Sally and Kathy Holt are as close as sisters can be. They share a room and all their secrets. That is, until that one day at the local pool when Sally almost drowned. That was the day that Billy Barnes first noticed them. The lifeguard hadn’t been paying attention to her job, but Billy saw that Sally was in trouble, and he jumped into the pool to save her. Their mother invited him over for dinner. He accepted. From that point on, Kathy and Billy were inseparable.
Sally struggled with her sister dating. Kathy was a couple of years older, but the two had been almost inseparable. And then Sally was left behind as Kathy spent all her time with Billy. Kathy told her all about the relationship, but Sally still felt left out. So much so that she insisted Billy drive her to school one morning. The night before, Kathy had gone out with him even though she was supposed to be watching the State of the Union address by President Bill Clinton. She asked Sally to take notes for her, and she had, but that means she has something that Kathy wants. So in exchange, she insists that Billy drive her to school.
As they’re going down Main Street, Kathy telling Billy to drive faster, she comes across a note Sally had written about their mother the night before. Kathy is asking Sally about it, Billy is looking at them to see what is going on, and he misses the deer in the middle of the road. When he turns to see the deer, he swerves, the front of the car going right into a tree. Billy tells Sally to run and get help, since she was in the back seat and was able to get out of the car.
Billy was injured in the accident but Kathy was killed on impact. And Sally, and her parents, are never the same.
As time goes on, Sally finds herself being drawn to Billy. She doesn’t go looking for him, but when she bumps into him, she starts talking to him. They talk online, and then later they talk on the phone late at night.
But eventually, Billy goes off to college, and later Sally does, and they lose touch. As the years go by, Sally finds herself moving away from Kathy’s memory and becoming more herself. After college, she decided to travel in Europe before settling down in New York City. She starts dating a lawyer and ends up engaged to him, freelancing as a writer and talking to her therapist about Kathy’s death and her own future.
And then her parents call. There is a big storm coming, coincidentally named Hurricane Kathy, and they want to know if Sally will come home for the storm. She decides to go, and when she finds out that Billy is back in town, having taken over his father’s garden center, she goes to his store. Her father is threatening to cut down their old trees himself, and she wants to find someone to give him a hand. But how will she deal with seeing him again after all those years, with Hurricane Kathy heading their way?
Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance is part coming-of-age, part love letter from one sister to another. It’s a study of sisterhood, of grief, of finding yourself after a tragedy. Author Alison Espach has crafted this moving story of growing up and figuring out who you are and who you want to be. There is a lot of sadness in this story, but there is also healing, and it’s a genuinely interesting story to follow.
I listened to the audio book of Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance, and narrator Jesse Vilinsky brings Sally’s voice to life. It takes some getting used to, as the way Sally’s voice is written, especially early in the book, there is a lot of conversations where the back and forth are punctuated with “he said” and “she said.” It gets repetitive and almost tedious, but it also serves a purpose. The way Sally tells these stories is an extension of how she thinks, how she organizes information. So the more you get to know Sally (and the older and more sophisticated her thinking gets), the more you understand Espach’s choice in using that repetition.
I found myself swept up by Sally’s story. I was surprised by the depth of the trauma, of Sally’s recovery, of Sally’s growth. And hearing the snippets of Billy’s story is so powerful. There were moments I found myself crying at this book, and yet I kept wanting to go back for more. Honestly, I was sad when I got to the end. I thought the storm at the end was inspired, and it was the perfect metaphor for the ghost of Kathy that haunted these individuals for so long. I would definitely recommend this one, but keep those tissues at hand because you will need them at unexpected moments.
A copy of the audio book for Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance was provided by Macmillan Audio through NetGalley, with many thanks.
