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“What?”
“It’s awful, I know.”
“How?” I breathe out.
“A car crash.”
I’m rocked by disbelief.
“I’m sorry to be the one to tell you. Truly. If it helps, they say that she died quickly, that she didn’t feel any pain.” I can’t find the words to speak. “Are you okay?” she asks.
“Yes,” I manage to get out, and then, “Thank you, Emily. Thank you for letting me know.”
We end the call and I sit there on the chair, stock-still.
It’s not surprising that I didn’t know that Nat was dead. After my sister Bethany’s death, my parents moved away from our hometown. I never went back. I cut ties with almost everyone from that time in my life. It was the only way I knew to move on from my sister’s suicide.
With shaking hands, I Google her name, Natalie Cohen, and then because that’s too broad, too general, I add the words Illinois and car crash. I press enter and a new page loads. Each headline is a shocking betrayal.
Six dead in fiery wrong-way crash
Wrong way crash kills mother, father and their three kids
Recent college graduate with a bright future among those killed on Illinois tollway
Community mourns a family lost in deadly crash
I think I will be sick or pass out, I don’t know which. On the kitchen chair, I spread my legs wide, hunch over and drop my head between them to increase the blood flow to my brain. I close my eyes. I breathe, in through my nose, out through my mouth, wondering if I should call Sienna, who’s in her bedroom ten feet away, for help, but I don’t want to worry her. I think about the breathing techniques they taught me before Sienna was born. I breathe out through pursed lips.
When I can, I sit back up. I lean back in the chair and look at the search results on my phone. I choose one of the headlines and read the article in its entirety.
All five members of the Cohen family were killed around 3:00 p.m. Sunday afternoon when their minivan collided with a van on Interstate 90 that was going the wrong way. The driver responsible for the crash, thirty-two-year-old Marcus High, was drunk at the time of the incident, with a blood alcohol content of more than twice the legal limit. He was also killed.
There is a picture. It’s dated, circa early two thousands. Mr. and Mrs. Cohen stand on the left, him in khaki pants and a white shirt, her in nice jeans and a warm tan blouse. On the right are two teenage boys, twins maybe, one with glasses, one without, both tall and lanky in jeans and neutral, coordinating polo shirts.
And there in the center of them all stands Nat Cohen with her short, blunt bobbed hair and gap-toothed smile, in a jean skirt and a turtleneck.
My chest tightens. My mouth is suddenly dry, though my hands are wet with sweat.
Who is this woman who’s been living in my home, who I’ve been telling my secrets to?
Nineteen
The days pass. Christmas comes and goes. The brutal winter makes itself right at home. The snow is no longer magical but persistent, never-ending. It doesn’t get warm enough for it to melt. The closest it gets to melting is dirty brown slush that we bring home on our shoes and into the apartment. The windows in our building are old and drafty; the winter air gets in and we are always cold, the days gray, spring an eternity away. I go to work and I come home, each day a carbon copy of the day before. Nothing changes.
Time passes and the police still haven’t found my stolen money. It’s not for lack of trying. The bank account, they’ve learned, the place where I wired the money to, belonged to a man named Joseph Minor. The police tracked him down to a dilapidated home just west of Washington Park. Joseph Minor is a drug addict and, at first when they told me, my heart leaped because I thought the police had found the person who did this to me. But I was wrong. Mr. Minor didn’t do it because, when the police spoke to him, he confessed that he had, in essence, rented out his identity—his name, his social security number—for cash, for money for drugs. Someone else—a woman, he said—paid him off and then used his identity to set up the quasi-anonymous account, and I don’t have to think long or hard to know who did it. She did. The woman I only know as Nat, using a voice changer app to make herself sound like a man on the phone and setting up the account online so she didn’t have to go into the bank, so no one would see her and there would be no evidence. I tell the police it was her, but without a real name or a picture of her, it’s like tracking down a ghost.
I look for her everywhere I go. At work. On my commute to work. Sitting in my living room staring out the window at the street. I watch the L pass by and wonder if she’s on it. I never see her, but I think she’s out there somewhere, watching me. I feel it all the time, this overwhelming, paralyzing feeling of being followed, pursued. There are nights that I know she’s lurking in the shadows, walking behind me, following me home from work. I never see her. It’s a gut feeling only, but I trust my gut, those times that my nerves scream out and the tiny hairs on my arms stand on end. I hear footsteps behind me, but every time I turn around to see, she’s gone, slipping into gangways, into the alcoves of stores, into covered bus stops or blending in with other people on the street.
She’s toying with me.
As the days go by, my indignation grows. She lied to me. She stole ten thousand dollars from me. She made me believe she was my long-lost friend. I let her into my home. I told her my secrets. And yet, I don’t know who she is.
It wasn’t just that. There’s more. Because one day not long after she disappeared, I went into my jewelry box, which I keep on the dresser in my bedroom. I don’t often wear jewelry, but Sienna asked for a bracelet to borrow, and when I opened the box, I felt sick. My wedding and engagement rings, which have sat untouched in one of the little modular trays since Ben and my divorce, were gone. The velvet tray lay empty.
I don’t wear those rings anymore but they’re worth thousands of dollars and even more in sentimental value. Right away, I told the police and reported the crime, but the only thing the police could do was file a report and then keep tabs on jewelry stores and pawnshops to see if she tries to sell them, but so far no luck.
I start to lose hope that I will ever see her with my own eyes. I try to distract myself with other things. I go on a date with a man I meet online, telling myself I need to move on and forget about Nat and everything that happened. I need to forget about my divorce and about Ben. I need to put it all behind me. I need to find a way to move on with my life, to find peace and happiness. What’s done is done.
