Page 54 of Forget Me Not

Marcia stretched out at the edge of the marsh, her baby boy asleep at her side.

Her diary was propped up on her knees, only a few pages left until the whole thing was full, and she rolled the pen between her slick fingers.

A smear of blue ink staining her skin as she gazed out at the dock just ahead.

A sound from behind stole her attention and she spun around quick, recognizing the slap of the screen door in the distance. Then she watched as Mitchell emerged from the main house before making his way into the budding vineyard beside it.

She turned back around and eased down on her elbows, reliving the day they arrived in this place.

It was a moment that would be forever ingrained in her psyche, a moment that would mar her dreams and mold her nightmares: standing in that house, five months ago, a pregnancy test hot in her pocket as she looked down at the body on the bedroom floor.

“Come on,” Lily had muttered as Marcia stared down at the eyes starting to glaze, crimson blood seeping into the carpet as Lily held that gun in her hand. “We have to go.”

Everything about that day had taken on a foggy quality like submerging your whole head underwater and hearing nothing but the thump of your heart in your ears, blinking to find all your surroundings blurry and bent.

It happened so fast it felt impossible to process—she and Lily were alone, then they weren’t; that woman had been alive, then she wasn’t—but there was one thing Marcia could remember perfectly, one little thing that seemed to transpire in slow motion: looking around the room in a faraway haze until her eyes landed on that film Lily had dumped on the bed.

Her mind rewinding to the flash she had seen when she walked out of the bathroom, her face frozen for one single incriminating second as the camera’s timestamp placed her smack in the center of a crime.

She remembered walking to the mattress in a numb detachment, cupping the roll in her damp hands before sliding it into her pocket. Then she had turned around, trailing Lily as they tore down the stairs, their bodies bursting through the front door.

“What did you do ?” Montana had hissed, eyes swelling as he saw them both coming. The gun was still clutched in Lily’s right hand, the metal bouncing back and forth as they ran.

“Drive,” Lily had said, Montana cranking the camper before they could even climb in the back seat. “Just drive.”

Marcia took a deep breath now, the salt air cleansing her system as her eyes stared down the length of the dock.

It was understood immediately they couldn’t stay at the Farm.

Lily had killed a cop—a cop who had been watching them, learning them, who knew where they lived—so they left that afternoon, the four of them piling into the camper before driving three hours south.

She could still feel the bounce of the tires as they took their last turn, the tangled trees surrounded by a moat of a marsh and a large white house standing tall in the distance, an identical cabin just beside it and acres and acres of untouched land.

“Where are we?” she’d asked as a man appeared on the porch.

Mitchell didn’t answer; she knew he wouldn’t.

Instead, he simply parked at the base of the stairs just as the man started to descend—and that’s when Marcia realized she knew him.

He was familiar, a face she had seen so many times before, but it was primarily his posture she recognized: the way both hands were punched in his pockets as he watched them all stumble out of the camper, dirty and disheveled without a possession to their names.

The way his shoulders stayed slouched like he was trying to make himself small, the same twitchy demeanor as all those times he had waited for Mitchell to slide inside of his car.

That’s one of our regulars, Lily had told her. Some rich guy who just inherited a fortune and doesn’t know how else to spend it .

Steven had welcomed them in without question, droning on about how his father had passed, how he had moved onto all this land by himself because there was no one else in his family alive to claim it.

He didn’t know anyone on the island and he had clearly been lonely, inviting Mitchell to visit during all the times he had stopped by the Farm.

Those little bags that he bought the only things to keep him company, the drugs blunting his boredom like a dull blade.

“What are you doing?”

Marcia snapped her neck up at the sound of a voice, Lily making her approach from across the grass.

“Nothing,” she said, slipping the diary beneath her legs as she pictured Lily bursting into the guesthouse the day they arrived. Opening up closets and pulling out drawers before grabbing a knife from a block on the counter and scratching that sentence in the depths of a desk.

Mitchell, of course, had set his own sights on the property’s main house. Then he had started planting things, picking back up on his business. Slowly spreading his tentacles wide as his fingerprints touched every inch of the place until it started to feel more like his every day.

“Pretty eyes,” Lily said as she sat down beside her. Marcia looked down, realizing her son was awake, staring up at them both. “He got those from you.”

She smiled, taking in their deep, cerulean blue.

“How are you feeling?” Lily asked next, long fingers playing with the thin strands of his hair. “All healed up?”

“Getting there,” she said, crossing her legs.

“Mitch has some yarrow flowering out back. It should help with the bleeding.”

Marcia stared at her, trying to decipher her words like she was speaking in code.

Ever since that day in the closet, the two of them looking down at the strip in her hand, Marcia swore she could feel the girl watching her, studying her.

Those cold gray eyes trained on the side of her face like she was waiting on Marcia to make some kind of move.

“I’ll have to try that,” she said simply, looking down at her lap.

“I’ll make you a cup.”

Marcia opened her mouth, about to protest, but Lily stood up before she could respond.

In truth, she had no idea if she should trust her.

On the one hand, Marcia couldn’t forget the look in her eyes as she held that gun, her total lack of remorse for taking a life—but on the other hand, Lily hadn’t told Mitchell that Marcia wanted to leave.

She had kept quiet, kept their conversation a secret.

Still, Marcia never mentioned leaving to Lily again; instead, she spent every moment of the last five months watching, waiting.

Staying poised and patient as her stomach started to grow.

Honestly, she was terrified, because while this place was certainly more comfortable than where they were living before—they had real beds and bathrooms, actual space to themselves—they were completely cut off now, dozens of miles from the nearest neighbor.

Nowhere to run to; no one to hear if she screamed for help.

They never even went into town anymore, that very last thread keeping her tethered severed the second they stepped into this place.

She glanced down, studying her son on the grass beneath her.

His mouth gaping open and closed like a fish.

She had known she couldn’t risk leaving when she was still pregnant, her unborn baby relying on her heart to keep beating, her lungs to keep breathing, her mind flashing back to that woman bleeding out on her bedroom floor every time Marcia wondered if she should try.

That little life inside her had become her everything since the moment she learned of its existence; it was her reason for being, her motivation to finally make her escape.

That baby deserved so much more than the life it would be born into, so she had waited until he was safely on the outside, putting on a face for the others while counting down the days until they could both finally leave.

She turned around now, watching as Lily disappeared into the house before pulling the diary out from under her legs.

Then she clicked on the pen that was now almost dry as she scribbled into its pages for the very last time.

Her plan was solid, but just in case anything were to go wrong, she still felt the need to write it all down just as she had written down every detail of the last ten months.

They would be leaving that night, she and Liam, the two of them slipping out of the guesthouse as soon as the sky was swaddled in dark.

Then she would take her son, the diary, and the film she had stolen, before starting the long walk toward town.

She flipped the book shut, scooping her son from the grass before turning toward the line of trees in the distance.

The camper was out there, slowly getting swallowed by vines and leaves, and she made the walk as quickly as she possibly could, her scheme running through her mind like an endless scroll.

Despite her isolation, her lack of connection to the outside world, the one thing she knew for certain was that the police were looking for Lily.

She had listened to the stories Montana brought back, the reward money mounting for information about the murder of a cop named Carmen.

A single name scratched into a headboard the only evidence her killer had left behind.

Over the last few months, Montana had become their sole source of information, taking Steven’s car when he left for training before bringing back news when he came home.

He was working to become an officer himself, an irony as bitter as all those teas Marcia tasted—though she was starting to realize it was all a part of some plan, Mitchell giving himself an extra layer of protection he knew that only a cop could create.

She reached the camper, finally, opening the door and climbing inside before making her way to the bed in the back. Then she wedged her diary between the wall and the mattress, the same spot she’d been hiding the roll of film.

The same spot she once found that sweatshirt, the very spot she’d return to later that night once everyone else was in bed, collecting her evidence before she and Liam would make their escape.

By the time she emerged from the trees, there was a cluster of clouds gathering in the distance, a sharp chill in the air as the sky grew dark. Then she looked down at her chest, at her son asleep against her warm skin.

When she looked back up, Lily had appeared on the porch, a large, white mug clutched in her hand.

She watched as Lily hoisted it higher, beckoning Marcia to join her inside. Then she smiled, waved, and tipped her head back. A single drop landing on her cheek like a tear.

“One more time,” she whispered into the wind, because she knew, at last, it would be over soon.