Chapter 24
TWENTY-FOUR
As Marlowe walked across the driveway, she shoved the bottle of gin she’d picked up deeper into her purse, along with Brierley’s notes.
She was prepared to field questions about how she’d managed to shop all day long without making any purchases.
But when she entered the house, nobody cared to ask.
Ariel thought upstate locals had been turned to ghosts, but Marlowe was a ghost in her own home, slipping down the steps and into the basement.
Marlowe threw Brierley’s envelope on top of Dave’s journal entries on her desk. Ariel was dropping breadcrumbs, handing Marlowe riddle after riddle, like a troll under a bridge. And Marlowe had no power to resist the questions, no choice but to follow the trail.
She unscrewed the gin and splashed it into the cup of iced lemonade she had grabbed from the kitchen. Marlowe knew these notes were going to be about her, and she had to brace herself.
For over a year after Nora’s disappearance, Marlowe had existed in a state of agony.
It was more than sadness. Marlowe didn’t know how to live without Nora leading the way.
She couldn’t make friends, definitely couldn’t talk to boys, and she lost all sense of what she wanted or what she was good at.
Nate saved her, of that Marlowe was certain.
She was seventeen, and it was August. More than a year since Nora. It was a scorching hot day in the city. Nate found Marlowe curled in a chair in the living room, idly sketching in her notebook.
“Marlowe, get dressed.” Nate rapped his knuckles on the table.
Marlowe blinked down at her striped pajama shorts and baggy T-shirt. “I am dressed.”
“To go out.” Nate grinned. “I’m taking you out tonight.”
Marlowe shook her head. She didn’t want to go out.
She didn’t want to feel shy and awkward around Nate’s boisterous friends.
She didn’t want to watch Nate laugh and joke and gleam with his electric energy.
She wanted to stay tucked away, wrapped in her cocoon of silence.
She was shy before Nora disappeared. Now, Marlowe was socially inept.
But Nate didn’t take no for an answer. And deep down, Marlowe was flattered, as every younger sister is when her older brother demands her company. Of course she wanted to tag along when he looked her straight in the eye and begged her to.
Nate led Marlowe through the streets toward the subway, the lazy air pressing down atop them.
As they stepped down the stairs into the train station, Marlowe felt the wave of heat rise up to claim her, and she thought of the descent into hell.
She thought maybe this was how Dante felt when Virgil took him by the hand to show him each ring of the inferno.
They took the subway to a pub Nate knew of with a rooftop sitting area. Marlowe perched on a bench and looked out over the hazy city, while Nate carried up beers for the both of them. The glasses were ice cold and coated with condensing liquid.
They sat and talked about school and old friends. Nate reminisced about when their great-aunt Eliza babysat the three of them while their parents traveled. Eliza meant to treat them to sparkling apple juice, but she had served them glasses of real champagne by accident.
It was a story Marlowe knew well, but no one told it like Nate.
After one beer, Marlowe felt bursts of joy streaming through her veins.
She was so happy she had agreed to come out with him.
As Nate gave her a second, he announced that a few of his friends from school were going to meet them there.
Marlowe was not scared or miffed. She was ecstatic at this news.
When she went to the bathroom, she ogled at her own reflection.
Her cheeks were flushed, and strands were falling out of her ponytail in a disheveled way she found attractive.
Drinking, she decided, made her pretty.
When Nate’s friends arrived, Marlowe found it easy to laugh and joke with them.
She talked to one guy for a long time as he peppered her with questions, fact-checking stories Nate had told him.
Marlowe shook her head at Nate’s exaggerations and gave wry responses, her lips twisted in a smile.
She was a different girl. More clever, more eloquent, more everything.
The group walked to another bar, feeling like they owned the streets of Manhattan, and then to a third, where they danced a bit.
Later, Marlowe tumbled into bed, feeling happy and full with the pizza Nate got for them on the way home. She reflected to herself that maybe the taste of beer wasn’t so bad after all. One just had to get used to it.
Her parents made her go to therapy after Nora, but Marlowe could take or leave the sessions. She didn’t hate them, and she didn’t resist, but therapy didn’t save her. It was Nate who got her excited about life again. It was Nate and those pints of beer that made her laugh again.
Marlowe was still grateful for that.
She took a long gulp of her drink and let it settle her. She had survived this once. How could some old notes hurt her after all this time?
Brierley’s scrawl was slanted, his letters crammed together but mostly legible.
As she read, she wasn’t surprised to see that throughout the investigation, he had clung to one central theory.
She’d felt his suspicion that summer. The way he kept circling back to Nate and Henry, and how Luke, Mike, and Liam, the boys’ friends, had been dragged in for questioning again and again.
It was clear from the notes that Brierley had been convinced the teenagers were lying, covering something up. If any of them broke, he figured it would be Henry’s friend Liam. Brierley actually called him “the weak link.”
But he still considered other theories.
With missing children, a detective always looks at the parents first. He noted potential logistics: They could have driven out to the property, taken her, then returned home in time to answer the Fishers’ frantic calls.
But there was no history of abuse in the Miller house, no criminal record.
Nothing in the house when it was searched. No sign of a struggle.
A sigh of relief escaped Marlowe when she read Brierley’s final verdict: No evidence of domestic tension; no signs of abuse.
The Fisher parents were considered too. But everyone knew they were asleep upstairs when it happened. And the idea of a family-wide conspiracy was dismissed outright. Far too outlandish.
Then there was what he called “the stranger theory.” A person completely unknown to the Fishers and the Millers who could have swept in and kidnapped Nora at the opportune moment. But the notes on this theory were thin, and Brierley seemed unconvinced by it.
How would a random kidnapper know the details of their movements, with Nora taking the trash out at that precise moment?
Crimes of opportunity happened, but this one would have required intense preparation.
A well-timed approach. If someone had taken Nora, they’d moved quickly.
And they’d silenced her instantly, because no one heard a scream.
Brierley had sketched out a rough map. A square for the Gray House, a line for the road.
Beneath it, he jotted down a note about Frank purchasing the land from Caroline Rodine.
A short list of names followed: Tom, Leroy, and Dave.
And then, scrawled in his handwriting, Marlowe’s own words from an interview.
Marlowe and Nora: pranksters, played around in barn, moved things. Farmers liked the kids. Some cousins bitter after sale, dislike Fishers, but no real connection.
In light of Dave’s journals, she and Ariel both knew that wasn’t true. “Bitter” didn’t even begin to cover it. Not for Pete. Not for Harmon.
On the next page, dated June 9—four days after Nora vanished—Brierley’s notes seemed to be more carefully composed, neater, as if he was thinking more deliberately.
I question the trash story. The way they tell it, it’s off.
Of course it was off. Nate had been more than tipsy. Luke and Mike full-on drunk. The rest of them—Marlowe, Henry, Liam—were racked with fear.
She saw why Brierley harbored doubt. If a story doesn’t make sense, a detective has no choice but to assume someone is lying.
And teenagers? They’re complicated, emotional, and impulsive.
The center of their universe, as Brierley saw it, was the handsome and charismatic Nate Fisher.
Brierley had written one note about Nate after his first meeting: too charming.
Farther down: Nate and Nora romance? Marlowe, Henry, friends, and all parents say no.
Marlowe chewed the inside of her cheek. Brierley’s bleak assessment suggested a worst-case situation.
Nora was young, and Nate may have taken advantage.
His charming demeanor might conceal a violent streak.
Maybe he manipulated her, hurt her. And then, as if tripping over a land mine, Marlowe saw the explosive question at the bottom of the page.
Was Nora pregnant?
It took a moment for her to regain her composure—to remember she had already been down this road.
It was a dead-end question. Without a body, they’d never know.
And if she was, she certainly hadn’t told anyone.
Her parents insisted she was not sexually active, but Brierley noted that didn’t mean much.
She read the paraphrase of her own words shortly after: Marlowe says no, certain Nora was a virgin. But the only possibility would have been Sean.
Marlowe’s stomach turned. Nate and Stephanie were planning to come for the weekend. If she asked him point-blank—had anything ever happened between him and Nora—would he tell her the truth? Would she even know if he was lying?
The first thing Brierley wrote about Nora was telling. He scribbled: Nora Miller, age 15. Pretty.