Thief River Falls

31

Lisa heard her phone ringing as she walked down Conley Avenue toward where the Camaro was parked. She’d meant to turn it off, in case they tried to track her through the cell towers. She grabbed the phone from her pocket to power it down, but when she did, she spotted a name on the caller ID that she hadn’t seen in a long time.

Noah.

Her brother was calling.

She stopped dead on the street, listening to the phone ring, feeling it vibrate in her hand. She made no move to answer it. When the call went away, she couldn’t even bring herself to push the button to shut the phone down. She stayed where she was. A minute later, she was still standing there, and the phone rang again.

Again, it was Noah.

Part of her wanted to take the call and ask him for help. Part of her wanted to take the call and scream at him. She didn’t do either. She simply stared at his name on the screen and then waited until it disappeared. Not long after, a bell chimed, telling her that she had voice mail.

She didn’t listen to it.

Lisa shoved the phone back in her pocket and continued to the end of the street to find the Camaro. It was dark now, and she didn’t worry about being seen. Lights had come on in the houses around the neighborhood, but if anyone looked outside, she was nothing but a shadow. She got in the car and drove, but she could feel the weight of the phone in her pocket, reminding her that Noah had left a message.

The next band of snow arrived with the cold evening, falling in heavy wet flakes and gathering on the ground. She headed for the river, taking a roundabout route to avoid the main roads. She went east and south and then cut back toward the water on a rural highway. No other cars passed her coming or going. She thumped over railroad tracks and knew she was close to the point where Purdue would have climbed off the train in the pouring rain. Her headlights lit up the barren terrain he would have crossed. It must have been a long walk for a boy who had just lost his mother and had nowhere to go.

A long, miserable walk that ended at the bank of the Red Lake River.

Lisa knew the road she was trying to find. It was called Riverbend Trail, and she’d been there countless times, but she still had to keep her eyes wide open in the dark. She knew she was close when the pavement ended and turned to rough gravel under her tires, but even so, she almost missed the turn. There were no lights or landmarks out here; everything looked the same. She spotted a Dead End sign ahead of her, and she braked hard, turning right onto a cross street and driving through an inch of white slush. Fall trees loomed on both sides of the dirt road, and long driveways led toward riverside homes that were built a comfortable distance from their neighbors. She couldn’t see the water, but it was close by. In the summertime, you could smell it from here, a little dank, alive with the whine of mosquitoes. She drove until the road curved like a horseshoe, and that was where she stopped. She turned off the Camaro’s engine.

On her right was a long stretch of open fields under a dark sky. If she got out and followed it, she’d eventually wind up back at the railroad tracks. Without the fresh coating of snow, she probably would have seen Purdue’s footprints in the deep mud. He’d come right past here. She was sure of it.

On her left was wooded land that led to the riverbank. The land belonged to Denis Farrell.

It was time to go back to the past.

Lisa opened the car door, but she hesitated before getting out. Her phone still felt like a lead weight, keeping her where she was. She took it out of her pocket again, and her thumb caressed the screen as she tried to decide what to do. Ignore the message. Delete the message. Listen to it.

What did Noah have to say to her?

What could he possibly say after all this time?

She put the phone on speaker, and she played the message. His voice filled the car, the oh-so-familiar voice in which she could hear echoes of Madeleine and her father and her brothers and herself. His words were halting and slow.

“Lis, it’s me. Look, I know you’re not answering, and I know you hate me. I don’t blame you. I could make excuses for what I did, but none of them matter, so I won’t bother trying. Not that you care, but things are different for me now. I’m living with a girl. Her name’s Janie. We’re good together. Ever since I met her, I’ve been thinking about coming home and trying to make things right with you, but I wasn’t sure that I had anything to come home to. I don’t know if I have a sister anymore. And I know that’s my fault, not yours.”

There was a long pause. Lisa wondered if Noah was done, but he wasn’t.

“The thing is, you’re in trouble. I know it. You never believed me about the connection between us, but it’s real. I can feel you need help. You’re sending out this — I don’t even know what to call it — this primal scream, Lis. It’s so loud, it’s so raw, I want to cover my ears and run away again. But I’m not going to do that, not this time. I’m here. You may not want me, but I’m here. I want to help you.”

That was it.

She could hear Noah breathing, and then he hung up the phone.

Lisa sat in the darkness. The Camaro was cold. The trees near her were a thick row of soldiers, guarding the riverbank. Hiding the old cabin. She didn’t need to play the message again; it was already frozen in her memory. She told herself that it meant nothing. It changed nothing.

“You’re right, Noah,” she said out loud. “You don’t have a sister anymore.”

Lisa turned off her phone and got out of the car.

Noah leaned over the balcony of his third-floor apartment with his forearms propped on top of the railing. The complex around him was huge, more than half a dozen buildings and hundreds of units. He was never alone here. Whenever he looked out, he could see someone walking their dog or smoking a cigarette or see the glow of televisions through a dozen different windows. He’d grown up near parks and farm fields, where it was easy to walk half a block and feel like he was the only person in the world, but since moving to Janie’s apartment in downtown Fargo, he’d discovered that he liked being around other people.

He knew that Lisa was the opposite. She didn’t want anyone else close to her; she wanted silence and space. It had been that way since they were kids. Wherever she was right now, he was certain that she was by herself.

Janie interrupted his thoughts. She’d heard him leave the message. She sat next to him on the balcony, but unlike him, her back was straight and her knees were pushed together. She always sat with perfect posture. One of her calico cats perched on her lap and batted at her long brown hair, and she stroked its back with her purple fingernails.

“I’m proud of you, Noah,” she told him. “I know that was hard.”

“She won’t call me back. I don’t even know if she’ll listen to the message. She might just delete it.”

“Oh, no, she’ll listen to it.”

“How do you know?”

Janie shrugged. “I’ve read her novels. They’re too personal. Too emotional. The woman who wrote those books would need to know what you said. She couldn’t let it go.”

Noah wasn’t sure if Janie was right. He knew Lisa better than anyone on earth, and he knew she was stubborn as hell. Danny had always complained that Lisa kept a wall around the most sensitive part of herself and would never let anyone through the gate. You could love her, but you couldn’t necessarily get to know her. Then again, maybe people could change. He’d been an introvert for most of his life, just like his sister, but Janie had brought him out of his shell. That was how he knew she was the one. He was going to marry her, and they were going to have kids. But something else needed to happen first.

He needed to make things right with Lisa.

“Do you think I’m crazy?” Noah asked.

“What, that you can hear your twin sister in your mind? That you can feel her talking to you? No, I don’t think that’s crazy at all.”

“Lis doesn’t even believe it herself.”

“I bet she does but won’t admit it. It probably scares her, so she pretends it’s not real.”

“She needs help,” Noah said. “I know it. Something’s very, very wrong in her life.”

“Can you feel what it is?”

He shook his head. “No, it’s like she’s blocking it from me. I don’t know — maybe she’s blocking it from herself, too. The thing is, it’s bad. I really think she’s in danger. Whatever it is, I’m not sure she’ll live through it.”

Janie lifted the cat from her lap and gently placed it on the floor of the balcony, where it nuzzled her ankle. She extended a hand to Noah and pulled him closer to her. She placed both of his hands on the warmth of her swollen middle, where she carried their child. The son who would be born in three months. Noah was going to be a father. It was one little ray of light in the darkness, after two years of hell. He could feel the growing life inside her, and after so much death, he had a profound new appreciation for life. That was another of Janie’s gifts to him.

“I’ve already told you what to do,” she said quietly. “Go to her.”

“She doesn’t want me there.”

“You’re her brother. You don’t need an invitation.”

“I might make it worse,” he said.

“From what you’ve said, I don’t think that’s possible.”

Noah nodded. Janie was right. He realized that his hesitation wasn’t about Lisa; it was about himself. He was afraid to face his sister again after a year of silence, not knowing what was waiting for him.

“Okay. I’ll head over there in the morning and see if I can get her to talk to me.”

Janie said nothing. She was waiting for him to realize what he already knew. And he did. He knew what he had to do. The truth was obvious. Noah got up from the chair, and Janie watched him with a Mona Lisa smile on her face.

“I can’t wait until morning, can I?” he said.

“No, you can’t.”

“Lisa needs me now.”

“Yes, she does.”

“I’ll call you from the road,” Noah told her, putting a hand gently on her stomach again and feeling life under his fingertips. “I’m heading to Thief River Falls.”