Page 21 of Forget Me Not

I can barely feel my fingers by the time I get back.

We had been picking for hours, until early evening, when Liam decided we were done for the day.

“Let’s pack it up,” he had said, probably noticing how my body had started to sag; my shoulders hunched, the subtle crick in my neck. “You’re going to be pretty sore in the morning.”

It had been daunting, standing there. Looking down at the buckets I had filled and realizing just how much more there was to go.

Glancing at my hands, the dirt and dried blood.

Mosquito bites peppering my ankles and the stinging sunburn on the back of my neck.

After a while, though, it had become rote: my fingers burrowing between the leaves, finding the grapes that were ready to pick—swollen and ripe, skin thick like a callus—and plucking them briskly from the stem.

Liam had told me to watch where I walked, warning of snakes and spiders that liked to lurk in the brush; then he taught me how to strap the harvest bucket onto my chest, eliminating the need to carry it around.

Still, it was physical work—grueling, even—spending all that time on my feet.

Even so, I found that I liked it, strangely enough. The sun on my cheeks and the breeze on my face so vastly different than my life back in the city. The stale air of my apartment and the fluorescent glow of my laptop screen leaving me depleted in an entirely different way.

“So, what do you know about Mitchell?” I had asked after a long stretch of silence, still unable to peel my mind from him.

I didn’t want to appear too eager so I had waited a while, instead inquiring about the business and nodding politely as Liam spent the better part of an hour spewing out facts about taxonomy and pathology; how they sell grapes by the basket to grocery stores and farmer’s markets, but also as jellies and jams and to wineries around the coast.

“What do you want to know?”

“Anything, really,” I said. “I can’t seem to get a read on him.”

“You’re not the only one,” he responded, smiling vaguely. Continuing to pick.

I thought hard about how to word my next question, careful not to reveal too much from the diary and all this knowledge I shouldn’t already have. Marcia hadn’t given me any information, either, but then I remembered what she said about the vineyard. About how they had lucked into the land.

“How did he come across Galloway?” I asked. “Is it family owned?”

“No, he bought it back in the eighties.”

“How many acres?”

“Close to fifty,” Liam had said, turning to face me. “Give or take.”

“Fifty?” I asked, glancing around. “I didn’t realize it was that big.”

“A lot of it is the woods out back,” he said, gesturing to the tree line on the side of the house. “The marsh, too.”

“But how could he afford that?” I asked next, realizing, too late, that I may have tipped my cards too much.

“I mean, he must have been young when he bought it,” I added, trying to feign ignorance as I remembered how Marcia had guessed at Mitchell’s age on the night they met. “In his late twenties?”

Liam stared at me, his expression blank before he turned back toward the vines.

“Something like that,” he said at last. “Land was cheap back then. A lot cheaper than it is today.”

I nodded, falling quiet, something about it not sitting right. Based on all the things Marcia had written, it didn’t seem like Mitchell came from money. He lived in a camper he parked around town.

“Why grapes?” I asked at last, looking back at the trellis, but Liam just shrugged.

“He’s good with plants.”

I unlock the door to the guesthouse now, my feet swollen and throbbing in my shoes. Then I step inside, an object in the kitchen stealing my attention. Something that wasn’t there when I left.

I walk closer, eyeing a large basket perched on the counter.

It looks like a picnic basket, woven straw with a cloth lining inside, and I peer over the lip once I’m close enough to see, realizing it’s all the things from my list: bug spray and sunscreen, a few other supplies I requested from the store.

I remember giving the list to Liam, swapping it for that sticky note with the network and password scribbled in ink, but what I can’t remember is if I locked my door this morning.

I rack my brain, replaying the events of the day: sipping my coffee on the dock before trying to talk to Marcia on the porch, Mitchell walking outside and breaking us up.

It’s possible I forgot, my mind pulled in so many directions, but I’m slightly unsettled at the thought of someone coming into my space uninvited—still, maybe Mitchell just didn’t want to leave it outside.

There’s food in here, perishables that would attract animals and bugs, so I shrug away the unease and walk back to my laptop, opening the lid and tapping it awake.

I navigate to the county website first, simultaneously pulling up Google Maps on my phone.

Then I find Galloway’s address from the first time I drove here and type it into the property records page now loaded onto my screen.

I hit Enter, leaning back in my chair as I wait.

The connection in this corner is painfully slow so I drum my fingers against the keys, watching the little timer spin as I attempt to justify my own nosiness, still not sure why I care so much about these details that probably don’t even matter at all.

Maybe it’s my profession, an entire decade of being trained to be curious and dig for answers.

A phantom itch that’s now begging to be scratched.

Or maybe it’s pure boredom—the long, lonely hours of the last few months spent trapped inside my own wandering mind—but something about all this just doesn’t feel right.

It’s an instinct, barely there, but based on that diary, Mitchell was practically penniless when he met Marcia in 1983…

although somehow, less than a year later, he managed to make enough money to buy fifty acres of land.

Petty as it may be, I want to know how.

The results appear and I lean forward, taking in the information on the screen—and there it is, right in front of me.

The land was acquired by Mitchell Galloway on October 3, 1984, for a deed price of forty-five thousand dollars.

It all seems perfectly legal and I let out a low whistle, doing the math in my head.

In today’s market, this land has to be worth at least a couple million.

They could sell it and make a fortune—though, of course, they live here, too. It’s their home, their livelihood.

I scroll down some more, looking for information on the previous owners. Before Mitchell, it was owned by a man named Steven Montague, and before that, Andrew Montague.

So it had been family land, before, for some reason, it was sold to Mitchell.

I flip back to Google, typing in the name Steven Montague and hitting Enter, already knowing it won’t get me anywhere.

The search terms are too vague, but I don’t have anything else to go on so I scroll through a few pages, just to be safe.

It’s mostly LinkedIn profiles and random obituaries, a few mug shots and an attorney’s office out in Washington state.

None of them seem relevant so I pull my notebook out of the desk and flip it open to a clean page, scribbling the name at the top of the paper and making a note to revisit it later.

Maybe the diary knows who he is.

I shrug off the thought, fighting the urge to dip back into its pages and instead turning toward the laptop again, typing in Mitchell Galloway next.

There are a few relevant results, mostly articles about the vineyard.

A nice fluff piece from a few years back about how this place is a hidden Southern staple, a reminder of the simple pleasures in life.

Still, I can’t find anything of value, anything that might shed some light on his past, and I’m about to close my computer and figure out what I should do for dinner when my arm suddenly stops in midair as I realize there’s still one person I haven’t yet searched.

I lift the lid again, replaying our strange interaction this morning, before typing Marcia Galloway into the search bar and watching as the cursor blinks on the screen.

I chew on my lip as I think back to the diary again, the only real details about her I have. Then I hit Delete and rephrase my search to Marcia Rayburn, her maiden name, before adding Draper, South Carolina in at the end.

I hit Enter, waiting impatiently as the results load.

It takes too long—twenty seconds, at least—but a new page finally appears and I feel my eyes widen when I see what’s there.

A handful of articles now fill the screen, and while their headlines vary, the gist is the same, so I click one at random and hold my breath as it loads.

The link bringing me to an archived page of The Draper Daily Herald dated March 18, 1984.

I lean forward, trying to wrap my mind around the words on the screen.

DRAPER, SOUTH CAROLINA, TEEN GOES MISSING

RAYBURN FAMILY DESPERATE FOR ANSWERS