This Town |NH|

Chapter Forty Seven

I sat in her house for what seemed like hours but was maybe only one. When I was leaving, I saw Conor coming up the steps.

"What are you doing here?" He asked. He looked at me angrily.

"I came to see Siobhan, if she was here but she's not."

He looked at me, his eyes bloodshot. "Where is she?"

"I don't know," I responded.

"You're lying. I know you are. I know she came to see you last night."

'How the fuck did he know that?' I thought. "Yeah, she did. But I don't know where she is now," I said.

"What did she want with you?"

"I honestly don't know. She climbed through my window and said she had something to tell me because tomorrow...today...would be too late. But she never said what it was. I swear." I definitely wasn't going to tell him I had slept with her last night.

He ran his hand through his hair and sighed. "Fuck."

"I don't see anything missing, so she's probably around here somewhere." Despite saying the words out loud, I knew neither of us believed me.

He looked around, rubbing his hands together, "I hope so." He turned to go before turning back, "If you see her, please tell her to call me or come by." He started to walk off before stopping and turning back, "Actually, if you see her, turn around and walk away from her. Move on, dude. She's not yours anymore."

As he walked off, I thought, 'She was last night but you may be right.' I sighed and went back home.

In the following days, I kept seeing her everywhere. Or, at least, my imagination did. Every time I turned a corner in that town, I thought I saw her. I thought she was coming out of the grocer's or walking by the hardware store. I even thought I saw her in all our old haunts – the playground, the river, even the shadows were playing tricks on me.

No one seemed to know where she went and, for the most part, no one seemed to care. Thomas and Conor were the only ones, besides my family who seemed to even notice she was gone. How could a person who had lived here for the past 10 years be able to leave this small town unnoticed? Was she really that insignificant to the people of this place? It baffled me but, unfortunately, I didn't have the time to search for very long. Pretty soon, it was time to get back on the road and back in the studio.

The following year went by rather quickly, as it seemed to do. I called my parents and Thomas relentlessly hoping she had returned. But after a few months, even that subsided. I knew it would take an act of God for her to ever return to that place.

Despite her telling me to stop, I continued to automatically put money into her account. I didn't know what she was doing or where she was but I, at least, wanted to make sure she could afford food and a place to stay. Although, I never knew if she actually touched it or not. That is, until the day the money I usually had deposited to her, came back to me, along with a notice that said the account had been closed. I called the bank and asked what had happened. I was informed the person whose account it was had taken it all out and closed it. This was about ten months after she'd disappeared.

It was the first sign of life I had had. But now, it was all I had and nothing more. She clearly took the money, which at that point, had seriously accumulated. But what had she done with it. All the bank told me was that she had come in person to close the account and received a check. I asked if the check had been cashed or deposited elsewhere but they weren't so forthcoming with that information.

A few months later, I was back home again, for the holidays. The town was lit up with lights that twinkled against the snow. The air was festive but I was not. I missed her and continued to feel like I saw her shadow everywhere I went. It was about damn near driving me insane.

I met up with Thomas for my second year of "12 Pubs of Christmas". Luckily, it went better than the year before. Conor even joined and he actually did seem like he had become a decent guy. Neither of us mentioned Siobhan, although I sensed he wanted to just as much as I did. I just wanted to know if she was okay. If I knew that, I felt like maybe I could move forward.

But another holiday, another new year came and went. No one knew where she was. It wouldn't be for another eight months, until someone finally had a sighting.