Forget Me Not: A gripping, heart-wrenching thriller full of emotion and twists!. A. Taylor M.

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       CHAPTER TWO

      I was dreaming of the sheet of glass again.

      I was carrying this huge plate of glass that was beginning to crack, tiny spider webs of distortion spreading fast, and as it did the pane shifted in my heavy arms and slipped from my grasp. I woke just as it should have been shattering into a million pieces on the floor below me. I carried that great big sheet of glass everywhere I went, my arms straining with the effort, my forehead shining with sweat, the glass itself slowly, slowly cracking as I shifted it slightly from hand to hand, arm to arm. It was exhausting and debilitating, cumbersome and controlling and, I thought, so, so obvious to everyone I met that I was struggling. People recognized the struggle of course, just as I knew they would, gave it a name, and either pushed it to the back of their minds or worried about it endlessly depending on who they were and what they were to me. They all made the same mistake, though: thinking that pane of glass made me weak. You try carrying something like that around with you wherever you go. You get tired, sure; but you also get strong.

      There was nothing particularly special about waking up to that shattering glass. I’d done it a thousand times before and no doubt it would continue to haunt me after; it wasn’t a portent, or an omen, I didn’t have to write about it in my dream journal, or put a black mark in my diary so that in the years to come I’d be able to look back and say “ah yes, the dream. I should have known something terrible was going to happen.” Because there was no way anyone could have known.

      Because when the worst has already happened, you don’t expect it to happen again.

      But this story doesn’t start with a dream. What story ever does? No, this story starts with Nora.

      Nora’s parents had chosen Sunday for the memorial because more people were available. The day was white and gray, the sky thick and heavy even though the snow didn’t come until nightfall. It had been the same on the day Nora disappeared but then that should have hardly come as a surprise. January has a way of making every day look and feel the same, the month lasting forever and then suddenly over. I don’t know why we gathered at the lake house rather than at the Altman home, although I was glad we weren’t huddled around the trees by the side of the road where her abandoned car had been found that morning, so many years ago. Too many impromptu vigils had happened there in the days and weeks following Nora’s disappearance for me to feel anything other than nausea when I drove past. At least the lake held some happy memories, long gone but still just about holding on. So, Nora’s dad, Jonathan, spoke, and then her older brother, Nate, did, and then we all just stood looking at the lake for a while, no one really knowing what to do, what we were expected to do. That’s something I’ve learned over the last ten years; no one ever tells you what to expect or what’s going to happen next because no one knows. You’re on your own.

      I waited for a while, wanting to get Nate on his own, but Leo and Bright were stood with him, their faces pale and maybe even a little drawn but talking to each other as animatedly as you can at a memorial. They were trying to draw Nate into the conversation, trying to coax him out, but wherever СКАЧАТЬ