“And the woman, Addison? What happened to her tonight?” He told Steele everything, including being so afraid to move that he let her die. “I don’t think she’s dead, do you?”
“I don’t know. Honestly, I just don’t know.” Steele said his name softly, but Nick didn’t look at him this time. “There’s a house. I can see it as clear in my mind as I can her marker. Not her face, of course, but I know that she’s beautiful. The house…the house is one I’ve seen before. I can’t remember where or when, but I know it. There is pink paper in the one bathroom. Towels of the same color hang on the shower door. In the kitchen there are green appliances. I think they called it avocado green back in the seventies. The floor is black and white linoleum, worn and full of holes. The cabinets have no doors on them. Not for any other reason than they were too expensive to replace.”
“You lived there.” Nick told him as a child, he’d never lived in anything but government housing. “Then maybe it was one of your foster homes. Someplace that you lived.”
“I think it’s yet to be seen by me.” He turned then and looked at his best friend. “What if I told you that I think she lives there? That she has lived there for a long time, yet no one knows it? That for whatever reason she’s hiding out there?”
“I’d say that’s as good a reason as any to find it.” Steele stood up and stretched. “I’m up now. Do you want to have a look? There might be something we can find on a missing Addison. What do you remember about the background? Like trees? A mountain?”
When Steele moved out of his room, still talking about what kind of clues Nick could give him, he stood and looked out the window again. She was out there. Somewhere. And he had to find her. Because if he didn’t, she was going to die.
Nick left his bedroom and went down the stairs trying to remember everything. There wasn’t much, but one thing kept nudging at his head. The cemetery where she was buried. He was sure it was the one right outside. The one he’d been sitting near for the last six months.
~~~
Addie watched the car drive off. It was the third one that had been there in the last three months. This time, however, whoever the person had been, had left a for sale sign in the front yard. As soon as the car was out of sight, Addie went to the sign, pulled it out of the ground, and laid it down. She even wiped it clean of her prints before leaving it where it lay.
The house wasn’t hers. She’d only been borrowing it for the last year and a half since she had nowhere else to go. The power, for some reason, had been left on, so she had heat and lights, though she never used the latter, nor did she use much of the former. Heat was something like a luxury to her, and she thought if she got thrown out of this house, it would also be hard to get used to not having. So instead, she stockpiled some blankets for the winter months and did her best to keep the place as unlived in as she could. She supposed it was working.
Going to the upper level of the house, she moved her things out of the cubby-hole that she’d discovered some time ago. She desperately wanted to sweep the floors and wipe down the walls, but that would bring unwanted attention to herself, and she wasn’t going to let that happen again. Taking out her diary, she wrote down the visit and the plate number of the car and what the man had looked like as well. She also dismantled his sign. Putting the diary back in her duffle, she leaned back against the wall where she hid out.
“Someday I’m going to buy this place. Then I’m going to make it a showplace again.” She hated talking to herself, but since there was no one else about, it was all she had. “I have the money now but not the means. I have to keep a low profile.”
That was an understatement. Addie looked at the bag that was hidden deep in the cubby-hole. It was full of money, more money than she had ever seen. But she’d not used it, not one dollar of it, for fear of what it might do to her.
“I won’t be like them.” She glared at the bag. “I only took it because it was mine and I had every right to it. So what if I rarely have two pennies to rub together? I have this as security.”
Her parents had been so wealthy, yet they wanted more. So much so that they were willing to sell her off to the highest bidder, as in a rich fuck of a husband, to get them more. And when they’d told her of their plans, to have her wed the smart lawyer in their firm, she’d told them no. But that hadn’t ended there. No, not for them. The Wests always got their way.