Page 16 of What Happened to Nina?

“She was a little kid, Andy. It’s not the same.”

“I know. I get it. But she’s caught up in the breakup. She’s a kid. I bet you a hundred dollars she’s back in that corner, licking those wounds, and we’ll hear from her when she’s good and ready.”

I could smell burning. The pan was too hot under the sausages. I turned away from Andy and lifted it off the ring with my left hand, and as I did so the handle, which had been loose for a while, finally gave way. The pan started to fall, and out of instinct I caught it and held it with my right hand. For some reason, instead of letting it drop straight to the floor, I held on to it long enough to drop it into the sink.

“Jesus, Lee.” Andy turned on the tap and grabbed my hand, putting it under cold running water. There were livid red marks on my palm and fingertips. I didn’t feel pain, just a bit sick and shaky. “Keep it there,” Andy said. He went to the long cupboard and took out the plastic box where we keep a first aid kit that we’ve never used. “There’s burn spray here somewhere.”

“I can’t. I need a minute.” I couldn’t wait for him. I couldn’t stay in the room for another moment. I took my hand out of the water and dried it on a dish towel. I took my jacket from the back of a chair and went outside. Rufus slipped out just ahead of me, and I let the door slam closed behind us. It was very cold outside, and it was already getting dark. No snow, or I would have picked some up and held it in my hand, which was throbbing. I walked in the garden and I thought about Nina. I knew my daughter, and she didn’t have a cruel bone in her body. That’s not how she was made. She could be impulsive, and she had a temper, but even as a little girl she’d been quick to forgive. She didn’t hold a grudge. So why hadn’t she returned any of my calls? Could she have been in an accident? She could be in a hospital bed somewhere, where no one knew her. Or... worse. There were worse things. There were predators in this world. My mind started to present me with scenarios. Terrible things. I shook my head hard, and then shook it again. I tried to tell myself that I was letting my imagination run away with me. That there was no need and no reason to think the worst, but fear welled up inside me, and it refused to be pushed back down.

I felt the hairs rising at the back of my neck, like someone was approaching, or watching me. I spun on my heel. There was no one there. I looked to the distant trees, the mountains, and paranoia gripped me. Anyone could be out there watching me. Suddenly I felt like I was in a closed room, under observation. I couldn’t get enough air. My throat felt like it was closing in, and my heart felt like it was beating faster and faster. I tried again to breathe and couldn’t. I’d never had asthma, but I felt like how I’d always imagined an asthmatic must feel in the middle of an attack. I could draw air into my lungs, but the air didn’t seem to do anything. I sank down onto my knees and sank my right hand into the gravel to keep my balance. The stones were sharp and pressed into my hand, and with that small pain came a burst of clarity.

Nina could still be in the house. If Simon had left her there, like he said he did, she could have fallen down the stairs. She could have hit her head or fractured her pelvis. She might have an injury that would make it impossible for her to get to a phone.

Jesus. How had this not been the very first thing we’d checked?

I was still kneeling on the driveway. Rufus tried to push his nose under my arm. He whined.

“It’s okay, boy. I’m okay.”

I stood and walked on shaky legs as fast as I could back to the kitchen. I called for Andy, but he wasn’t there. The pan of sausages was still in the sink. I didn’t have time to look for him. It felt like delaying for even five minutes could ruin everything. I got my car keys and jacket and left. I was certain that I would find her, if I could just get to Stowe without any interruption. Certain in a way that made everything around me brighter and sharper.

I drove out of town and turned left on Route 100, in the direction of Stowe. I’d never been to the Jordans’ chalet, but I knew from Nina, and from town gossip, that they’d bought some four hundred acres just five minutes from Stowe. I knew that there was a house on the property, and a small lake and a caretaker’s cottage, and miles of cut trails, and springs and ponds. I knew enough that finding the house wasn’t hard. When I got closer to Stowe, I pulled off on the side of the road and used my phone to look up properties sold near the village over the past year. Then I filtered the search results, weeding out anything that had sold for less than five million dollars, figuring that four hundred acres in that location would be in that ballpark, at least. The filter left me with a list of six properties. I clicked on the links and flicked through the descriptions and the photographs. Bingo. Or, at least, a partial bingo. From the description I thought I’d found the right property, but when I entered the address on Google Maps, the little red pin appeared right in the middle of a forest. It took a little more adjusting and fiddling before I could figure out that access to the property was off Tansey Hill Road. I pinned the access point, turned on directions, and started driving. It started to rain. Ten minutes later I pulled up outside a six-foot solid timber gate. There was no number on the gateposts, nothing to confirm the address of the house, but I knew I was in the right place.

I got out of the car. Given how obsessive the Jordans were about security at their home in Waitsfield, I thought perhaps the gate would be locked, but it wasn’t. I was able to push both sides open and drive right in. It was full dark now, and the only light came from my headlights. The house was some two hundred yards back from the road. I don’t know what I had expected. Something monolithic, maybe, like the house in Waitsfield. But this house was different. It was a long, slim pavilion, designed, or so it appeared to me, to look almost like one of Vermont’s covered bridges. Unlike the Jordans’ home, this house was settled into the landscape. It had a quieter presence, the trees and shrubs that surrounded it were mature, and there was moss growing on the roof tiles. No doubt Jamie and Rory would bulldoze it the first chance they got and build something enormous and ridiculous in its place.

I got out of the car and walked to the house through the rain. It was eerily silent; there wasn’t even birdsong. The lawn to the right of the house fell away in a gentle slope to a jetty on a small lake. The water was still, dark, and uninviting. The windows of the house were dark too, and there were no cars parked outside. I went to the door and rang the doorbell. There was no response. The front door was enormous, easily nine feet high, and there was a full-length glass panel to the left of it. I tried to open the door, without much hope. It was locked. I could see into a wide hallway with pale timber floors, looking almost gray in the dim light of the late afternoon. There were no lights on inside, no sign that anyone was at home. I rang the doorbell again, then a third time.

“Nina? Nina, can you hear me?”

I had to get into the house. I could feel her, in there, needing me.

I jogged around the side of the house, trying to see in the windows. I got a peek into the kitchen and another into the laundry room, but the drapes were closed on most of the rooms, and I got increasingly panicked and frustrated as I made my way around the back. I thought maybe the back door might be open. In Waitsfield people sometimes left their doors unlocked. But I wasn’t that lucky. I tried the door more than once, put my shoulder to it and shoved, but the effort was pointless and I knew it.

I stepped back and searched around for a rock. I found a solid chunk of granite, a stone that had been dug out of the mountain and used with others to form the edging for a garden bed. I hefted it in two hands and crashed it as hard as I could into the closest window. The glass shattered. The noise of it, the shock of it, gave me energy, and I worked faster. I removed a few of the big shards that I thought might come down, then put my hand through the break and opened the window. I climbed inside, avoiding the broken glass as best I could. Soon I was tracking my way through a long corridor, making my way back to the front of the house.

“Nina?” I called. My voice echoed. It was getting late, and the house was dark. I found a light switch, flipped it, and blinked in the sudden light that flooded the hallway. I opened a door and on the other side found a great room. It felt cold and unwelcoming, like a room that had been long abandoned and resented that abandonment. The floors were bare timber. Three large couches had been set out in a U shape, facing an empty fireplace, but there were no rugs for comfort, no coffee table or lamps. There were large windows overlooking the valley, and on another day the view might have been wonderful, but with the clouds and the rain and the sun going down, all I could see was gray. I left the room and found the stairs and took them two at a time.

“Nina?” I called her name as I climbed the stairs. I hurried from bedroom to bedroom, but there was no sign of her, and no sign she’d ever been there.

I stood very still and pressed my hands to my face. I made sounds I was barely conscious of. I whimpered. The certainty in my head was leaving me, and I didn’t want it to go. I wanted to be in the world where I found my girl and I held her and kissed her warm head and called an ambulance and I was her mother and she was hurt but the kind of hurt that I could make better. The house was too cold and hard and empty. The house was a rock with sharp edges.

I knew I should leave. Nina wasn’t there. Any justification I may have had for breaking in was gone. But I wasn’t ready. This was the last place she’d been for sure. I needed to be certain that I hadn’t missed anything, any clue about where she’d gone next. I started searching more carefully, going through the wardrobes and checking under the beds. The bedrooms were like hotel rooms; every bed was made, all the surfaces clean and polished, and nothing personal was left out. The master suite had a dressing room full of clothes; presumably belonging to Jamie and Rory. The closets in the first bedroom were empty, but in the second I found clothes that I was pretty sure were Simon’s. Some slacks and sweats, long-sleeved T-shirts, underpants, socks, and sweaters. But there was nothing of Nina’s.

Where had she gone when she’d left this place? And who had she gone with?

I went back downstairs. I would have to call the Jordans. Confess that I’d broken into their house. Pay for the broken window. I stood in the middle of the great room and closed my eyes. Tried to imagine Nina here. Nina, who was so warm, in this place that was so cold. The room smelled clean, not like floor cleaner or surface spray, but like someone had just done a fresh load of laundry. I went to the kitchen and opened the fridge. I’d expected it to be empty, but there was food inside. A wilting bag of lettuce, an open pack of bacon, butter, and some grapes. And finally something that suggested Nina had been here. Her favorite brand of yogurt, with two gone from a container of six. I moved aside the wilting lettuce and found a bottle of prescription eye drops with Nina’s name on the label. Nina had trouble with dry eyes.

I clutched the little bottle in my hand. There was a large door to the left of the fridge. I opened it, expecting to find a walk-in pantry. Instead I found a small hallway and stairs that led down, into a basement and darkness. I flipped on the light switch and hurried down. The door swung shut behind me. In the basement I found a well-stocked boot room, with skis and snowboards and jackets and hats. Everything neatly put away, ready for the snow that was only weeks away now. I nearly turned around and went straight back upstairs, but a flash of red caught my eye. Nina’s hiking jacket, peeking out from behind a bigger, navy jacket that I thought I recognized as Simon’s. I searched around and found her day pack and a pair of rain pants. I looked inside the bag and found her climbing shoes and chalk, a fleece pullover, and a plastic sandwich bag with crumbs inside. There was a laundry basket in the corner of the room, half-full, with discarded socks and thermals, some of which I recognized as Nina’s. I scrabbled through the laundry, pulling out everything I knew to be hers. Thermals, socks, and underwear... I shoved it into her day bag, then hugged her bag and jacket to me as if I was holding her. Then I heard the door at the top of the stairs open and a deep voice say:

“Police. Get on the floor. On the floor.” I heard heavy footsteps on the stairs and a moment later a very young man, a police officer in full uniform, came into the room, with his gun raised and pointed straight at me. “Get on the floor. Get on the floor right now.”

I looked at him stupidly. I was still clutching Nina’s things. He gestured with his gun, and I started to kneel, awkwardly. He didn’t want to wait. He grabbed me and shoved me to the floor, then wrenched my arms behind my back, handcuffing me. It hurt, and I let out a sound that was something like a yelp.

“I’m just looking for my daughter.” I don’t know if he even heard the words I said, if he processed them. He was breathing hard, worked up. He pulled me up by my handcuffed arms, like I didn’t weigh a thing, and propelled me toward the stairs.

“Please. I need to bring my daughter’s things.”

“Ma’am. I need to you climb the stairs right now.”

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