Page 19 of Forget Me Not

It’s early morning and I’m standing outside, watching the sun rise slow over the water. The color trickling into the cotton-candy clouds like the slow bloom of a flower as it turns its face toward the light.

There’s a mug of coffee pushed hot in my hands and I inhale it slowly, the bitter smell of the beans keeping my breath soft and steady. The air is dewy, but my eyes are dry, every flip of lids feeling like sandpaper scratching the surface.

I stifle a yawn, pushing my hand flush to my mouth. I slept terribly last night.

Lying in bed, not nearly as exhausted as I was the first time I collapsed onto those sheets, I had noticed that the mattress was hard, metal springs stabbing the flesh of my back.

The quilt was scratchy, the pillows limp, but it was the diary that kept me awake.

I had stayed up reading for entirely too long, all of Marcia’s memories so vivid and real it felt like cracking open her skull and dipping into her brain.

Wading through the murky inner workings of an eighteen-year-old girl.

I look down at the water now, the tips of my shoes at the edge of the dock as I stare down at my own reflection. Then I kick a pebble over the ledge, the rippling liquid twisting my features into a face that appears distorted and strange.

I turn around and start my walk back, eyes on the guesthouse and my mind on the diary safely tucked into the back of the desk.

Earlier this morning, after hours spent reading through my hosts’ most intimate moments, I had started to feel like something of a voyeur.

A Peeping Tom at the edge of their window, helping myself to their private lives.

I had read about Marcia losing her virginity, recounting every subsequent encounter in more detail than I have any right to know.

She had seemed so young, so na?ve, that even though she had been eighteen—technically legal, a certifiable adult—it felt wrong imagining the things they did together, her mind more immature than her body itself.

I lift the coffee to my lips, draining it completely as I will my brain to stay awake.

Of course, I’m still interested in all that I’m reading.

There’s still so much I want to know. The diary is hundreds of pages, every single one filled front to back, and I’m tempted to keep going, to finish the whole thing…

but at the same time, it’s starting to feel wrong, finding it all out like this.

I’m starting to wonder if I should just ask, learn more about them the regular way.

I’m getting ready to head inside when a gust of wind whips off the water, a strange new scent traveling with it. I lift my nose, inhaling deeply as I try to place it. It isn’t pluff mud, that familiar odor of curdling decay. Instead, it smells like something rancid and sour.

It smells, I realize, like death that’s fresh.

I step off the dock before walking toward the edge of the water, the scent getting stronger the closer I get. The bank is peppered with plants, bushy shrubs and swaying reeds, and my eye catches on something red in the distance. A tuft of fur blowing in the briny breeze.

I squint, realizing it’s an animal, maybe a fox, lying motionless on the rim of the marsh. It’s definitely dead, and I’m still staring at its limp little body when a noise from behind makes me jump.

I twist around, recognizing the slap of the screen door from the main house behind me.

Marcia is on the porch now, making her way to one of the gliders and easing herself gently down.

She’s in a white bathrobe, that same braid draped over her shoulder, and I raise my arm to wave in her direction—but instead of smiling or waving back, all she does is stare straight ahead. Almost as if she can’t see me at all.

I feel a twist in my chest, a subtle unease about how she hasn’t spoken a single word since I got here.

She’s barely even acknowledged my existence…

although maybe I caught her at a bad time.

She seemed out of it that first night, groggy like I had woken her up, so I decide to walk over now, wondering if maybe this is my chance.

I close the distance in less than a minute, climbing the porch stairs two at a time.

“Gorgeous morning,” I say, my empty mug still clutched in my hand.

I register a twitch of a smile, a gentle nod, but still, she says nothing.

“Are you always up this early?” I ask, switching tactics.

A direct question, after all, requires a response.

A fairly obvious but helpful trick I learned after ten years of interviews. “It’s barely light out.”

She nods again, still refusing to engage, and I take the opportunity to scrutinize her more carefully, feeling another rush of remorse at reading her words.

Of course, she’s not the same person she was when she wrote them; forty-one years is an incredibly long time.

She probably doesn’t even remember that diary, the things she thought when she was only eighteen, but I can’t help but wonder how she would feel if she knew that I had it.

Like sneaking through a stranger’s medicine cabinet, thumbing my way through a pile of clothes, it’s a blatant invasion. Helping myself to a person’s private thoughts.

“You know, I was just thinking about how we haven’t had a chance to get to know each other yet,” I try again, making my way across the porch. “I know I only just got here, but I’d love to hear how you and Mitchell got together.”

I raise my eyebrows, hoping that if I can get her to tell me the story herself, maybe I won’t feel so guilty about all this knowledge I shouldn’t already have.

She turns to me, finally meeting my stare.

“You don’t want to listen to that.”

“I do,” I say, slightly taken aback at the sound of her voice; entirely lucid but low and melodious, not at all what I was expecting. “I’d love to know how you created this place.”

She regards me cautiously, her eyes that light, liquid gray, and I wonder if maybe she’s just being modest. Like the kind of people who bat away compliments, too insecure to accept the praise.

“We were young when we met,” she concedes at last, and I feel a small thrill in getting a little bit closer, prying away this piece of the truth.

“Liam told me you started Galloway in the eighties.”

“We lucked into the land.” She nods. “We’ve always been very… self-sustaining.”

I open my mouth, prepared to ask another question, when I hear the screen door slap again. Then I twist around in the direction of the noise, eyeing Mitchell as he walks toward us with two large mugs steaming hot in his hands.

“Good morning,” I say, flashing a smile as I wait for him to shoot one back, though his expression stays vacant so I simply watch as he walks.

His body cutting clean across the porch like a shark breaching the water, silent and sleek and a little unsettling.

“Marcia was just telling me the story of how you two started this place.”

“Oh, was she?” he asks, eyebrows raising in amusement. “And what, exactly, did she say?”

I turn back toward Marcia, a gentle swallow as her eyes dart to the ground.

“We didn’t get far,” I say after a long stretch of silence, my gaze now boring into her hands.

Her grip has tightened around the armrests, the thin skin on the top threatening to tear, and I feel the inexplicable urge to backpedal, something about Mitchell’s expression and Marcia’s sudden silence making me uneasy.

“I’m just so impressed by everything you’ve built. ”

I look up at Mitchell now, my own skin bristling at the way he seems to be assessing me carefully.

Then he hands Marcia a mug, his eyes never once leaving mine.

After a few seconds, the prolonged staring is too much to bear so I lower my gaze again, instead staring at the mug in her hand.

It’s the same white, ceramic mug as the ones in my cabin, the very same one as what I’m holding right now, and I watch as she takes a tentative sip, the herbal smell wafting in my direction making my hair stand on edge.

“Well, don’t let me disturb your morning,” I say at last, gesturing to the vineyard and suddenly desperate to get off of this porch.

Mitchell nods, Marcia’s eyes still stuck to their spot on the floor, and while I know I haven’t done anything wrong—at least, nothing they know about, my mind back on the diary again—it still feels like I’ve broken some cardinal rule.

Like Mitchell just caught me snooping through his things and he’s waiting for me to drop to my knees, beg for forgiveness.

Like I somehow just got Marcia in trouble, even though she never told me a thing.