Page 32 of Forget Me Not
If Marcia had vanished a couple decades later, her picture would have been plastered all over the place. She would have gone viral, her name probably trending, instead of withering into oblivion after only a month.
I lean back, my mind starting to swim as I think about the diary again, her blatant desire to get away. She had written about leaving, dreamed of going to college and finding a job, so maybe she simply ran away with Mitchell and got in touch after. She could have called, could have written a letter. Could have somehow let her parents know that she was okay. I bet they were humiliated once they realized their “good, righteous girl” skipped town on her own—especially that she skipped town with aboy—so they kept it a secret, allowed the attention to simply dissolve away… but then I glance back at the screen, another result catching my attention. This one dated from 1985.
ONE YEAR LATER, MARCIA RAYBURN STILL UNFOUND
I click on the link and scan the scant article, the image, this time, of William and Jane only. They’re standing in front of their house and holding a picture of their daughter, their expressions solemn. Practically blank. They look older here, so much older than in their family portrait from only a year before. I can see it in the lines of their faces, the ache in their eyes. William has a beard, Jane’s hair is entirely gray, and I suddenly think of my mother again, how she’s aged in such a bone-deep way. There’s a weariness to her that’s infused into everything: her eyes sunken in and shoulders slumped down like the weight of the world is too much to hold. Her smile empty like the muscles remember how to go through the motions but there is no feeling there. No emotion at all.
I zoom in on my screen, looking at the picture of Marcia they’re holding. It’s pixelated after my attempt to enlarge the framed shot but she still seems so young, so vibrant, her expression exposing a certain lust for life that feels so far removed from the way she is now. Her hair is long and straight and draped over her shoulders, her eyes the same amorphous gray, and I try to reconcile her adolescent face with the older one I saw just this morning. It’s hard to compare them, how changed they are, and it makes me wonder what Natalie might look like if she was actually given the chance to grow up. If I would be able to see past the creases and scars, the alterations etched in after twenty-two years of time spent apart, and I realize with a pinch of guilt that it’s possible I wouldn’t even recognize her if I were to pass her on the sidewalk.
If she’s somehow still out there, if she’s still alive, she could pass as a stranger to me. After all this time, shewouldbe a stranger.
I lean forward, the tips of my fingers grazing the digital picture on the screen as I imagine a young Marcia scribbling into the book I now have, filling up its empty pages with a story an outsider would one day read. It’s a bit jarring, I think. All the different ways time changes a person. How the years distort both flesh and memories until everything is too wrinkled to smooth back out—and then it dawns on me swiftly, an insight that jolts me so hard it feels like the Earth has been knocked off its axis. All this unwanted power I suddenly have.
It’s the realization that, to the rest of the world, Marcia Rayburn is still missing. She’s an unsolved mystery, her life an ellipsis with no tangible end, but I know where she is. I know what happened.
Other than Mitchell, I might just be the only person who does.
CHAPTER 21
A numbness has started to creep into my limbs from these strange revelations I can’t understand.
I stand up and peel off my clothes before floating into the bathroom and stepping into the shower, twisting the knob to the hottest setting and letting the water burn me raw. Then I grab a washcloth and start to scrub at the dirt on my arms, the dried mud caked to the creases of my knees. Scratching my nails through a bar of old soap like I can rinse all this knowledge straight from my skin.
I step out a few minutes later, my body buzzing like a severed nerve. My mind is foggy from the heat, from the fact that I now have to make a decision on what to do next.
I walk over to the dresser and change into a pair of shorts and a clean T-shirt, toweling off my hair as I make my way back to the desk. Then I stand in the center of the room, looking around in a strange kind of daze. On the one hand, I could do nothing. I could go back to the city or still stay for the summer, simply going about each day as if none of this happened. I could try to forget Iever found that diary, wiggled my fingers into their business and uncovered these things I should not know. After all, these people invited me into their home, theirlives,and now here I am, digging around. Exhuming all the skeletons buried deep in their past. I realize now that I’ve been running on autopilot, that always-oiled urge to put the pieces cleanly together taking over the second I sniffed out something strange, but there could be an innocent explanation for this. Maybe Marcia disappeared for a reason, a reason I don’t yet understand.
Maybe she doesn’t actuallywantto be found… but at the same time, I already know I won’t let this go.
I turn around, toward the guesthouse windows, the sky outside a deep, bruised blue. I can barely see it from here, the ambient light fading fast, but I let the main house materialize in my mind as I imagine those looming white columns and restless chairs. The phantom presence of Marcia on the porch, just this morning, sipping slowly from a mug of hot tea. It’s so hard to wrap my mind around it: the fact that, just across the yard, on the other side of the grass, lives a woman who no longer exists. A woman who has spent the last forty-one years hidden in plain sight, tucked away in the same state where she once vanished.
So far away, yet still within reach.
I ease back into the desk chair, hoping to uncover a little more before I have to decide what I should do. Then I reach for my laptop, returning to the first article I found.
DRAPER, SOUTH CAROLINA, TEEN GOES MISSING
RAYBURN FAMILY DESPERATE FOR ANSWERS
I flip back to the map, typing inDraper, South Carolinaand watching as a pin slowly drops. Of course, I’ve heard of Draper before. Growing up around here, I have a general idea of wherethings are, the names of all the neighboring towns. I know it’s a farming community; mostly large fields and wide, open space. Inland, rural. Full of conservative Christians with political posters in their yards year-round. Now, though, I can see that it’s a little over one hundred miles away, and I click over to the second article now, my eyes on the picture of William and Jane as I take in their ranch house in the background. Four blurry numbers bolted to the stairs.
I zoom in further, squinting at the address. I can make out the numbers 1629 and I turn toward my notepad, about to scribble it down when I realize it’s pointless without a street name to go with it… but then I remember the diary again, Marcia’s very first entry when she described her walk to the theater, the fear that she would run into someone she knew. She had called her town a bubble, tightly knit, mentioning her school was only two blocks south of her house—her church, four blocks east—so I switch back to the map again, zooming in to Draper’s Main Street. Suddenly grateful she grew up in a place I can crawl in a matter of minutes.
I roam around now, finding my bearings as I click across various locations. Acutely aware of how much has likely changed in such a long stretch of time. I’m reminded again of my drive through Claxton, all the growth that took over my own tiny town, though there still seems to be only one high school in Draper, apparently founded in 1966, so I touch the icon with the tip of my finger, tracing my way two blocks north. Then I search for a church, knowing, in a place like this, that I’m likely to find quite a few. As predicted, there are several across various denominations: Presbyterian, Catholic, Southern Baptist. They’re scattered all over town, making it impossible to narrow it down, but I continue to comb through my memories, recounting all the clues Marcia inadvertently dropped. Her talk of the scriptures and the way she dressed.
He doth not dwell in unholy temples. Neither can filthiness or anything which is unclean be received into the kingdom of God.
I tap my fingers against the keys, thinking. Remembering from a documentary I once watched that the LDS community refers to certain buildings as temples. I decide to refine my search again, now specifically looking for a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. There’s only one, and it’s not very far from the high school, either, so I point at it with my free hand, making my way four blocks west.
I lean forward, watching as my fingers intersect on a residential street called Hickory Road. If Marcia’s entries are accurate, then this should be the street where she grew up.
This should be the street where she disappeared, the very street where she was last seen.
I click over to the search bar, typing1629 Hickory Roadbefore hitting Enter and watching as the map zeroes in on a house. Then I switch over to satellite as a picture materializes on the screen and I can tell, without a shred of doubt, that it’s the same house from the article I just read. The siding has been painted, the stairs replaced, but it’s the exact same one William and Jane stood in front of as they held that framed picture of their daughter in their hands.
I stare at the directions, the step-by-step turns, trying to wrap my mind around the fact that I could be there in less than three hours. I could jump in my car and show up on their doorstep, giving a family the answers no one else could. It’s a dizzying notion, this level of power. The sense of responsibility I suddenly feel. Of course, I know it’s possible the Rayburns don’t actually live there anymore—it’s possible they’re not evenaliveanymore—but still, I lean back, exhaling slowly as I picture these strangers and their last four decades. All the nights they surely spent by that window, willing Marcia to find her way home. If they are still alive, they must have long ago accepted that their daughter is dead. There is no moving on from that, but I know better than anyone that thereismoving forward. A slow, painful lurching in some tenuous direction, eachday that passes providing a little more padding. A cushion to help soften the sharp edges of pain.
I open the desk drawer, eyeing the diary I had stuffed deep inside. I’d told myself I wouldn’t read any more, that the details within were none of my business. That plunging into its pages each night was intrusive and wrong and I should leave it alone… but now this book feels like my only way to know for sure what to do. If Marcia left her parents on purpose, then giving up where she is feels like not only a massive betrayal but like taking a scalpel to those poor people’s stitches, smearing salt in a wound that’s still trying to heal.
