Page 35 of Last Seen
“Mom sent you to spy on me. Get out!”
Did Mom send me to spy?Halley wonders, but the rest of the memory is gone. She is back on the quad, with the bag of cookies and a notebook by her side.
Strange, how vivid it was. Nothing from her time in Nashville is nearly as alive as that. Her breath is coming short, just as it had when Cat yelled at her. Cat yelled at her a lot.
Your memories are coming back. Be careful.
Halley can’t decide whether to call the therapist or the husband and settles on trying Tyler.
The first phone number has a recording that says the number isn’t in service. The second is answered by a harried woman. “Westcott and Westcott. Where can I direct your call?”
“Tyler Armstrong, please.”
“He’s in a meeting. Can I take a message?”
“Um ... sure. My name is Halley James. Tell him my sister is Catriona.” She reels off her number and hangs up. Dials the therapist. The number is also in Boston. The phone goes to voicemail, and the soft tones of a woman with a gentle accent make Halley take a deep breath. She sounds very calm and competent.
“This is Dr. Chowdhury. If this is an emergency, please dial eight. Otherwise, I will get back with you as soon as I can.”
At the beep, Halley leaves a similar message, identifying herself as Catriona’s sister and giving a callback number.
She’s half tempted to get on a plane and fly north, though she hardly has the resources—or time—to do that. Besides, are the answers there? No, being an armchair detective—a bench-on-the-quad detective?—is the best she can do right now.
You could go to Tennessee. It’s an easy drive ...
She goes back to the computer bank inside the library and looks up the Brockville Writers’ Retreat. They have a slick, elegant website, soothing blues and greens and creams. She reads the “About” page. The retreat exists as part of an artists’ colony in a small village called Brockville, a sustainable biophilic community created by a man named Miles Brockton. The fellowships, as they’re called, are highly competitive. There is a stipend awarded, a cabin provided, and two months of writing programming and workshops with leading authors in a variety of genres. She reads the accolades with a growing sense of astonishment. Graduates of the Brockville Writers’ Retreat have won everything from the Pulitzer to the Orange Prize to the National Book Award. Bookers, Edgars, Thrillers, even a Nobel.
Her sister was a good enough writer to get into this elite retreat?
She wonders what sort of writing Cat did. She should have asked Alison if she had any idea where Cat’s work might be.
Well, duh. She types “Catriona Armstrong” into the search engine, and up pops a very old website. But there’s a 404 error, nothing to see. Makes sense. If she has been missing for so long, who would be making payments on the website and doing updates to keep it in compliance?
But now she has a track to follow. Searching her sister’s married name, Halley gets a hit on a website that apparently published one of Cat’s poems. The poem is short and downright creepy:
She raises the knife like a conductor.
It has a mind of its own, and
she can’t—won’t—stop its path.
For steel to a heart creates a longing
That will never be fulfilled.
The bio that follows reads:
Catriona Armstrong has published numerous poems in a variety of regional journals. She is working on her first novel and has recently been accepted into the prestigious Brockville Writers’ Retreat.
Halley feels sick. She searches and finds a few more of Cat’s poems. All of them feel dark and partially deranged. There are footprints of the girl she used to be all over the internet. These breadcrumbs feel more like a horror film than something that would fit the literary bent of this Brockville Retreat. But Halley doesn’t know this world. She doesn’t know what kind of novel Cat was working on. What attracted them to her.
There’s no phone number for the Brockville Writers’ Retreat. Figures. It’s that exclusive. She sends an email inquiry to the contact page, asking to speak to someone who would have been in charge in 2002. She reads a bit about the town of Brockville—they’re clearly very proud of the community they’ve created. And bingo, at the bottom of the web page, there is an address. She puts that into her Maps app. It’s about a three-hour drive down I-81, then a direct turn east into the Blue Ridge Mountains. She can do that easily. If she leaves early enough in the morning, she might even be able to come home the same day. Assuming there’s nothing to be found, of course. If there are threads to follow in Brockville, she could get a cheap motel room. There will be plenty off the highway.
Happy to have a plan, she opens the search bar once more and inputs her sister’s name, then clicks on Images. Hundreds pop up, but none that match her remembrances of her sister’s face. Page after page after page, and none are the right one.
She tries to remember what Cat looks like. Blond. Pretty. But the features are blurry in her mind. She is an impression only, a spirit of memory.
Halley closes the browsers, logs out, and stands, wiping her hands down the front of her jeans, and has only taken two steps back toward the quad when her phone buzzes. She answers without looking and keeps heading outside.
