Forget Me Not: A gripping, heart-wrenching thriller full of emotion and twists!. A. Taylor M.

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СКАЧАТЬ Nora any other way than being gone that sometimes those memories of her being here felt too far out of reach even for me.

      “Have you spoken to Louden yet?” Ange asked, cutting through my memories.

      I shook my head. Louden Winters was Nora’s ex and the brother of one of our high school friends, Hale, who hadn’t made it to the memorial but had sent a vast bunch of lilies in her place. We’d all been friends at one point, more than friends really. A group of mismatched friends and siblings who’d grown up together from scraped knees and training wheels right through to tequila shots and heads hanging over the toilet bowl. I’d once been as close to Hale as I was to Ange; but then Louden had been named as a suspect in Nora’s disappearance and for some reason Hale hadn’t taken too well to me accusing him of killing our friend. I’d been trying to ignore Louden’s presence altogether, pretending he wasn’t there, but he was six foot three, taller than most everyone else there and it had been getting harder and harder to ignore the fact that I hadn’t even said hello.

      “When did you last see him?” Ange asked.

      “A couple of years ago at Christmas I think. At the bar. You were there.”

      Ange nodded. “Right, yeah. You really haven’t seen him since?”

      “No. Have you?” I asked, unable to keep the trace of suspicion that licked through me then out of my voice.

      Ange swallowed a mouthful of coffee and nodded. “Yeah, I was in Chicago for a couple of days last year, remember? I went for a drink with him and Hale.”

      I raised my eyebrows, looking between Ange and Louden. “Why?”

      Ange shrugged. “Why not?”

      I stayed staring at Louden for longer than I meant to, trying to arrange my thoughts in a way that made sense, jigsaw pieces scrambling to find their mate and failing. I knew what I wanted to say: because he might have killed our best friend, and it was almost there, rising higher and higher in my chest until I pushed it down, away, saving it for myself. I wasn’t allowed to say such things anymore.

      It had been okay for a while, at least, the wild accusations and rampant theories. Louden’s arrest had come just days after Nora went missing, one of the main suspects, but he’d provided an alibi and been released without charge. It hadn’t stopped my own suspicions of course, and neither had it stalled the small-town gossip, but all these years later there was something childish about those words, an intense naiveté that I wasn’t allowed to indulge in anymore. They were words from another life, another lifetime, the one right after she went missing. Nevertheless, cold sweat pricked at my skin all of a sudden, the airless room stuffy with bodies, my own body still cold from the world outside as Louden turned towards me, feeling my stare, liquid brown eyes catching light. He lifted his chin in my direction and I let out a heavy breath before turning back to Ange.

      “What did he have to say for himself?” I asked, my attempt at small talk still managing to sound like an accusation.

      “The usual. He’d just started seeing someone, but I don’t know if it stuck.”

      “Lucky her.”

      “Mads,” Ange said, warning lacing her voice.

      “What? All I’m saying is he’s a bad boyfriend, that’s all.”

      “That was over ten years ago. People change.”

      It was something I wanted to believe, desperately, that people change. And maybe I did believe it, just with certain caveats; that change was glacial, imperceptible, and when it did come it didn’t necessarily mean anyone had changed for the better. It seemed to me as though it was the world that kept changing, often with a loud, deafening crack as life tore itself apart, and we were all left struggling to keep up. Not all of us managed to. I was testament to that; I was still struggling to keep up with the thundercrack that had torn through our lives ten years earlier and led us all there, to that room on a snowy day.

      As I stood there, just waiting for the day to end, waiting for that heavy, empty feeling to lessen just slightly, even though I knew it wouldn’t, that it probably never would, I couldn’t possibly have known that another crack was coming, waiting to tear us all apart yet again. That less than twenty-four hours later, Noelle would be dead, and I would be left once again, breathless, desperate, trying to make sense of a world that seemed determined to leave me behind, too broken and battered to even try and catch up.

       CHAPTER THREE

      I woke the next morning to the same shattering glass and a feeling in my chest like I couldn’t breathe, the same way I’d woken up the day before, the same way I’d been waking up for the past ten years. The weight of the memorial the day before still hadn’t lifted on top of which I had a slight hangover. I wished it felt different, I wished I felt different, but whatever I did, whatever I tried, nothing ever seemed to change. Or maybe I wasn’t trying hard enough; there were definitely people out there who would prescribe to that theory. As if she knew I was thinking of her, my phone began to buzz insistently on my bedside table, the illuminated screen telling me Serena was calling.

      “Hey,” I said, pushing myself to sit up in bed as I spoke.

      “Hey,” she said, her voice sounding a little breathless down the line. She was on her way to work. “How are you? How did yesterday go? Are you doing okay?” The questions came short and sharp; rat-a-tat-tat, like incredibly efficient gunfire.

      I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, trying to keep my voice steady. “It was fine, I guess. It was … the same as it ever is. Hard. Cold. Strange.”

      “I can’t believe it’s been ten years, Mads. It’s insane. I really wish I could have been there for you. For Nora too.” Serena had modulated her voice, gentle, gentle, but there was wind whipping around her as she walked down the street, traffic noise practically drowning her out, so I had to strain to hear her.

      “I know, it’s fine. It was all fine. Ange was there, we stuck together.”

      “Mom said you guys went out for a drink after?”

      I rolled my eyes up towards the ceiling. My mom and sister sharing notes about me wasn’t breaking news however, so I let it slide.

      “Was Nate there?” Serena continued.

      “At the memorial, yeah; he didn’t come for a drink.”

      There was a little beat, the briefest of pauses before: “How was he? How was that?”

      I held my breath before answering, one, two, three, four, before remembering that what you were actually meant to do was count to ten while breathing to calm yourself down, not cut off the supply of oxygen for ten seconds. When I finally let the breath out, the sigh that emanated from me seemed to fill my entire bedroom.

      “It was about as awkward as I thought it would be,” I said at last, “actually, you know what, it was worse than I thought it would be. He seems to actively dislike me now. I don’t know what it is I’m meant to have done, but there it is.”

      Serena made a sound I had a little difficulty translating and then said: “He needs to get over himself. You’d think after everything that’s happened he could at least СКАЧАТЬ