Page 50 of Forget Me Not

I see myself standing at the vanity mirror, begging for a reflection that wasn’t my own. Growing up desperate to be someone different and savoring every second I could pretend it was true.

“What did you do?” I whisper, staring at this stranger on the opposite side of the shed as the woman I thought she was evaporates before me, twisting away like a fat plume of smoke with nothing but an imposter left in its wake.

“She wasn’t committed.”

I tilt my head, Marcia’s memories suddenly looking so different as I imagine a teenaged Lily winding through all those houses, flaunting around in heels and fur coats. Trying on lives like masquerade masks, each one infinitely better than her own.

“She had people who loved her,” I say, my mind on that picture of Marcia’s parents in the paper as the search for their daughter quickly turned cold. “A family who wanted her home. You never had that.”

I watch as Lily stands still in a watery pool of the moon and I try to visualize her as a young girl now, a girl who was lost in every sense of the word. Nowhere to live, no one to love, until a man came along and gave her a home.

A home she would do anything to protect.

A quiver of movement steals my attention and I twist to the side, watching as Mitchell steps through the shadows. The clanking of metal keys as he walks, that silver ring hooked into the loop of his jeans.

“You can thank Liam for insisting we do it this way,” he says as he kneels on the ground before me. Then I look behind him, the first hint of dawn illuming the shed as Liam stares down at the floor beneath him. “It’ll take longer, but it won’t hurt.”

I look down at Mitchell’s hands now, noticing the mug wrapped in his grip.

“Just a little something to take the edge off.”

I hear a hint of a smile as I recall him speaking those very same words as I sat in the main house, Liam casing my ankle in gauze as Mitchell offered my only chance of relief.

The way I had taken it, trusted him. All his little persuasions coaxing me into the palm of his hands before squeezing his fingers and cupping me tight. Snuffing out the small voice in the back of my brain that had been whispering all along that something wasn’t right.

“You killed Marcia,” I say, my voice soaked in disgust as Liam perks up slightly. “The mother of your son. You killed your own daughter .”

“Blood doesn’t automatically make you a family,” Lily says, and I turn to the side, to the place she’s been standing, thinking about all the things that Marcia had written. The two of them sitting outside of that barn, Lily twisting those plaits through long, tangled hair.

This is my family. The only family I need.

“I never killed anyone,” Mitchell says, his voice firm as he draws my attention back toward him. “And I didn’t even know I had a daughter until she showed up that night, accusing me of murder like you are right now.”

I look back at Liam, his gaze peeled from the floor as he stares at me the same way he had been staring last night, an intimacy between us as I laid it all bare.

How he said he was sorry and how, at the time, I had assumed that was a simple condolence, no different than the string of people that summer who came by with their flowers, their hollow words—but now, I realize it wasn’t that at all.

Instead, it was a purging of guilt. An actual apology.

“What happened to Natalie wasn’t your fault,” I say, thinking about how Ryan had said those same words to me, the shame I had felt for doing nothing, for letting it happen, lifting like a weight had been eased from my shoulders.

“Of course it’s his fault,” Mitchell says as he lifts the cup higher. “She wouldn’t be dead if he hadn’t gone against his own family.”

Now I feel my mind bend around every single thing Liam told me last night, his emotion so raw it could not have been faked.

Kids are so vulnerable at that age. Like the concept of mortality doesn’t even apply.

I picture Liam as a boy growing up in this place.

All his remarks about being so lonely, so secluded out here on his own, as a new memory starts to emerge from a forgotten well in my mind: the two of us talking out in the vineyard, the moment I asked about the farthest he’d been and the way he had shrugged, spread his arms wide like he could fit his whole world in that one small space.

He hadn’t just meant the state, like I thought. He hadn’t meant South Carolina.

He had meant here, right here on Galloway. He had meant the island itself.

I open my mouth, an attempt to talk, though my words are suddenly stuck in my throat as I realize that while I was wrong about Marcia being trapped in this place, there really was someone stuck on the property.

Instead, it was Liam who was unable to leave.

“Come on,” Mitchell says, the steam from the mug floating like breath on my neck, although I try to ignore him as I keep looking at Liam.

“You were just a kid,” I press, the ceramic edge of the mug now kissing my lips. “You had no way of knowing what they would do to her—”

“That’s enough,” Mitchell snaps, and I pinch my lips tight, unable to keep talking without him tipping the whole thing back. “Twenty minutes, it’s over. It’ll be like falling asleep.”

I keep looking at Liam, silently pleading as the gun stays clutched in his right hand—although he doesn’t move, he doesn’t speak, and I suddenly know that it’s all over.

I know, at last, there’s no way to get through.

I close my eyes and think of my sister, wondering if this is how it went for her, too.

In a lot of ways, it’s a fate far better than what I originally thought as I spent all those years picturing her trapped in that car, her arms desperately jerking the handle as ten fingers grabbed at the back of her hair.

This, in contrast, almost feels peaceful.

All she had to do was take a few sips, feel a slow warmth filling her up until her eyes closed for the very last time.

I inhale, the smell from the mug making my mind fuzzy and light, and all at once, the loneliness of my life starts to take hold.

I think about quitting my job, my failed attempt at making it all on my own.

My apartment I can barely afford, my parents with whom I rarely speak.

Pushing away Ryan, my one true friend, all because he had been trying to help.

He’s been so patient, ten whole years of attempting to crack through my impenetrable shell, but now that he’s in, now that he’s seen all my scars, the rough, ugly tissue I’ve kept hidden beneath is surely enough to scare him away.

I open my eyes and stare down at the mug, the temptation to take the easy way out building with an irresistible strength.

It’s the same thing I’ve always done, simply closing my eyes and sticking my head in the sand.

Letting the darkness whisk me away… but then I think about Natalie again, her blood-soaked shirt they found in that car, and I know I still don’t have all the answers.

I know she must have fought until the bitter end.

I lean forward, closer to Mitchell, the warm clay pressed against my lips, our two faces inches apart. Then I take a deep breath, close my eyes, and grip the shears tight in my hand before swinging them straight into his neck.