Page 38 of Forget Me Not

In the weeks following Natalie’s disappearance, my mom and I entertained a slow trickle of visitors until, one day, they all dried up. At a certain point, I learned that people simply run out of words. The condolences grow stale, the flowers die.

“God, how have you been?” I ask her now, leaning my arms against the counter as I think about how she was always there in the beginning, bringing us dinner she reheated in the kitchen.

Lingering like she wasn’t quite ready to leave.

She sat in our row at the funeral, an empty casket at the head of the church and Natalie’s senior-year picture perched in a gold frame.

It wasn’t abrupt, though. Her eventual departure from our lives.

Instead, she faded away slowly like a ghost simply dissolving into the background until a year passed and I realized with a jolt that I couldn’t actually remember the last time she came by.

“Oh, you know,” she says, gesturing to the little room around her like she’s embarrassed about where she wound up.

I look at her now, her clear discomfort, and wonder if she feels bad about disappearing like that, abandoning my mom and me when we needed her most. Even back then, I couldn’t blame her.

I knew she did all that she could. She spoke to the police and gave her statement, so once Jeffrey was arrested and the case was closed, she decided to do the next natural thing.

She simply decided to move on with her life.

“How have you been?” she asks, flinging a rag over her shoulder as I wonder next when she dyed her hair, when she got that sleeve of tattoos.

As I wonder, strangely, if Natalie’s name is etched on there somewhere. A permanent memento inked into her skin.

“Fine,” I say. “Living in New York, working as a journalist.”

“Good for you,” she says, sounding like she genuinely means it. “Are you in town visiting your mom?”

“Just for a few weeks.”

“What are you doing all the way out on Ladmadaw?” she asks, shifting her weight from one leg to the other. “I mean, there are a lot of other places to grab a coffee. Seems a little out of the way.”

“I’m actually staying out here, spending some time on Galloway Farm.”

I watch as Bethany’s face falls, her lips morphing into a thin, straight line.

“Have you ever been?” I ask. “Natalie worked there that summer.”

“Oh, I remember.”

I sense a venom in her voice now, a disdain for the place dripping from her lips.

“What?” I ask, leaning forward, not understanding the sudden shift in her mood. “What is it?”

“I guess I’m just surprised you’d want to go out there.”

“Why is that?”

“You know,” she continues, sounding a little hesitant now. “Since Natalie got a little obsessed with that place.”

I stare at her, my voice clotted in my throat as Bethany looks down at the counter, clearly trying to decide what to say next.

“What do you mean, obsessed ?” I ask at last.

“I mean, she was there all the time.”

“Well, she worked there—” I start to argue, but then I think about that day we visited, my parents sitting us down shortly thereafter.

Breaking the news about their divorce. Natalie quit just a few days later, that rebellious streak gaining momentum and speed like a runaway train that would soon burst into flames.

I always assumed the fact that she quit therefore meant she also stopped going…

but now I realize that’s not necessarily the case.

“Yeah, for barely a month,” Bethany says, reading my mind. “But she kept going even after that.”

“Why?” I ask. “What was she doing?”

Bethany just shrugs, averting her eyes like she’s suddenly ashamed.

“She snuck me into their woods once. It was a good place to party at night.”

I swallow, my mind on those trees surrounding the vineyard; Liam’s words, fifty acres, bouncing around in the back of my brain.

I think of those pictures I found in the shoebox, the one of Bethany and Natalie surrounded by brush. There were so many shots of Galloway in there, stills of my sister deep in the vines, and I realize now that the ones in the woods might have come from the same roll.

If those pictures were still in any kind of order, they might have been taken on the exact same day.

“Did anyone else go with you?” I ask, remembering the one of Jeffrey now, the way his arm hung around Natalie’s neck like a noose, a cigarette dangling limp from her fingers.

“A couple other people,” she says. “I think they were mostly her coworkers.”

I nod as she pulls out a muffin before pushing it in my direction with one gloved hand.

“Anyway, it was good to see you,” she adds, an apology in her eyes for all this talk of the past. “I’ll have that coffee out in a minute.”

I make my way to the table now, my mind spinning from what I just learned but still not sure what it all means. Then I plug in all the things from my bag and wait impatiently for them to turn on, my phone buzzing back to life before a trickle of texts start to come through.

Claire, are you okay? What just happened there?

I’m sorry if any of that came out harsh, I’m just really worried about you.

I sigh, remembering the way Ryan and I ended our call.

That conversation cut short by the strengthening storm.

I know I should probably check in with him soon, reassure him that everything is fine, but at the same time, I’m still angry at how he hadn’t believed me.

Dismissing my concerns as nothing more than hysteria, like I’m somehow imagining these signs that something’s not right.

I ignore him for now, instead opening my laptop and tapping at the keys, my mind chewing over our conversation again.

As much as I hate to admit it, he was right when he claimed I don’t know much about Marcia and Mitchell; that I might be jumping to conclusions solely based on the things that I’ve read.

I’ve learned a little about Marcia through all of her entries, those articles I found once I searched her name, but Mitchell is still an enigma to me. A mystery I’ve barely begun to crack.

I launch a new browser window, deciding I’m going to focus on him next. I don’t have much to go on—the last time I tried searching his name had revealed nothing significant at all—but then I think of some of the diary’s earliest pages when Marcia was on her mission to piece him together herself.

What did you study at Berkeley? she had asked, wrapping that sweatshirt around her bare shoulders.

People, he said. I studied people.

I pull up the Berkeley website, navigating to the alumni directory and finding a phone number at the bottom of the screen.

Then I grab my phone, punching in the number and hitting Call, my foot tapping hard on the floor as I listen to the endless ringing.

Realizing it’s still early out in California, doubtful anyone will even pick up.

“University of Berkeley Alumni Association.”

“Hi,” I say, sitting up straight once I hear an older woman’s voice on the line. “Hi, yes, I was wondering if you could help me confirm the graduation date of one of your alumni.”

“Do you have their member number?”

“No,” I say, my foot bouncing harder now. “But his name is Mitchell Galloway, and I think he might have graduated around or before 1983.”

The line stays quiet for a beat too long.

“I’m sorry, but we’re not supposed to give out alumni information without a member number.”

“Please,” I say. “I’m a friend, and I’m throwing him a surprise retirement party. I just want to make sure I have the right year.”

The woman is silent and I feel my hopes start to deflate.

“I know he majored in psychology,” I add. “Maybe that could possibly help?”

“Well, if he majored in psychology, then he didn’t graduate before 1983.”

A faint tapping erupts on the other side of the line as the woman starts typing, the phone suddenly slick in my hand.

“Berkeley didn’t offer that as a major until 1988,” she adds.

I think back to the diary, those dates I know for a fact are correct. Mitchell met Marcia in 1983. Galloway was founded in 1984, which means Mitchell was far away from both Berkeley and the entire state of California the only time he could have gone to school.

“Are you sure?” I ask, even though the answer is so obvious now.

Mitchell was never a student at Berkeley, though he wasn’t lying when he said he studied people—only, instead of in class, instead of with books, he studied by watching, observing.

Scrutinizing the things that made them tick and tucking them away for his own gain.

I think of those early entries again, the way he had eyed Marcia in the back of that alley. Saying all the right things to pick away at her armor; homing in on her insecurities like they were scribbled all over her face.

“Positive,” the woman says, drawing me back. “You either have your dates wrong or he was enrolled somewhere else.”

“Okay,” I say, getting ready to thank her and hang up when she starts to speak again.

“Of course, ’83 was a hard year for the college, so it is possible he graduated late.”

“What do you mean a hard year ?” I ask.

“We had a student disappear that year. The investigation took a toll, as I’m sure you can imagine. Quite a few kids took some time off.”

“A student disappeared,” I repeat.

“Sadly, yes. Right after finals. I remember it like it was yesterday.”

“What happened?” I ask, leaning forward as my hands start to shake.

“Unfortunately, she was never found.”

I exhale, feeling like the wind was just punched from my lungs as I think back to that sweatshirt I found in their bedroom, buried like a body in the depths of the floor.

“What was her name?” I ask as I lower my phone, swiping to my pictures and opening one of the very last ones that I took.

The one of the tag with the university logo, those initials— KAP— written in bleeding black ink.

“Katherine,” the woman says, her voice suddenly muffled by the rushing blood in my ears. “Katherine Ann Prichard. To this day, her case is still unsolved.”