Page 61 of Forget Me Not
Orphan,she had said.But don’t worry about Annie. She won’t be coming around anymore.
CHAPTER 39
It feels like I’m floating as I make my way through the building, sweat prickling my neck once I step into the sun. Then I glide across the parking lot, unlocking my car before sliding into the driver’s seat, immediately reaching for the box by my side.
I open the lid, fingers shaking as I grab all the pictures and flip my way through each one until I come across that print of my parents.
The print I had first seen at the top of this stack, the one of the two of them standing on our porch. Their expressions so blissful, so young and in love.
I turn it around, eyeing the inscription written in pencil.
Alan and Annaliese, March 1984.
I drop the image onto my lap, my mind spinning as I stare at the date. Then I reach into my bag and grab Marcia’s diary, flipping to the very last entry I read. It’s dated in April, only a month afterthis picture was taken, and I close my eyes now, imagining Marcia stepping out of the shower before rummaging around in the bathroom cabinets. Walking into the kitchen to find Lily perched on a counter, that picture of Annie stuck to the fridge.
I open my eyes again, realizing that wasn’t just any house they broke into.
It wasourhouse. Marcia and Lily had been in our house.
I take a deep breath as I attempt to wrap my mind around Marcia washing off in our guest bathroom downstairs; Lily scouring around in our pantry, plucking an apple from the back of the fridge and dropping her core into the bottom of the sink. Of course, all this happened long before I existed, before Natalie and I were even born, but it’s still the same house my parents bought before they got married, the very same house where Natalie and I grew up, and the thought of them wandering through all our rooms, sloughing their cells all over the floor, is enough to make my skin clammy with fear.
I lean back in my seat, trying to map it all out in my mind. Marcia had written about how they used to hop between towns, choosing houses at random so they wouldn’t get caught, and I wonder now, just as Marcia had, if Lily had known my mom was from Claxton, if it came up in passing during their time at the Farm, or if hitting our house had been nothing more than a fluke. If she had simply been shutting the fridge door and saw that picture of my parents stuck to the surface, my mother’s blond hair uncharacteristically combed and my father’s arms wound around her waist. The boy she had been with since she was sixteen.
She wasn’t committed,Lily had said.To the family, to us.
I slide the diary back into my bag, thinking about how my mother’s face fell the second she saw that picture of Natalie surrounded by vines; that choke in her throat as she mutteredGalloway Farm.She knows Mitchell, which means she must also know moreabout what happened back then, so much more than she’s been letting on, and I grab my phone before tapping on her number, listening to the ringing before it abruptly ends.
“Hi, you’ve reached Annaliese Campbell. I can’t come to the phone right now…”
I wait impatiently for the recording to stop, launching into a message as soon as it beeps.
“Mom, it’s Claire,” I say, a quiet anger radiating through the phone. “Look, I’m still here, I’m still in town. I’ve been staying over at Galloway and there are clearly some things you need to tell me.”
I fall silent, my leg bouncing up and down as I think.
“Call me back as soon as you get this.”
I end the call, lowering the phone into my cup holder before glancing back down, the picture of my parents still on my lap. I pick it up, moving to slip it back into the box when the new image on top catches my eye.
I lean to the side again, plucking the photo between my fingers. It’s the one of Natalie and Bethany out in those woods, the one I’ve thought of so many times, but now my eyes zero in on a detail I barely noticed before. It’s that car in the background, a flash of metal hidden in the trees. I had seen it the first time I looked at this picture but back then, back in the living room as I sat with my mother, I just assumed the car belonged to one of the kids at the party—but now, I think about the article outlining Katherine’s disappearance.
Her missing camper, the one I’m now sure Mitchell was driving around.
I pull it in closer, squinting as I notice the car’s orange tint. The license plate is still there, still attached to the back, but the image isn’t clear enough to make anything out.
I lower the picture as my mind starts to churn. Thinking about what Chief DiNello just asked me, if I have any proof of these various crimes.
Thiswould be proof.
If Katherine’s camper is still out there, if the plate matches the BOLO issued in 1983, then this would be irrefutable proof that Mitchell was somehow involved. The police would be forced to search his whole property.
They would insist on talking to Marcia, hearing the whole story straight from her lips.
I toss both pictures into the box, ready to crank the engine and make my way back, when my phone starts to vibrate again, the loud clatter in the cup holder making me jump.
I reach out and grab it, swiping at the screen before even bothering to check who it is.
“Mom,” I say, my voice sharp as I push the receiver into my ear. “We need to talk.”
