Page 22 of Last Seen

“He’s in a meeting. Can I take a message?”

“Um ... sure. My name is Halley James. Tell him my sister is Catriona.” She reels off her number and hangs up.

Dials the therapist. The number is also in Boston.

The phone goes to voicemail, and the soft tones of a woman with a gentle accent make Halley take a deep breath. She sounds very calm and competent.

“This is Dr. Chowdhury. If this is an emergency, please dial eight. Otherwise, I will get back with you as soon as I can.”

At the beep, Halley leaves a similar message, identifying herself as Catriona’s sister and giving a callback number.

She’s half tempted to get on a plane and fly north, though she hardly has the resources—or time—to do that. Besides, are the answers there? No, being an armchair detective—a bench-on-the-quad detective?—is the best she can do right now.

You could go to Tennessee. It’s an easy drive ...

She goes back to the computer bank inside the library and looks up the Brockville Writers’ Retreat.

They have a slick, elegant website, soothing blues and greens and creams. She reads the “About” page.

The retreat exists as part of an artists’ colony in a small village called Brockville, a sustainable biophilic community created by a man named Miles Brockton.

The fellowships, as they’re called, are highly competitive.

There is a stipend awarded, a cabin provided, and two months of writing programming and workshops with leading authors in a variety of genres.

She reads the accolades with a growing sense of astonishment.

Graduates of the Brockville Writers’ Retreat have won everything from the Pulitzer to the Orange Prize to the National Book Award.

Bookers, Edgars, Thrillers, even a Nobel.

Her sister was a good enough writer to get into this elite retreat?

She wonders what sort of writing Cat did. She should have asked Alison if she had any idea where Cat’s work might be.

Well, duh. She types “Catriona Armstrong” into the search engine, and up pops a very old website. But there’s a 404 error, nothing to see. Makes sense. If she has been missing for so long, who would be making payments on the website and doing updates to keep it in compliance?

But now she has a track to follow. Searching her sister’s married name, Halley gets a hit on a website that apparently published one of Cat’s poems. The poem is short and downright creepy:

She raises the knife like a conductor.

It has a mind of its own, and

she can’t—won’t—stop its path.

For steel to a heart creates a longing

That will never be fulfilled.

The bio that follows reads:

Catriona Armstrong has published numerous poems in a variety of regional journals. She is working on her first novel and has recently been accepted into the prestigious Brockville Writers’ Retreat.

Halley feels sick. She searches and finds a few more of Cat’s poems. All of them feel dark and partially deranged.

There are footprints of the girl she used to be all over the internet.

These breadcrumbs feel more like a horror film than something that would fit the literary bent of this Brockville Retreat.

But Halley doesn’t know this world. She doesn’t know what kind of novel Cat was working on. What attracted them to her.

There’s no phone number for the Brockville Writers’ Retreat.

Figures. It’s that exclusive. She sends an email inquiry to the contact page, asking to speak to someone who would have been in charge in 2002.

She reads a bit about the town of Brockville—they’re clearly very proud of the community they’ve created.

And bingo, at the bottom of the web page, there is an address.

She puts that into her Maps app. It’s about a three-hour drive down I-81, then a direct turn east into the Blue Ridge Mountains.

She can do that easily. If she leaves early enough in the morning, she might even be able to come home the same day.

Assuming there’s nothing to be found, of course.

If there are threads to follow in Brockville, she could get a cheap motel room. There will be plenty off the highway.

Happy to have a plan, she opens the search bar once more and inputs her sister’s name, then clicks on Images. Hundreds pop up, but none that match her remembrances of her sister’s face. Page after page after page, and none are the right one.

She tries to remember what Cat looks like. Blond. Pretty. But the features are blurry in her mind. She is an impression only, a spirit of memory.

Halley closes the browsers, logs out, and stands, wiping her hands down the front of her jeans, and has only taken two steps back toward the quad when her phone buzzes. She answers without looking and keeps heading outside.

“Hello?”

A man’s voice; rough, abrasive. “I’m looking for Halley James.”

“Is this Tyler Armstrong?”

“Yeah. What’s this nonsense about you knowing where Cat is?”

She is taken aback by his harshness. “I didn’t say I knew where she was. I said I’m her sister.”

“She never told me she had a sister.”

“Did she tell you anything about her past?”

“Just that her mom died when she was sixteen.”

“Didn’t you live in Nashville then? Didn’t you know her in high school? I remember you picking me up from school once with her.” Unsaid: “ How did you not hear about your friend murdering her mother? ”

“Your memory is better than mine. My family moved to Boston at the beginning of my junior year. We met again in college. What is this about?”

“You had a sister named Tracy, though, right? I was in elementary school with her.”

He gives a sharp, nonamused laugh. “You’re just determined to ruin my day, aren’t you? Tracy OD’d four years ago. Thanks for bringing it up.”

“Oh. I am so sorry to hear that. Were you close?”

“Not particularly. I was a lot older, and already out of the house, went to boarding school junior and senior year. She got wrapped up with some guy she met at a church lock-in when she was sixteen, and he got her hooked on crack.”

Sixteen. Halley was here, safely ensconced in the bosom of Goode, with her dad looking over her shoulder. Not in a bad way, in a welcome way. He kept her from making too many dumb mistakes. Her shyness helped with that, too.

“And you went to Harvard with Cat?”

“Listen, I’m busy as hell. Cat bailed on me fifteen years ago, and personally I think she’s dead, though there’s no way to prove it. If you know where she is, I would like to hear, so the court can follow up. Otherwise, you’re wasting my time.”

“I don’t know where she is.”

“Then good luck to you.” He hangs up.

“Asshole,” she mutters. “No wonder she divorced you.”

Interesting, though, that Cat used the same story Halley’s dad did—that her mom died in an accident.

Tyler’s recall of Cat’s past seemed to be as cut and dried as Alison’s.

Maybe he knew the truth and was covering for Cat?

Though he didn’t seem like the type to do anyone a favor that didn’t benefit him.

That leaves her wondering how big of a story the murder was.

You’d think something as salacious as a daughter murdering her mother would be all over the papers.

She hasn’t been able to find much at all, but 1989 was before the internet became ubiquitous, and Catriona was a juvenile, too, so it was easier to keep things quiet.

But if a friend’s mother was murdered, wouldn’t you at least hear about it?

How had Cat managed to convince everyone her mother had died in an accident?

Maybe she was very convincing. Maybe she was charming. More likely she was a cobra, swaying back and forth, hypnotizing her prey.

Before she can take that thought any further, her phone rings again. She recognizes the number—the therapist.

“This is Jana Chowdhury.”

“Hi. Thanks for getting back with me.”

“I’m very happy to finally talk to you, Halley. Cat told me so much about you.”

“She did? That’s surprising to hear. She didn’t seem to share anything about her past with her friends. Or her husband.”

“Hm. Well, therapy is different. Sometimes people need to protect themselves. That said, you know I can’t discuss her case with you unless there is news on her whereabouts, or a court order.”

“So you know she’s missing?”

“Of course I do. It was strange timing. As I told the police.”

“Strange timing? I understand you can’t discuss what Cat spoke to you about, but can you at least tell me why you say that?”

The doctor hums in assent. “She had nothing but clear air ahead. She was happy. Achieving her dreams. The divorce was finalized. I will never believe she left of her own accord. I believe there was foul play, and I told the police that.”

“So you don’t think she just ran away to mess with Tyler and get out of the divorce?”

“No, I don’t. I think something happened to her in that town.”

“Where the retreat is? Brockville?”

“Yes. And Halley, I must tell you this, and it’s the last I’ll be able to say. I think you should stay away from this. It would be such a shame if something happened to you, too.”