Chapter Text
CHAPTER 5 – ENID SINCLAIR
That night, I don't go home.
I drive with only one purpose: to make the landscape change quickly enough that Joel's words have nowhere to land.
"I don't think you ever allowed yourself to, because I know writing about her... would have meant looking at her again."
I repeat them to myself with the same precision he used when he spoke them, examining them the way one examines something that has pierced the skin before identifying exactly what it is.
I drive without counting the miles. The city gradually dissolves behind me, the streetlights become intermittent, then sparse.
Then disappear altogether.
The road bends, and my hands follow it without consulting me. At some point, I recognize the dirt road and pull over without ever consciously deciding to.
Watchung.
I've walked these trails since childhood long enough that my feet know every corner without the need for light.
I walk...
I don't know for how long.
I only know the forest doesn't judge me.
It doesn't ask questions.
It doesn't wait. It doesn't need me to make sense.
When the lake appears through the trees, I stop.
It's there.
As it has always been.
As though time had never passed.
As though time were an invention that only works somewhere else.
The water is perfectly still, and the sky reflects upon it with that peculiar clarity unique to summer nights.
And then I see it.
The moon.
Waxing.
And yet... And yet.
"Look," Enid would say. "It's a waxing moon."
I sit at the water's edge with my knees drawn against my chest, my eyes fixed on the lake... The memory reaches me before I have the chance to stop it.
Nevermore, sophomore year. One October night, not long after the body swap we went through. Enid had spent the last twenty minutes arguing—with the particular persistence of someone who knows she'll eventually win through sheer exhaustion—that we needed to climb onto the roof.
"Please, Wednesday, the view is better," she repeated for the fifth time.
"We already have a view from the balcony."
"It's not the same..."
I crossed my arms and raised an eyebrow.
"Fine. If you won't come with me, I'll go by myself."
"Enid..." I sighed. "Wait. I'm coming."
We climbed onto the roof.
That's how we worked. She proposed something, I resisted, eventually gave in, and she somehow managed to ensure I never regretted doing so. It was one of the few social mechanisms I had learned to tolerate without resentment.
Nevermore's roof sloped enough to make standing without care impossible. We sat with our legs drawn up, the night's cold gradually seeping through our uniforms.
"Look at it," Enid said, pointing at the sky with her whole arm, as though the moon required a formal introduction for someone who had never looked at it with the attention she believed it deserved.
"I am."
"And you don't think it's incredible?"
"I see it exactly as it is. A satellite in its waxing phase, approximately three hundred and eighty-four thousand kilometers away, reflecting sunlight without producing any of its own."
Enid looked at me.
Not with disappointment. With that particular mixture of exasperation and something that, at the time, I still didn't know how to classify correctly and which, for convenience—or perhaps because I was afraid to label it by its proper name—I filed away under affection, though that category always struck me as remarkably inadequate for what it actually meant.
"Do you know what your problem is?"
We both leaned back against the sloping roof.
"Several, according to most people who know me."
"You look at the sky and only see what you already know."
"I find looking at what's actually there more efficient."
"I think that's a very sad way to look at the universe."
I didn't answer. It was an imprecise observation—sad didn't accurately describe reality—but there was something in the way she said it that left my reply unfinished, and instead I simply looked at her.
Enid moved closer, erasing what little distance remained between us, her head resting against my shoulder while she continued looking up at the sky. After a moment, she lifted the hand that had been resting on her stomach and laid it open beside her.
She simply held it out...
And I, without examining the decision with the attention I normally devote to any form of physical contact, took it.
Her fingers closed around mine with that warmth she possessed even in the cold, that constant temperature that seemed independent of the weather, as though her body generated its own inexhaustible source of heat.
"When I was little," she said, her voice quieter now, directed more toward the sky than toward me, "and I couldn't sleep, my dad used to take me into the garden. He'd point at the moon and tell me I could ask it for anything, any wish at all, and if I wished hard enough..." She smiled faintly. "He said the universe would hear me."
"And did it?"
"Never." A brief laugh, entirely free of bitterness, crossed her lips as she squeezed my hand. "But it made me feel better."
"Why keep doing it if it never worked?"
Silence.
Enid, her head still resting against my neck, turned to look at me without ever letting go of my hand. And there, in the darkness, with the light of the waxing moon falling across her face, there was something in her expression I couldn't decipher with my usual speed. As though all the information were there, but my system for classifying it had suddenly failed.
"Because sometimes I don't need the universe to give me what I'm asking for."
She looked back at the sky.
"Sometimes I just need to know that someone is listening."
I said nothing. Not because I didn't have an answer, but because I felt, in a way I couldn't have articulated back then, that anything I said would break something that was better left unbroken. Something I didn't want to break.
We stayed that way for hours, side by side, her warmth surrounding me, and despite the cold, I never felt it. Her hand in mine, her thumb absently stroking the back of my hand.
At some point, without any identifiable transition, she fell asleep.
I knew because her breathing changed, and because she began shifting in search of more space before wrapping herself around me like a koala, in that uniquely unconscious way she had of clinging to something solid even while she slept.
I didn't wake her. I remained perfectly still until dawn, partly for her safety and partly because her closeness made any attempt to move extraordinarily difficult.
It wasn't the first time we'd fallen asleep like that. I was never the one who sought her out. It was always Enid who found her way to me.
I merely pretended resignation, as though I didn't want exactly the same thing.
And as the sun began to rise, I filed those thoughts away in the folder of things I tolerated from Enid Sinclair that I would have tolerated from no one else. A folder that, over time, had grown considerably thicker than I'd ever expected when I first opened it.
Sitting at the edge of Watchung Lake, with the reflection of the waxing moon shimmering across the water, I finally understand something I left unexamined that night on the roof.
I didn't tolerate her.
I chose her… Always.
Every single time.
Without naming it.
Without calculating it.
It simply happened, and I allowed it because, with Enid, choosing never felt like a concession.
It felt like the only logical answer.
Joel was right...
I never wrote about Enid in those files because turning her into words would have meant fixing her in the past tense, and I had refused—with a stubbornness I now recognize as fear—to accept that the past was the only tense still available to her.
But there is another reason.
One that, tonight, beside the lake, I allow myself to examine for the first time.
I never fully understood what Enid was to me.
And as long as I couldn't name it, as long as that file remained open, unclassified, without a precise label, she remained a question.
And questions do not die.
They simply wait for an answer.
I don't make a wish upon the sky.
I don't whisper her name.
I simply look at the moon Enid always insisted was magical and... pray she's right.
…
A little after three in the morning, Morticia Addams finds Joel in the kitchen.
Not because the noise woke her. It's something far more difficult to explain, perhaps connected to her dove powers. Somehow, she sensed her guest's wakefulness from the other side of the house, like the faintest vibration traveling through the walls.
When she enters the kitchen, the kettle is still resting on the cold stove, and Joel is sitting at the table in one of the old wooden chairs, his notebook open.
The same blank page.
A cup of tea, untouched, rests beside his right hand.
Morticia enters without making a sound, and Joel looks up immediately. For a moment, he seems ready to stand, to apologize, to explain why he's still awake.
"Mrs. Addams. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to..."
She raises a hand ever so slightly, stopping him.
"You can't sleep."
There is no question in her voice.
Joel lowers his eyes.
"No."
Silence.
Morticia says nothing yet. She lights the burner beneath the kettle and waits for the water to boil. She replaces the teabag in Joel's cup, pours fresh water, prepares one for herself, and only then sits down across from him.
"Wednesday will come back. Sometimes she needs air when something is beyond her control."
Joel nods.
"I know." He absently stirs the teabag in his cup. "I just..." It takes him several seconds. "I think I found something she's been avoiding for a very long time... and I didn't know how to say it without hurting her."
Morticia cradles her cup in both hands.
"My dear, you probably said something that was true."
Joel doesn't answer.
Morticia takes a sip of tea before continuing.
"The truest things are often the hardest to hear. Especially when you've spent years trying not to face them."
For several seconds, neither of them speaks.
Then Joel breaks the silence.
"I didn't want to hurt her."
Morticia smiles faintly.
"I know. Not everyone is willing to tell us the truth, or to face uncomfortable conversations. That's precisely why I know you spoke out of affection."
Joel doesn't answer. He looks at the notebook. It is still blank.
"Mrs. Addams... may I ask you something?"
"Of course."
Joel hesitates, then continues.
"What was Enid like?"
Morticia doesn't answer immediately. Not because she doesn't know. Because she doesn't know where to begin.
"What is it you'd like to know exactly?"
Joel meets her gaze.
"Everything you're willing to tell me."
Morticia takes another sip of tea. Then she sets the cup down with her characteristic care, while a smile appears without her intending it.
Very small, very brief.
"Do you know what the very first thing I thought when I met her was?"
Joel shakes his head, and Morticia lets out a soft laugh.
"That she talked too much... and that she was far too loud."
Joel wasn't expecting that.
"I don't mean that as criticism. It was simply an observable fact. She spoke with a speed that suggested her thoughts arrived faster than her mouth could process them, and she had apparently decided that was the world's problem, not hers."
Morticia takes another sip of tea, clearly savoring the memory.
"Gomez spent twenty minutes talking with her during one of the parents' weekends. She wanted to know everything about Wednesday. She kept asking question after question. By the time it was over, Gomez swore they'd been talking for hours."
Joel laughs for the first time since Wednesday left. It's brief, but genuine.
Morticia laughs as well. Her smile lingers for another few seconds before changing. It becomes quieter. More nostalgic.
"But the curious thing was that Wednesday never tried to stop her."
Joel looks up.
"There was one afternoon. Gomez and I had been at Nevermore for several days because of a school committee matter that isn't relevant now. I found them in one of the corridors. Enid was talking. Wednesday was reading."
She pauses.
"For nearly twenty minutes, I watched them from the far end of the hallway, convinced Wednesday was ignoring her. She never answered. Never looked up from her book. Never gave the slightest indication she was present in the conversation. But when Enid finally finished speaking..."
Morticia pauses deliberately.
"Wednesday looked up and answered the very first question Enid had asked her twenty minutes earlier."
Joel blinks.
"She'd been listening the whole time."
"With her full attention," Morticia confirms. "She had simply chosen to process everything before answering... Enid wasn't surprised." Morticia lets her eyes rest on a fixed point on the table. "That was what struck me most. Enid already knew. She had spent twenty minutes talking with the absolute certainty that Wednesday was there, even though every outward sign suggested otherwise."
Joel writes something down.
"What else do you remember about her?"
Morticia considers the question. For a moment, her gaze drifts somewhere beyond the window, as though she were searching through a particularly precious archive.
"That she was more stubborn than she appeared," she says, a faint smile touching her lips. "Wednesday has an extraordinary ability to make people give up. It's a skill she's been perfecting since childhood. But Enid never gave up. And the curious thing was that she never fought, either. She simply kept trying with the same energy, as though no were only provisional information, not a final answer."
"And Wednesday gave in?"
"Always." Morticia cradles her cup between both hands. "I remember that, during the weekends we served on the school committee, Gomez and I stayed in a nearby cottage. If Gomez wanted Wednesday to join us for dinner, he never asked her. He went straight to Enid. Because he knew that if Enid agreed, Wednesday wouldn't refuse."
Joel smiles.
"After dinner, we'd watch films at Enid's request. She always chose the sort of films Wednesday considered an insult to any functional brain. The kind you can predict completely within the first ten minutes."
"And Wednesday watched them?"
"She did... But she complained through the entire film." Morticia's smile grows warmer. "For Gomez and me, watching the two of them was the real entertainment. Enid enjoyed the film. Wednesday enjoyed complaining about it."
Joel laughs softly.
"I suppose they were very close."
Morticia takes a few seconds before answering.
"I always had the impression that neither of them knew exactly what to call whatever it was." Silence. "Curiously enough... it never seemed to matter very much to either of them."
Joel sets his pen down.
"What did she like?"
Morticia smiles again.
"It would be easier if you asked me what she didn't like."
"I remember the music most of all." She falls silent for a few moments, thinking. "The summer after their first year at Nevermore, something very unusual happened... Wednesday began practicing different pieces on the cello... modern music."
Joel raises an eyebrow. Up until then, he'd heard her play mostly Bach. He couldn't picture her playing popular music.
"Gomez thought she was ill."
They both laugh.
"One afternoon he asked her why she'd changed her repertoire. Do you know what she answered?"
Joel shakes his head, and Morticia smiles with quiet fondness.
"'Enid likes them.' That was all. As though that explanation alone were enough to justify absolutely anything."
"That same summer, Wednesday spent several weeks traveling through different states. She was investigating the case of one of the serial killers she had admired most since childhood... She came home with an enormous doll."
Joel frowned slightly.
"A doll? Kansas city scalper?"
"That's right. Quite unsettling, as a matter of fact. Blonde hair, blue dress. Gomez assumed it was another one of those trophies that would eventually end up decorating her room." She paused. "A few days later, she wrapped it carefully and took it back to Nevermore."
"She gave it to Enid?"
Morticia nodded.
"Until then, Wednesday had always collected things that said something about herself. That was the first time she ever brought something home with someone else entirely in mind."
Morticia took another sip of tea.
"The most unreal thing was that my daughter always believed no one noticed those things."
Joel smiled, and Morticia gave him a knowing look.
"We all noticed everything."
Joel absently played with the pages of his notebook with one finger.
"You know, Enid also had a rather peculiar obsession with painting Thing's nails."
Joel blinked.
"Thing let her?"
Morticia let out a soft laugh.
"Not only did he let her. He went looking for her. Every week."
They both laughed very quietly. Then the silence returned, but this time it was different.
Heavier.
It took Joel several seconds before he spoke again.
"And... what happened when she disappeared?"
Morticia slowly set her cup down on the table. The sound of porcelain seemed unnaturally loud.
She didn't answer immediately, ans when she finally did... her voice had changed.
"That... was what broke our daughter."
"The loss."
Joel frowned slightly.
"For months she barely ate. She spent entire nights without sleeping. Not because she believed she could control when Enid would appear, but because resting felt like a betrayal of the time she could have been using to search for her."
Joel watched her in silence.
"The hardest part wasn't watching her suffer." Morticia's voice grew quieter. "It was watching her convince herself that continuing to live was a way of forgetting her... of being disloyal."
A long silence.
It took Joel a long time to speak again, and when he finally did... it was almost a whisper.
"Thank you... for telling me."
Morticia shook her head very slowly.
"No. Thank you for staying by her side." She looked at him with the same calm certainty she had carried throughout the conversation. "Get some sleep, Joel." It wasn't a suggestion. "Wednesday will come back. Believe me."
Joel nodded. He watched Morticia Addams leave, and a few minutes later he closed the notebook, turned off the light, and climbed the stairs to his room.
He doesn't actually sleep that night, however, nor does he make any serious attempt to. He lies awake staring at the ceiling while Morticia's words return in fragments.
"She talked too much."
"Wednesday listened to her."
"She had a peculiar obsession with painting Thing's nails."
He arranges them and rearranges them, searching for the complete picture. He thinks he's managed to reconstruct only a small part of it.
Not the whole person.
When the first light of dawn slips through the curtains, he accepts that staying in bed is pointless.
He showers, gets dressed, and leaves his room. The mansion is silent. Joel walks first to Wednesday's bedroom. He doesn't go in. He doesn't dare. But Thing appears from inside, and with a gesture that looks remarkably like a shrug, lets him know she isn't there.
Joel nods and heads downstairs to the study. The files are still spread across the desk exactly as they left them. There is no sign that Wednesday has returned.
Pugsley appears in the kitchen around ten o'clock, still wearing his pajamas, his hair flattened on one side. He opens the refrigerator and takes out some milk, then walks over to the pantry and, much to Joel's surprise, pulls out a large bag of potato chips hidden behind a jar of jam.
Joel watches him from the table.
"You have chips for breakfast?"
Pugsley closes the pantry without looking at him.
"Sometimes. I hide them before my dad finds them." A pause. "He says they're processed poison. Then he eats the whole bag."
Joel smiles.
"That sounds about right."
Pugsley sets the bag on the table and, for the first time, looks directly at him.
"I guess Wednesday still hasn't come back."
"No. Not yet."
"She will." He shrugs. "Wednesday always comes back, Glicker." He sits down and opens the bag with the familiar crackle of the seal breaking. "Want some?"
"No, thanks. But... actually, I wanted to talk to you."
"About what?"
"Enid."
Pugsley stops reaching into the bag.
He remains perfectly still for several seconds.
Then, slowly, he withdraws his hand and rests his elbows on the table.
"Why?"
"Because I've spent days reading through three years of searching," Joel says, "and I still don't know who the person everyone was searching for actually was."
Pugsley looks at him.
He seems to be evaluating him, in that very particular way he has of measuring things before deciding whether they're worth his time.
Finally, he shrugs.
"She was terrible at keeping secrets."
Once again, Joel hadn't expected that as an opening.
"I'm sorry?"
"I mean she was hopeless at keeping secrets." Pugsley reaches into the bag again. "Don't get me wrong, she was ridiculously loyal, but... things just slipped out. I still remember my sister's face whenever Enid blurted out something she wasn't supposed to. It was funny seeing Wednesday that thrown off."
Joel sits down across from him.
"And what did Wednesday do?"
Pugsley chews on a potato chip.
"Nothing. That's the strange part. Wednesday never stopped telling her things. Now that was weird. Wednesday doesn't tell anyone anything."
Joel writes it down.
"What was Enid like with your sister?"
Pugsley chews thoughtfully.
"Unbearably attentive." A pause. "Always worrying about her. Wednesday has always looked like someone who can't be stopped, someone who can handle anything. But Enid..." He shrugs slightly. "Well, she seemed to think the exact opposite. As though she had to look after her. At the same time, she was always pulling Wednesday out of her comfort zone, making her do things she never would have done on her own. Like socializing."
"So Enid actually got her to talk to people?"
"Not exactly. But she got her to talk to her, at least." Pugsley smiles faintly. "I've spent my entire life trying to get Wednesday to tell me something, and the most I've ever managed is a monosyllable. Somehow, in the short time they had together, Enid learned more about her than I have in my entire life."
"It's irritating."
He says the last part without malice.
Simply as a fact.
Joel smiles, and this time he does take a potato chip.
"Did you see Enid much at Nevermore?"
"We were in different years, but yeah." Pugsley pauses. "Mostly in the dining hall. Enid always looked for whichever table Wednesday was sitting at. And if somebody else got there first, she'd somehow manage to make them leave."
"How?"
"Not aggressively. She'd just... start talking so much that eventually people needed air."
Joel laughs.
"So she was strategic."
"No." Pugsley reaches for another chip. "She was a werewolf. More accurately, she was absolutely territorial."
"There was a girl in my year, Agnes, who idolized Wednesday with an intensity that was honestly a little unsettling. Always trying to stay close to her. Always doing something to get her attention."
"And Enid...?"
"Enid hated her." Pugsley says it with complete neutrality. "She never told her that, because Enid wasn't the kind of person who'd say something like that out loud. But whenever Agnes was around, Enid somehow always ended up between the two of them."
"And she'd gradually steer her away from Wednesday."
Joel considers that.
"And Wednesday...?"
"Wednesday never noticed." Pugsley raises an eyebrow. "Or pretended not to. With her, you can never really tell." A pause. "What I do know is that Wednesday treated Agnes the way she treats me. Useful in very specific situations. Disposable the rest of the time."
"She never treated Enid that way."
The silence that follows feels different from the ones before it.
Joel sets his pen down, and his mind begins connecting everything he's heard that morning with everything Morticia Addams had told him.
"What else do you remember about her?"
Pugsley thinks for a moment.
"She had a camera she carried everywhere and photographed absolutely everything." Something that could almost be called a smile escapes him. "She insisted the quality was better than a phone's. One afternoon, she, the others, and I spent hours photographing insects."
"The entire photo session ended up on Instagram." Pugsley leans back in his chair. "She had social media for everything. Instagram. TikTok. A vlog on YouTube. She documented everything. Anyone could follow her, know what she was doing, how she was feeling. She wasn't discreet."
"Sounds like Wednesday's complete opposite."
"Wednesday has no online presence. You know—no photos, no accounts, no digital footprint." A pause. "Enid existed everywhere at once."
"Are her accounts still active?"
"No one ever closed them." Pugsley's voice changes almost imperceptibly, becoming quieter. "I checked them during the first few months. I kept thinking that if it was still really her, sooner or later she'd post something and we'd finally have a lead."
"Wednesday asked me to do it."
"She never looked at them herself."
"But... why not?"
Pugsley takes his time answering.
For someone who normally speaks without hesitation, the pause is significant.
"She never actually told me, and I never asked." He lowers his eyes. "But I'm almost certain she can't deal with ghosts. If you go in there, Enid is still eighteen."
"She's still laughing."
"I think that would be unbearable for her."
Joel doesn't write anything this time.
He simply sighs and thinks Pugsley is right.
Pugsley keeps eating chips from the bag, and as though he'd suddenly been struck by an idea, he gets up from the table without warning.
"Come on!"
Joel looks at him.
"Where?"
"I want to show you something. But hurry, before Wednesday gets back... Oh, and you can't tell her."
Pugsley pulls Joel upstairs to the attic. By the time they reach the top floor, Joel is short of breath and, at the same time, already suffering from the dust filling the room. He pauses to steady himself, pulling out his inhaler while Pugsley begins moving boxes around.
"When Enid disappeared," he says without turning around, "the school was going to throw her things away. Her parents never came to collect them. Wednesday went to get them and brought them here."
Joel stops beside the first box.
ENID SINCLAIR.
The handwriting is Wednesday's.
He recognizes it immediately.
"She's never opened them," Pugsley says. "She brought them up here... and that was it."
Joel looks at the boxes.
There are four of them.
They are perfectly arranged, every label precisely aligned, with the meticulous care Wednesday applies to absolutely everything.
Pugsley lifts the lid from one of the boxes.
There is no ceremony in the gesture, only the practicality of someone who has been up here more than once and knows exactly what's inside.
Joel looks in.
Inside are brightly colored hoodies and fashionable clothes, stuffed animals in different sizes, several makeup cases, and a reusable water bottle covered in stickers, including, as far as Joel can tell, at least three wolves and a pink phrase that reads moon daughter.
The ordinary life of an eighteen-year-old girl, packed away with the precision of someone who couldn't bear to lose a single piece of it.
"She was like this," Pugsley says, gesturing vaguely toward the contents. "Everything was colorful. Everything had stickers. Everything had a wolf on it somewhere."
Joel runs his fingers along the edge of the box without touching anything inside.
"You knew her well, didn't you?"
"Pretty well." Pugsley rummages through the box with the ease of someone who knows exactly what he's looking for. "She treated me like a little brother. Once, at Nevermore, some upperclassmen started picking on me. Enid came out of nowhere, pulled out her claws, and told them that if they wanted to get to me, they'd have to go through her first." He pauses. "She was shorter than I was. Honestly, it was embarrassing even for me, but she didn't seem to care. She was very protective."
Joel smiles.
"And then?"
"Well, then she asked whether I wanted her to teach me how to bite someone's shoulder in a way that hurt just enough to make them stop, but not enough to leave a mark."
Joel blinks.
"She was going to teach you that?"
"No. Wednesday found out and told us revenge should never leave biological evidence. Like saliva."
Pugsley pulls something out from beneath a pink hoodie.
He holds it between his fingers.
A small bracelet made of pink and black beads.
In the center are a black raven and a white wolf, separated by two initials and a heart.
W ❤ E.
"Enid made it. Actually, she made two." Pugsley holds it more carefully than he normally handles anything. "For a Taylor Swift concert. She wanted Wednesday to wear the matching one."
Joel looks at the bracelet.
"Wednesday went to a Taylor Swift concert?"
Pugsley places it gently in Joel's palm with a solemnity completely at odds with his usual manner.
"Believe it or not, she did... and she wore this for the entire concert... even for weeks afterward. Then one day I stopped seeing her wear it. You know... after Enid disappeared." He lowers his eyes. "I never asked what had happened to the bracelet until I found it here."
Joel holds the bracelet.
It's incredibly light.
His eyes linger on the beads, especially the initials.
W ❤ E.
"Why did she keep it up here?" Joel asks, though he already thinks he knows the answer.
Pugsley looks at him.
"Maybe she was afraid of losing it."
The silence that follows is different from every other silence that morning.
Downstairs, the slam of a door echoes through the mansion.
Both of them raise their heads at the same time.
Pugsley peers through the small attic window and sees the old hearse parked outside.
"She's back."
Joel lowers his eyes to the bracelet, places it back exactly where it had been, and Pugsley closes the box.
"You go down first."
Joel nods.
But before leaving, he pauses for a moment in the attic doorway.
He looks at the four boxes with their perfectly aligned labels, hears a second door slam—the one that tells him Wednesday is in her room—and finally walks back downstairs.