Forget Me Not Read online

WHOKiLLedL‌AURaPalMEr

  You’re right it’s the anniversary. And her sister was 17 as well—same as Nora when she went missing. God that poor family.

  DeathsDoor

  Poor family? Starting to think something might be pretty rotten in that family. Both their daughters dead or missing by 17? That’s fucked up. Someone should take their little kid away from them before he ends up dead too

  hellomarshmallows

  Jesus that is horrible why would you say that?

  DeathsDoor

  Because it’s obvious! What’s the common denominator here? The Altmans. I reckon it’s the mom. Can’t cope with her daughters being young and beautiful still so goes full fairytale and kills them

  hellomarshmallows

  You can’t just go around saying that kind of shit

  DeathsDoor

  This is the internet it was built for saying that kind of shit

  skeletonkey

  /u/NeverGoesOut bud, you there? What the hell’s going on?

  NeverGoesOut

  I’m here. As in literally in Forest View. Got here last night. Can’t believe it.

  skeletonkey

  Good to hear you’re up there on the front lines again man. Any news? Any info? Been looking online but there’s not a lot to go on so far

  NeverGoesOut

  Pretty much how it is up here too tbh. Police haven’t released any statements yet so it’s just me sitting in the bar trying to overhear any interesting conversations

  It didn’t take a detective to figure out that NeverGoesOut and Keegan Ellis were one and the same, and although it didn’t surprise me to find him virtually hanging out here too, I was shocked by how all this commentary made me feel.

  It was one thing to be aware that all this kind of stuff existed, but another to actually be confronted by it. Maybe I should have been comforted by it, but I felt carved out, hollow instead. I remembered Gloria Lewis’s words when she knocked on the Altmans’ door that afternoon; it was going to be so much worse this time round. And not just because of Reddit, Twitter, Facebook and whatever else. Here were two sisters, one dead, one long missing, both gone; it was the kind of thing that drove people to talk about family curses—at best—and at worst to grimly gossip about the rest of the family.

  From a place of objectivity, I knew this scrutiny was warranted and in some ways right: most murders are committed by someone the victim knows. But there was no place for objectivity, not here, not now, not for me. I didn’t get that luxury.

  If I’d been paying closer attention, I might have been able to see what was coming. I could have traced the events directly over those that happened when Nora disappeared and prepared myself. But grief and shock, and horror and fear weigh you down and cloud your vision, even when you’ve been there before, even when you know the journey and the destination by heart. So, even though I’d promised myself that I’d find out who killed Elle, it wasn’t as if the resolution banished those clouds from my eyes and enabled me to see clearly at last. I wanted to do right by her, but finding the right way was difficult when you didn’t know which way was up.

  I should have gone to sleep then of course. Should have shut down my laptop and shut my eyes, but instead I wandered back over to Facebook and added Keegan Ellis as a friend. If he was keeping tabs on me, I wanted to be able to keep tabs on him too.

  My News Feed was full of people writing on Elle’s wall, and I clicked through to see her profile. It was already full of messages of condolence, shock, horror, sadness. No one had mentioned the way in which she had died; it was as if she’d simply been carried off out of our lives forever on the wings of some ill-timed but benevolent angel. The messages were all “I can’t believe you’re gone,” and “We’ll remember you forever,” and “I’ll think of you whenever I go ice skating.” Pretty but empty.

  I remembered the barren kitchen at the Altmans’ house and wondered where everyone’s condolences were when it came round to actually doing something.

  I scrolled though the whole thing, right down to the last thing Elle herself had posted, which was an ancient photo of her and Nora. She must have scanned it in, or maybe it was a photo of a photo from her phone; the picture was grainy and a little blurred but I recognized it immediately. An eleven- or twelve-year-old Nora sat on the long-gone couch from the Altmans’ TV room, leaning forward around an almost-toddler Elle who looked like she was about to cry and was nestled against Nora’s chest. Nora was grinning for the camera, ecstatic to be left in charge of her baby sister by whoever had taken the photo. Elle had posted the photo on Sunday, the day of the ten-year memorial, and had simply written “Nora” underneath it. It had been liked 312 times.

  One of the likes had come from Jenna who, upon scrolling back up Elle’s page, I realized hadn’t left any message of shock or condolence like her peers. I went to her profile page, her picture a close-up of her own last name on a forest green hockey jersey: FAIRFAX.

  A few people had written on her wall too, sharing in her grief but she hadn’t replied to any of them, nor updated her status to a blanket expression of either thanks or grief. I didn’t read too much into it though; if you went on my Facebook page you’d probably assume I’d gone into hiding, it was so sparse and irregularly updated. In fact, adding Keegan Ellis as a “friend” was the most activity on my profile in years. Thinking of this, I added Jenna as a friend too and was surprised when she accepted almost immediately, the green dot by her name indicating she was online and free to chat.

  I have a weird question

  I wrote to her

  OK

  Do you know what Elle’s password was? For Facebook, I mean

  Yeah. She had the same password for everything.

  I breathed out, relieved: This was what I’d been hoping for; that Elle had been as lax about online security as her sister had been.

  How would you feel about letting me know what it was?

  It took a little longer for Jenna to reply this time, but eventually she wrote:

  Why?

  I want to log into her account and see if she was messaging anyone out of the ordinary

  You mean like any of those guys I mentioned from school?

  Maybe yeah

  You really think one of them might have killed her?

  I honestly don’t know. I just want to try and see what was going on with her in the last few weeks. Or months

  OK

  she wrote back,

  Her password is Noelle1998. She used it for everything. I used to tease her about it because anyone could guess it.

  I took a shaky breath and laughed. Jenna was right—I probably could have guessed that password if I’d tried hard enough. I wanted to ask Jenna if I was a terrible person to even ask her this favor, to even think about doing it, but I didn’t want to place that burden on her. If I was doing a terrible thing, I was doing it, in that moment, for the right reasons. So instead I just thanked her and logged out of my own account before logging back in as Elle. A surge of nausea rolled through me, forming a pulsing, ragged, ropey knot in my abdomen as I typed in Elle’s email address and then the password Jenna had given me.

  She had well over a hundred notifications, all friends who had written on her wall since she’d died. I quickly turned off chat so that Elle wouldn’t appear online to anyone else and freak them out, and went to her message inbox. There was a message from Jenna sent on the day of Nora’s memorial, mere hours before Elle would have been killed. Just seeing it there made me think about the unforgivable breach I’d made. I was betraying Elle’s trust, and invading her privacy, but even as my hands, which were hovering over the keyboard of my laptop, began to tremor and shake, I took a deep breath and clicked on the message:

  Hey babe, just tried calling but guess you’re still up at the cabin with no reception so thought I’d try here. So sorry I wasn’t there for you, lmk when you’re heading over to mine? Or can come to you, don’t mind. Love you xox

  I stayed looking at that messa
ge for a long time, my heart turning to a crater inside my chest. It had been sent at 8:34 p.m. on Sunday night. Elle had never even read it.

  I thought about turning back, about logging off and shutting down my laptop and not taking this any further. What exactly was I trying to achieve, trying to prove by reading Elle’s private messages? But I couldn’t bring myself to log off, not yet. I’d come this far after all; the painful, soft vulnerability of that final message was going to be hard to beat.

  So, instead I checked her inbox for messages from any of the guys Jenna had mentioned at the diner—Johnny, Mike, and Adrian—making a sound of frustration when I came up with nothing. Thinking that perhaps she might not have been friends with them online, I checked the “message request” part of her inbox, where messages from non-friends are filed. My eyes widened a little when I saw how many there were. Some had appeared since Elle’s murder; people she didn’t know or did know but wasn’t friends with on Facebook, sending fruitless messages of sympathy that would never be read. So, I scrolled further down, looking for something, anything from just before she was killed.

  And there, after a few seconds of scrolling, although it felt like many long minutes, I found someone calling themselves “John Smith” who had been messaging Elle since her last birthday:

  From: John Smith 08/13/2017 06:45

  Happy Birthday Noelle. You’re 17 now right?

  From: John Smith 09/21/2017 18:26

  I saw you in the diner yesterday. You look so much like your sister

  From: John Smith 09/21/2017 18:34

  Why won’t you answer me? I’m a good person I promise. Just telling you happy birthday and how much you remind me of your sister

  From: John Smith 09/22/2017 00:13

  Do you remember her? Your sister? I can spend hours just looking at her profile. Sometimes I think about where she’d be now if it hadn’t all gone so wrong. Do you?

  From: John Smith 09/22/2017 17:56

  Sorry if these messages freak you out. I don’t mean to I just want you to reply?

  From: John Smith 09/30/2017 18:22

  You look so much like her

  From: John Smith 10/17/2017 18:54

  I was watching you at the diner again earlier. Did you see me?

  From: John Smith 10/21/2017 02:42

  I thought maybe we could be friends? All I want is to talk to you Noelle that’s it. It’s not much to ask is it?

  From: John Smith 10/23/2017 23:16

  You’re a selfish bitch you know that? I’ve never met anyone so fucking self-involved. I was watching you today laughing with your friends having fun. What about your sister Noelle? Have you forgotten about Nora?

  From: John Smith 10/24/2017 01:01

  I used to think you looked just like her that you were just as beautiful as her but your not. Your nothing compared to your sister

  From: John Smith 11/01/2017 16:13

  I’d be worried that what happened to Nora will happen to you if I was you

  From: John Smith 11/22/2017 20:37

  I saw you fall over in the parking lot today. I was going to come over and help but then someone else got there first. Are you ok?

  From: John Smith 11/23/2017 01:31

  I DON’T UNDERSTAND WHY YOU WON’T JUST FUCKING ANSWER ME

  From: Noelle Alexandra Altman 11/23/2017 18:11

  I’m going to report you to Facebook. Please stop messaging me

  From: John Smith 11//23/2017 18:15

  You little fucking bitch you make me fucking sick

  I felt nauseous and sweaty, angry heat crawling through my body, and even went to reach for my trash can, but nothing came out. The last few messages had been sent on Thanksgiving. I looked at the time stamp and realized that I might even have been with Elle when she got them. I’d been home for the holiday and went round to the Altmans’ for pie as I’d always done when Nora was still here.

  ***

  Elle is sitting at the far end of the table, surrounded by cousins and her aunt and uncle, pushing her pie around her plate, not talking, not listening, her shoulders slumped. Altman family gatherings have been quieter ever since Nora disappeared, but this feels different. There’s noise, and chatter, and clattering of knives and forks, glasses accidentally chiming other glasses as they’re placed back down on the overcrowded table, but all that noise and action, all that purpose and activity comes from the extraneous members of the family Altman. Katherine is in the kitchen, quietly clearing up, even though everyone else is still eating, and her three children are all staring down at their plates in uniform, while Jonathan is nowhere to be seen.

  I watch as the iPhone sat next to Elle’s hand flashes silently and she grabs it, suddenly hurried. She doesn’t look up from it as she pushes her chair back and leaves the room. I take a few more bites of the pie Katherine cut for me when I got there before getting up to follow her. She’s in the living room, sat precariously on the arm of one of their sofas, one leg crossed over the other, still engrossed in her phone. She hasn’t heard me walk down the hallway and come into the room, and there’s a pained look on her face like she can’t quite figure out what it is she’s reading and is mad at herself because of it.

  “Hey, are you okay?” I ask.

  Her head flips up at the same time as she shoves her phone into the pocket of her jeans.

  “Mads, hey. Yeah, everything’s fine.”

  “You sure? Everything okay with you and Jenna?” I haven’t met Jenna yet, but Elle’s told me all about her in the long emails which she sends me, even though I’m terrible and only ever manage to reply to about one in three of them and, even then, only with a few sentences.

  She smiles, easy now. “Yeah, Jenna’s fine. We’re all good.”

  “What about your parents?” I ask. “Where’s your dad?”

  Something flashes across her face—anger, hurt, frustration—I can’t quite tell, but her shoulders slump and she looks smaller, younger all of a sudden. “He’s not here. They’re-they’re getting a divorce. They told us last weekend. Finally.”

  “They’re getting a divorce?” I ask, taken aback. The Altmans have been on the precipice of divorce for at least ten years, but for some reason it still comes as a shock. Maybe I just thought they’d never actually go through with it—as far as I know from Mom, they basically live apart anyway, only really staying together for the sake of the kids. But maybe Jonathan met someone after all those months, hell, years, spent alone in Madison, or maybe, for all I know, Katherine has. Or maybe they’ve just reached the end of the line. After all these years, after everything they’ve been through, maybe they just need it all to be over. I can’t help thinking of Nora, not of how she would’ve reacted, because she probably would’ve just turned to me, a righteous look on her face and said, “told you so.” No, I can’t help thinking that this is yet another final nail in her nonexistent coffin.

  “Yup, they’re getting a divorce, and Nate knew the whole time. Isn’t that hilarious? Even my own brother’s been lying to me, been in on the joke the whole time.” She looks up at me, brown eyes catching the light, flashing amber almost. Her face has hardened, and there are red patches on her cheeks, but she’s smiling, somehow, as if she too were in on the joke. She stands up, so we’re eye to eye, and continues to smile, but now it looks stretched, strained. I can feel myself about to ask her again if she’s okay, really, but I can’t. Her smile’s fake, but she’s trying, so hard, and what can I possibly say in the face of all that effort?

  I’d known the Altmans when they were so full of life it spilled out and all over everything. They were infectious; their laughter, their energy, their noise. I’d watched from the sidelines over the last ten years as all of them, together and apart, had been diminished, waned. I’d stopped myself time and again from being brought back into their orbit because I knew what lived there, at the heart of them, because it lived in me too: that giant, cataclysmic black hole that Nora had left behind. I thought I’d done just enough, a few emails he
re, a knock on the door there, but all I’d been doing was the bare minimum, to make myself feel just that tiny scrap better and just a jot less guilty. I hadn’t even stopped to think about Elle in all that mess. There she’d sat, crying out for help, on the arm of their couch, and all I’d been able to think about was Nora.

  I wondered then if I’d ever let Elle out from underneath Nora’s shadow, and the answer was, of course, no. I should have pressed on, pried her out from behind that forced smile, to talk to me, tell me the truth. Because, sure, she was angry and in pain about the divorce, but it was now abundantly clear that there was something else going on as well. I read over the messages again, paying attention to the dates and times they were sent, trying, too little, too late, to figure out who this “John Smith” could be.

  But as the night went on all I could think about was that forced, stretched smile, Elle hidden behind it, just out of reach. I logged out of Elle’s Facebook and back into mine, messaging Jenna, who was now offline, to ask if Elle had ever mentioned getting any threatening messages on Facebook. Then, after thinking about whether or not I should text Nate—my phone in my hand the whole time as I stared at his name on the screen of my iPhone—I instead texted Leo and asked him if we could meet up “tomorrow.”

  Finally, I swallowed down a diazepam and turned my computer off, waiting, desperate to fall asleep. Elle’s face, grim, taut and faking a smile, greeted me as soon as I closed my eyes.

  CHAPTER TEN

  I was back in CJ’s by 8 a.m. the next morning, having woken up to a text message from Leo telling me when and where to meet him. He was already there when I arrived, hunched in a booth, cradling a cup of coffee.

  “Hey,” he said, looking up at me, and then “Jesus,” flinching slightly.

  “What?” I said.

  “Nothing—you just … you don’t look great, Mads.”

  I sighed, sitting myself down in the booth and pushing hair back out of my face. “I’d only just woken up when I got your text. Didn’t have time to shower.”