“Know what?” Marlowe’s throat went dry.
“I told them more this time,” Mike said. “More than I said back then.”
“That’s good,” she said. “That’s—that’s all I’ve wanted.”
He must have heard some fear in her voice. “I’m not saying I know anything; there were just little things, really. Things I never said. Because I was young and Nate was my friend, and I honestly wanted to forget the whole thing.”
“Can you start at the beginning?” Marlowe asked. “Can you tell me what you told them?”
Mike started on the drive up from the city, with Nate describing the weekend they were in for.
“It was clear he loved the place,” Mike said. “He’d been raving about it for weeks. How we were going to take a long hike through the woods and maybe swim in the river if the weather was warm enough. The big dinners we would have.”
The lost weekend.
“Nate talked about you guys too. And Nora. I was honestly curious to meet all of you.” Mike paused and heaved a great sigh that sounded like the crackle of a radio when the channel hit a spot of static. “I’ve thought about that night a lot. I’m sure you know I was never close with Nate afterward. That we drifted. I guess I tried to forget, but I never could do it. That girl, disappearing—it stuck with me.”
“It’s not something we can ever forget.” Marlowe’s voice was low, barely audible.
“Yeah.” Mike paused for a long second. “The thing is, I have three daughters now, and if it were one of my daughters …” Mike’s voice trailed off as he considered the unimaginable. “Look, I wish I could go back and grab my idiot younger self by the neck and tell him to do more. To say more.”
“To say what, specifically?” Marlowe was holding the phone so close to her ear that she felt it was going to leave an imprint on her cheek. She knew this was the moment Mike would tell her that Nate and Nora had been sleeping together.
“On the ride up there that Friday, Nate described the three of you. He’d mentioned his kid brother and little sister before,” Mike said. “He told us Henry was a riot, and that his sister was solid. But in that car, that was the first time he mentioned Nora.”
Marlowe was frozen in suspense, but a small part of her rankled at being reduced to “solid” by her older brother.
“Nate said the neighbor would be there, and he was tense about it,” Mike said. “Look, I don’t know all the details, but he implied she was clingy, always hanging around. Honestly, it just sounded like a typical neighbor situation to me, like something out of a sitcom. But then he claimed that she was a little thief. That’s what he called her: ‘a little thief.’”
Marlowe blinked. That was a secret.
“Nate wasn’t mad or anything. He just seemed put off by it,” Mike continued. “He didn’t go into detail, but he said he knew she had stolen a ring from his mother’s box, and some silver or something.”
There had been a ring, yes, and a pendant. A paperweight from her father’s office. Silver cuff links.
Small things. Things Marlowe had been quite certain her parents would never notice. Fallen behind a dresser drawer or misplacedsomewhere. Left in the city, perhaps, or in a hotel room.
Marlowe helped Nora take them. Gave them to her. The Gray House had too much. Why shouldn’t it go to Nora, who needed it?
There had been an older student with a car. Nora had cut some sort of deal. The guy drove to Albany or Poughkeepsie, to various pawnshops, and he and Nora split the cash.
It was for things she needed. School supplies. Clothes. Things that Marlowe justhadeasy access to.
Marlowe had seen the difference in their lives. She had seen how unfair it was. So she helped, but she never suspected that Nate had caught on to it.
“Is that all he said about her?” Marlowe asked.
“He called her tricky; I remember that,” Mike said. “Sly. Manipulative. Said we should keep an eye on her. The way he described her, I thought we were going to meet some sort of red-eyed demon. But then we got there, and she was just a girl.”
“And you never told Brierley this? Back when she first disappeared?”
“All Brierley asked was if Nate was sleeping with Nora, and I said no, full stop. Then I just repeated over and over that I didn’t know anything.”
“But was he sleeping with her?” Marlowe nearly whispered the question.
“No, I don’t think so.” There was a rustle on the other end. Mike was shifting and moving something. Marlowe pictured him in a plaid button-down shirt, eager to enjoy his day off. “I think he hated Nora. Not in a romance-gone-bad type of way. Just true resentment.”
Marlowe furrowed her brow. Nate didn’t hate Nora. He never had. They were friends, all of them. So why was Mike so certain?
