Page 4 of Forget Me Not

I stumble home well after midnight, a warm buzz carrying me through the streets of the city and the hoppy remnants of beer on my breath.

I peel off my clothes as soon as I step inside, my dress puddling onto the floor with the rest of my laundry.

It’s hot in here, my window unit barely able to keep up with the humidity hovering on the other side; even so, the gush of mildly cooler air in my apartment still chills the sweat stuck to my skin and I can feel it raise in reaction, fleshy little bumps responding to its touch.

I step around the clutter, bare feet navigating the spaces like I’m dancing through land mines, and plop down on my couch, grabbing my laptop from the far end of the cushion.

Then I open the lid and tap at the keys, the glow of the screen illuminating my face like a flashlight as I type my sister’s name back into the browser, selecting the same result as before and watching as the headline appears on the screen.

BOYFRIEND ARRESTED FOR MURDER OF MISSING GIRL

I close my eyes, imagining Ryan’s pupils flicking back and forth while he read. The gentle drop of his jaw as comprehension clicked and the way he lowered my phone slowly, the sounds of the party suspended around us like we were suddenly the last ones left.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked, a whisper of disbelief in his voice once he realized the scale of what I’d been keeping.

The real reason for my mood over these last few months.

Grief is not a rational thing, I know it doesn’t make much sense, but even though there are two decades of distance between these two cases—even though the story on the news now is not related to this story on my screen, to what happened to Natalie—the parallels between them have dug up so many old memories it’s been a bleak reminder of all the ways the world hasn’t changed.

How we’re all still dancing to the same, sick song. Little ballerinas spinning in circles. Constantly moving but going nowhere at all.

“I don’t know,” I admitted at last. “I guess I try not to think about it.”

“For ten years?” he probed, eyes narrowing as he took me in. “You’ve tried not to think about it for ten whole years?”

I stayed quiet, not sure what to say.

“Your sister was murdered, Claire.”

My eyes snap open, an instinctive flinch at the thought of that word like a finger grazing against a hot stove. Presumed dead is the technical term, but at this point, it’s a trivial change.

I begin to scroll now, taking in this article from August 2002.

I know it’s not smart, traveling down this long, dark road, but I’m just drunk enough to be feeling a little too wistful.

An emotional cutting I know I’ll regret.

There’s a mug shot on the right side of the screen, the name in the caption identifying the man as Jeffrey Slater, my older sister’s secret boyfriend.

The one none of us knew that she had. She had kept him from everyone, hid him like a bad habit she knew would come back to bite, and I lean in closer, my nose practically touching the glass as my eyes bore into the lines of his face.

He had been attractive, no doubt about that, although it had been in that weathered sort of way: too-tan skin and sandy blond hair pulled into a bun at the nape of his neck.

Muddy tattoos peeking out from beneath the collar of his shirt and a boyish quality to his lips, tipped up at the edges, even though he had been twenty-eight at the time of his arrest.

Ten whole years older than her.

I keep scrolling, forcing myself to move on to the words.

Then I skim the article, beginning to end, even though I know there’s nothing new in here.

Nothing novel has come out about my sister’s case since Jeffrey was arrested, twenty-two years of anniversary articles with regurgitated details, an occasional blitz of fresh results when some podcaster catches a whiff and attempts to make it shiny again.

Still, I rehash it all as I read about the clues, the car, the traces of Natalie pushed into his passenger seat: a thick blond hair with the root still attached, her fingerprint smudged on the passenger door.

And all of that could have been explained, of course, except for the shirt soaked in her blood balled up in the glove box.

That had been the proverbial nail in the coffin. The reason he got life without the possibility of parole.

I glance down, eyeing the ominously edited pictures of our childhood home. Natalie’s window in the distance, cracked like a shell. At first, the cops insisted she’d just run away. They thought she’d be back in a few days.

She probably spent the night at a friend’s house or something, one of the detectives had said, a man by the name of Eric DiNello who had grown up with my mother, the small-town stereotype of everyone knowing everyone just a simple fact of life. You know how girls can be.

I blink a few times, my body floating like it’s been flung two decades into the past. Like I’m suddenly eleven again, legs kicking in the air as the detectives sat us down at our dining room table and tried to walk my mother off her mental ledge.

Their theory had stuck around for at least a few days, especially once we realized a bag was missing.

A black duffel bag Natalie kept in her closet.

That, plus the lack of a body, had made it easy to hold out hope, but we were eventually told she probably died in that car, her DNA painting a grim picture of how her last minutes might have played out: the two of them fighting, screaming.

Natalie capable of saying the most terrible things, her tongue a razor that knew just where to cut until her hand reached out and grabbed at the handle the moment Jeffrey’s reached out and grabbed at her hair.

Until she tried to leave and he yanked her head back before slamming it forward, blinking to find her body go limp. Fingers shaking with wet blood on his hands.

I click out of the article and launch a new window, trying to force my mind to switch gears.

I log in to my bank account, my chest squeezing when I eye the number glaring back, dangerously low.

Journalists don’t make much—especially at mid-tier papers like The New York Journal, especially after two months with no paycheck—and I do some quick math in my head, realizing that, in another two months, I’ll be down to single digits.

“Fuck,” I mutter, pushing my fingers into my eyes, feeling the sockets. Letting the world get blissfully blurry before forcing myself to pull my hands back.

I think of my old colleagues back at the bar; their pity-soaked smiles, pinched and tight, as I wound my way through the parting crowd.

My former boss, that petty patronization cloaked as concern, and the fact that I’ve spent the last eight weeks in a vicious cycle of rage and regret.

Maybe a month away could be good for my psyche; maybe a break from the city, from the pressures of trying to make it all on my own, could spark something new in my mind.

Besides, if I spend the rest of the summer back home, I could rent out my apartment.

Put a little more money in my pocket. Give myself a safety net so I won’t have to drain my savings completely.

I pick up my phone and click over to Contacts, tapping my mom’s number before starting a new text.

Then I stare at the blank screen for a second, the cursor pulsing like a ticking clock, a beating heart.

The sight of it sending a sharp chill down my spine.

My parents are still in Claxton, that small fishing town on the South Carolinian coast. After their divorce, my dad moved into a new house, of course, but my mom still lives in the exact same one in which we grew up and I don’t know how she does it, to be honest. I don’t know how she can keep walking past Natalie’s bedroom, peeking inside.

Her twin bed forever unslept in, a closet full of clothes forever unworn.

I take a deep breath, forcing my thumbs to dance away at the screen. Then I type a few words, delete them. Rephrase, type something else, as I remember my dad’s plea not to mention his name before finally settling on something casual, vague.

Thinking about coming home for a visit. Any chance my room is open?

I shoot off the text and close my eyes, my jugular pulsing hard in my neck.

I realize, after I’ve sent it, that it’s one in the morning and my mom is probably asleep—that, and she’s notoriously bad about checking her phone, anyway; it can sometimes take days for her to get back to a text—so I open my eyes and stand up quick, ready to make my way to bed when I feel the phone vibrate in my hand.

I look down, the screen suddenly bright in my palm as my mom’s number appears on the display, a generic M in place of a picture because I didn’t have any recent ones to use.

I swipe up, holding my breath as I read her response.

Would love to have you. The room is yours.