Forget Me Not. A. M. Taylor

deep and dark where Nora had never been, and do my very best to leapfrog over that day. But that was never going to be a possibility. Not that day.

      I showered and dressed in the same clothes I’d been wearing the day before for no reason other than when I’d packed to go home I hadn’t been able to think beyond the memorial. Mom had already left for work by the time I made it down to the kitchen, and my dad, who was a retired school principal—my high school principal, in fact—was sat in the breakfast nook drinking coffee. The familiarity of my family home, the sight of Dad reading the newspaper, the muffled light of the kitchen as snow crowded the window pane, crouched over me as it always did when I was back there: Here was my home, a reluctant sanctuary, and yet I did not feel safe. I never did.

      “Morning, Mads,” Dad said, glancing up from the paper as I wandered past to help myself to coffee and maybe even a bowl of cereal.

      “Morning.”

      “When are you heading back?”

      “Soon. Ange will be over to pick me up in an hour or so.”

      Dad nodded, sipping at his coffee as I leaned back against the kitchen counter and took a long drag from my mug.

      “When are you planning to take your car in to get fixed?”

      “I can’t afford it,” I said shrugging, “not right now anyway.”

      “We can lend you the money.”

      “It’s fine, Dad. I just need to save a little money and I’ll get it done.”

      “But how will you get around until then?”

      “I can just get the bus, it’s not the end of the world.”

      Dad looked out the window at the snow and then back at me, an eyebrow raised in skepticism. “You can borrow the Explorer if you want? I don’t use it so much anymore anyway.”

      I shook my head. “Dad, if I left you without a car you’d basically be stranded whenever Mom left the house. It’s fine, don’t worry about it.”

      “But the bus—”

      “Is a perfectly legitimate form of public transportation.”

      “Okay, okay, I get it. I’ll back off.”

      “Thank you.”

      There was a slight pause while Dad weighed out his words and said: “You know your mom and I are always happy to—” his voice trailed off but his words still managed to fill the room, unspoken yet heard loud and clear.

      I’d lost count of the number of times we’d had this conversation. It wasn’t always that exact conversation, of course; it wasn’t always about my broken-down, practically worthless VW. Sometimes it was about rent or my meds, occasionally about the cost of therapy and health insurance. It was always there, the helping hand, perennially extended out towards me along with the tendrils of guilt that inevitably accompanied it whenever I took it. But guilt pounded its way through my life, relentless and as all-encompassing as rain in a summer storm, regardless of whether I accepted the help that was offered me.

      “I know, Dad.” I said at last.

      “Okay, I just thought it needed to be said. Because you’ve been doing really well recently, but if you need a little help with money, then that’s okay. And I know yesterday must have been hard for you, not to mention today, but we just want you to stay on the right track.” He said it all in a slight rush, even though he normally spoke slowly, thoughtfully. He’d obviously worked up to this a bit, not wanting to spook me, as if I was a highly strung racehorse. I wondered if he and Mom had discussed it before she left for work that morning, or maybe even the previous night when I stumbled in through the front door, a little worse for wear.

      I thought about every bitten back word I’d never spoken to my parents, and every catapult line I’d thrown out at them and wished I’d pulled back on. It had been a long ten years, and I couldn’t help feeling that I’d made it even longer. The guilt I felt over losing Nora had seeped out, into, and over everything, and eventually evolved into a guilt about feeling guilty; hell, it might even have been guilt over having any feelings at all. There’s no manual for grief, and there certainly isn’t one for being someone a missing person leaves behind; but however you were meant to act in the face of the impossible, I was pretty sure that I’d failed. Everything I did was filtered through that failure, grimy with that guilt, and as much as I hated asking for help, I seemed to be in need of it, all the time. I wanted, desperately, to get to a place where that helping hand didn’t immediately feel like a punch to the gut, but I had no idea how to get there, no idea if I ever would.

      I nodded, staring into my coffee cup. I could feel the grief building in me. The small round rock of loss that lived somewhere around my abdomen and rose through my stomach and lungs, and up through my esophagus until it stayed somewhere right at the back of my throat, threatening tears and an inability to breathe. Sometimes it rose even further and lived for days inside my head, growing moss, clouding my thoughts and vision. Those were the days my limbs felt too heavy to get out of bed. Those were the days that had taught me that sometimes it was easier to say nothing at all. I had to be careful here, to maneuver myself around all the ways I might trip up, or fall down, or however you want to put it, because if I didn’t, if I didn’t look for the signs and pay attention, that rock would get bigger and bigger and heavier and heavier and I wouldn’t make it out of the house, let alone back to Madison.

      “You want me to make you breakfast?” Dad added gently once it became obvious I didn’t have it in me to reply.

      I shook my head again, this time a little more forcefully and said: “I’ll just have cereal.”

      I was sitting in the breakfast nook eating my cereal when Ange called me again.

      “Hey, I’m just finishing up my breakfast,” I said on picking up, assuming she was parked outside somewhere waiting for me to come out, “you want to come inside and wait for me here?”

      “Maddie,” she said, her voice a breathless straight line.

      “Yeah?” I said, suddenly sitting up a little straighter. There was something about the shape of her voice that instantly shook me, old memories rattling around in my ribcage making my heartbeat pick up.

      “I … I—”

      “Ange, what’s going on? What’s happened? Are you okay?” My voice was snappy and sharp, but I couldn’t help it, I knew where conversations like that went and my fear translated to frustration all too easily.

      “I was just driving through town to come get you and all these police cars passed me.”

      There was no way I could have possibly known, so of course I thought of Nora, blindly following my memory back, racing those cop cars as fast as they could go to a morning so vivid it could have happened yesterday.

       ***

       I wake up slowly, one side of my face still smashed into the cool blue of my pillow case. When my eyes open the room is an even, cold grey. Ange is already up, the bed empty and the curtains opened halfway, not that it’s made much difference. Outside the world is one single color. White.

       I reach for my phone, checking to see if there are any calls or texts from Nora, but there aren’t any. There’s one from Nate but I don’t read it, not yet anyway. I can smell hot butter and coffee, and I pull on my bathrobe and slippers before heading downstairs to the kitchen. Cordy is sat in the breakfast nook, her back to the window, feet on the bench and knees pulled to her chest while she texts someone feverishly and almost completely ignores me as I walk into the room. Instead of my mom at the stove, Ange hovers over the skillet, spatula in her right hand, waiting to turn the French toast over. She’s still dressed in her pajamas, one of my hoodies pulled over her T-shirt to keep her warm. Mom walks in through the garage door, waving a bottle of maple syrup triumphantly in one hand.

       “I knew we had more somewhere,” she says, closing the door