MARTY MCKINNON:
Sadie might not have been the most forthcoming girl, but it was clear she was upset about something. Find out later, it was that fight.
WEST McCRAY:
The fight was brought to the Abernathy Police Department’s attention by Sadie herself, but played no significant part in their investigation into Mattie’s murder. It’s just another layer of tragedy in a story that’s already seen more than its fair share.
MARTY MCKINNON:
It was a long shift, I remember. Sadie said she really needed the money, so I gave her a few more hours. She clocked off pretty late and— MAY BETH FOSTER:
She came back to my place. She didn’t do that all the time, only when she was real worn out and maybe … maybe looking for a bit of mothering. I was glad to do it, because the opportunity didn’t come along too often with Sadie. Anyway, she fell asleep on my couch and she looked so peaceful, I didn’t want to wake her. I should have. I can’t help but wonder what might’ve happened if I had. Maybe she and Mattie would’ve crossed paths before Mattie ever got in that truck … because that’s the thing—no matter what happened between them, Sadie always checked in on Mattie for whatever she might need. She always had a meal on the table or in the fridge, ready to heat up. No matter how frustrated Sadie got with her sister, she never stopped looking after her.
But that night, I wouldn’t let her. I didn’t wake her up. I thought it would be good for Mattie—for Mattie to stand back and notice that absence, to realize how much Sadie did for her even if Mattie thought Sadie didn’t get it right enough of the time. So I texted Mattie and I let her know Sadie was with me and she wasn’t going to be home.
WEST McCRAY:
Mattie never got it. She’d left her phone in the trailer. Sadie discovered this when, the next day, she sent a string of frantic texts to her little sister, demanding to know where she was. They read as follows: SORRY, MATTIE. FELL ASLEEP.
WHERE ARE YOU?
I DIDN’T DO IT TO BE A BITCH, I PROMISE.
I’M FREAKING OUT—JUST TELL ME WHERE YOU ARE.
DON’T DO THIS TO ME.
MAY BETH FOSTER:
I’ll never forget it. Sadie came back to my place and told me Mattie was gone. I said, “I’m sure she’s somewhere around town, just being a little bitch about it.” That’s exactly what I said. I’ve never forgiven myself. And Sadie just looked at me and said, “This feels different.” She was right.
WEST McCRAY:
I don’t need to paint you a picture of what this retelling does to May Beth because you can hear the utter agony in her voice. Still, I want you to know she sits across from me at her table the entire time, her gaze fixed on something I can’t see, her hands twisting the tablecloth. She’s not shying from her hurt, and it’s a true privilege that she’d share it with me, but her desperate attempt to control it tells me the pain I’m witness to is barely scratching the surface. I don’t know how she survives it, frankly. She doesn’t seem to either.
MAY BETH FOSTER:
It’s killing me a little more every day. And if that’s what it’s doing to me, you can’t imagine what it did to Sadie. She … became a shell of who she used to be. I lost her a little more each day.
WEST McCRAY:
It’s understandable then, that May Beth wants to protect Sadie from further hurt. She’s so afraid of the information she’s been keeping from me she makes me fly back to Cold Creek just to get it. It’s not that she doesn’t trust me, she says, but she’d feel better saying it to my face.
When I get there, I turn the microphone off and she tells me what she knows. Five days later, I have a new lead, and once she’s been reassured that what she’s told me won’t cause any kind of problems for Sadie should we find her, May Beth agrees to tell me again for podcast.
MAY BETH FOSTER:
Once I say it, everyone’s going to understand why I don’t think much of the Farfield Police Department because if they were as thorough as they claim they were, if they did everything in their power to figure out what happened to Sadie, they would’ve found this and they would’ve followed through on it. It was under the passenger’s seat of her car.
WEST McCRAY:
It’s a credit card. Sadie didn’t have any credit cards when she lived in Cold Creek. And this one doesn’t belong to her. It belongs to a woman named Cat Mather.
She’s an easy enough person to track down.
sadie
I dream of small, broken bodies.
Prone and hurt, catalogued and kept sacred in a small, dark spaces. The look in their eyes is one of utter incomprehension giving way to pain, to emptiness. Sometimes they stare right at me. Other times, the middle distance. There’s nothing I can do. It’s too late.
I dream of Mattie’s face.
I jerk awake, the side of my head knocking against the windshield. The throbbing in my nose is near unbearable—but survivable.
It’s survivable, I tell myself.
I turn the car on and glance at the clock only to discover I wasn’t out for more than an hour. I feel more tired than I did before I gave in to sleep and my bones are aching in a way that makes me miss my bed, makes me miss the idea of a home. The trailer’s not even that, anymore, though. It wasn’t when I left it. It’s not home if I’m the only person in it.
I yawn. It was the shuffling and shifting beside me that woke me up. Cat rummaging around, I think, but by the time my eyes were open, she was sitting very still beside me, staring out at the road. I follow her gaze. The rain has stopped. Must have just stopped. The midafternoon sun is out, making the pavement gleam.
Cat doesn’t look right. Everything she laid out on the dashboard is gone, back in her bag, I guess. An hour doesn’t seem like it would be enough time for them to dry.
“What’s w-wrong w-with you?” I ask.
“What? Nothing. I was just waiting for you to wake up.”
“I-I’m awake.” I clear my throat. “You wanna g-get outta here?”
“Sounds like a plan.”
I pull back onto the road while Cat sits rigid beside me. We drive the next hour in silence. She’s different now. I can’t put my finger on why—all I did was sleep. I roll the window down and take a deep breath. I can see the air, thick with post-rain haze.
“Hey, hey.” Cat taps me on the arm with one hand and points left with the other. The road reveals a small gas station and we must be between nowhere and somewhere, because it’s surprisingly busy. It’s got two pumps out front and probably the world’s grimiest bathrooms out back. I pull in. The sign next to the pumps says SELF SERVE (CASH ONLY, PAY INSIDE).
It’s the best of the worst available options, just slightly less talking involved than if an attendant shows, expecting you to tell them what you need. But I’m not feeling up to it. If Mattie were here, I’d let her do the talking. She liked doing her best impression of a person in charge to save me from The Look, or worse. Because there are worse people than Becki with an i—Becki, imagine her, the tip of an iceberg—and I swear I’ve met them all. There’s a lot of folks out there willing to pay for their comfort with someone else’s voice.
Cat unbuckles her seat belt and shoves some crumpled money into my hands.
“Should be enough,” she says quickly. A yellow truck pulls up behind us. “Uh, I’m just gonna stretch my legs … go to the bathroom.”
“Okay.”
She gets out of the car.
I watch her round the station and sit there for another minute, or maybe much more than a minute, because the next thing I know an older man raps his knuckles against my window, startling me so bad I near hit the roof. I roll the window down and stare. He’s all silver hair and bushy eyebrows, the skin of his deeply tanned face sun-leathered enough to make it hard to guess how long he’s actually been on this earth. Forty. Sixty. I don’t know.