Page 90 of What Happened to Nina?

“Did his parents help him to run away?” I asked, in the end.

“We don’t know. It’s a possibility. Look, again, I know how hard this is, but I need to ask you to trust us. We will do our jobs. We will find out the truth, and we will make sure that those who are guilty are punished.”

Andy and I looked at each other. Grace’s head was pressed into my shoulder.

“Nina’s gone,” Andy said, in a voice that rasped with tension and unshed tears. “That’s the only thing that matters. After her funeral we’ll be going away for a while. We don’t want to talk to the press or anyone else. When the dust has settled, we’ll come home again.” His eyes met mine and I nodded.

So that’s what we did. We got Nina’s body back one week after she was found. We held a funeral for her, and too many people came. Her friends and ours, and family, but far too many strangers. The service was private, but at the cemetery the vultures came, standing a little distance away, watching us in our grief and taking pictures like we were a pageant put on for their amusement. The next day we left Waitsfield. We went to New York City. Andy’s theory was that we needed to keep busy. A beach vacation wouldn’t be good for us. We’d have too much time to sit around and think about everything. So we went to the city and we packed every day with things to do and places to go. For the first time in my life I didn’t worry about money. We had savings, and while we didn’t know exactly what the future held, the money didn’t seem worth worrying about. We rented an AirBnB for three weeks and tried very hard to forget. Not Nina. But everything else.

We couldn’t escape things completely, of course. We heard about it when Rory Jordan was arrested and charged as an accessory to Nina’s murder. It turned out that Nina had been moved from that shallow grave in the woods to the lake, and the only person who could have done that was Rory. He’s still denying it, but everyone says the case against him is very strong. Simon killed her. The police are sure of that. She had bruises on her body, old and new, and a fractured jaw. She also had a fractured skull. The police think that Simon might have punched her, hard enough that she fell back and hit her head on the fireplace in the living room of that house. There’s some forensic evidence to support the theory, as I understand it, but I haven’t asked too many questions. I know enough. Too much, really.

They haven’t been able to ask Simon, because they haven’t been able to find him. There’s a warrant out for his arrest, and sometimes there are “sightings.” Matthew Wright calls us every now and again, to reassure us that he’s doing everything he can to find Simon. We listen quietly each time, thank him, and hang up. We never talk about what really happened.

We came home to Waitsfield on December 1. We would have sold the inn and moved away, if we could have, but we can never do that now. We’ll live here for the rest of our lives. We’ve decided to keep the inn closed until January, when we’re going to relaunch it under a new name, with a new website. We will reinvent ourselves and leave all the mess that was attached to the Black Friar behind. Andy’s business is picking up. He got some phone calls and emails after Rory was arrested. There were one or two apologies, but mostly those people who hired him back seemed to want to pretend that nothing had happened. Andy let it go. It was hard for him, but he had no choice. We’d come close to ruin, and he was too grateful to have an income to want to punish people who’d believed the worst about him.

So life began to settle into a kind of normalcy. We missed Nina every day, but we were together, and we were rebuilding.

On December 20, Jamie Jordan came to our home. Andy answered the door, but Jamie asked for me. She looked the same as she always did, almost. She was dressed in a pair of soft brown leather trousers and a black sweater with a black wool jacket and hat. Her hair was still blond and perfect, and her eye makeup had been expertly applied. But she didn’t look well. Her lips were so dry they were cracked and bloody. Her nail polish was chipped, and she had dark circles under her eyes that no amount of makeup could hide.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sure you don’t want to see me. I didn’t come here to upset you, or Andy. Or Grace, of course.”

I held the door so that it was mostly closed. I didn’t want her looking past me into the house. I didn’t want her near my family.

“Why did you come here?”

“I... look, I’m sorry. I know sorry is not enough, I know it doesn’t help, but I’m so sorry about Nina. I understand the pain you’re going through.”

I didn’t say anything. I didn’t have any words.

“I came because...” She let her voice trail off. She seemed lost, as if whatever energy had driven her to come to our door had deserted her.

“You should go home now, Jamie,” I said. “I don’t think we should see each other.” I started to close the door.

“Wait,” she said. She took a step forward and raised her hand, as if she was going to try to force the issue by holding the door open, then she let her hand fall to her side. “Simon’s missing. Everyone thinks he ran away. I thought that too, in the beginning. But it’s been a month, and he hasn’t touched his bank account. He doesn’t have any cash. He hasn’t tried to call me or his father. And the police have searched the Long Trail. They even used a helicopter with a body heat camera. They checked security footage at the bus stations. They interviewed all of his friends. There’s been no sign of him.” She spoke in urgent, abrupt fits and starts, falling into silences where her nerve failed her.

Her eyes were tight on mine.

“So?”

“So I don’t think he ran away. I think... I think maybe something happened to him.”

My face was stone. I stared her down.

“I keep thinking about what I would have done if I thought your child had killed mine and was going to get away with it. I couldn’t live with it, I don’t think.” Her eyes were tight on mine. “I think maybe I would have... done something.” She let her voice trail away again.

“What are you trying to say, Jamie?”

“Just this.” Her eyes filled with tears. She tried to blink them back and failed. She wiped them away with the back of her hand. “If you know anything, if you think that something happened to Simon, please, please tell me. I don’t mean that you have to say anything out loud. I’m not trying to make trouble for you or your family.” She took a step closer to me. She reached out and gripped my wrist. “But you understand better than anyone what it is to lose a child and not to know. You understand that it’s impossible to live with the not knowing. So please. I’m begging you, woman to woman. Mother to mother. If you think that Simon is dead, I’m asking you to nod your head. Just nod your head. I’ll walk away, and you’ll never hear from me again. But you’ll know that you’ve helped me. You’ll have given me some peace.”

I saw the pain in her face, in the set of her body, in her eyes. It was eating her alive, in the same way that it had consumed me. She was right. We understood each other. I wanted to take away some small part of her pain. That was a human instinct. I thought about Andy. I thought about Grace. I thought about Nina.

“I can’t help you,” I said.

And I shut the door.

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