Forget You Know Me

by Jessica Strawser

  Molly hadn’t mentioned one in a long while, though. Then again, she hadn’t mentioned any real disagreements, only vague discontent. It seemed as if the couple had grown to favor wearing things down over having them out. Not that Liza really knew.

  “Well, you and Molly have always gotten along, too, but look what happened there.”

  “True.”

  “Sounds like great dinner table conversation to me!”

  “Ha. Yeah, well, I’m not going. I figured I’d wait until it gets closer, and then make up some excuse.”

  He was quiet for a moment. “You know, I totally get why you wouldn’t go. But—maybe you should? If you’re really moving back, you can’t avoid her forever, and she is your oldest friend. Maybe it’s worth at least trying to clear the air. Maybe there’s some whole thing you don’t know about. Who knows?”

  “There better be some whole thing I don’t know about. Otherwise, she’s completely lost her mind. But still, no thanks. I’m just—I don’t think I’m up to that yet. If at all.” People seemed to hold on to this notion that the oldest friends remained the best friends, but was it really true? She wasn’t sure she wanted to reconnect with this version of Molly, who seemed to spend a lot of time feeling sorry for herself. “Just because I’ve known her since we were kids doesn’t mean we have to stay friends. People change.”

  “When is this reunion supposed to take place?”

  “Not this Saturday, but the next one.”

  “Well, I have that weekend open. What if I go with you? Then you won’t be outnumbered.”

  Liza started to laugh, but the semi-offended silence on the other end of the line made it clear he wasn’t kidding. “That’s a sweet offer, but completely unnecessary. I can take care of myself.”

  “You have made that abundantly clear over the years. As if you know that it’s one of your most lovable qualities. We get it, already.”

  “Har-har.”

  “All I’m saying is, that doesn’t mean you can’t let someone help you once in a while.”

  “I do! In fact, in this exact case, I already brought you into it, and look what happened.”

  “Exactly. I drove ten, twelve hours through the middle of the night for nothing, too! You’re not the only one she owes an explanation. Plus, if you need backup, I have genuine selfish irritation to fuel my already unwavering support of you in any and all battles.”

  His support really was unwavering, and it pulled at her, made her wish she could wrap him in an impulsive hug. Further proof that new friends could be the best friends. “I really was just going to bail.…”

  “But putting her on the spot would be more fun! Plus, you know…” His tone was softer now. “Best-case scenario, you get your friend back. And you get to see me. Win-win.”

  “I do catch myself wishing you were here,” she said finally, her smile showing in her voice in spite of herself. It would have been so much easier to block out her bad memories of Chicago, to sweep away the charred remains of the mistakes she’d made there, to leave all of it behind, if Max hadn’t been there when no one else was. But he had been. And she had to be grateful that at least someone didn’t want to let her go so easily.

  “I miss you, too, Liza. What’s your brother’s address?”

  17

  Molly was twenty minutes into the contract consultation she’d booked, which meant she had only forty minutes left to get the answers she needed. She couldn’t even afford the cost of this meeting, let alone another one. Yet so far, most of the questions had been directed at her.

  “I’m guessing I can skip the part where I remind you it’s best to consult an attorney before you sign a document?” The woman behind the mahogany desk exuded elegance, save for her mouth, which was wiped clear of lipstick and set in a grim line. The clock was running down on a half-eaten salad forgotten on the far side of her keyboard.

  “Good guess,” Molly said.

  The attorney sat back in her chair, still holding the contract, turning a page forward, then back. “This one is … I’d need more than an hour to be thorough. But predatory lenders, a lot of them have a business model reliant upon trapping people in a debt cycle, where things multiply so rapidly you can never get on top of them. The sugar frosting is spread so thick on the contract language you can’t taste what’s underneath. That’s by design. And that’s what we have here.”

  Molly hadn’t slept last night. Before he’d left, Daniel had installed simple motion detectors on the back-facing doors and windows, but after the visit from the man in the hat they’d done little to put her at ease. She told herself she wasn’t really afraid of the lenders coming for her, didn’t really wonder if maybe they already had. But the worry over the “reminder” that felt more like a warning had kept her up anyway.

  “So I’m trapped?”

  “Not necessarily, if they’re not reputable. There are regulatory commissions that look into violations.” She tapped the YWBF letterhead, and Molly had to admire her restraint at not pointing out what a shyster name Your Way Back Financial was. Not to mention its logo. The arrows should point into the spiral: not a sun, but a drain. “I’ve never heard of this company. But if there’s something here of interest, someone who specializes in this sort of thing might take you on pro bono. Or there could be class action potential.”

  “Are you—”

  She held up a hand. “I’m taking the summer off with my kids. Lightening my caseload. That’s why this hour was even open.”

  Molly nodded, trying to convey a mom-to-mom understanding that might soften this woman toward her. She was highly rated in client reviews on the local site where Molly had found her listing. YWBF, however, appeared almost nowhere beyond its own home page. In her initial fact-finding, she’d assumed that was because the company was relatively new. But now … “I was hoping you could at least tell me if they’re legit. Before I bankrupt myself paying off scammers.”

  The attorney sighed. “Unfortunately, the answer to that question isn’t as simple as reading a document. There are plenty of payday lenders in business who I don’t think should be, but they are technically operating within the law. Others, especially online, are just biding time until someone goes through the hassle of holding them accountable.”

  She turned another page, skimmed some more. “You say they never mentioned collateral? That surprises me. As a general rule, legit lenders don’t approve a loan they don’t feel you can repay, unless it’s smaller and shorter term than this. You see a lot of those in low-income neighborhoods.”

  Molly bit her lip. She felt like she should apologize for the fact that she should have known better. But she didn’t owe this woman that apology. She owed it to herself.

  “Is there any chance of a loophole I might use to get out of it? Not to shirk what I already owe, but to break that cycle you talked about?”

  “There’s always a chance of one. But judging from the length of this thing alone, I wouldn’t hedge your bets on it. Whoever drew this up knew what they were doing.” Molly had more questions, but she was struggling to form them into words. “What does your husband do?” the attorney asked.

  Molly looked away. “He’s a financial officer,” she said softly. The attorney set the papers gently on the desk and turned her focus to Molly. Seeing her, for the first time. She didn’t need to verify that Molly’s definitely-knew-better husband was still in the dark. Or that the time to loop Daniel in without severe repercussions had arrived and gone.

  The attorney opened a filing cabinet and rummaged through. “Let me give you some resources.…”

  Molly shook her head. “Thanks, but I don’t think I’m going to pursue it. This is—well. It’s embarrassing. I’ll figure something out.”

  She’d have to try harder to come up with the money. She could sell off some of her other bad investments, maybe—she must have a couple thousand dollars’ worth of unused herbal supplements and even prescriptions. There wasn’t much else of resale value she could unload without
Daniel’s notice, but maybe she could pick up extra work. The nature center ran private parties at Krippendorf Lodge—if she could score some shifts, she might bank tips. An hourly wage wouldn’t come close to cutting it.

  The woman slid a stack of brochures across the table, ignoring her decline. “Take them,” she said. “You may change your mind. I hate to see anyone taken advantage of.”

  “Thank you for your time.” Molly stood, politely gathering up the handouts and heading for the door. She’d toss them in the first trash can she saw. The last thing she needed was something else to hide from her husband.

  “Mrs. Perkins?” Molly turned. “I know this is a hard situation, but—please be careful. These lenders may just be opportunists, but if they’re truly unscrupulous, the stakes could be higher than you think. You don’t want to mess with anything that could be dangerous. Consider the proper channels. At the very least, have a talk with your husband.”

  Molly thought again of the man in the hat. If his job had been to scare her, it had worked to a point, but aside from the unsettling fact of him tracking her down, he hadn’t been physically threatening. A messenger, but nothing more.

  Just because an unconventional lender had unconventional methods of checking in with their clients didn’t necessarily mean they were dangerous. Did it?

  She’d find a way to make a few decent payments and see if she could renegotiate the terms moving forward. She knew she’d been taken for a fool, but still, they’d seemed so earnest at the start. Maybe if she could get back in their good graces, explain how she’d come to ignore the earliest invoices until things had already escalated, everything would be okay.

  “Thank you,” Molly said again, and hurried away. She wasn’t about to make yet another promise she already knew she was going to break.

  * * *

  Something must have happened in Chicago. Daniel came back … different. He’d been home only a few hours and—though he’d won her over by stopping outside of Lunken to bring them a mom-and-pop feast from the Hitching Post—by bedtime Molly was certain she wasn’t imagining it. Somehow he seemed preoccupied and attentive at the same time. His eyes darted from the fried chicken to his phone to the door as if he was expecting an arrival or a call, and yet he behaved in a way that could only be described as doting, ignoring the kids’ barrage of chitchat to talk to her across the table when usually she was the one who couldn’t get a word in. He even—while taking the dish towel from her hands and telling her to sit, no less—used the word mindful. As in, “I want to be more mindful of how you are feeling from day to day.” The Daniel who’d been occupying their marriage these past years was decidedly not mindful, nor would he think to utter those syllables in that order.

  Also, in a how long has it been? twist, he’d come up to bed at the same time as her.

  If she didn’t know better, she’d suspect he was on to her, and messing with her head until she buckled and told him everything. But his smiles were genuine. This seemed to be more about him—and if he too was harboring some guilty conscience, she wasn’t sure she wanted to know why.

  No, she was sure: She did not want to know.

  If it had to do with work—with the quandaries some of his more loathed colleagues sometimes put him in, expensing plane tickets for their wives or anything else not by the book—she’d nagged her last nag on that matter. If there was one thing she couldn’t stand, it was a hypocrite, and suddenly, to her chagrin, she hardly had room to talk about keeping things on the up-and-up. Nor was she feeling charitable about him sticking out his neck and putting his own job on the line at this particular financially delicate moment.

  And if things hadn’t come to a head in Chicago that way? If this different Daniel was the result of some spousal indiscretion that was now weighing on him? If some other occupant of his hotel bed had sent him scurrying back to Molly’s? She wouldn’t be entirely surprised, she supposed. But she’d prefer the ignorance-is-bliss path there, too, given the strikingly similar questions it raised of high horses and poor timing.

  He was behind the ajar master bathroom door now, brushing his teeth and unpacking his toiletry bag. She lay curled on the bed, clad in a soft sleeping tee and flannel pants, holding a book she wasn’t really reading and thinking how cozy it could be to simply lie and listen to the sounds of a companion puttering about. Her last year of college she and Liza had shared a house crammed full of six girls, and when she’d tried to live alone after graduation the worst part was not the bigger rent checks or the sole responsibility, but that unfamiliar combination of quiet and stillness. She’d begged out of her lease so she could squeeze into Liza’s “I guess I’m not using it…” loft, a space that didn’t even have a door. A year later, she’d jumped straight to cohabitation with Daniel, and Liza, to her credit, had seemed neither perturbed nor relieved—perhaps in part because they all still lived on the same block. Liza and Daniel had been cut from the same happy-to-take-the-lead cloth, and Molly had found them both so comforting. But somewhere along the line she’d let the quiet and stillness close in again, even when her husband was right there, even when her best friend was just a phone call or an afternoon’s drive away.

  Unfathomable that now Molly was actually longing for that time: the miserably lonely time, right up until last week, when she’d have shut off the light and burrowed resentfully into her pillow before Daniel could join her. At least then she hadn’t had this underlying mounting horror at all she’d put at risk.

  Admitting to the way she’d allowed herself to almost feel about Rick, confronting the desperate choices that had bled her savings, regretting anew her quick dismissal of the police as the lawyer’s warning echoed in her mind … It all weighed on her in a way that assured her she was not, as she’d feared, at rock bottom. There was still far to fall.

  Daniel switched off the bathroom light and wheeled his carry-on into the bedroom. He was shirtless and barefoot, wearing only Superman-print pajama pants Grant had given him for Father’s Day, and he swept the remaining contents of the bag into the hamper before tossing it into the closet.

  “How was flying out of Lunken?” she asked. Better to keep the conversation away from her. And he’d told her precious little about the trip. She still didn’t even understand what exactly he’d gone away to do.

  “Well, I had to sit next to Mr. Human Resources. Other than that, it was pretty sweet. Like time travel—you land at the same time you took off.” He brightened. “I can’t believe I forgot to tell you. You’ll never guess who I ran into.”

  She let the book fall closed. “Who?”

  “Liza. She’s moving back.”

  “Moving back?” Molly blinked at him, stunned. That the catastrophe of how she’d botched things with her oldest friend had been overshadowed by so many related catastrophes was telling. She’d been promising herself she’d reach out to Liza and make amends, just as soon as she’d dealt with the rest. Liza was the type who needed time to cool off anyway, and was far enough away that putting things on pause hardly felt out of the ordinary, even if the pausing itself had been rather … hostile.

  “Don’t take it personally that she hasn’t called yet,” he said, switching off the overhead light by the chain, leaving the ceiling fan whirring, and climbing in next to her. “I think she’s still in shock. Her apartment burned down, and she lost everything.”

  “Oh my God.” Molly clasped a hand over her mouth. “Was she at home? Is she okay?”

  “I don’t know details, but she’s okay. She’s staying with Luke and his wife—I can never remember her name.” Daniel could never remember anyone’s name. He was constantly asking Molly to remind him of exactly who the neighbors were, even that annoying Cathy woman who walked by multiple times a day with that formidable dog. Molly had grown to resent this as one more way she was supposed to be the keeper of important information—sign-up deadlines, school holidays, doctors’ appointments. “She was at Lunken for a job interview.”

  Molly tried to make sense
of it. “To manage the airport facility?” What an odd job for Liza. She’d been running glitzy hotel ballrooms like a professional homecoming queen for years.

  “No, the Sky Galley.”

  That little restaurant? Oh, Liza. She must be scrambling. And living with Luke and Steph with a baby on the way couldn’t be ideal. Guilty tears welled in Molly’s eyes. She remembered the dawn of recognition on Daniel’s face last week, when she’d seen him realize just how bad things had grown in their marriage, and she felt it toward Liza now. They’d once leaned on each other, first and fiercely, in times of crisis—yet here she was, learning her friend’s life-altering moments secondhand. And it was her own fault.

  “I invited her to dinner, next Saturday.”

  Just like that, the tears dried up.

  “You what?” she cried, and he looked at her in surprise. Easy, came her mantra. There was no ostensible reason, in Daniel’s eyes, why she would not want to have her best friend to dinner. If anything, waiting until next Saturday was ludicrous. In a world where Liza didn’t have reason to hate her, Molly would be bounding out of bed this instant to call her and demand details.

  Then again, in that world, she’d already know them.

  “All I mean is,” she said more calmly, “she hasn’t even called me yet. She must be so overwhelmed. We’ll set something up when she’s had a little time to cope.”

  He looked at her strangely. “It seemed like the thing to do. And she was eager enough. To see the kids, especially.” She bit her lip. Could that be true? Liza would have felt cornered, with no way to decline politely. Kind of like Molly felt now. “Look, if you don’t want to cook, we’ll get some nice takeout. I just figured it’s been a while since we’ve hosted something grown-up. We used to throw pretty solid dinner parties, you know.”