Forget You Know Me

by Jessica Strawser

  “Well, the Molly I know can’t be stopped by a little wall.”

  She laughed weakly. Guilt had been chipping away at her fortress ever since she’d declined Daniel’s overture of the retreat, but she had so many things to feel guilty about, it was getting hard to separate one from the next.

  “Can you forgive me?” she asked. It was one of many things she’d have been better off asking sooner. Much sooner. “I know I don’t deserve it. I never should have treated you the way I did. It wasn’t about you, and it wasn’t fair to you. I just—panicked.”

  Liza looked away. She didn’t have to say that she wasn’t sure she could, that she wasn’t sure she wanted to. She was never one to mask her feelings, and Molly could read them as if they were her own.

  In fact, they had been her own—toward Daniel. But never toward Liza.

  “I’m trying to figure out how to sell this to Luke,” Liza said finally. A conspicuous non-answer. And perhaps an apt subject change. Luke had never liked Molly—had always seen her for what she was. A pathetic excuse for a friend. “I promised him I’d go to that meditation class with you. Which is obviously not happening. But it was either that or see a therapist. And I’m not sure this Rosie thing counts as therapeutic. No offense.”

  A therapist? Luke wasn’t a touchy-feely sort. He must be convinced that Liza needed help. Significantly. So much of their limited time together, since Liza’s return, had been focused on wading through Molly’s debris field. No wonder her friend was reluctant to bury bygones. Molly was lucky Liza was standing here at all, bothering to change the subject, putting off hurting her feelings. She cleared the lump from her throat, trying to keep her voice neutral. “Well, if you want to find the least-offensive-to-you self-help option available, I’m your girl. Ask me anything—I’ve tried it all.”

  “You know, maybe that’s the problem. Maybe it’s like … well, I have this new beef with news headlines. I’ve been rewriting them—just for myself. Trying to make them more honest.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “To be less about what happened, and more about who it happened to—and why, I guess. Ever since the fire … it bothers me that we get the facts, but not the humanity behind them.”

  Hmmm. This might explain Luke’s concern. But Molly wasn’t in a position to judge.

  “Maybe it’s the same with the self-help stuff. It’s spelled out for you, and it might seem cut-and-dry, but that stuff works differently for everyone. And if you take it all as gospel, maybe you’re sending yourself the message that if you’ve read all the relevant books and articles and you’re still unwell, it’s your fault.”

  “It is my fault.”

  Liza shook her head. “Maybe this debt is your fault, maybe this line you’re teetering on with Rick is your fault, but your pain isn’t your fault. And how your husband has reacted? I don’t doubt he’s given you a few hard shoves toward Rick, or toward the next fix, or whatever. I’m not saying you don’t bear any responsibility, but you can’t blame yourself for everything.”

  If only. “You’ve never liked self-help. You once told me it felt ‘oppressive.’”

  “Well, you haven’t proven me wrong.”

  Maybe Molly was putting too much emphasis on the self part. She could only have gotten in this deep without someone else to snap her out of it. She managed a smile.

  “If I have to lay off the self-analysis, then so do you.”

  “Mine’s different.”

  “Is it? I’ve become an expert at not thinking through consequences—self-delusion all the way. But you’ve convinced yourself every decision you make is life-or-death. No wonder you’re feeling so anxious.”

  A beat of something like understanding passed between them. “One pain at a time,” Liza said softly. “Like you said. You deal with one at a time, but you deal. Okay? And I will, too.”

  Hearing Liza say the words made it seem doable, possible, if only Liza would still be there, by her side.

  But she still hadn’t answered that part. And Molly knew better than to ask again.

  28

  One day to go until the big-deal meeting with the big-headed suits, and Daniel’s budget presentation had never been so … creative.

  Damn it. On top of everything, now he was borrowing Toby’s word.

  The math was all there, and everyone knew numbers didn’t lie. It reflected twelve solid fiscal months of widespread profits dwarfing spotty losses and forecasted an even better year ahead: streamlined expenses without a reduction in staff, and acquisition-driven growth that had remarkably little blowback on existing resources. A whole desktop folder full of meticulously zipped-up spreadsheets, and there was no reason to be nervous about a thing in any of them. He’d never seen the company in such a safe, healthy place—an anomaly in today’s corporate climate, an executive board’s dream. If they were to request a change, it should be to add a little something extra for his troubles. That’s how good it looked. That’s how lucky the employees were.

  The creativity, of course, was in what it did not reflect. The transgressions in HR were buried—down to the travel expenses that had first drawn Daniel’s attention. The omissions were too small to be line items unless someone requested a closer look, which wouldn’t happen, as they were for things that weren’t supposed to have transpired. And the fact that employee deductions didn’t add up as they should? The bogus fees that made the provider a bad deal all the way around? Well, that information didn’t get reviewed at this level. That’s how unlucky the employees were.

  Still, he needed this day, all eight, nine, or ten hours of it, and the rest of the office knew not to disturb him, the star of tomorrow’s show. Ostensibly he was looking it all over once more. In actuality he was sitting with what he was about to do. It wasn’t his first point of no return in recent memory, and the others hadn’t gone particularly well. He needed this to be different.

  The call buzzed through on his desk line, and as soon as he picked it up Daniel knew this could not be good news: Liza, of all people, calling him at work, of all places.

  Was this a bad time? she wanted to know. It was a horrible time, but he wasn’t about to put her off without finding out what she had to say. And he could always count on Liza to get right to the point. Which she did.

  “I’m worried about Molly.”

  He’d once had a boss who’d respond Welcome to my world! when anyone dared voice a complaint—in blatant negligence of the reality that his “world” was largely daisies and rainbows, thanks to his long-suffering support staff. Daniel had come to loathe the phrase, and yet it was what leaped to his mind now: Welcome to my world. He resisted the urge to say it aloud.

  Molly’s rejection of his retreat idea had felt like a final attempt failed, in part because, while the invitation hadn’t been insincere—far from it—it had also been a test. He’d been hoping she’d turn to him with the status of her pain, tallying its figurative and literal costs. But not only had Molly not come clean, she’d turned somewhere far darker. It threw him, the way she dismissed the idea, along with all her other attempts, with a simple I’ve been doing it wrong, as if it were out of her hands, no longer a problem worth fixing. An alarming category she seemed on the verge of lumping their marriage into while she was at it.

  And her accusations—they hurt, in part because she was right. Not about every single thing she said, but about too much of it. He hadn’t brought up the retreat since. In spite of the fact that the thing was prepaid, he had no idea if they were going.

  “I don’t understand why she’s not telling you this herself,” Liza went on, “and I don’t like betraying a confidence. But Daniel, she’s scared. She thinks that intruder was someone who’s out to get her. She’s terrified they’ll be back.”

  Well now, hang on a second. He’d been bracing himself to hear that Molly wasn’t herself anymore, that she seemed weary, exhausted, defeated. But terrified?

  “You’re sure? I didn’t even think this was still on her mind
. You heard her at dinner. A random thing. Bullet dodged.”

  “She doesn’t really believe that,” Liza said. “Do you?”

  This was uncomfortably direct. “Well, I don’t have any other theories,” he said, trying to sound unbothered, if perplexed. So Molly didn’t believe the intruder was Rick after all. Or, more likely, she didn’t believe it anymore—Rick had convinced her otherwise. Either way, she was still hanging out with the guy. Nori had mentioned Rosie just yesterday.

  “That makes one of you,” Liza said. “You’re not involved in anything that might have put you both at risk? At work, maybe?” There wasn’t real conviction behind the question, but still it put him on edge. It implied Molly had alluded to the possibility.

  “Of course not,” he said, even as his palms grew clammy at the thought of who else Molly might have mentioned it to. “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Well, Molly doesn’t think so. She’s freaked out,” Liza said. “And that freaks me out. You can’t let on that I called you about this, but you need to find a way to bring it up with her.”

  “I—”

  “If there’s any truth at all to what she’s afraid of, she shouldn’t be facing it alone. But I don’t know how to help. I think you’re the only one who can do that.”

  He was nodding, slowly, into the empty room, an action no more futile than anything else he’d done in recent memory. This week marked a month since the incident, a month of failing to correct their course. His nudges, his overtures, his tiptoed dances around things no one wanted to say—all of it had amounted to nothing.

  “Thanks for the call,” he said, all business. It was an unnatural tact to take with someone who had once climbed through their apartment window without so much as a knock every weekend morning. But so much had changed. “I’ll look into it.”

  Left to the silence of his office, he stared unseeing at his computer screen and categorized the cause and effect in the Molly spreadsheet of his mind.

  Rick might not be the only thing Daniel had missed. Something else might have spooked her. Toby? In spite of the unsettling but explained-away sighting on their street, Daniel couldn’t work out a reason his adversary would breach their deal and approach Molly. Toby was getting what he wanted, after all.

  Daniel, however, was not.

  It was time to do what he should have done in the first place. In more ways than one.

  29

  The congestion at the starting line—people securing their numbers with pins, double-knotting their shoes, stretching their hamstrings, high-fiving their partners—was almost enough to mask Molly’s mounting panic.

  Almost.

  Why had she thought she could do this?

  Long before any real kind of pain ever gripped her, she’d dreaded the timed mile runs in phys ed. She was an active enough student, with ballet and biking, to think of herself as healthy, even fit, but running seemed to require a set of skills her body was programmed to reject. Her breath would too quickly become shallow. Her sides would clench into stitches, bending her at odd angles. Her shins would splint no matter how diligently she walked on her heels before or after. She’d manage to finish, but inevitably among the stragglers, and never without collapsing like a gasping fish on the other side of the stopwatch.

  She’d been so much younger then. And that had only been one mile. People talked about 5Ks as if they were short jaunts, so she’d been more shocked than she should’ve been to look up the distance conversion and find she’d agreed to run 3.1 miles. Three times as far as those miserable gym classes back when she’d been at least three times more in shape.

  Grant was punching the air next to her Rocky Balboa style, jumping on his tiptoes like a slingshot ready to release. School had let out a half hour ago, and the midafternoon heat was intensified here on the blacktop of the bus lot. He was wearing a kindergarten class T-shirt the PTO peddled for monthly “spirit days,” color blocked in the school’s signature orange. To match she’d worn the only orange shirt in her closet, a Bengals tee Daniel had gifted her one Christmas in spite of her disdain for the NFL. If gifts could talk, most of the ones she’d received from her husband would have purred If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. Daniel hated that expression—he had a tendency to be personally affronted by idioms, especially at work—so why he’d foist the intent behind it upon her was a mystery best left unexplored.

  Grant beamed at her. “Okay, Mom, so the plan is for me to match your pace,” he said importantly. He’d been spouting recommendations from his after-school club for days. There will be water stations and we shouldn’t skip them, even if we don’t feel thirsty. We should not wear new shoes in case they give us blisters. Even though it’s a race, we shouldn’t worry about winning, only about finishing. The last part was no comfort. Winning was obviously out of the question, but she’d started to worry Grant didn’t see it that way. “Our time doesn’t get recorded until our slowest runner crosses the line.” This, too, she’d heard no fewer than a dozen times, and every time, her heart sank lower. If she didn’t finish, Grant wouldn’t get credit. And though he’d first received her offer to run the race with an appropriate amount of skepticism, somewhere along the line he’d convinced himself that she could do it. While her own doubts had grown, his had been absorbed by youthful enthusiasm. If she disappointed him, what would that do to his ability to keep faith in any unlikely thing?

  What would it do to his faith in her?

  “Got it,” she said, bending again to touch her toes. Shades of orange swirled around her, and she felt suddenly light-headed. Her airway was dry, but there was no water station here and wouldn’t be for the first mile. This was a terrible mistake. She straightened and searched the spectators for Rick, who was holding Rosie in one arm and Nori in the other. The girls pointed and waved, but Rick’s expression mirrored her own. He hadn’t tried to talk her out of this, but nor did he share Grant’s belief that she’d wished her way into a vastly improved human vessel overnight.

  She had to find a way out, a way that would save face for her and Grant both. Something that had nothing to do with being weak, that might occur through no fault of her own. She scanned the sidelines for options and saw nothing more promising than a golf cart manned by volunteers. If she were to maneuver in front of it, then stumble …

  No. This was ridiculous. She had only two options: go through with it, somehow, or tell Grant now that she couldn’t. Yet true to form, it seemed she could do neither of those things. She could only stand rooted, about to humiliate herself and her son in front of his entire school. The heat filled her lungs and threatened to explode. She wondered what hyperventilation felt like, even as she told herself to stay calm, that panic would only beget panic, just as doubt would only beget doubt, and pain would only beget pain.

  Easy. She hated this damn mantra. She needed a new one, but it was all she had. Easy. A hand clapped her on the back, and she turned.

  The stranger who’d confronted her in the nature center parking lot was dressed exactly as he had been that day—as if this time it was more important to be sure she recognized him than it was to blend with his surroundings. He tipped his Panama hat and flashed an icy smile, his fingers curling around his binoculars as he leaned closer. The panic that had already begun to grip her squeezed harder.

  “You know what they say about how you can run but not hide,” he chided, giving her a wink. “It’s wonderful to see you healed enough to attempt the running part. But the latter half would be unwise to try.”

  Grant was dancing around again, oblivious, so close to this horrible man—too close. Molly wanted to wrap her son in the protection of her arms and fight her way through the waiting racers, to get away, but what if there was still some chance the man didn’t know which child was hers? She didn’t dare point Grant out with so much as a glance, just in case. She was unable to move anyway, frozen in her terror.

  One pain at a time, she and Liza had decided. Molly’s calendar mandated that the race be the one she d
ealt with first. But what if she’d already dragged her feet too long?

  “Final warning to pay up,” the man said, his voice an eerily pleasant singsong.

  “What if I can’t?” Her words were a low rasp. She should have asked the first time he’d appeared. But the vagueness of his warning had, somehow, allowed her to slip back into her denial, uncomfortable though it was.

  “Well, we don’t bust up knees.” He gestured toward her copper sleeve–wrapped legs, and chuckled. “Though maybe you’re wishing I would.” He took a step closer, his voice lower still. “We’re more about taking temporary custody of something of value. A vehicle, perhaps—though we’d need more than one in your case. Of course, sometimes it’s the things that have no monetary value that are the greatest motivators.”

  There was a flurry of motion at her side, and she looked down with horror to see Grant looking up at her expectantly. Before she could sweep him out of view, the man dropped a firm palm onto the top of his head and left it there. “Good luck with your race today, son,” he said warmly.

  “Thanks!” Grant replied.

  The last of Molly’s denial disintegrated, too late.

  “Good luck to you, too,” he told Molly, winking again. “I expect we’ll be hearing from you soon. Say, within the week?” Just like that, he turned and began weaving his way through the crowd. She watched the top of his hat bob until she couldn’t see it anymore. She risked a glance over at Rick, but his attention was on the girls. Somehow, no one had seen.

  She might still be safe. They all might be safe. For now.

  But only for now.

  Grant had thought nothing of the encounter, was giggling with a friend who’d called his name. She looked down at her body, becoming aware of the adrenaline coursing through her veins, the primal fight-or-flight curling itself into every muscle. And her next thought, bizarrely, was not that she no longer had a choice but to come clean to Daniel, to pay her debts by any means necessary, to stand guard in the meantime. None of that was going away—final warning, custody, motivators—but it could wait for her at the finish line.