Page 44 of Forget Me Not

The sound of chimes pulls me back to the room.

I look down at the phone on my chest, the alarm I set earlier blaring in the dark. Then I let out a breath, pushing the snoozer on the side as I try to process what I just read.

I glance down at the diary again, only a few pages left until I reach the end, though that last entry was scrawled in such a messy, frantic script it almost felt like it came from someone else entirely.

Gone was Marcia’s careful cursive, those swooping blue strokes I’ve quickly come to know.

Instead, it feels like she scratched down that memory in a desperate attempt to keep it alive, what was once a dreamy reminiscence of how a young girl had been spending her days morphing overnight into something more like a ledger.

A recollection like she was intentionally leaving a trail.

I try to imagine Marcia lying awake that night, slipping away once everyone else was asleep as she filed away this horrible story in preparation for the day she might somehow escape.

Because she had wanted to escape, that much is now obvious.

I could practically feel her fear saturating each page as she recalled the moment she learned she was pregnant, a protectiveness for her child settling into her stomach along with a desire to somehow make her life right.

Marcia was smart, I can tell, and that last entry felt like she was collecting evidence.

Organizing her thoughts into something cohesive so someone, someday, could revisit them later and put the pieces together themselves.

My mind is still replaying the events I just read when I feel my body shoot up quick, an abrupt realization jerking me from bed before I run to my bag on the floor.

I dig through the pockets, pulling out the envelope I picked up earlier as I think about the man back at the store, the way he tugged at the film when I first dropped it off.

This is old, he had said, admiring the canister like it was something fragile and sacred. Really old .

I had assumed, back when he said that, that the pictures were taken in 2002.

That when he said the film was old, he was referring to twenty-two years.

Just another camera Natalie took when she was out with her friends—but now, I realize it’s so much older than that.

It isn’t from two decades ago, like I had originally thought. It’s from four decades ago.

That film was from 1984.

I dump the prints out as my hands start to shake, my fingers lining them up on the desk before I swoop the flashlight across them all.

Then I stare at the woman again, the woman on vacation who I didn’t recognize, though I now understand that this is the woman from that very last entry. This is the woman who owned the camera.

This is Carmen, the cop who came home to find Marcia and Lily rooting around in her closet. Who had tried to help them only to lay dying on her bedroom floor.

I scan my way across the stack until I come across the very last shot, a picture I hadn’t seen before as I tossed the envelope into my bag, not even bothering to reach the end.

I pick it up now, eyeing a young Marcia like a deer in headlights as she looks unwittingly into the lens.

There’s a bathroom behind her, the door cracked open like she just walked out, and she looks slightly startled, maybe even afraid.

Her mind surely still stuck on the test in her pocket, her entire life changing just a few moments before.

I lift it up closer, a pinch in my chest like I know her so intimately along with a strange sensation uncoiling in my stomach, a nagging feeling I can’t quite place. Then I turn the print around, something I never even thought to do before. The time stamp on the back reading May 15, 1984.

I flip it back over, racking my mind for some answer that’s attempting to make itself known when the alarm erupts from my phone again.

I look down, ten minutes passed since I silenced it before. There’s barely any charge left, the battery drained to 20 percent, and I realize that if I’m going to search those woods, use the light from my phone before it dies for good, then I need to do it now.

I step outside, the air around me heavy and wet like trying to breathe through a damp towel.

It’s too dark to see much, though the glow from the moon reflecting off the water is giving me the faintest hint of light.

Still, I don’t want to turn my flashlight on.

I don’t want to draw attention to myself, risk Mitchell seeing the beam if he’s still awake, so instead, I attempt to position myself based solely on the sounds.

There’s a lapping of waves off to the left, the gentle churn of the water against the dock. That means the tree line is off to my right.

I twist around, squinting as I lock the guesthouse door before pushing my phone and the key into my pocket and walking toward the woods in the distance.

Fifty acres is a massive amount of land to cover, and I know I won’t be able to search it all.

Still, some of that is the vineyard. Even more is the marsh itself.

The trees probably make up half the property, so my plan is to start with the section closest to the vines.

After all, if Mitchell drove the camper into those woods, then he must have come from this general direction… and if Natalie was near the camper during one of those parties, then I doubt they had to go far to find it.

I can feel the crunch of brush beneath my feet as I walk, the soft soil of the vineyard morphing into twigs and dead leaves.

The forest is thick, and as soon as I enter, it immediately starts to feel darker out here: the moon blotted out of the sky, long shadows casting shapes in the night.

I try my best to stay in a straight line, tapping on my flashlight as soon as I’ve ventured in a few yards.

Then I shine the light in a slow circle, the silhouettes of the trees staring straight back.

I take a deep breath, forcing myself to keep moving forward; swallowing my fear and counting my steps as I walk.

It would be so easy to get lost out here, disoriented in the bitter black, so I figure keeping track of my distance is the best way to avoid getting too turned around.

I go for twenty minutes, over one thousand steps, sweeping the light back and forth across the dense forest floor as tiny gnat teeth nip at my ankles, sticky wet leaves adhere to my jeans.

Another thirty minutes pass and I look down at my phone, the battery drained to 10 percent.

I let out a sigh, stopping in place as I begin to wonder if this might have been a mistake.

It’s creeping close to two in the morning and I could have easily underestimated the sheer size of this place, the time it would take to scour the grounds.

Covering the whole property could realistically take me all the way to dawn and I don’t want to be stuck out here after my phone dies.

More than that, I don’t want to still be here when Mitchell wakes up.

I twist around, my eyes still struggling to adjust to the dark.

I think I’m looking in the direction of the house, the way I need to go to make my way back, but at the same time, I can’t really be sure.

Every inch of these woods is practically identical, so I take my best guess and start to walk back, my gait going faster as I start passing things I can’t remember passing before: a stump that looks different, the mangled limbs of a tree I don’t recognize, though I can’t tell if I’m actually lost or if my mind is just starting to play tricks.

I take another breath, a flimsy attempt at keeping myself calm, though I can feel my throat quiver as I start to pick up speed, sticks snapping like bones beneath my feet as I run.

My flashlight is bouncing across the ground now, the blacks and greens and browns of the forest like an abyss that’s threatening to open beneath me and swallow me down—and then I lurch forward, my legs getting twisted in some kind of root, and I feel myself trip before coming down hard on my hands.

I lie still for a moment, catching my breath before standing up slowly, my skin stinging in pain as a flood of wet blood starts to gush from my palms. I can see my phone resting on the ground a few feet ahead, the light shining like a beacon into the sky, and I walk forward to grab it, looking down at the dirt smeared on my jeans, the liquid red glistening on both of my hands…

but then I freeze, the sudden cushion of color obscuring my feet looking strangely out of place.

I’m no longer standing on twigs or dead leaves; instead, I’m surrounded by a bed of wildflowers, delicate petals spreading out in each direction as I sweep my flashlight across a sea of light blue.

They’re absolutely everywhere, a hidden meadow in the midst of all this black, and I raise my gaze slowly.

My eyes following the light until it lands on something a few feet ahead: a mound of rusted metal atop an altar of flowers like a lost tombstone or private shrine.