Page 23 of Forget Me Not

A numbness has started to creep into my limbs from these strange revelations I can’t understand.

I stand up and peel off my clothes before floating into the bathroom and stepping into the shower, twisting the knob to the hottest setting and letting the water burn me raw.

Then I grab a washcloth and start to scrub at the dirt on my arms, the dried mud caked to the creases of my knees.

Scratching my nails through a bar of old soap like I can rinse all this knowledge straight from my skin.

I step out a few minutes later, my body buzzing like a severed nerve. My mind is foggy from the heat, from the fact that I now have to make a decision on what to do next.

I walk over to the dresser and change into a pair of shorts and a clean T-shirt, toweling off my hair as I make my way back to the desk.

Then I stand in the center of the room, looking around in a strange kind of daze.

On the one hand, I could do nothing. I could go back to the city or still stay for the summer, simply going about each day as if none of this happened.

I could try to forget I ever found that diary, wiggled my fingers into their business and uncovered these things I should not know.

After all, these people invited me into their home, their lives, and now here I am, digging around.

Exhuming all the skeletons buried deep in their past. I realize now that I’ve been running on autopilot, that always-oiled urge to put the pieces cleanly together taking over the second I sniffed out something strange, but there could be an innocent explanation for this.

Maybe Marcia disappeared for a reason, a reason I don’t yet understand.

Maybe she doesn’t actually want to be found… but at the same time, I already know I won’t let this go.

I turn around, toward the guesthouse windows, the sky outside a deep, bruised blue.

I can barely see it from here, the ambient light fading fast, but I let the main house materialize in my mind as I imagine those looming white columns and restless chairs.

The phantom presence of Marcia on the porch, just this morning, sipping slowly from a mug of hot tea.

It’s so hard to wrap my mind around it: the fact that, just across the yard, on the other side of the grass, lives a woman who no longer exists.

A woman who has spent the last forty-one years hidden in plain sight, tucked away in the same state where she once vanished.

So far away, yet still within reach.

I ease back into the desk chair, hoping to uncover a little more before I have to decide what I should do. Then I reach for my laptop, returning to the first article I found.

DRAPER, SOUTH CAROLINA, TEEN GOES MISSING

RAYBURN FAMILY DESPERATE FOR ANSWERS

I flip back to the map, typing in Draper, South Carolina and watching as a pin slowly drops.

Of course, I’ve heard of Draper before. Growing up around here, I have a general idea of where things are, the names of all the neighboring towns.

I know it’s a farming community; mostly large fields and wide, open space.

Inland, rural. Full of conservative Christians with political posters in their yards year-round.

Now, though, I can see that it’s a little over one hundred miles away, and I click over to the second article now, my eyes on the picture of William and Jane as I take in their ranch house in the background.

Four blurry numbers bolted to the stairs.

I zoom in further, squinting at the address.

I can make out the numbers 1629 and I turn toward my notepad, about to scribble it down when I realize it’s pointless without a street name to go with it…

but then I remember the diary again, Marcia’s very first entry when she described her walk to the theater, the fear that she would run into someone she knew.

She had called her town a bubble, tightly knit, mentioning her school was only two blocks south of her house—her church, four blocks east—so I switch back to the map again, zooming in to Draper’s Main Street.

Suddenly grateful she grew up in a place I can crawl in a matter of minutes.

I roam around now, finding my bearings as I click across various locations.

Acutely aware of how much has likely changed in such a long stretch of time.

I’m reminded again of my drive through Claxton, all the growth that took over my own tiny town, though there still seems to be only one high school in Draper, apparently founded in 1966, so I touch the icon with the tip of my finger, tracing my way two blocks north.

Then I search for a church, knowing, in a place like this, that I’m likely to find quite a few.

As predicted, there are several across various denominations: Presbyterian, Catholic, Southern Baptist. They’re scattered all over town, making it impossible to narrow it down, but I continue to comb through my memories, recounting all the clues Marcia inadvertently dropped.

Her talk of the scriptures and the way she dressed.

He doth not dwell in unholy temples. Neither can filthiness or anything which is unclean be received into the kingdom of God.

I tap my fingers against the keys, thinking.

Remembering from a documentary I once watched that the LDS community refers to certain buildings as temples.

I decide to refine my search again, now specifically looking for a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

There’s only one, and it’s not very far from the high school, either, so I point at it with my free hand, making my way four blocks west.

I lean forward, watching as my fingers intersect on a residential street called Hickory Road. If Marcia’s entries are accurate, then this should be the street where she grew up.

This should be the street where she disappeared, the very street where she was last seen.

I click over to the search bar, typing 1629 Hickory Road before hitting Enter and watching as the map zeroes in on a house.

Then I switch over to satellite as a picture materializes on the screen and I can tell, without a shred of doubt, that it’s the same house from the article I just read.

The siding has been painted, the stairs replaced, but it’s the exact same one William and Jane stood in front of as they held that framed picture of their daughter in their hands.

I stare at the directions, the step-by-step turns, trying to wrap my mind around the fact that I could be there in less than three hours.

I could jump in my car and show up on their doorstep, giving a family the answers no one else could.

It’s a dizzying notion, this level of power.

The sense of responsibility I suddenly feel.

Of course, I know it’s possible the Rayburns don’t actually live there anymore—it’s possible they’re not even alive anymore—but still, I lean back, exhaling slowly as I picture these strangers and their last four decades.

All the nights they surely spent by that window, willing Marcia to find her way home.

If they are still alive, they must have long ago accepted that their daughter is dead.

There is no moving on from that, but I know better than anyone that there is moving forward.

A slow, painful lurching in some tenuous direction, each day that passes providing a little more padding.

A cushion to help soften the sharp edges of pain.

I open the desk drawer, eyeing the diary I had stuffed deep inside.

I’d told myself I wouldn’t read any more, that the details within were none of my business.

That plunging into its pages each night was intrusive and wrong and I should leave it alone…

but now this book feels like my only way to know for sure what to do.

If Marcia left her parents on purpose, then giving up where she is feels like not only a massive betrayal but like taking a scalpel to those poor people’s stitches, smearing salt in a wound that’s still trying to heal.

But if she didn’t leave on purpose, if she was somehow taken against her will, then her own words might be my only way to find out.

I grab it before I can change my mind, hoisting the diary up by its spine and revealing the picture tucked underneath. I forgot this was in here, the print I slipped in as I shuffled around that first morning, slowly unpacking all my things.

The picture of Natalie, here, in this same place.

I lower the diary onto my lap, lifting the picture from its home in the drawer and holding it between my still-slick fingers as I realize that this is the real reason I can’t seem to stop digging.

This is the thing that’s been nagging at me, pulling at me to keep going like two fingers tugging at yarn, desperate to watch it all unravel and reveal the answers hidden beneath.

It’s the fact that there are parallels between Marcia and my sister that I cannot even begin to explain. Their lives, their stories, despite them occurring two decades apart, seeming to be inexplicably linked.

I slide the picture into the journal before standing up from the chair and walking back to the bed, easing my body onto the sheets.

Then I flip to the latest entry, hesitating for a second as I look at the date scrawled at the top of the page.

It’s just a few months before Marcia would go missing and something about this moment feels like a point of no return, a crossroads between two conflicting paths as I stand dead in the center, gazing into the darkness ahead.

I stare down at the text, Marcia’s quaint cursive like a curling finger beckoning me in. Then I take a deep breath and continue to read.