Page 46 of Last Seen
She looks at her watch. It’s not even eight. If she leaves in the next half hour, hour even, she can be in Brockville by lunch.
It feels like the next logical step. It feels like the only choice she has. Granted, she could try to get to Nashville, try to find their old house, try to get inside ... But what’s that going to do besides perhaps unlock a moment in time?
Finding her sister could unlock everything else.
She will talk to the people at the writing retreat directly. Find out what happened to her sister when she went to Brockville. Surely, if there are answers to be had, they’ll be where Cat was last seen.
Chapter Eighteen
Catriona
Brockville Artist Colony
Literature Workshop
2002
As I wander the beautiful, fragrant path, drowning out my demon’s cackle with the birdsong and splashing river, I can’t help but spiral a bit. My divorce was agreed to with somewhat undue haste because neither of us could wait to get out of the marriage. We were not compatible, especially when he, like my fictional Greg, started sticking it to the neighbor’s babysitter. The girl was in college, but still, Tyler was flirting with the half-your-age-plus-seven line.
It feels like years ago, but it’s only been two days since my best friend, Alison, came over to celebrate the impending official split. “You start your marriage with a party, you should end it with one, too.” That’s what Alison said when she showed up at my front door with two bottles of wine and an insouciant grin. We drank, and we talked, and finally, when we were hammered enough, Alison asked me what was next.
“Writing.”
“No, I mean, what are you really going to do now?” Alison was slumped back in her chair with her glass of Chablis. We were beyond drunk, and I was kicking myself. I know better than to have more than two glasses of wine. It doesn’t mix well with my meds. I am going to wake up feeling sick, with a headache and nausea, and I had a very long drive from Boston to Tennessee. Getting drunk on top of the convoluted thoughts brought about by the ending of this failed chapter of my life was maybe not the smartest thing to do. I can still taste the sour wine in my mouth.
But then, high on wine and girl power, I’d answered emphatically, sloshing some of the wine out of the glass into my lap. “I’m not kidding. I’ve been applying to Brockville for a long time. I was accepted a few years ago but couldn’t pull the trigger. This time? I am going to drop everything and go. Find a way to make it through, deal with the rest later.” I shot back the last of my wine and declared, with all the seriousness I could muster, “Writing is my future.”
“I didn’t know you got in before. Why didn’t you go?”
I was weak. Scared. Not ready to face my fate.Don’t scare her, idiot.“Tyler forbade it. He didn’t want to spend the money.”
Alison had squinted one eye at me. “I mean, it’s not that I disapprove of you shaking things up. But you’re making a lot of changes all at once. Divorce is a moment of reflection. I get cutting your hair. I even get wanting to change jobs. But to sell all your stuff so you can afford to run off to the forest and write a book? With no source of income other than some alimony, which runs out in ...”
“Five years or a new marriage.”
“Right.” Alison took a swig of the wine. “What does Dr. Chowdhury say?”
Ah, the good doctor. One of the bright points in my life, truth be told. The only person who knows everything about me. And I mean everything. “It took a bit of convincing, but she thinks it’s good for me to have agency here, to make decisions about my life that only affectmefor a change. I’ve never been able to do that. I met Tyler practically thefirst day I moved here, and I haven’t been without him since. I need to find myself, and that’s why I’m following this dream at last.”
I hooked myself onto him the moment I realized he wasn’t bright enough to see me for who I really was. That he didn’t even putmetogether with his past.
The acting got boring, in the end. And I let slip, just a tiny bit, who I really was, and he ran right between the legs of the first young thing he could find. It’s fine. He wasn’t much of a challenge, and I don’t like to be bored. Ten years is a long time to be bored.
“Well”—Alison finished the last of her wine and tipped the empty glass toward me in a final toast—“I am thrilled for you, and I hope you won’t forget us little people when you’re some rich and famous author.”
“Hardly,” I replied, knocking my glass against hers. “I mean, that’s not going to happen—”
“No, no, don’t you dare. Agency, remember? Visualization. You only put into the world what you want to have happen. Say it after me: ‘I’m going to be famous and successful in my chosen career.’”
“I’m going to be famous and successful in my chosen career.”
“‘I will not talk down to myself.’”
“Ali—”
“Say it.”
“I will not talk down to myself.”
