Page 76 of Forget Me Not
I glance back at him, registering the faraway look in his eyes.
“Eventually, when it became obvious she wasn’t coming, I walked back to the house and found them all there… but by the time I arrived, it was too late.”
“So, how did she—?” I stop, still unable to say those final few words.
“My parents told me that at first, she ran,” Liam says as I imagine my sister tumbling out of the cruiser the second DiNello opened the door. She must have tried to sprint through the vineyard, beelining toward the trees where she knew Liam was waiting. “She tried to get away but then she fell in the dark, twisted her ankle and cut her arm bad. Marcia—”
He stops, corrects himself.
“Lily,” he continues, “convinced her to come into the house so they could talk. She told her it was all a misunderstanding, that there was an innocent explanation for all of it. Natalie didn’t know who she really was. She had no reason to suspect her of lying.”
I let myself imagine it now, the scene eerily similar to when I got that bite: Natalie sitting in the living room, maybe even in that exact same chair, her shirt wet with blood from her fall as Mitchell tenderly treated her wounds.
“Honestly, I think she just wanted to believe the best,” Liam adds as I imagine Lily walking in from the kitchen next, thrusting out a mug of something hot in her hands. “That her biological father wasn’t the monster she suspected him to be.”
“But why didn’t you try to leave later?” I ask, although I already feel like I know the answer as my mind revisits all those articles I’ve covered, Liam being conditioned his whole life to believe he was dependent on two people alone—and in a way, he was.
Without a legal identity, in the eyes of society, he doesn’t even exist.
“I was scared,” he says, the simplicity of his answer catching me off guard, though I find myself nodding as my mind is transportedto my kitchen table, eleven-year-old legs kicking in the air as I willed myself to say silent about all the things that I knew. “They convinced me it was my fault. That it only happened because I went against my family and if anyone ever found out what happened to Natalie, it could come back on me. They had a cop in their pocket.”
I think of the pain in his eyes as he led me out to the shed, no doubt believing his life would be over if he allowed me to leave with all that I knew.
“Family,”he mutters, the word hissing through his teeth like it has a bad taste, an acrid smack rising up in his throat. “She kept going on about family, how you don’t go against your family, but all along, she was lying about that, too. Natalie was more of my family than she was.”
A heavy silence settles over us both as I register the silky pink of the sky; the marbled clouds mirrored in the water and the sudden stillness of the wind in the trees.
“You two are so alike,” he says as I cock my head. “You and your sister.”
“We’re nothing alike,” I reply, that same line I’ve repeated to myself over and over and over again.
“Yes, you are,” he argues. “Natalie risked her life to help me, you risked your life to helpher.”
He gestures back to the shed, to Lily, who’s gone silent inside.
“Neither of you had to do that. You could have just left, gone about your lives, but you came back to help someone who you could tell was in trouble.”
I stay silent, letting myself sit with that belief for a bit.
“If you take me to the police, I’ll come clean about all of it.”
I glance back at my car, the tires slit, but then Liam holds up Mitchell’s keys, his neck jerking in the direction of the truck as I realize the enormity of what he’s suggesting.
“Natalie was right,” he adds. “This place is the prison. I’d rather be in jail than spend another day here.”
There’s no movement between us for a handful of seconds, no sounds at all as I let the truth finally settle over my shoulders, the prospect of Liam walking into the station and willingly living the rest of his life behind bars. On the one hand, he’s been complicit in so many crimes. He’s known the truth about Natalie for twenty-two years and he’s hid it from everyone, hoarding the answers all for himself—but somehow, it still doesn’t sit right, letting him bear the brunt of it all.
I’m still standing above him, trying to decide what I should do, when Liam perks up beside me, his back lengthening as he turns toward at the road.
“Someone’s coming,” he says, and I follow his gaze as a cloud of dust erupts from the side, a little black car roaring fast through the gates. Something about it looks familiar and I take a step forward, a small smile emerging as I think about leaving the station yesterday, digging out that picture of my parents before calling my mother and leaving that message. I had admitted to staying at Galloway, demanded answers to the secrets she’s been keeping herself, and I watch now as her car creeps closer. Her face twisted in fear on the opposite side of the glass until our eyes meet and I can see her shoulders loosen, her held breath expelled.
I look down at Liam, then back up at her.
“I think I have an idea,” I say.
CHAPTER 50
The three of us drive straight to the station—though not in Claxton, not to Chief DiNello, but a hundred miles away in a town called Draper where the disappearance of Marcia Rayburn still sits cold.
