Forget You Know Me

by Jessica Strawser

  But no one had seen. Or at least no one had known what they saw. He’d rationalized that good intentions could compensate for bad judgment, even as he’d promised himself that no one would ever know.

  He’d been wrong. But today, in the moments before Liza stormed in, it hadn’t felt wrong. It had felt worth it. A twisted, backward way back to Molly, back to the man he had meant to be, out of this awful arrangement with Toby and on his way to a fresh start all the way around. It had almost worked, which was the craziest thing of all. And that had made it hard to be sorry.

  It was easier now.

  “What did you say to that poor man last night to make him come over and confess this morning? That might be the most messed-up thing. His hands are heartbreakingly full without your bullshit.”

  “That was—a means to an end. I didn’t like doing it. Even if he was after my wife. But it solved some very complicated problems for me. One of which has nothing to do with Molly and is the reason you really shouldn’t be here right now.”

  “You know, it’s not like you’ve never shown your manipulative side before, but I always liked you anyway,” she said, exaggerating her tone as if to marvel at her own naïveté.

  “For what it’s worth,” he said, “Rick agreed it was for the best. He wouldn’t have done it otherwise.”

  “Now you’re trying it on me,” she said, eyes wide with incredulity. “Let’s set Rick aside and back up. Do you know what you put me through? I still don’t follow what you would have done if I didn’t see you. What would have happened if—”

  She stopped short, and he watched the realization dawn across her face. He’d thought of it a lot, himself, ever since the day he’d run into her at Lunken, looked up reports of the fire upon landing in Chicago, and put the dates together. “My harebrained scheme saved your life,” he said for her. “That, I don’t regret.”

  She stood, motionless, her eyes clouded over. “Look,” he told her. “You know deep down I’m right that we were losing her. I did the stupid thing, you saw me, and then what did Molly do? Nothing! Are you aware she didn’t even tell me about the intruder at all?” Liza stared through him. “I came home and heard it from the cop parked outside, and then she acted like he wasn’t even out there, like nothing even happened. If I didn’t confront her later that day, I probably still wouldn’t have heard any of this from her. Meanwhile, you show up to check on her and she slams the door in your face.” Surprise flickered in Liza’s eyes. She was listening. He kept going. “Does that sound like someone who was in a place to talk things through, work things out? If you hadn’t moved back, where do you think you two would be now?”

  Liza stepped back. She wouldn’t want anything to do with this line of reasoning, but she couldn’t deny it, either. “If there’d been any doubt we were two seconds away from losing her, the morning after erased it. What I did was messed up, but how she reacted was, too. Who doesn’t tell her own husband about an intruder? Who doesn’t welcome her worried best friend inside when she’s been driving all night? Don’t tell me nothing drastic was necessary. I’m not saying what I did was right, but I also know that’s not true.”

  There was a commotion, outside his office. The email had landed. People were talking. They’d be coming here soon, the ones at the top, to hear it straight from him all over again. Liza turned toward the closed door, her head cocked, attuned to the energy shift.

  “You’re going to have to go,” Daniel said, his urgency rising. Now or never. “I’m begging you, Liza, please don’t tell Molly. There’s no reason for her to know. What does it change? And she’s doing better now. We’re doing better now. And you two are, too. What’s done is done.”

  “Oh no. You’re not pulling me into this.”

  “You’re already in it. Please at least think about it. What’s to be gained from telling her?”

  She shook her head, incredulous. A knock sounded on the door.

  “Please,” he said again.

  The door opened and Liza walked out before he could say another word. All he could do was watch her go as the line of waiting suits filed inside.

  35

  In the contemplative vacuum of silence left by Liza’s departure, Molly had turned to another strong woman for company.

  In all her years of paging through the Eleanor Roosevelt quote book—the one that had inspired the name of her daughter, the one that had followed her from bedroom to dorm room to apartment to house—she’d managed to skip over the First Lady’s “Ten Rules for Success in Marriage,” reprinted from a 1931 edition of Pictorial Review. Not all advice was evergreen, after all. Even the feminist icon had listed housekeeping among a wife’s three fundamental roles and asserted that having children was not a choice but a duty in matrimony.

  Molly read them now, however, with an initial skepticism that grew into the kind of intense discomfort you want to wriggle swiftly out of, leaving your skin behind if that’s what it takes to be free.

  The rules, for the most part, were still relevant, smart. Yet both she and Daniel had broken every one. Apportion your time and energy.… Expect to disagree. Be honest. Talk things over. Keep alive the spirit of courtship, that thoughtfulness which existed before marriage.

  Also, this prescient understatement: Remember that sooner or later money is apt to be a cause of friction.

  Right.

  It was as if they, but most literally she, had had the answers all along, yet blatantly disregarded them. What audacity, for either her or Daniel to have expected a better outcome.

  This was doing nothing to help her mind-set for their sit-down tonight. It only made her feel less worthy of forgiveness, her sense of hope waning as her dismay at their mistakes grew wider and deeper. Their breaking points were not, as she’d told herself, the product of a few escalated bad decisions, but the result of systematic failures in their fundamental core.

  But Molly was meant to be psyching herself up, not tearing herself down—and thank God for Liza, yet again. Here her friend was back, calling out a greeting in lieu of a knock, brandishing a white paper bag darkened with splotches of pastry grease. One look at her face, though, and Molly sensed she was about to lose her appetite.

  “This goes against the grain for delivering bad news, but I don’t think you should get this sitting down,” Liza said. “Let’s walk.”

  So they did, like they used to—down the manicured sidewalks, where everything seemed maddeningly ordinary. The pungent, woody smell of freshly spread mulch and the drone of a lawn mower and the tiny lawn signs the schools were fond of doling out: “Home of an All-Star Reader” and “Congrats to Our Graduate” and “Team Spirit: We Bleed Orange!” The people in these houses had followed Eleanor’s rules, certainly. At least some of them.

  “Something you said earlier tipped me off,” Liza began. “But I had to be sure. Too many false accusations have been flung already.”

  She pieced it all together for Molly as they walked—what Daniel had put her through, and sustained somehow, and his backward rationale, and whatever the hell he must have said to Rick last night, no doubt proving to the guy that he was better off without the mayhem that came with Molly. Their pace slowed as Liza picked up steam, gesturing in front of them wildly, a hand talker in times of stress, tearing truth through the air. Back on the couch or at the kitchen table, Molly might have absorbed the shock like a blow, but Liza had been right to keep her moving this way. Their forward momentum carried Molly into the thick and through, and the soreness of yesterday and the reckonings of this morning fell away until she was left with only this. The words. The walk. The reality.

  Liza stole a quick glance at her. “Are you okay? This is a lot.”

  Molly concentrated on the rhythm of their sneakers on the pavement. One, two. One, two. She realized she hadn’t thought of her mantra once today—not even while Rick was unloading his false confession, and most telling of all not now—and was glad to be rid of it. Even counting to two was more soothing than constantly reminding
herself nothing was easy. And it was comforting to have Liza in stride beside her. Step, step. Had a part of Molly suspected Daniel? Had a part of her known? She didn’t think so. If she had, maybe the rage that was heating to a rolling boil now would be tempered by some unsurprised emotion—the satisfaction of a hunch panning out, even in a heartbreaking way.

  “I don’t know what to be angriest about,” Molly said, her voice slippery, barely under her control. “It’s taken years to hear him own up to having done anything to contribute to the state we’re in. Now I’m supposed to believe he was so aware of it, so desperate about it, he did this?”

  Liza shrugged. “I caught him off guard, but he was ardent at explaining himself. Something’s going down at his office today, too. Seemed serious. Maybe to do with that scandal you mentioned?”

  It was. He’d texted with the bombshell: Toby caught in an illegal scheme, and Daniel helping do the catching. Said he needed to make some statements, on the record. He’d be home late. Possibly very late.

  Said she’d inspired him yesterday, at the finish line, to be the sort of person others could put their faith in, even when it was hard to come through. Said he loved her, so much.

  Had he typed those words before or after Liza’s visit?

  “Does he honestly think there’s a chance in hell you didn’t come straight here and tell me everything?”

  Liza shrugged. “He begged me not to.”

  “Well,” Molly said dryly. “Thank you for not succumbing to his charms.” She meant it as a joke, but Liza didn’t laugh. A woman with a jogging stroller raised a hand in greeting as she passed, and they waited until she was behind them before speaking again.

  “I’m on your side,” Liza said. “In case that isn’t obvious.”

  “It is. I’m sorry.” Molly hugged herself, though the air was sticky. Her arms seemed to need some purpose, and swinging them felt bizarrely cheerful. “What do I do with this?”

  “Molly, he—maybe you’ve already thought of it.” She cleared her throat. “He saved me from that fire. Saved my life.”

  She’d not thought of it. My God. She turned her attention to Liza, trying to discern if this exacerbated the way Liza had been feeling since her near miss, or if it helped somehow. Her sudden gratitude at her friend’s very presence overwhelmed her, and she reached out and gave Liza’s hand a squeeze. Liza squeezed back.

  “So you can’t be mad at him, is what you’re saying.”

  “Oh no,” Liza said. “I’m mad. And I’m—I’m more sad, if I’m honest. For both of you. Last night, the way you were talking about him had me thinking that turnarounds were possible, under any circumstances. But now…” She shook her head. “I can’t cast a vote, is all. However you handle this has to be your call.”

  Under any circumstances. She’d almost dared to think so, too, and she wanted to scream at having it ripped from her grasp. “This is insane,” she said. “I swear I used to be a normal person. With room to talk.”

  “Maybe,” Liza said. She never did mince words. “But even if? You both did something desperate to try to save something you loved. You both got in over your heads. You’d both change it if you could.”

  It was a charitable perspective, begging to be challenged. But Liza had already done so much. Molly wouldn’t press her, though she wanted to: Tell me again why you believe the best about him—or even about me. Tell me why I should. Tell me if any of that is enough.

  Tell me how to forget I know this.

  “Say he could forgive you everything. Could you forgive him? What do you want?”

  “I don’t know.” What did she want? She was furious. Heartbroken. And … was she relieved? She’d been about to take her place in the hot seat, but now Daniel would be joining her there. Was it wrong to feel less alone?

  Still, she couldn’t visualize the next steps. She let out something between a moan and a growl. “What I want is to skip ahead,” she said. “To where we have no real worries, not in our finances, not in our marriage. Where Daniel is like he was at the starting line yesterday: in it all the way. Where I’m like I was then, too: capable of things I thought I couldn’t do.”

  “So you don’t want to skip to the part where you’re divorced and over it,” Liza pointed out.

  Molly pursed her lips. “But maybe that’s the shock talking. It’s not that simple. How could I trust him again? And even if I could, what does that say about me? That I’m a doormat?”

  “Doormats don’t open and shut doors,” Liza said firmly. “And you are the one here with your hand on the knob.”

  Was she? With Daniel on the other side, wanting in?

  The person who wants less from the relationship holds the power.

  “Besides,” Liza went on. “Maybe simplicity is overrated. Or maybe things can be as simple as we want them to be.”

  Number one on Eleanor Roosevelt’s list of marriage rules was to have a plan. A clear objective for the future.

  For that, Molly had two choices. And one, she could suddenly see, had a big advantage over the other.

  36

  More than any other place she’d worked, Liza liked closing up the Sky Galley. Mornings here were de rigueur as anywhere—the preparation, the inevitability of some ingredient or service revealing itself to be in short supply—but after dark, after the last patrons had departed and her staff had cashed out and rolled the next day’s silverware, the space took on an air of novelty. With the background din silenced every footfall echoed under the old ceilings, and the picture windows framed a panorama of lights blinking and blurring down the runways.

  They closed fairly early—weeknights at nine—and Liza liked to linger after everyone else had gone, as she did tonight. She straightened the line of high-backed barstools running the length of the galley that gave the restaurant its name, pausing to watch a plane take off and finding, at last, that she had more curiosity about where it was headed than worry about whether it would get there.

  Seeing Steph so unburdened had restored for Liza some of her faith that things were more likely to go right than wrong. And Daniel—oh, Daniel—had proven that even a terrible mistake could result in some improbable thing to be grateful for. If not for that, she wouldn’t be here.

  She’d had to relearn that letting go didn’t necessarily make you naïve, only hopeful.

  She didn’t know what might happen between Molly and Daniel tonight, but she was happy to be free of the questions that had tormented her since she’d been their witness. Free of a lot of things. Lighter.

  After another almost summer day, the dinner crowd had arrived in a good mood. Liza was growing to like them—the loyal regulars, the hungry trail runners, the unhurried travelers, who didn’t forget to appreciate Lunken for what it was, a last-man-standing symbol of a less complicated time. She’d worried, signing on, that this job might not feel like enough, but for now it was exactly enough—nothing less and nothing more.

  If only she could break her habit of watching the door, foolish though it was to hope Henry would reappear. She owed him an apology at the very least, and had gotten as far as scrolling to his name on her phone, but that was where she clammed up. She’d been in such disarray since they’d met, she couldn’t even think of a convincing argument to coax him back.

  Satisfied the restaurant was ready for another day, she headed to where she’d stashed her purse beneath the bar and retrieved the rental application a prospective landlord had faxed over. She had appointments to see two of his properties in Mount Lookout tomorrow. Nothing good stayed on the rental market there for long, though she wasn’t otherwise in a hurry to move. Since her talk with Steph, Luke had warmed again, and Liza worried less about wearing out her welcome and more about making the most of this time they had together.

  She grabbed a pen from the hostess station and crossed to a table by the window, but before she could pull out a chair something caught her attention beyond the patio.

  Or, rather, someone.

  Henry lifted
one hand in a sheepish wave, indicating with the other, through elaborate finger walking, that she should come out and join him. He wasn’t exactly smiling, but then again, he was here, and anticipation surged through her at the sight of him. She held up a finger and rushed to gather her things, turning out the lights and locking the door behind her.

  Her breath caught as she headed down the walk toward the dark airfield. Waiting at the open gate, Henry was out of uniform but still somehow looked the part with his light zip jacket hanging open over his T-shirt in the warm night air.

  “I didn’t want you to think I was a creeper, waiting out here for you,” he said, preempting her while she was still a few strides away. “But there’s something I want to show you.”

  “I don’t think you’re a creeper,” she said, grinning. “Yet. Guess it depends on what this something is.”

  “Fair enough.” She followed him through the opening and toward the first hangar. Lights dangled high overhead into the cavernous, shadowy space, revealing an assortment of small planes in various colors and body styles. They passed one that might have belonged to Snoopy’s Red Baron, then two more modern silver models, and stopped next to a white and blue two-seater with disproportionately long wings. Just looking at them conjured an image of the plane gliding aloft, tilting back and forth in constant search of center, and so Liza focused her gaze on the cockpit, where Henry stood next to the open door.

  “On loan from a friend,” he said. “A beauty, isn’t she?”

  Liza nodded. She’d never thought of a plane as beautiful, but this one looked as if someone had showered it with love. There wasn’t so much as a scuff on the paint, and polished leather beckoned from the seats.

  “I was hoping you might reconsider,” he said, gesturing inside, and her eyes widened. He held up a hand. “Don’t answer yet. I’ve brought provisions. In the event of the most common mishaps, you’ll be prepared.” He turned and reached into the space behind the passenger seat, procured a large cardboard box, and set it at his feet.