Yet, no one saw a woman slip from her car. No one saw a thing. Or if they did, they aren’t saying. Silence can hold a thousand untold stories.
The Alexanders’ porch light winks against the snow that has collected on the railing and front steps—the house itself giving the impression of sinking into the earth, doing its best not to collapse completely. I can hear Maggie breathing, the beat of her heart beneath her ribs—she wasn’t panicked or afraid. Her car didn’t break down like the police report had suggested. She stood on the side of the road and stretched her arms overhead, like she had merely stopped to work the tension from her joints after a long drive. Her eyes blinked against the sun and she drew in a deep breath, tilting her face to the sky.
She wanted to be here; she came with a purpose. But she didn’t turn for the Alexander’s house. She may have peeked at it briefly, observed it in the same way I do now, but then she shifted her focus toward the barn. Walking to the edge of the road to stare up at it.
Yet, the barn was not her destination either, it was only a clue. She was on the right path. She was close.
I mirror her footsteps, letting the memory pull me back to her car where she opened the trunk, metal hinges creaking as she bent to look inside. She hoisted out a backpack from the trunk and stuffed it with two bottles of water, a hooded sweatshirt, and a fresh pair of socks. In her front pocket was the pack of strawberry gum she purchased back at the store, and her cell phone.
Around her neck, she wore the silver necklace—five charms clinking together.
She slung the pack over her shoulders and locked the car, taking her keys with her. She planned on coming back. She wasn’t running away, not for good. She believed she would return to the car.
I watch as the memory of her takes several steps toward the side of the road, and when her hand brushed at her hair… it catches on something. Maybe the straps of her backpack snagged the silver charm, or just her fingertips, but it breaks free from the chain and falls to the gravel at her feet. She didn’t notice, didn’t hear it fall, and she strode on.
It wasn’t a struggle or a fight with an attacker that caused her to lose the charm: it came free on its own.
I watch her image walk down the embankment toward the barn, her pace assured, easy.
She only had enough supplies for a day’s hike. No sleeping bag, no tent, no dehydrated food to be reheated over a camp stove. She didn’t mean to vanish. Or she anticipated she’d have shelter and food wherever she was going.
She anticipated something other than what happened to her.
* * *
A little over a month ago, I was sitting in a truck stop parking lot on the northern border of Montana, considering crossing over into Canada and seeing how far north I could travel before the roads ended and there was nothing but permafrost and a sea of evergreens, when my cell phone rang.
An annoying little chirp, chirp, chiiirp.
I rarely answered it anymore—it rarely rang. The battery was perpetually low and I’d only ever charge it enough to keep it from dying, in case of emergencies. In case I got a flat tire. In case I wanted to call someone—which I never did.
But when I picked it up from the dashboard, I saw the name light up on the screen: Ben Takayama, my roommate from college, the guy I once drank a whole bottle of vintage bourbon with then drove all night to Reno only to sleep in the bed of his dinky Toyota truck, sweating under the midday sun as the alcohol seeped from our pores, then vomited in the bushes that lined a shady, neon-lit casino. No one even batted an eye at us. Not even the security guards. Ben and I had shared countless stupid, half-brained adventures together, most of which ended badly—with our wallets stolen, our dignity facedown in an alley gutter, our flesh bruised and sliced open. He was notably one of the few people who I still called a friend. And probably the only person whose call I would have answered in that moment, longing for a homemade meal and something familiar. Anything. Even a call from Ben.
“Travis?” he said on the other end when I answered, but I just sat there, mute. How long has it been since I talked to someone from the old days? How long have I been on the road, driving across state lines, heading east and then north? Two months? Three?
I cleared my throat. “Hey.”
“No one’s heard from you in a while.” His voice was strange, concerned—unusual for him. And I didn’t like the way it made me feel—like he was trying to peer beneath the shadow I had been hiding under. He exhaled, as if he knew I didn’t want his sympathy. I wanted the old days, before it all went to shit. Cheap beer and Friday nights in our dorm room, bad breakups and failed economics classes. I missed those days in the way most people miss their college years, even though at the time you don’t realize you’re living smack in the middle of the years you will tell stories about later. The years when you’re so damn broke you have to steal rolls of toilet paper from the restroom of a dive bar two blocks from campus that serves a weekly happy hour special: a beer and a slice of pie for four dollars.
You miss those years, but you also wouldn’t go back.
They were also the years when I drank because it dulled the effects of my ability. When I was drunk, and even hungover, I could touch objects and not feel a thing. No flashes of memory. No seizing images of the past. When my mind was clouded over with booze, I felt almost nothing. I made it through college this way. And sometimes, I still drink just to escape the things I don’t want to see—don’t want to remember.
“I like that you’ve gone all Jack Kerouac and abandoned social norms,” he began, “living on the road like a fucking heathen. But you need to check in every once in a while.”