearing black.
“How dare you go into my closet, you little thief? Give me that.”
Halley startles. The memory is clear as day. She’s in Cat’s bedroom, with a folded sweater in her hands, about to set it on Cat’s bed. Cat bursts in the door and rips it from her hand.
“I wasn’t in your closet,” Halley says. “Mom did laundry.”
