Page 73 of The Gallagher Place
Her parents would only echo Henry’s refrain: We’ve done nothing wrong. The lawyers will protect Nate and Enzo. In an armchair near the fire, Constance sat with a book open in her lap, but her eyes were fixed on Marlowe.
Crossing the kitchen, Marlowe slipped behind the counter and squatted, her legs still aching from her frantic run through the woods, and plucked a bottle of whiskey from the cabinet. She poured a generous amount into a glass and downed half in one swift gulp, ignoring Constance’s wide-eyed gaze. Clutching two cans of ginger ale from the fridge, she gathered the bottle and glass in her other hand and headed for the basement.
There, after refilling her glass, she pulled out her phone and dialed Charlie Beacon—the neighbor from up the road who lived closer to Damen. He had been a newcomer decades ago, long before the Fishers, but was now considered a local.
Charlie picked up after one ring.
“Hi, it’s Marlowe Fisher. I need you to check on Damen Miller tonight.” Marlowe paused as she considered how much to divulge. “He’s been having a rough time. Just call if he’s not there.”
“Of course. I’ll walk over to his place in a bit,” Charlie said.
Hanging up, Marlowe took small comfort in the unspoken rural code: Neighbors watched out for each other, sharing warnings even over small mishaps.
God, she hoped he made it home. She hoped he didn’t collapse in the woods.
Returning to her drink, she crossed the room and shut the door behind her. There was a moment, Marlowe knew it well, in between a drunken stupor and a total blackout—a rare moment of clarity when she saw things for what they were. The only time she was able to know the truth. And she was going to find it.
She mixed the ginger ale with the whiskey and then sank into the armchair by the window, taking a long swallow and staring at the blackness outside. Had it been this dark the night Nora disappeared?
As she took another long sip of her drink, the legend of Rip Van Winkle came to her. There was a nearby bridge over the Hudson named after him. As the story goes, he was a Dutch farmer who wandered off into the Catskill Mountains one day and met a stranger who gave him liquor that sent him into a deep slumber. He slept for twenty years and awoke to a changed world. His wife was dead and his children were grown. Yet faint remnants of the past were still recognizable. Marlowe mused that perhaps twenty years was the perfect measure: long enough fordramatic change, but not so long that all traces of what once was had vanished.
She imagined Nora returning to the Gray House, marveling at a renovated kitchen yet finding solace in the unchanged hearth. Nora would shake her head and laugh about Henry’s graying hair, and she would tease Nate over his protruding belly.
And then she would turn to Marlowe with a gentle smile.
“At least I’m back now,” Nora would say. “I just slept in the woods—took a sip of a strange drink and fell asleep.”
Squinting through the darkness, Marlowe chugged the rest of her drink, already planning to switch to the hidden bottle of red wine in the closet once the whiskey had fully eased the tension in her head and the soreness in her body. Damen Miller’s attack, his clumsy pursuit of revenge, had forced a reckoning she could no longer ignore.
Another swallow confirmed it: She didn’t need to face more harsh truths or painful memories tonight. As Ariel had warned, overthinking was the enemy; all she needed was a stiff drink to quiet her mind. She wasn’t a violent drunk like Damen. No, Marlowe was a wise drunk.
But she couldn’t stop the barrage of fragmented memories from surfacing: Pete Gallagher’s anger, Harmon’s desperate claims implicating the Fishers in Nora’s fate, whispered secrets of family guilt, and the small details that spoke louder than words—Enzo’s boots, Henry’s adamant belief in Mr. Babel, Nate’s skepticism about Henry’s stories. That night, Henry and Enzo headed back to the apple orchard while she and Nate dashed to the Gallagher barn, which made more sense now. They knew the mysterious house was in that direction. That was where their thoughts had gone.
Meanwhile, Marlowe and Nate stumbled across the street, breath ragged in the night. Their parents made for the pasture. It was Nate who’d checked the loft. Marlowe could remember hisshadowy form slipping into the barn. She had stood at the sliding doors, calling out over the fields but glancing back at Nate as he climbed the ladder, quiet as a mouse. He had poked his head up into the loft; she remembered him shining his flashlight, and then he’d come down. “Nothing,” he had said. “Nothing up there.”
The next day, the hounds tracked Nora’s scent and then ran to the trash bin. And then they ran right to the barn, where the trail went cold.
She remembered it all.
Marlowe made herself another drink. Later, her mother knocked on her door. Marlowe opened it, meeting Glory’s knowing eyes.
“Rest tonight. Tomorrow we are a united front.”
Marlowe’s sluggish mind could offer only silence. Glory’s quiet departure up the stairs spoke volumes—as if she didn’t care, as if they had all resigned themselves to letting her drown her sorrows in a bottle, dulling her senses until the pain receded.
If only they knew. When she drank, the truth became clear, but she could never hold on to it. That was why she would never be a great artist; she was brave enough to face reality only when too inebriated to hold a pencil or brush.
As she sat on her bed with her knees drawn up to her chest, drink in hand and feet freezing beneath her, a lump rose in her throat. Visions of long-ago sleepovers with Nora flooded back: whispered secrets shared between the twin beds and the giddy rush of warming limbs as they kicked playfully under their duvets. These were moments she’d never recapture. Because they were together.
A familiar release came with the right amount of drink. She let the tears fall down her cheeks as she heaved in silence. Curling up with her head spinning, she wished for an endless sleep—a twenty-year slumber, maybe even forty. She hoped that when she woke, the whole world would be changed.
THIRTY-FIVE
BONFIRE
Sunday, May 24, 1998
Nate pounded into the kitchen in grand spirits. He had just finished his first-year finals at Princeton and was home for the summer.
