Page 69 of Forget Me Not
“Go ahead,” he says once the padlock unhooks. Then I watch as he slips it out of the handle, motioning for me to step inside.
I take the single stair into the shed, figuring that right now, my best chance at survival is to comply. I know I can’t risk running, the possibility of Liam shooting at point-blank range, so I watch as he motions for me to sit down at the base of the workbench. The one bolted to the side of the wall. I do as he asks, the moisture from the damp boards seeping into my jeans as I hear the sound of a chain being unhooked from across the room. It’s even darker in here than it is outside, only a sliver of the moon illuminating our movements, but I can tell when his footsteps start to walk toward me; the metal of the chain suddenly cold on my wrists as he secures my arms behind my back.
“Why are you doing this?” I ask, a sob seizing my throat. “What are you even doing here right now? It’s three in the morning.”
I think about the time, the fact that he was in my guesthouse in the middle of the night, and suddenly realize that in the week I’ve been living at Galloway, I’ve never once seen Liam leave. I don’t even think he has a car. It was always just mine and Mitchell’s parked side by side, all my attention on his rusty red truck as I tried to track its movements.
I’ve never once wondered how Liam gets here or where he goes home to at the end of each day.
I think back to showing up that first morning, Liam emerging from the front door of the house; me returning later that night and smiling wide as he welcomed me in. I had been too relieved at the sight of his face to even wonder why he was still there, what he was doing inside of their house, but now the answer finally sinks in.
“You live there,” I say, thinking about how I had crept through their rooms, poked my head into what I thought was a guest room,a checkered blue bedspread impeccably made. “You live there with them.”
Liam stays silent as my understanding expands, my mind on Marcia’s last entry when she took that test in a stranger’s bathroom, hand hovering over her stomach as the new life inside her continued to grow.
“You’re their son,” I say, the pieces slowly slipping together as I reflect on the similarities between Liam and Mitchell, all the traits they share I’d never noticed before. His knowledge of the vineyard and interest in plants; his voice during our picnic as he ducked his chin low.
That’s surprising,he said when he’d asked about a boyfriend back home.Just, you know. You’re very pretty.
He had been luring me in the same way Mitchell lured Marcia, both of them peeling away at our shells until all of our soft spots were exposed.
“You’re exactly like him,” I say, a sharp tug on my wrists as Liam tightens the chain around the leg of the bench behind me, my shoulders twisted at a harsh angle. Then he stands up, backing away toward the direction of the doors. My arms are wrapped so tight behind my back now that I can barely move them, but still, I pull. A desperate attempt to yank myself free.
“Were you and Natalie together?” I ask, realizing now that Liam must have been the one she was hiding that summer.Hewas the boy she was always sneaking out to see, returning to Galloway even after she quit.
It wasn’t Jeffrey, like the police had thought. It wasn’t even Mitchell.
All along, it was his son.
“Did she finally realize she was too good for you or something?” I push, my anger suddenly too big to contain, although Iknow he’s not going to respond. “Did you kill her because she came to her senses and you didn’t want her to leave?”
“No,” he says, and I yank my arms again, the boards beneath me spongy and soft after forty years of salt water soaked into the wood. “It wasn’t like that.”
“Of course it was,” I snap, watching as his outline retreats farther away. “Natalie and I were both so lost that summer. She was the perfect target for someone like you.”
He still doesn’t respond, but I sense him hesitate on the other end of the shed until he finally opens his mouth, his voice barely audible in the thick of the night.
“She didn’t want you to know.”
I take a deep breath, trying to make out more shapes in the dark as Liam sighs like he wants so badly to get the words out, a tug-of-war that he’s rapidly starting to lose taking place inside his own mind.
“She was so scared it would crush you,” he continues, almost like he’s talking to himself now. “But I don’t know, maybe it would be better if you knew the truth.”
“The truth about what?” I ask, my heart somehow beating even harder as I think about all the strange ways Liam looked at me this week, all the times he started to open his mouth like there was something he desperately wanted to say. “What could you possibly know about my sister that I don’t?”
He’s quiet, his resolve buckling under the weight of my questions, and I feel my fingers start to shake as I try to prepare for whatever is about to come next.
“We were close,” he concedes. “But we weren’ttogether. Not like that, anyway.”
“Then what were you?” I ask, waiting a few seconds while he clears his throat, a strangled sound like he’s trying hard not to cry.
“Natalie and I were siblings,” he says at last, his words knocking my world off its axis. “She was my sister, too.”
CHAPTER 46
For a few seconds, I can’t bring myself to breathe. I have no idea what Liam is saying, his voice muffled like he’s speaking through water.
“Siblings,” I repeat, though I still don’t know how it could be true.
