She stood barefoot in the sand, squeezed her eyes together against the sun and held up one hand because she gestured to me to stop photographing.
That picture became the image that everyone knew.
The police enlarged it.
News outlets used it.
Volunteers printed it on flyers.
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For years I have studied every detail.
Her face.
Her hair.
The turquoise fabric.
That crooked yellow sun.
None of that brought her home.
Eventually, the organized search operations were discontinued.
After that, the phone calls became less frequent.
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People who first asked what they could do, gradually stopped doing that.
For everyone else, life just went on.
For Michael and me, time has simply reorganized around Nora’s absence.
My husband was getting quieter.
I became obsessed with details.
Every post about an unknown young woman caught my attention.
Any alleged observation.
Any message from an unknown who claims to have seen Nora in a supermarket, a train station or a bus station.
Most of them led nowhere.
Some were cruel.
Eventually, I stopped getting close to beaches.
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I couldn’t hear the sound of the waves without being immediately returned to that afternoon.
When Michael proposed to spend a weekend in a coastal town nearly six hundred miles from home, I immediately said no.
He asked again.
“It doesn’t necessarily have to be over the beach.”
“It’s literally a seaside resort.”
“We can eat. Walking around. Sit down somewhere. If you don’t like it, we’ll leave.”
I looked at him.
He looked exhausted.
We were both in our 40s.
And we had built our lives for eight years around someone who was gone.
