Page 16 of Forget Me Not

The guesthouse is cold by the time I’m back, my hairline damp with sweat and an angry red burn stinging the back of my neck.

I sit down on the edge of the bed, my body sinking into the mattress and a weariness settling into my bones.

We didn’t even do any work today. We only walked the grounds, a slow, leisurely pace, but still, I’m tired.

The intensity of the sun and the sheer size of this place.

The magnitude of what exactly I signed up for and the slow stretch of summer pulling like taffy, long and lazy and only just the start.

I look down at my legs, at the crust of dirt flecked across my ankles.

A small smattering of welts like a cluster of bites.

I reach down and absentmindedly scratch, my nails dragging across the skin as I feel the wet slick of blood, the sting of ripped flesh.

Then I stand up and walk to the desk, grabbing a piece of paper from my briefcase and starting a basic list for Mitchell.

I jot down sunscreen and bug spray, my pen hovering over the page until my eyes are drawn to the laptop asleep by my side. The screen is dark, but still, it’s tempting, so I tap at the keys, deciding to check my email before being hit with an error message.

I already forgot: I’m not connected to the internet.

It strikes me as strange, suddenly, how blindly reliant we are on technology.

How much has changed since 2002. How we go about our lives swiping and dragging, clicking and tapping, and how back when Natalie disappeared, none of this stuff even existed.

There was no digital trail pointing directly to Jeffrey.

No online footprint for us to follow, no damning messages for the cops to scour.

We couldn’t search her browser history or learn about her life from various apps.

People had to talk to one another, face-to-face.

The world was so much simpler in so many ways and it might actually be nice to stay disconnected for a bit, to use this month to fully reset.

I lean back, letting myself daydream about a summer without my phone, without email.

Without idly scrolling to numb my mind. It’s nice, the thought, but I know I need to be able to check in on my tenant, access my inbox in case I hear back from my leads, so I glance around now, letting the thought melt away as I look for a password written somewhere.

A modem or a router. As I wonder if this place even has internet at all.

It has to have internet—how could anyone these days survive without internet?

—and I stand up when I can’t find anything, making my way back to the door and deciding to walk to the main house and ask.

I place my hand on the knob, pulling it open before jumping straight back as a startled sound erupts from the depths of my throat.

“Hi,” Liam says, smiling uncomfortably on the other side of the door. He looks timid and embarrassed, a sharp contrast to the way he appeared just yesterday. All confident and sure as he walked me around. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

“Hi,” I echo, embarrassed myself by my skittishness, my nerves. I look down, realizing my hand is clutching the base of my throat, and I remove it quickly. Wiping my palms on the sides of my jeans. “No, sorry. I just wasn’t expecting you. Can I help you with something?”

I feel my body tilt into the doorframe, trying to hide the mess inside.

“I brought you lunch,” he says, holding up two brown paper bags. “Actually, I brought us lunch. I thought you might be hungry?”

He says it like a question, the end of his sentence trailing off in high pitch, and I think I register a subtle blush in his cheeks. A shyness peeking through I hadn’t noticed before.

“Starving,” I say, and as if on cue, I can feel my stomach rumble as I realize I haven’t had a proper meal since that pizza back home, back with my mom, almost two days ago now.

I step back outside, closing the door and looking down to find a straw basket pushed against the siding. There’s a blanket folded neatly inside; a strainer of freshly washed berries I assume he just picked.

“I thought we could have a picnic,” he says. “Sit outside somewhere in the shade.”

I smile, the two of us taking off in the direction of the vineyard, no sounds between us except for the crunching of grass and occasional zip of a mosquito.

It isn’t awkward, though. The lingering silence.

Instead, it’s oddly refreshing; a comfortable kind of companionship like we’ve known each other for years instead of hours.

We stop once Liam finds a spot beneath a live oak and I watch as he unfolds the blanket, draping it gently across the ground. Then I plop down, too, pretzeling my legs and opening the basket before pulling out two bottles of beer.

“Drinking on the job?” I ask with a teasing smile.

“It’s five o’clock somewhere.”

I twist off the caps and thrust a bottle in his direction, clanking mine against his before taking a sip.

It’s cold, hoppy, and feels incredible on my throat.

Then I swallow, exhale, and allow myself to close my eyes, tip my head back, and simply sit with the silence for a second.

Something I haven’t done in a long, long time.

“It’s nice, isn’t it?”

I open my eyes to find Liam staring, that wary little smirk emerging back on his face.

“Very nice,” I say, tucking my hair behind my ear. “Have you worked here long?”

Liam nods as he unpacks the brown bags: two sandwiches in plastic, oddly shaped carrots he pulled from the garden. Then he hands me my sandwich and I unwrap it quickly, taking a large, ravenous bite.

“How do you handle it all on your own?” I ask next, gesturing to the grapes and the garden; the animals in their pens and the shed out back. “This place is so big.”

“It’s manageable,” he says. “In the off-season, at least.”

I watch as he takes a long swig of his beer, the tendons in his neck pulling as he swallows.

“I won’t lie to you, though. I’m enjoying the company.”

He smiles at me, the crow’s-feet by his eyes setting even deeper, and maybe it’s because he’s in his element now, the afternoon glow of this picturesque place, but something about Liam strikes me as even more attractive than he was just yesterday.

I watch as his Adam’s apple bobs in the dip of his throat; the dark tan of his arms and the way the veins bulge in his biceps, a kind of rugged appeal I hadn’t noticed before.

“You got a boyfriend back home?” he asks, eyebrows lifting with insinuation. I feel my cheeks turn hot, wondering if he caught me staring, though I doubt he can see the blush creeping in. I’m already flushed from the sun, my face warm and pink. “Any visitors we should be expecting?”

“I’m… sorry?” I ask, taken aback by the change in topic.

“If so, you should probably let him know,” he says, going back to his sandwich. “Mitchell. He doesn’t really like unexpected company.”

“Oh, no,” I say, my face feeling hot again.

At my mistake, my assumption that he was asking because he was actually interested, but also because a flash of Ryan has suddenly entered my mind along with a wave of guilt that feels unexpected and strange.

“He won’t have to worry about that. It’s just me. ”

“That’s surprising,” Liam says, and I watch as he ducks his head, like he hadn’t meant to say that out loud. “Just, you know. You’re very pretty.”

I smile at him, charmed by the compliment.

“Eight million people in New York City and I still haven’t managed to meet the right one.”

Liam smirks, turning his attention back toward the vineyard.

“Well, I’m sorry to say you won’t find many prospects on the island, either.”

“What is the population out here, anyway?” I ask, my teeth snapping into a carrot.

“A couple hundred,” he says. “If that. The center of town is about ten miles away, but there’s not much there other than a general store and a diner. You and I might be the youngest two people on this whole spit of land.”

He holds his beer out with a cheeky grin and I tip mine against his, smiling back.

We’re quiet for a while, the moment between us heavy and charged. I’m still sipping my beer, eyes trained on an egret wading in the distance, when Liam’s voice starts up again—only this time, it sounds different, strained.

“Listen, I don’t mean to pry,” he starts, and when I turn to face him, I can tell he’s deliberately not looking at me, staring intently at the grass beneath. “But I have to ask. Last night, I overheard you talking about your occupation. This and that .”

He turns to me, finally, eyebrows raised.

“What, exactly, does that mean?”

“Oh.” I laugh, trying to sound blithe. Thinking of the way he had been eyeing me last night, that suspicious stare as he stood in the kitchen.

The way he swooped in when Mitchell kept prying like he could tell I couldn’t come up with a valid response.

“I guess it means I might be between jobs.”

“Well yeah, I gathered that,” he says. “Why else would you be here.”

I stay quiet, mentally flipping through all the possible excuses.

“It’s just that I’m in charge of the labor around here,” he continues. “Which also means I’m in charge of you. So I have to have at least a general idea of your background, you know. Of who you are.”

I gaze down at the blanket beneath us, pupils tracing the patterned fabric.

“You don’t need to tell me your whole life story or anything,” he continues. “Places like this don’t exactly do things by the book. We’ve employed plenty of people with shady pasts—”

“I don’t have a shady past,” I snap, suddenly defensive as I lift my head.

“I didn’t mean to imply that you do,” he says, raising his hands in mock surrender. “You just gotta give me something.”

He looks at me, his eyes puppy-round, and I realize, at last, that it’s a fair question.

These people hardly know anything about me, yet they’ve graciously invited me to live in their home.

They’re saving me this summer, whether they know it or not, and it feels like I owe them at least a kernel of truth.

“I’m a journalist,” I say at last, deciding, in a flash, to just come clean. That I don’t want to deal with an entire summer of lies, tiptoeing around my only coworker and friend. “I quit two months ago to go freelance, but I haven’t been having the best of luck.”

I look down to find my fingers pulling at the beer label, little wet rips scattered in the grass.

“I don’t really know why I kept it from him,” I continue. “Mitchell, I mean. I guess I’m embarrassed I haven’t published anything in a while. Plus, I didn’t want him to think I’d be poking around or something. Snooping through their stuff.”

I feel another flash of heat on my cheeks; the irony of Marcia’s diary sitting on my bed, concealed in the sheets, not at all lost on me.

“People can be wary of journalists,” I add, clocking the way Liam is nodding slowly, his eyes squinting in the glare of the sun.

“Right,” he says at last. “They can be a little paranoid.”

“Paranoid,” I echo, nudging him to go on.

“About their privacy. I guess you can say they’re… protective. Of their privacy.”

“Of course,” I say, that word, privacy, cutting like an insect sting, venomous and sharp, as Marcia’s diary pulses through my mind like a migraine. My blatant violation of keeping it to read.

“I wouldn’t mention that,” he says, and I’m suddenly confused, wondering how he could possibly know I’ve been reading her diary, when I realize he’s not talking about the diary. Of course he’s not. He’s still talking about my job. “I mean, I wouldn’t tell them what you do.”

“Okay…” I say, slightly perplexed about why my profession would be such an issue. I suppose, in recent years, that plenty of people have become distrustful of the news, wary of the media, and I start to wonder if maybe I was right to hide it from them.

Maybe Marcia and Mitchell are the suspicious kind and Liam is simply saving me the headache.

“I won’t mention it,” I add, feeling a swell of gratitude at having someone to look out for me here. “Thanks for the heads-up.”

“Sure thing,” he says as he turns toward the water, his eyes trained on a spot in the distance.

For a second, it looks like he’s about to say something else, his mouth parting only an inch, but then he shakes his head, a gentle twitch like he changed his mind, before bringing the bottle back to his lips and downing the rest in one fell swoop.