Forget Me Not

Claire is struck by the silence of the country, the absences of city noise and lights. She sleeps soundly and wakes up confused before remembering she’s at Galloway Farm. She looks at her phone but has no service, which isn’t a surprise given the remote location. She surveys the guesthouse and sees that Mitchell has prepped it with everything she could need. She unpacks her things and notices that a desk drawer contains a carved phrase: “Lily was here” (71).

While cleaning the guesthouse, Claire finds the air conditioner is blocked by the bed and moves it. As Claire cleans dust from the vent, she discovers an old diary. The first entry is from 1983, written when Marcia was only 17. Claire wonders if she should stop reading and give it back, but her curiosity gets the best of her. She learns Marcia’s parents were extremely protective and Marcia bought the diary to hide her secret relationship with Mitchell. As Claire didn’t hear Marcia speak the night before, she superimposes Natalie’s voice onto the diary contents. Marcia reveals she thinks Mitchell is “THE boy” (75) and begins to recount how she met him.

Marcia’s narrative continues. It’s November 1983, and Marcia is frustrated by her parents’ insistence she should be submissive and humble. After dark, she sneaks out to go see the movie Romeo and Juliet without her parents’ permission. Lately, she’s been questioning their values which include being wary of all books, film and art. Marcia would like to go to college, but her father doesn’t think she should.

When she leaves the theater, she walks through the smoke of a young man’s joint and he offers her some. He is dressed like hippies she’s seen on the news and he warns her she shouldn’t be out so late. She gets nervous as he asks her name, but she’s also intrigued. He tells her she’s pretty. She ascertains quickly that he’s older than herself and she worries briefly about how dangerous he might be, but excitement takes over. He introduces himself as Mitchell. When she asks if he’s local, he says he’s not from “around anywhere” (82). He lifts the joint to his mouth and Marcia takes it and takes a drag.

Claire is startled from her reading of the diary by Mitchell knocking on her front porch. He says he hoped he hasn’t woken her up. He wants to give her a tour of the property. In the garden, he notes that harvesting should occur first thing in the morning. He tells Claire may take whatever she wants from the vegetable garden and to give him a list for anything she needs in town. He shows her the chicken coop and the shed, where the supplies are. She feels a little intimidated by all the unfamiliar farming equipment and gets a creepy feeling there.

Mitchell shows her the grapes and notes how time-consuming picking is, since it must be done by hand. Liam will help her but it will be hard work. She does note that Natalie did this, and thinks agreeing will bring her closer to her sister’s experience.

Claire remembers she’s not connected to the internet and wonders at modern technology’s hold over her life. She needs to check in with Ryan and the renter. She decides to leave the guesthouse to ask at the main house about service. When she opens her door, Liam’s there. He’s brought a prepared picnic lunch. They walk in friendly silence to a live oak, then settle in to eat and drink a beer. She asks how he manages all alone and he says it’s not so bad, though he is enjoying having her company. He asks if she has a boyfriend and warns her that Mitchell doesn’t like unexpected guests. She says it’s just her, although she thinks of Ryan.

Liam asks her about her job, noting that she seemed deliberately vague the night before. She insists she doesn’t have a shady past and reveals she’s a journalist. She’s trying to go freelance but hasn’t been successful and feels embarrassed. She tells Liam she’s not snooping, but does feel guilty about the diary, which she doesn’t admit to reading. He tells her that Marcia and Mitchell are very protective of their privacy and she shouldn’t mention her job to them. She thanks him for the heads-up. He seems to want to say more, but chooses not to.

Liam has given her the internet password so Claire connects to a weak signal. She discovers she has a series of texts from Ryan, who is concerned about her. She’s about to answer when he calls. She explains that the service is spotty, but she doesn’t tell Ryan she’s not at her mom’s. He tells he’s proud of her for doing something so hard. She doesn’t tell him she knows she’s avoiding her problems, just like her mom does. He admits he’s bored without her then reiterates that what she is doing—facing her mom—is healthy. She tells him that his support means a lot. He then lets her know that her tenants are pretty rowdy.

They laugh together and she admits she has feelings for Ryan but is commitment-phobic. Sad when she sees there are no developments on job leads, she ends the phone call, and escapes back into Marcia’s diary.

The narrative of Marcia’s diary continues in December 1983. Marcia wakes up in Mitchell’s orange camper, to find him staring at her. Marcia’s not sure of how or when she fell asleep. Mitchell tells her she’s beautiful, which reminds her of the first night they met and how he told her the same thing. This is appealing to her since her conservative clothing is ridiculed at school and she is often made fun of. Mitchell’s intense attention is seductive. Marcia often sneaks out of the house to meet him and have sex.

After she finds a sweatshirt from University of California at Berkeley in his camper, he tells her he studied psychology there. Marcia tells him how she longs to go to college, but he assures her college is a fraudulent scheme and she can learn everything by going out to see the world. He assures her that the only way to be free is to be independent. He knows how to read the “real” her and wants her to stop feeling lonely and lost. Mitchell tells her she’s ready to “meet the others” (107).

The next morning, a tired Claire overlooks the water, disturbed by Marcia’s words. She’s learned that Marcia had penetrative sex for the first time with Mitchell, but seems very young and naïve in her diary, even though she was technically 18 at the time—an adult.

As she walks by the dock, Claire spots a dead fox in the water. She hears a noise and sees Marcia on the porch. Realizing she still has yet to hear her speak, Claire decides to visit the older woman. She asks Marcia about what it was like to meet Mitchell, but Marcia tells her that Claire doesn’t really want to know that. Claire asks how they started the farm and Marcia reveals that they had gotten the land by luck.

Mitchell comes outside, with two mugs of tea. Once he arrives, Marcia becomes reticent and stops talking. As Mitchell assesses her and Marcia tenses, Claire excuses herself, feeling uncomfortable, as if she’s been caught spying. She worries she’s got Marcia into trouble.

Claire completes her work, even though the shed still makes her uneasy. She glances at the house. She’s convinced Mitchell was watching her earlier, which causes Claire some anxiety.

She takes a small break to get water from a house and admires the garden of herbs and flowers next to the vegetable garden. Liam surprises her by coming up and asking if she’s ever tried honeysuckle. When she says no, he teases her about being a so-called “Southern girl” (118). She’s surprised but remembers she did tell him she grew up in the area. He asks where, and she tells him Claxton, but notes she hasn’t been back in years. She enjoys trying the honeysuckle, but Liam warns her not to eat everything that looks good because some of the plants are toxic. He says most of it is out by the water. She mentions the dead fox and he tells her that he’ll take care of it. They go to pick grapes.

After picking grapes for several hours, Liam warns Claire she’ll be sore. She liked being outdoors, however, and contrasts it with her oppressive apartment in the city.

She asks Liam for more information about Mitchell and how he found the land for the farm. Liam reveals he bought the 50 acres in the 1980s. She wonders how he could afford that, but Liam notes that it was a lot cheaper 40 years earlier. Claire notes this doesn’t jibe with Marcia’s diary. When she asks why he decided to harvest grapes, Liam tells her Mitchell is good with plants.

Later, Claire returns to the guesthouse, where a basket of the things she’s asked for rests on the kitchen counter. Although she’s grateful for the items, she’s slightly disturbed: She’s sure she locked the guesthouse. She decides she must be mistaken.

Alone, Claire looks up records for when Mitchell bought the property from Steven Montague. While the place is now worth a couple of million, it was only $45,000 then. Claire can’t trace Steven Montague on the internet so she searches for Mitchell Galloway instead, returning some local interest pieces. She looks up Marcia as well. Coming up with nothing, she searches under her maiden name of Rayburn. She learns that Marcia Rayburn went missing from her family home in March 1984.

There’s a photograph of the Rayburn family together in the newspaper documenting Marcia’s disappearance. Claire is startled by the fact that Marcia left the house very similarly to how Natalie did the final time in 2002: No note, an open window, and a missing duffel bag.

Recalling the diary, Claire thinks of Marcia’s desire to escape home. She thinks maybe Marcia ran away and then contacted her parents, and they just quietly kept it to themselves out of feeling embarrassed. However, Claire then sees a follow-up a year later that states that Marcia remained missing. An included photo shows how devastated the Rayburns look. This reminds her of Annaliese’s own hollowed-out persona after Natalie left. She zooms in and can’t reconcile the younger face—the long straight hair and lively eyes—with the older woman now in the house. She wonders what Natalie herself would look like now and worries she might not even recognize her.

Claire concludes that Marcia Rayburn is considered still missing—and the only two people who might know where she is are Claire and Mitchell.