Page 22 of Forget Me Not
A creeping unease slinks up my spine as I continue to stare at the headline, my gaze traveling next to the black-and-white picture printed beneath. It’s a portrait of a family, grainy and old. The caption identifying them as William, Jane, and Marcia Rayburn.
Beneath that, a short article.
When her mother went upstairs to check on her, she found nothing in her room but an open window.
Ascending those stairs, that gentle knock. Her panicked scream splintering the stillness and the clatter of her mug when she realized Natalie was gone.
I continue to read.
No note was left behind, nor were there signs of a struggle or break-in. However, when pressed about whether anything appeared out of place, the Rayburns admitted to a missing duffel bag, as well as a recent change in behavior from Marcia.
Despite this, they do not believe she left of her own accord.
I swallow, picturing the black bag that disappeared from Natalie’s closet. Her sour stare as she glowered at our mother, the slam of her door like a slap to the face.
“Marcia is a good, righteous girl,” William Rayburn said in a recent press conference held by the Draper City Police Department. “She had no reason to leave like this. She was loved. She was happy.”
I stare at the screen for so long the lines of text start to blur in my vision before clicking back to the search results and opening up a couple more.
It’s a futile exercise; I know I won’t be able to find anything else.
The articles are scarce and they’re all from local papers, as well as all published in 1984.
Marcia’s disappearance didn’t appear to gain much traction outside of a small cluster of towns and I suppose that, without the prevalence of the internet, it was a lot harder back then for news to travel.
Despite all its flaws, that is one strength I can’t deny: the world is better at sharing knowledge now.
If Marcia had vanished a couple decades later, her picture would have been plastered all over the place. She would have gone viral, her name probably trending, instead of withering into oblivion after only a month.
I lean back, my mind starting to swim as I think about the diary again, her blatant desire to get away.
She had written about leaving, dreamed of going to college and finding a job, so maybe she simply ran away with Mitchell and got in touch after.
She could have called, could have written a letter.
Could have somehow let her parents know that she was okay.
I bet they were humiliated once they realized their “good, righteous girl” skipped town on her own—especially that she skipped town with a boy —so they kept it a secret, allowed the attention to simply dissolve away…
but then I glance back at the screen, another result catching my attention. This one dated from 1985.
ONE YEAR LATER, MARCIA RAYBURN STILL UNFOUND
I click on the link and scan the scant article, the image, this time, of William and Jane only.
They’re standing in front of their house and holding a picture of their daughter, their expressions solemn.
Practically blank. They look older here, so much older than in their family portrait from only a year before.
I can see it in the lines of their faces, the ache in their eyes.
William has a beard, Jane’s hair is entirely gray, and I suddenly think of my mother again, how she’s aged in such a bone-deep way.
There’s a weariness to her that’s infused into everything: her eyes sunken in and shoulders slumped down like the weight of the world is too much to hold.
Her smile empty like the muscles remember how to go through the motions but there is no feeling there. No emotion at all.
I zoom in on my screen, looking at the picture of Marcia they’re holding.
It’s pixelated after my attempt to enlarge the framed shot but she still seems so young, so vibrant, her expression exposing a certain lust for life that feels so far removed from the way she is now.
Her hair is long and straight and draped over her shoulders, her eyes the same amorphous gray, and I try to reconcile her adolescent face with the older one I saw just this morning.
It’s hard to compare them, how changed they are, and it makes me wonder what Natalie might look like if she was actually given the chance to grow up.
If I would be able to see past the creases and scars, the alterations etched in after twenty-two years of time spent apart, and I realize with a pinch of guilt that it’s possible I wouldn’t even recognize her if I were to pass her on the sidewalk.
If she’s somehow still out there, if she’s still alive, she could pass as a stranger to me. After all this time, she would be a stranger.
I lean forward, the tips of my fingers grazing the digital picture on the screen as I imagine a young Marcia scribbling into the book I now have, filling up its empty pages with a story an outsider would one day read.
It’s a bit jarring, I think. All the different ways time changes a person.
How the years distort both flesh and memories until everything is too wrinkled to smooth back out—and then it dawns on me swiftly, an insight that jolts me so hard it feels like the Earth has been knocked off its axis.
All this unwanted power I suddenly have.
It’s the realization that, to the rest of the world, Marcia Rayburn is still missing. She’s an unsolved mystery, her life an ellipsis with no tangible end, but I know where she is. I know what happened.
Other than Mitchell, I might just be the only person who does.