Page 54 of Forget Me Not
I drop my hands to my sides, staring at the woman as I remember all the days she came by after school, backpack slung off in that spot by the door. The picture of her I found in that shoebox, bottles of beer littered in the distance, as my mom’s watering eyes drank it all in.
I think she got a little strange. Started getting tattoos.
“Bethany,” I say, thinking of her long blond hair that’s no longer there; her old air of innocence now totally gone. I feel guilty for not recognizing her, but at the same time, people change after so many years. She hardly even looks like the same person anymore. “Of course. You’re Bethany Wheeler.”
CHAPTER 36
In the weeks following Natalie’s disappearance, my mom and I entertained a slow trickle of visitors until, one day, they all dried up. At a certain point, I learned that people simply run out of words. The condolences grow stale, the flowers die.
All that to say: I haven’t seen Bethany since 2002, this once-solid presence of my past vanishing as completely as my sister did.
“God, how have you been?” I ask her now, leaning my arms against the counter as I think about how she was always there in the beginning, bringing us dinner she reheated in the kitchen. Lingering like she wasn’t quite ready to leave. She sat in our row at the funeral, an empty casket at the head of the church and Natalie’s senior-year picture perched in a gold frame. It wasn’t abrupt, though. Her eventual departure from our lives. Instead, she faded away slowly like a ghost simply dissolving into the background until a year passed and I realized with a jolt that I couldn’t actually remember the last time she came by.
“Oh, you know,” she says, gesturing to the little room around her like she’s embarrassed about where she wound up.
I look at her now, her clear discomfort, and wonder if she feels bad about disappearing like that, abandoning my mom and me when we needed her most. Even back then, I couldn’t blame her. I knew she did all that she could. She spoke to the police and gave her statement, so once Jeffrey was arrested and the case was closed, she decided to do the next natural thing.
She simply decided to move on with her life.
“How haveyoubeen?” she asks, flinging a rag over her shoulder as I wonder next when she dyed her hair, when she got that sleeve of tattoos.
As I wonder, strangely, if Natalie’s name is etched on there somewhere. A permanent memento inked into her skin.
“Fine,” I say. “Living in New York, working as a journalist.”
“Good for you,” she says, sounding like she genuinely means it. “Are you in town visiting your mom?”
“Just for a few weeks.”
“What are you doing all the way out on Ladmadaw?” she asks, shifting her weight from one leg to the other. “I mean, there are a lot of other places to grab a coffee. Seems a little out of the way.”
“I’m actually staying out here, spending some time on Galloway Farm.”
I watch as Bethany’s face falls, her lips morphing into a thin, straight line.
“Have you ever been?” I ask. “Natalie worked there that summer.”
“Oh, I remember.”
I sense a venom in her voice now, a disdain for the place dripping from her lips.
“What?” I ask, leaning forward, not understanding the sudden shift in her mood. “What is it?”
“I guess I’m just surprised you’d want to go out there.”
“Why is that?”
“You know,” she continues, sounding a little hesitant now. “Since Natalie got a little obsessed with that place.”
I stare at her, my voice clotted in my throat as Bethany looks down at the counter, clearly trying to decide what to say next.
“What do you mean,obsessed?” I ask at last.
“I mean, she was thereallthe time.”
“Well, she worked there—” I start to argue, but then I think about that day we visited, my parents sitting us down shortly thereafter. Breaking the news about their divorce. Natalie quit just a few days later, that rebellious streak gaining momentum and speed like a runaway train that would soon burst into flames. I always assumed the fact that she quit therefore meant she also stopped going… but now I realize that’s not necessarily the case.
“Yeah, for barely a month,” Bethany says, reading my mind. “But she kept going even after that.”
