The bungalow was a peeling, faded blue, like the knees of your oldest pair of jeans, and the color looked a little sick in the red glow of the sunset. As I walked up the crumbling sidewalk to the front porch, I saw a couple of envelopes sticking out of the mailbox next to the door, and even though the air was warm, a chill ran up my spine. Something wasn’t right. Noelle was supposed to come over for dinner the night before and bring fabric for Jenny, who was actually sewing blankets for the babies program, much to my shock. That wasn’t the sort of thing Noelle would forget to do. It bothered me that she hadn’t answered my messages. I’d left her one the night before saying, “We’re going to go ahead and eat. I’ll keep a plate warm for you.” I left the next one around ten: “Just checking on you. I thought you were coming over but I must have misunderstood. Let me know you’re okay.” And finally, one more this morning: “Noelle? I haven’t heard back from you. Is everything all right? Love you.” She hadn’t gotten back to me, and as I climbed the steps to the porch, I couldn’t shake a sense of dread.
I rang the bell and heard the sound of it coming through the thin glass of the windowpanes. I knocked, then tried the door, but it was locked. I had a key for the house some where at home but hadn’t thought to bring it with me.
I walked down the steps and followed the walkway through the skinny side yard to the back door. Her back porch light was on and I tried the door. Also locked. Through the window next to the door, I saw Noelle’s purse on the battered old kitchen table. She was never without that purse. It was enormous, one of those shapeless reddish-brown leather shoulder bags you could cram half your life into. I remembered Noelle pulling toys from it for Jenny back when she was still a toddler—that’s how long she’d had it. Noelle and that bag were always together. Auburn hair, auburn bag. If the purse was here, Noelle was here.
I knocked hard on the window. “Noelle!”
“Miss Emerson?”
I turned to see a girl, maybe ten years old, walking across the yard toward me. We were losing daylight fast, and it took me a minute to see the cat in her arms.
“Are you…?” I glanced at the house next door. An African-American family lived there with three or four kids. I’d met them all but I was terrible with names.
“I’m Libby,” the girl said. “Are you lookin’ for Miss Noelle, ’cause she had to go away all of a sudden last night.”
I smiled with relief. She’d gone away. It made no sense that her purse and car were there, but I’d figure that out eventually. Libby had put one foot on the porch step and the light fell on the calico cat in her arms. I leaned closer.
“Is that Patches?” I asked.
“Yes, ma’am. Miss Noelle asked me to take care of her at my house this time.”
“Where did she go?”
“She didn’t say. Mama says it was wrong for her not to tell me.” She scratched the top of Patches’ head. “I take care of Patches sometimes but always in Miss Noelle’s house. So Mama thinks this time Miss Noelle meant she was going away for a long time like she does sometimes, but it was wrong she didn’t say when she was coming back and she ain’t answering her cell phone.”
What the hell was going on?
“Do you have a key to the house, Libby?” I asked.
“I ain’t got one, ma’am, but I know where she keeps it. I’m the only one that knows.”
“Show me, please.”
Libby led me across the lawn toward the little garden, our shadows stretching long and skinny in front of us. She walked straight to the birdbath and bent down to pick up a rock near the little bronze girl’s feet.
“She keeps it under this rock,” Libby whispered, handing me the key.
“Thanks,” I said, and we headed back to the door. At the steps, I stopped. Inside, I’d find a clue to where Noelle had gone. Something that would tell me why she hadn’t taken her giant bag with her. Or her car. That ominous feeling I’d had earlier was filling me up again and I turned to the girl. “You go home, honey,” I said. “Take Patches back to your house, please. I’ll try to figure out what’s going on and come tell you, all right?”
“Okay.” She turned on her heel, slowly, as though she wasn’t sure she should trust me with the key. I watched her walk across the yard to her own house.
The key was caked with dirt and I wiped it off on my T-shirt, a sure sign I didn’t care about a thing except finding out what was going on with Noelle. I unlocked the door and walked into the kitchen. “Noelle?” I shut the door behind me, turning the lock because I was starting to feel paranoid. Her purse lay like a floppy pile of leather on the table and her car keys were on the counter between the sink and the stove. Patches’ food and water bowls were upside down on the counter on top of a dish towel. The sink was clean and empty. The kitchen was way too neat. Noelle could mess up a room just by passing through it.
I walked into the postage stamp of a living room, past the crammed bookshelves and the old TV Tara and Sam had given her a few years ago when they bought their big screen. Past the threadbare brown sofa. A couple of strollers sat on the floor in front of the TV and three car seats were piled on top of some cartons, which were most likely filled with baby things. More boxes teetered on top of an armchair. I was definitely in Noelle’s world. On the wall above the sofa were framed pictures of Jenny and Grace, along with an old black-and-white photo of Noelle’s mother standing in front of a garden gate. Seeing the photographs of the children next to the one of her mother always touched me, knowing that Noelle considered Tara’s and my girls her family.
I walked past the first of the two bedrooms, the one she used as her office. Like the living room, it was bursting with boxes and bags and her desk was littered with papers and books…and a big salad bowl filled with lettuce and tomatoes.
“Noelle?” The silence in the house was creeping me out. A slip in the shower? But why would she have told Libby to take care of Patches? I reached her bedroom and through the open door, I saw her. She lay on her back, her hands folded across her rib cage, still and quiet as though she were meditating, but her waxen face and the line of pill bottles on the night table told me something different. My breath caught somewhere behind my breastbone and I couldn’t move. I wasn’t getting it. I refused to get it. Impossible, I thought. This is impossible.
“Noelle?” I took one tiny step into the room as if I were testing the temperature of water in a pool. Then reality hit me all at once and I rushed forward. I grabbed her shoulder and shook her hard. Her hair spilled over my hand like it was alive, but it was the only living thing about her. “No, no, no!” I shouted. “Noelle! No! Don’t do this! Please!”
I grabbed one of the empty pill bottles but none of the words on the label registered in my mind. I wanted to kill that bottle. I threw it across the room, then dropped to my knees at the side of the bed. I pressed Noelle’s cold hand between mine.