Page 66 of Forget Me Not
RAYBURN FAMILY DESPERATE FOR ANSWERS
“Are you girls living with that man by the river?” she continued, a softness in her voice that made Marcia want to cry. “He is not a good person,” she said. “We all know what he’s been doing and he’s not going to get away with it much longer.”
Marcia swallowed as she remembered the older woman she saw during her first drive to the Farm, glaring eyes on the camper as they roared past.
“I’m a cop,” she continued as Marcia’s eyes darted back to the gun in the drawer. “My name is Carmen, and I can help you.”
“We don’t need help,” Lily snapped as Marcia felt herself flinch, turning to look at her friend by her side. In the midst of the moment, the memories of her parents winding around her, she had somehow forgotten Lily was even here.
“Yes, you do,” the woman pressed as Marcia felt her fingers twitch, a sudden desire to run toward this stranger starting to work its way up her legs. “Whether you were taken against your will or you think you went there on your own accord, I can help you. I can bring you both home.”
Marcia tried to talk, though the words got stuck somewhere deep in her throat. Just a croak coming out when she parted her lips.
“No onewill blame you,” the woman continued like she was somehow reading her mind. “All your families want is for you to come home.”
Marcia found herself nodding, tears streaming down her cheeks as her hand hovered over her stomach. Then she opened her mouth wider, finally ready to speak, when a loud crack from the corner made her let out a scream.
She turned to the side, the gun from the drawer now in Lily’s right hand and pointed at the woman on the other side of the room. Then Marcia spun back around to watch the woman’s wide eyes look down at her chest, the slow bloom of blood unfurling like a flower just before her body crumpled onto the floor.
CHAPTER 42
The sound of chimes pulls me back to the room.
I look down at the phone on my chest, the alarm I set earlier blaring in the dark. Then I let out a breath, pushing the snoozer on the side as I try to process what I just read.
I glance down at the diary again, only a few pages left until I reach the end, though that last entry was scrawled in such a messy, frantic script it almost felt like it came from someone else entirely. Gone was Marcia’s careful cursive, those swooping blue strokes I’ve quickly come to know. Instead, it feels like she scratched down that memory in a desperate attempt to keep it alive, what was once a dreamy reminiscence of how a young girl had been spending her days morphing overnight into something more like a ledger.
A recollection like she was intentionally leaving a trail.
I try to imagine Marcia lying awake that night, slipping away once everyone else was asleep as she filed away this horrible story in preparation for the day she might somehow escape. Because shehadwanted to escape, that much is now obvious. I could practicallyfeel her fear saturating each page as she recalled the moment she learned she was pregnant, a protectiveness for her child settling into her stomach along with a desire to somehow make her life right. Marcia was smart, I can tell, and that last entry felt like she was collecting evidence. Organizing her thoughts into something cohesive so someone, someday, could revisit them later and put the pieces together themselves.
My mind is still replaying the events I just read when I feel my body shoot up quick, an abrupt realization jerking me from bed before I run to my bag on the floor.
I dig through the pockets, pulling out the envelope I picked up earlier as I think about the man back at the store, the way he tugged at the film when I first dropped it off.
This is old,he had said, admiring the canister like it was something fragile and sacred.Really old.
I had assumed, back when he said that, that the pictures were taken in 2002. That when he said the film was old, he was referring to twenty-two years. Just another camera Natalie took when she was out with her friends—but now, I realize it’s so much older than that. It isn’t from two decades ago, like I had originally thought. It’s fromfourdecades ago.
That film was from 1984.
I dump the prints out as my hands start to shake, my fingers lining them up on the desk before I swoop the flashlight across them all. Then I stare at the woman again, the woman on vacation who I didn’t recognize, though I now understand that this is the woman from that very last entry. This is the woman who owned the camera.
This is Carmen, the cop who came home to find Marcia and Lily rooting around in her closet. Who had tried to help them only to lay dying on her bedroom floor.
I scan my way across the stack until I come across the very last shot, a picture I hadn’t seen before as I tossed the envelope into my bag, not even bothering to reach the end. I pick it up now, eyeing a young Marcia like a deer in headlights as she looks unwittingly into the lens. There’s a bathroom behind her, the door cracked open like she just walked out, and she looks slightly startled, maybe even afraid. Her mind surely still stuck on the test in her pocket, her entire life changing just a few moments before.
I lift it up closer, a pinch in my chest like I know her so intimately along with a strange sensation uncoiling in my stomach, a nagging feeling I can’t quite place. Then I turn the print around, something I never even thought to do before. The time stamp on the back reading May 15, 1984.
I flip it back over, racking my mind for some answer that’s attempting to make itself known when the alarm erupts from my phone again.
I look down, ten minutes passed since I silenced it before. There’s barely any charge left, the battery drained to 20 percent, and I realize that if I’m going to search those woods, use the light from my phone before it dies for good, then I need to do it now.
I step outside, the air around me heavy and wet like trying to breathe through a damp towel. It’s too dark to see much, though the glow from the moon reflecting off the water is giving me the faintest hint of light. Still, I don’t want to turn my flashlight on. I don’t want to draw attention to myself, risk Mitchell seeing the beam if he’s still awake, so instead, I attempt to position myself based solely on the sounds.
There’s a lapping of waves off to the left, the gentle churn of the water against the dock. That means the tree line is off to my right.
I twist around, squinting as I lock the guesthouse door beforepushing my phone and the key into my pocket and walking toward the woods in the distance. Fifty acres is a massive amount of land to cover, and I know I won’t be able to search it all. Still, some of that is the vineyard. Even more is the marsh itself. The trees probably make up half the property, so my plan is to start with the section closest to the vines.
