Page 47 of The Gallagher Place
Marlowe forced herself to continue with his notes. There, at the top of the following page, a name she never expected to see.
Mr. Babel.
Her breath hitched. She had forgotten until now, but Brierley had asked her about Mr. Babel. A throwaway question. And she had laughed it off. “Oh, he’s just made up. We tell stories about him. He’s not real.”
That was all he got from her, and then he moved on.
Evidently, Nate and Henry had told a different story, one that Marlowe had never heard. Henry swore he’d seen a man in the woods, camping out and hunting small game. He saw him once pulling a dead rabbit from a trap. And Nate similarly claimed Mr. Babel was real but kept to himself.
A quote from Nate jumped out at her:
We’re not friends with him. We’ve just seen him. Two or three times.
It appeared that Brierley invoked Marlowe during the exchange, because Nate made a point of mentioning that she didn’t think Mr. Babel was real, before ending with a line that chilled her:
Marlowe and Nora have their secrets, and we have ours.
Marlowe raised her head, pulse thrumming in her ears. She couldn’t believe it.
Brierley shared her confusion, having written:The boys are leading me on wild-goose hunts after “Babel,” and Marlowe is blind.
It made sense why Brierley had suspected them. Why bring up some phantom lurking in the woods unless they were trying to misdirect? It may as well have been a confession.
Marlowe didn’t see guilt. She saw fear. Of course, Nate and Henry might have their secrets, but if they had actually seen Mr. Babel, if he was real, they would have been falling over themselves to share that information. Unless they were hiding something.
Her eyes flicked back to the crumpled notes she had made at the museum. Pete Gallagher’s name glared up at her. He would have known every inch of that property. Nate and Henry claimed they’dseen something a few times. But he could have been out there every night, watching them all. Waiting.
When she finished, Marlowe collected the notes. She knew why Ariel had given them to her—just in case Marlowe had evidence that might fit. But she didn’t. The only evidence she had was the story that Brierley found so unbelievable, he had come up with soap opera plotlines to explain it.
Marlowe closed her eyes.
It had been a long time since she had pictured it in detail. She used to run it over in her head again and again, searching for clues she may have missed.
In her mind, it played like a movie: Nora stepping out onto the lawn, her wellies squishing against the damp grass. It had been a sunny day, but the earth was always damp—because of the swamplands and marshes, as Jeanine said.
Nora shivers faintly; she’s wearing only a T-shirt and jeans, and the June nights can be brisk. But she walks on. The light from the house illuminates half the lawn with a yellow square. Beyond that, Nora can see only the outlines of the pines and the trash bins. But that’s enough. She knows the property. How many times has she taken out the trash at night? Just as much as Marlowe had.
She pushes one of the bins open and tosses the bag in with a little huff. As the lid snaps closed, Nora hears something. Her attacker’s car (and there had to be a car, unless he’d been clever enough to find a hiding spot before they searched) couldn’t have been too close. Nora wouldn’t have ventured farther. She would have turned around.
So her attacker approached on foot, and Nora would have heard something. A footfall or a rustling sound from the trees.
Nate liked to play jokes. He did it all the time. They all did. When Marlowe or Nora were outside at night, Nate sometimes jumped out from behind a bush to scare them. And they’d oftenreturned the favor. It always worked, no matter how much you might expect it.
Marlowe imagines Nora hearing something but not panicking right away. She would have thought it was Nate.
There’s a heavy silence, and Nora, who always had impeccable instincts, feels that prickle at the nape of her neck.
Then she’s snatched from behind. That was what Marlowe had imagined the most. That’s when Nora tries to scream, but before she can get the sound out, he drags her away. If he got an unconscious Nora into the thicket near the North Field, or into the old Gallagher barn, he could have hidden. Marlowe and Nate and the others never checked the thicket very well, or the woods. And they had poked about in the Gallagher barn, but it was so dark. Marlowe remembered Nate climbing up into the loft at one point, but just to have a cursory look with the flashlight. He didn’t delve into every corner. Not that night.
The attacker had left with Nora before dawn, of that Marlowe was certain.
Whoever took Nora was good at hiding. It was not a nuanced psychological profile, but it was all Marlowe had up to this point. But now she had Dave’s journals and Brierley’s notes. Nate had told Brierley he had his secrets. They all had secrets. She had to stop looking for missing pieces out in the dark. She needed to consider the people who had been sitting in the house with her, hiding in plain sight.
She tightened her grip around the cold glass before gulping down the dregs.
Marlowe knew, even when she was a teenager, it was wrong to rely on drinking to ease her sorrow. She knew it would lead only to trouble. Her mother didn’t drink at all, because she grew up with an addict for a brother. Glory told them that it was genetic. Alcoholism was in their blood, woven into their very DNA.
Marlowe tried everything to break the cycle of drinking. She tried traveling as far as she could; she tried therapy; she tried boyfriends. She hadn’t tried marriage, but she would have for the right person.
