Long Time Gone, page 1
LONG TIME GONE
A NOVEL
HANNAH MARTIAN
For Anna. We did it, brother.
Part 1
The Missing Woman
PROLOGUE
Wild Child
SHE WAS FLYING; she was sure of it.
The Wyoming night was brittle cold as it rushed in through the open window of the passenger side door. Her cheeks hurt from the chill as she tilted her face toward it, but in that moment she couldn’t have moved if she had wanted to.
For the first time in her life, she was running—and it was her choice.
It was glorious and freeing, even if she knew it would all end soon. It had to. She could already see the sirens in the rearview mirror, hear them blasting through the otherwise silent night.
Or maybe it wouldn’t end.
After all, if they found her, how would they explain the existence of the girl next to her?
The one who shined brighter than the stars hanging in the Wonderland sky.
The one she would, and had, gone to war for.
The one who was driving them directly into the heart of the rest of their lives.
CHAPTER
1
… Ready for It? (Now)
MY PHONE IS ringing.
It takes a minute for the sound to drag me out of the deep, dreamless sleep I’d been under. Then I’m groaning, groping to my left, hand finally closing around it on my nightstand.
I prop myself up on an elbow, squinting against the brightness of the screen. Fucking five AM, and I’m getting a call from a number I don’t recognize in—
Wyoming.
Wonderland, Wyoming.
And suddenly I’m wide awake.
I go still, the ringing somehow growing louder, the screen getting brighter.
The woman lying next to me grumbles something incoherent, the bed dipping beneath us as she rolls over, throwing her arm around my bare waist. “What time is it?” she groans, trying in vain to pull me back to her. She’s Jessie or Jaime; another face, another name I won’t remember come the sunrise.
But I remember Wonderland, Wyoming, as much as I wish I didn’t.
And the only person who would be calling me from there—yeah, I’d like to be able to forget her too.
I sit up, my hand shaking as I bring the phone to my ear and answer with a short “You’ve got a lot of fucking nerve calling me, Cora.”
Silence. For so long that I think that surely my long-estranged aunt has simply misdialed and is now realizing what a terrible, horrible mistake she’s made. A mix of anger and anxiety is making my pulse pound so hard I can feel it against the inside of my temple.
“Not Cora,” a deep female voice responds.
“Then who the hell is this, calling me at five in the goddamn morning?”
“Didn’t realize it was too early to call.”
Fucking Wyomingites and their ranching hours. “What do you want?” I demand.
The woman next to me releases her grip on my stomach, pulling away in alarm, as the one on the other end of the line offers me no reply. I already know what Jesse/Jaime is thinking, wondering exactly who she went home with tonight: “What’s wrong with her? How could she talk to someone like that?”
But that’s the good thing about one-night stands: they know nothing about me and my past and one tiny town in the most miserable excuse for a state in this entire country.
“Cora wants you here,” she replies, quiet and terse.
“She shouldn’t have sent me packing eight years ago, then.”
“Well, your aunt’s missing now. Maybe that’ll change your mind.”
Either the woman on the other end hangs up or the phone slips from my hand, landing somewhere below me in the tangle of skin and sheets—which one, I don’t know.
CHAPTER
2
Kerosene (Now)
THE SOUTHWEST WYOMING Regional Airport is so small it shouldn’t be allowed to legally operate. The airport in Spokane is small. A handful of flights to Seattle, one or two to Canada, throw in a special trip to Boise or Missoula every once in a while. But this is one compact, concrete slab of a building with a landing strip in the back. There’s no food, no gift shop; only a small baggage claim and a couple rows of seats.
I throw my backpack over my shoulder and drag my carry-on out, closer to the door. A few people run past me, jumping into the waiting arms of loved ones, tears and shouts and laughs making this place even smaller.
I’ve always wondered what it’s like to have that—someone waiting for you. Someone excited to see you, welcome you home. Or even just someone to pick you up from the airport.
The last time I was in this airport, there was someone to drop me off—accompanied by a vow that it’d be the last time I’d ever see the inside of this shitty place.
“Well, your aunt’s missing now. Maybe that’ll change your mind.”
Missing. Gone. Vanished. One of only two family members I have, and now I don’t know where either of them is.
The woman who’d called me from Wonderland followed up her call with an email from Cora’s account not twenty minutes later. A plane ticket, already booked in my name, for August 3rd, was attached, complete with the message: Cora said you worked for an investigator, the kind she used to be. I’ll be at the airport if you reckon to use this ticket.
I won’t, I’d told myself. I deleted the email without a reply. Eight years ago, my aunt turned her back on me when I needed her, when she knew I needed her—karma would suggest it only appropriate that I return the favor now. She’s been missing from my life for almost a decade. Let the good people of Wonderland, Wyoming, get a taste of that feeling.
And yet.
Here I am.
In fucking Wyoming.
There’s only one person still waiting by the time everyone else has cleared out. A woman, roughly the same age as me, clad in a red flannel button-up, dark-wash denim jeans, and a light brown cowboy (cowgirl?) hat. The jeans she wears are worn and torn in a way that I’ve only ever seen mimicked in department stores, which I doubt they’ve even got within fifty miles of here. Her hands are tucked into her pockets, shoulders back, eyes forward. Her brown hair is cut bluntly, like she did it herself with a pair of kitchen scissors, and hits right at her chin, which looks sharp enough to cut me if I were to get too close.
She’s familiar, maybe—but I can’t quite place her. If she wasn’t so clearly a Wyoming product, I might’ve guessed she was a hookup I’d forgotten about. Everything about her is easy and relaxed, comfortable and in control; exactly the kind of woman I’d approach at the bar, a drink or two humming through my veins, tossing my hair over my shoulder as I smiled and fed her a line.
The woman is motionless, waiting for me to come to her. And she’s staring at me. Though the way she’s doing it makes staring seem like an insufficient description. It’s like she’s trying to burn her way down to my bones. Maybe it’s just her eyes that are making me feel that way. The color of them is shocking, even from ten feet away—haunting, almost. The shade makes her pupils nearly blend in with her irises: a blue that’s nearly as dark as the Wyoming night sky, far different from the lighter, icier shade that mine are. No, that’s the feeling her eyes remind me of—standing outside of Cora’s ranch house at midnight, so much emptiness above me it made it impossible to even ponder what lay beyond it, feet bare and the wind nipping at my shoulders, holding me in place and forcing me to exist solely in that precise moment.
If I missed anything about this state, it was that feeling. Now it’s staring right at me.
I make the first move, crossing into what I’ve known for years is unwelcome territory. As I come to stand in front of her, I clear my throat, blink a couple of times to disperse my plane daze. “I take it you’re the one who called me at five in the morning to let me know my aunt’s missing?”
The woman in front of me reacts as if I hadn’t spoken at all. Enough time passes that I raise my eyebrows. Well?
“I take it you’re the niece?” she finally replies. Her voice is even deeper than it sounded on the phone, rougher, like she hasn’t used it in a while, and it’s putting her out to do so now.
“Quinn Cuthridge,” I say.
A once-over, quick and clinical, then she meets my eyes again. “Let’s go.”
“I need my other bags—”
“You got more than this?”
I snicker. “I doubt that you’ve got everything that I need out here in the middle of—”
“Didn’t ask for the whole kit and caboodle,” she says, rubbing at her forehead.
“What in the hell does that even—”
“It means get your bags and let’s go,” she says irritably. “I’ve got work to do.”
I take a step closer, hating that I have to look up to meet this woman’s eyes. For a moment, they throw me off, so familiar, the memory just out of reach. “You asked me here,” I say.
The stranger echoes me, moving so we’re right in each other’s faces, the brim of her hat tipped toward the sky, as she retorts, “And if you didn’t wanna come, you shoulda stayed right where your feet were planted.”
Oh, she’s certainly not a once-upon-a-time hookup I forgot about. This woman would’ve taken whatever pickup line I’d fed her and stuffed it right back down my throat. This woman I wouldn’t have given up on, wouldn’t have forgotten.
This is a woman I want to go toe to toe with just for the thrill of seeing what happens.
“I ain’t got time for this,” she says,
“Are you going to help? Or just stand there and keep making demands?”
She doesn’t move. For so long that I think we’re going to be locked in this staredown until this tricked-out barn of an airport closes, but then this angry, gnashing woman reaches down, grabs the bag at my feet, and gestures for the one on my back.
She jerks it out of my grasp as I hand it over. “I’ll be in the truck.”
That’s all she says before she’s gone, and I’m standing in this airport, alone again, wondering what in the hell has happened over the course of the past eight years to get me right back to where I started.
I turned six in the spring, sixteen years ago. Every summer after that I spent in this wasteland of a state—up until Cora banished me, no reason given, the summer before I turned fourteen.
The memories are faded around the edges, time dulling the sharper points—that old saying about remembering how someone made you feel, but not their words. Still, I don’t recollect it taking this long to drive back from the airport. I watch what feels like the same strip of land flash by over and over again, the most incredibly dull landscape of green and gold and brown. Occasionally there’s a sign for a town, but half of them advertise “No Services.”
How does someone even end up living out here? How haven’t they all gone completely insane yet?
It’s been silent the entire drive, not even the radio playing. All I’ve done is watch the sun slowly make its descent toward the Wyoming horizon, and ponder exactly how old this truck is. It’s well taken care of—no holes in the brown upholstery beneath me, hardly any scratches or stains—but dust covers nearly the entire span of the floorboard. I wouldn’t have the slightest idea how to drive it; the stick shift and dials on the dash make me nauseous just looking at them. I keep hitting the window hand crank on the door with my elbow, and my knees keep knocking against the glove box.
“You’re going to have to speak to me if you want me to find Cora,” I remark at one point.
It’s disorienting out here, especially in the silence. The speed limit is eighty, but it still looks like everything I see is standing still.
“Once you actually say something worth responding to, I’ll talk.”
I shift on the bench seat. “Who are you, for starters?”
“Hunter Lemming,” she says finally—something. Some shred of evidence that this is all real, happening, and not some sick daydream my mind has concocted.
“How old are you? What do you do out here?”
“I’m twenty-one. And I work for Cora.”
“Doing what?”
“Whatever she asks me to. Includin’ drivin’ three hours to get her overly-chatty niece from the airport.”
I bite back a response to her insult, instead asking, “She’s missing, so how’s she still issuing demands?”
Hunter’s hands tighten on the steering wheel. They’re tan and strong, wrapping around the steering wheel like they have a right to be there, and it makes me wonder what else they’d look good wrapped around. “It’s what she would want. It’s been long enough.”
“What do you mean—”
The truck suddenly comes to a stop, cutting me off. I face forward, looking right at the ranch house that’s been in the Cole family since Wonderland, Wyoming, has been in existence. It’s been renovated several times over the past few decades, but some of the original features remain. The exterior is all wood, a hazelnut color, with high ceilings and big windows. The porch wraps around the entire house, and there’s a sign that reads “Cole” above the front door, in gold letters. I used to dream of owning a house like this, once. I used to dream about a lot of things that I don’t anymore.
Hunter’s out of the truck in a flash, and I follow her, walking to the back of the truck. She throws the tailgate down, then lifts my incredibly full suitcases effortlessly out of the bed. She’s moving again before I even have time to register it. Everything is exact and precise with Hunter; no energy or time wasted, as if her mind is always already three steps ahead of her body. She reminds me of a wild animal tracking its prey: her eyes, the tone of her voice, the way she moves.
The ranch house is one story, a mostly open floor plan that sends the entryway to the kitchen, then to the living room without breaking stride. Rugs are thrown over the hardwood in front of both couches, with a large glass coffee table sandwiched between them. The appliances are all gleaming silver in the kitchen, the countertops obsidian black. It’s a similar setup to the one in the guesthouse, which is back down near the edge of the property. Everything’s as I remember, as if this place has been frozen in time, waiting for my return.
And then, of course, there’s Cora.
The last time I was here, the last time I’d gotten a glimpse of my aunt, she was gorgeous in an easy, straightforward way: bare feet and blue jeans and a big tousle of brown hair. Eighteen years the junior of Elain Cuthridge—my mother, by legal definition—making her thirty-nine now. Half sisters, the two sharing a mother, but not a father. Family tradition, seemingly, to fornicate with the wrong men. Maybe that’s why the universe made me a lesbian—“enough of this bullshit; no more men.”
It’s always been just me, Elain, and Cora. The former I haven’t seen or heard from in six years, the latter in eight. Another family tradition, I suppose: abandonment. Mothers running, fathers never having existed in the first place.
“It’s all yours,” Hunter says suddenly, tossing a set of keys onto the kitchen table. “Bedroom’s down the hall, bathroom’s right next to it, laundry’s at the very end. I’d say you could take your old bedroom, but Cora had everything cleared outta there. I’m in the guesthouse if you need anything, though I hope you won’t.”
“You live here?”
“What I said, ain’t it?”
Hunter’s boots echo behind me as she starts to leave, but I stop her. “Where would she go?”
“What?”
I turn. She’s leaning against the wall, arms crossed over her chest. Cora used to stand in that exact same spot in that exact same way, and seeing it replicated so precisely by a woman I don’t know from Adam isn’t a feeling I ever want to get used to.
It hadn’t hit me at the airport, or on the ride here, that I’m back, in this place that’s felt more like home—and hell—than anywhere else in the world. This place I never thought I’d see again. But oh, is it hitting me now.
“You seem to know her better than anyone,” I reply, trying in vain to keep my tone even. “So. She goes missing. Where would she go?”
“Nowhere else to go around here.”
“She had a life before all this ranch shit. She could’ve up and decided—”
“She was an investigator, like you’re fashionin’ yourself to be,” she says, cutting me off again. “She gave that up when her dad died. She missed this place, and this is what she was raised to do. This is her life now—and I know her well enough to know she didn’t run off. No, she’s …” Hunter swallows, shakes her head. “She’s in trouble. I know it.”
“Is that what the cops think?”
“Some of ’em.”
“What—one out of three?”
“Somethin’ like that.”
Goddamn her with all these half answers. “And how long has she been missing?”
“Two weeks.”
“She’s been missing for two weeks? Why’s it taken you so long to pick up the goddamn phone?”
She shrugs, like the timeline doesn’t even faze her. “Guess I finally got desperate enough to ask for your help.”
“I need to get started now, then.”
“Nothing of importance’s open around here till Monday.”
“Is there internet here?” I only have one bar of cell service, making it nearly impossible to do any research on my phone.
Hunter jerks her chin down the hall. “Only thing left in your old room’s the computer. It’s ancient, though. I tried doin’ some searchin’ before I called you, and couldn’t get much to load.”
“What about the house, then? Have you looked around at all or—”
“Of course I have. If I’d found anything, I wouldn’t have had to call you to investigate.”
