Brian Freeman - Thief River Falls

“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.”

The trees all spoke in urgent whispers, as if warning Lisa to turn back. She went slowly, navigating through tangled branches and listening to the in and out of her own breathing. The ground was soft, a shallow bed of snow and wet leaves yielding under her feet. The darkness of the night left her mostly blind, but her other senses were alert. She smelled no fire, no cigarette, no cologne. She heard no voices, no footsteps. If anyone was waiting for her near the river, they were well hidden.

She tried to remember the way in. It had been a long time, and everything looked alike under the dark sky. The outer woods were like a wall, but when she crossed that barrier, the trees thinned, spaced around grassland. The cabin was hidden somewhere in there. Danny’s grandfather had built it, or maybe his great-grandfather, back when there were no homes along the river, only rustic forest for hunting and fishing.

Somewhere close by, water gurgled against the rocks. Lisa was near the river. She pushed her way to the very edge of the bank, where a ribbon of black water snaked through the channel. The temperatures weren’t low enough yet to freeze the current in place. She stared at the water, overwhelmed by memories. She remembered skinny-dipping here with Danny during those long-ago high school summers. She remembered drinking whiskey with Danny and Noah around a campfire until she was sick. She remembered a moonlit night when she’d encountered a black bear up to its haunches in the river. It had shaken its wet fur, bared its teeth at her, and then lumbered peacefully away.

Lisa followed the path beside the bank. Purdue would have done the same thing, not knowing where it would take him. She knew the cabin was close by, because you could practically spit from the back porch to the water. Danny and Noah had both tried. Nestled among thick trees, the cabin was barely visible in the shadows. It was unchanged from her teenage years, although it looked smaller than she remembered it. She felt a keen sense of everything that had been lost in the time since then. Danny was gone. Noah had left.

She stopped where she was, waiting before she went closer, making sure she was really alone. Denis had no way of knowing how much Purdue had told her and how much the boy remembered of that rainy night. If he suspected that Lisa knew what had happened here, then he might have someone waiting for her. But the solitude of the area felt unbroken.

The cabin welcomed her back like an old friend. It wasn’t large, and the decades had weathered the exterior. She wondered why Denis had never torn it down and started over, but maybe there was a little bit of sentiment in the man, despite everything he’d done. She found the front door and let herself inside, but she kept the lights off. She remembered that the interior was always nicer than the outside would lead her to believe. Plush furniture. A pool and gaming table. A fireplace. Always beer in the refrigerator and food in the cupboard.

She tried to stay in the present, but the past kept creeping into her mind. Music played from her memory’s speakers; it was Third Eye Blind singing “Semi-Charmed Life” as she danced with Danny. Eighteen years old. The week after her high school graduation. Her gaze traveled around the shadows. She’d kissed him there, up against the wall under the old deer head. She’d taken off his shirt there, where the fire warmed their skin, and he’d done the same to her. She’d lost her virginity there, on the cushions of the sectional sofa.

Stop it!

The past was over. The past was dead.

She had to think like a thriller writer. She had to figure out the mystery of what had happened two nights ago.

Lisa turned on her phone again. She wouldn’t be here long, not long enough for them to find her. When she activated the flashlight, she turned the phone around and squinted as a bright white beam shone in her face. A headache thumped behind her temples, as it had for two days. She quickly pointed the light at the hardwood floor, and when the afterimage disappeared from her eyes, she used it to search the small interior of the cabin.

She tried to put herself inside the head of a character like Nick Loudon.

He’d come back to Thief River Falls in a fit of rage. He’d stormed inside his old house and murdered his wife. Not just murdered her. Desecrated her. Defiled her. He’d left behind the body of Fiona Farrell for her father to find and fled on foot — to go where? Where could he hide in a town where everyone was looking for him? The cabin was the obvious spot. He could clean up. He could stay here for days undetected if he needed to. Stay until the heat died down and everyone had assumed that he’d slipped out of town.