Forget You Know Me

by Jessica Strawser

  Rosie did not look at Liza, but the child was obviously hyperaware of her presence even as she watched a pair of mallard ducks swim by.

  When she still didn’t answer, Molly’s face broke into a reassuring smile. “Take your time, sweetheart. We’ll wait until you decide.” She perched nonchalantly on the edge of a nearby bench, and Rick settled in the middle, gesturing for Liza to join them. She tried not to look sullen as she landed as far from him as the seat would allow and crossed her ankles beneath her. On the dock in front of them, Nori whispered something into Rosie’s ear and the two of them sank to the wooden planks, cross-legged. None of them seemed to be in a hurry to proceed.

  “I was so sorry to hear about what brought you back to town,” Rick said quietly. “Do they know what caused the fire yet?”

  Liza shook her head. “Did you say you were a contractor?”

  “I did.” Not her favorite profession at the moment. She straightened her spine.

  “Well, there were initial reports that this contractor was negligent.”

  He cringed. “So Molly said. There were fatalities, right?” She looked down at her lap, and he sighed. “In an old building like that … I hope it was just a freak accident.”

  Liza didn’t raise her eyes. “Is it weird that I almost don’t hope that? I almost want someone to be held responsible. I don’t like the idea of life or death being a dumb-luck thing.”

  “Even if someone was at fault, it’d still be dumb luck for everyone else,” he said.

  “I guess that’s true.” She shuddered again. “I can’t stop thinking about it. Not the fire, exactly, but the odds of it happening the way it did.” As usual, she’d said too much. She braced herself for him to ask what she meant. As far as she knew, Molly hadn’t put the timing together with Liza’s fated through-the-night drive, which was fine by her. She didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of being glad about the silver lining.

  On the other side of Rick, Molly had inched closer, ostensibly to lean across him to hear Liza. But Molly’s eyes were on the girls, watching to see what they’d do when they thought no one was paying attention, and the small space between her and Rick seemed intimate in a way that made Liza uneasy.

  “I remember when we brought Rosie home from the hospital,” Rick was telling her. “It was snowing, and there was this orderly on the night shift who took a liking to us in the maternity ward. We were there a few days longer than normal—we didn’t know about the cancer yet, but we did know something wasn’t right—and she’d been sneaking me meals even though I wasn’t a patient. The last night, when she knew we were about to be discharged into the storm, she gave us a string of beads. Said they’d been hanging from her rearview mirror during two collisions that should have been fatal. Said they would keep us safe, bring us luck.”

  The story was oddly moving. Maybe Rick had that sense of intimacy with everyone he met, not just Molly. Maybe something about him made people want to get close, want to help.

  Maybe.

  “Did you feel like they worked?” she asked.

  He gave her a guilty half smile. “We never hung them,” he admitted. “She was in more than one near-fatal car crash with those things. She believed they were good luck because she survived, but what if they were bad luck because she had the crashes in the first place? That’s the thing about luck. It’s flimsy.”

  At the other end of the bench, Molly had turned her intent gaze on Rick. “Do you ever think maybe you should have hung them?” she asked. Her voice held curiosity without judgment. A pitch-perfect strumming of that hard-to-reach chord had always been one of Molly’s best qualities.

  “All the time,” Rick said.

  Liza was the first to notice Rosie approaching them. She wasn’t finding the girl particularly inspiring thus far, but she did relate—uncomfortably strongly—to her reluctance to make a choice. The girl shot her a nervous glance, then ran and buried her head in her dad’s lap.

  “Nori wants to do the turtles,” came the tiny, muffled voice.

  Molly had described this moment as one that was nearly impossible not to cheer for, but Liza was too distracted by the way Molly was nudging Rick, by the way he extended the fondness in his eyes from his daughter straight over to Molly in such an unguarded way that he must not even realize he was doing it. Molly didn’t seem to know he was doing it, either. She was biting back her own smile, lowering her head to Rosie’s.

  “It’s not Nori’s turn to pick,” Molly said gently. “What do you want to do?”

  The girl turned her face just out of his pant leg to meet Molly’s eye, then nodded once. “Turtles,” she whispered.

  “I love how you told us that. Turtles it is!” Molly got to her feet and led Rosie by the hand out to the dock, turning to flash Liza and Rick a thumbs-up.

  “It probably doesn’t seem like a big deal,” Rick said, not looking at her. “But she hasn’t talked in front of a stranger since—well, maybe ever. Thanks for coming.”

  This exercise was clearly everything to him—it wasn’t an act, or an excuse to get close to Molly, or a front for something else between them. Liza could see all of that had happened by accident. It was understandable, she had to admit, how he would have fallen for her friend along the way. She saw, too, that he knew the depths he’d stepped into, but that this revelation was relatively new. His gaze at Molly was weighed down with wistfulness but also a sort of shock, a justified alarm. Regret, too.

  Molly’s, meanwhile, held a willful denial. Maybe even negligence for the effect this could have on him even as she leaned into it, a crutch to prop up the less happy moments in her own life, something to get her by until she sorted things out on her own.

  “You’re welcome,” Liza told Rick. For a moment, she felt nothing but sorry for him.

  27

  “Ever notice how your body can only focus on one pain at a time?” Molly knew she was rambling but couldn’t stop. Now that Rick had taken the girls and left the two women to follow the trail around the lake, Liza seemed unnaturally tight lipped, as if withholding some sort of judgment. And so it fell to Molly to withhold Liza.

  “Whatever hurts worst at the moment kind of fills up your brain,” she went on. “You trip over something hard, and right away your foot hurts where you hit it. Then a few minutes later, once that subsides, you realize you’ve twisted your ankle pretty good, too. And once you’ve iced that, you’re walking up the stairs and notice your knee is also popping. They’re not happening one after the other, but you experience them that way, like your body thinks it would be too much for you otherwise.” She risked a sidelong glance at her friend as they made their way across a wooden footbridge. Liza was peering over the rail at the muddy rut left by heavy rains.

  “Never really thought about it,” Liza said.

  “I envy you. But actually, I think it’s been kind of like that with what you’ve had going on. You know, maybe in Chicago…” Liza obviously hadn’t been moved by Rosie’s efforts earlier. Molly had to make something about this outing resonate, lest the conversation turn back to the meditation center. Or, worse, lest Liza beg off and never call her again. “Sometimes you’d feel homesick for Cincinnati. And then, other times you’d be down on dating, or your boss taking you for granted. One small pain at a time when really they were all at once. And even though some of those resolved when you came back, a whole new set has been thrown at you. It’ll take a while to cycle through, have a look at everything you’re dealing with.”

  “Gee,” Liza said flatly. “How comforting.”

  “I never said it was comforting,” Molly replied, frowning. “But a near-death experience can be pretty profound.”

  Liza sighed. “Let’s not pretend I’ve been impacted in any meaningful way. I haven’t changed careers to become an ER nurse. I’m not volunteering my time to help put fire and flood victims in new homes. If I am enlightened, it hasn’t made me noble. It’s only made me neurotic.”

  “You’re not starring in a movie ab
out rising from the ashes, Liza. You’re just living your life. Sometimes that’s the most noble thing a person can do, especially on her own terms. Nobody’s looking for more from you. No one’s expecting a hero or a miracle. We just want for you to be okay.”

  “And what’s your movie about?”

  “What?”

  “The one you are starring in. What’s it about?”

  Molly brushed her hair back from her face, uneasy. “I guess I’m still figuring that out.”

  “Let me help. You thought it was Rick in the mask that night, didn’t you? Max was on the right track with his kinky-affair jokes, only it wasn’t Daniel. It was you.”

  Molly stopped walking. She shook her head.

  “Come on, Mols. That explains a lot. Not everything, but a lot.”

  Liza’s eyes bored into hers, and she saw there was no point in denying it. Had there ever been? Molly never had the upper hand—not with Daniel, Liza, or anyone else she could think of. “But it wasn’t Rick,” she said, giving in. “He says it wasn’t him, and I believe him.”

  Liza didn’t react, only tilted her head. “Are you having an affair?”

  Tears sprung to Molly’s eyes. The way Liza was looking at her … “No. I might have come close, and I’m not proud of it. But we’re only friends.”

  “You might want to tell Rick that,” she shot back. “He’s the one who’s going to get hurt here. Don’t you think the guy has been through enough?”

  Over Liza’s shoulder, a smear of color caught Molly’s eye: a chalked design on an ancient tree trunk as wide as her arm span. It might have passed for the doodle of a free spirit, perhaps a tribal-looking sun, but Molly would know that spiral anywhere.

  She knew its deceptive comfort from the contract she’d signed bearing its name. And she knew its desperation, from every mounting bill she had yet to pay. Its outer rim of arrows mocked her, relentlessly, a ring of fire disguised as an emergency exit.

  She pushed past Liza, trancelike, to the tree, and touched the chalk with a tentative finger. The bright blue came off easily on her fingertip; it had to be fresh, as it had rained all morning, and it wouldn’t last long, as the forecast held more. Someone had intended for her to see it now.

  “Molly? Are we not finally having a real conversation?” She whirled not toward Liza, but away, panning beneath the canopy of the trees, searching for the mark’s maker. But everything these people did seemed so carefully untraceable—leaving Molly to question whether she had really experienced it at all, until another sign appeared. Or until, as now at last, she had a witness.

  Not unlike her pain itself.

  She turned in a slow circle, and another blur of color caught her eye. More chalk, at the bend ahead; bright yellow this time. She began to move toward it, picking up speed as her panic grew.

  “What are you doing?” Liza called.

  She didn’t answer. The symbol was repeated here, this time with two words under it: Try harder.

  She pushed ahead, catching sight of another, leaving Liza behind. They’d chosen only the trunks that were too big to miss, too centered in any walker’s line of vision to overlook. This one was an electric orange and said simply: Find a way.

  At that, she had to laugh. They were supposed to be the way. Your Way Back Financial. Clearly the YWBF stood for something else. You’re Way Beyond Fucked.

  Or maybe: You Will Be Found.

  Someone was coming, up ahead, straight toward her—but it was only a pair of spry-looking elderly bird watchers. One saw her looking at the mark and smiled. “They’re all around,” she said. “Some new age hiking group or something?”

  “I’m all for motivation, but it’s a little heavy on the tough love for my taste,” her companion said, chuckling. Molly tried to smile, but she felt dizzy, outside of herself. She stood aside to let them pass, and by the time they did, Liza had caught up and was turning her by the shoulder.

  “Molly!” The impatience drained from her expression at the sight of Molly’s tears, just spilling over. “What is it? You’re freaking me out.”

  She took a shaky breath, lifting her eyes to the branches above, away from the symbols, the spinning trees, the muddy ground. “I’m in way over my head,” she managed. It came out as a whimper.

  “With Rick?”

  “No. I mean, maybe. But—” The tears kept coming. She was so tired. Tired of being afraid, of everything. Tired of deceiving herself into thinking everything would somehow be fine. Tired of feeling alone.

  “The money problems you mentioned?” Liza supplied.

  She nodded, swallowing hard. “It isn’t ordinary debt. I accepted help from … some alternative methods. They’ve been here today.” She pointed at the chalk. “And they’ve been here before.”

  Liza’s eyes widened. “And at your house? That night?”

  The sobs were coming harder now. They’d been pent up too long. She could barely get the words out. “I really didn’t think so. I didn’t want to believe … I still don’t know for sure.”

  Liza looked skeptical. “What kind of alternative methods? Have you been gambling?”

  “Nothing like that. I thought it was this small loan company for people with medical expenses like mine. But it was a scam.” She gestured at the trunk in front of them. “This is their logo. These messages are for me. Though for all I know they have other clients here, too.”

  “They’re threatening you? You need to call the police.”

  She shook her head quickly, sniffing hard. She had to pull herself together, or Liza would take control. She didn’t want to relinquish what few decisions she had left. She searched her jacket pockets for an old tissue, a napkin, anything, but came up empty. “I don’t know that they are. No overt threats about my safety, anything like that. They just want their money. Which, in fairness, I do owe. I signed a contract.”

  Liza looked from one chalked symbol to the next, then back at Molly. “I don’t know, Mols. This seems crazy creepy to me.”

  Well, she was right about that. And in the one place Molly had always felt unafraid. She officially had no safe harbor left. Not Daniel, not Rick and Rosie, not these woods, not even Liza. She could tell from the look on her friend’s face that this predicament wasn’t tugging at her sympathetic heartstrings. If anything, it would make her glad she already had a grudge of an excuse to maintain a safe perimeter. And who could blame her?

  Still. Holding back had gotten Molly nowhere. Nowhere but here.

  “I don’t know if these people were behind the intruder, but I am more and more convinced it wasn’t random,” she ventured. “There are too many other options.”

  Liza threw up her hands. “More than this one?”

  She nodded. “There’s something underhanded going on at Daniel’s work, too. I think he found out, and—I don’t know.” If only her visit to Toby had yielded any peace of mind at all. She’d only felt more on edge ever since. Unsure what to believe.

  Liza pulled a face. “Well, I highly doubt they hired a thug. It’s the nontoxic furnishings business, for crying out loud.”

  “But it could have been this guy he’s caught on to. I actually saw him in our neighborhood, and…” She stopped short. She sounded crazy. “All I know is someone was either trying to scare Daniel or trying to scare me. Either way, it worked.” She gestured toward the trees. “I know I have to make this right, but I’ve been caught up like an idiot in damage control. I’m so embarrassed. And I’m terrified they’ll be back. Whoever they are.”

  “Nonthreatening lenders don’t follow people into the woods and chalk messages on trees,” Liza persisted. “Where did you find these people?” She fished a pocket-sized pack of tissues out of her jacket and handed it over. Molly took one gratefully and pressed it to her face.

  “They found me. Outside the meditation center. That’s why I didn’t want to take you. They lurk there, looking for easy prey. I don’t know what they’ll do if they see me. And I don’t want them to see you, either, because—
”

  Terror gripped her, abrupt and hard. “Liza. Oh my God, your apartment fire. You don’t think he somehow knew who you were and came after you, too? Because you saw him on the webcam?” She lifted a shaky hand to her mouth, feeling the blood drain from her face. She really might faint. “Oh, God…”

  “No! Molly, no. It’s not possible.” Liza had her by the shoulders again. “The fire was the same night. Do you hear me?”

  Confusion clouded Molly’s watery view. “The same night?”

  She nodded. “While I was driving to check on you. Unless he time traveled somehow to Chicago, you can rule that one out.”

  Molly pulled away. “There is a flight that gets you to Chicago in an hour, though! Daniel took it for work—he said it was like time travel. Those were his exact words.” She stepped back, fully engrossed in the horror. “Oh my God. Toby has taken that flight.… That might mean—”

  Liza held up a hand. “Molly, I don’t know who Toby is, but that Chicago shuttle doesn’t fly late at night.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I work at Lunken, remember?”

  “You might not know all the schedules.”

  “Mols, I’m dating that shuttle’s pilot. Or I was.”

  Dating a pilot? Since when? Molly knew next to nothing about Liza’s life since her return, and all because Molly was too much of a coward to explain herself. She’d never been so ashamed, about so many things. “Hey,” Liza said more gently. “You’re really scared, aren’t you? What does Daniel think?”

  Molly pulled another tissue from the pack. “Just what he told you at dinner. That you saved us from an entirely random intruder. No reason for future concern.”

  “He’s your husband. What happened between you two that you can’t talk to him about something like this?”

  “He will never forgive me this,” Molly said.

  “You don’t know that. And I’m not seeing other options here. You can’t go on this way.”

  She shook her head, knowing Liza was right but unable to imagine any outcome that was better. She’d be less afraid, maybe, but more alone than ever. “I told you, there’s a wall.”