Remember Me Not

FORTY-TWO - AFTER

Hanna insists I stay the night.

As she rightly points out, I shouldn't have walked here alone in the first place, and she certainly won't let me do it a second time. Instead, she sets me up a comfy spot on her couch with all the spare blankets and pillows she can find after I insist I'm not taking her actual bed. I have to admit it's nice not to have to go back out in the rain. Also, thanks to the relief of our reconciliation, I'm able to get more than a few hours of uninterrupted sleep for the first time in a long while.

In the morning, however, I have to get back, and I'm keen to do it before Hanna's roommates wake up and any awkward greetings ensue. So I say my goodbyes quickly, we exchange one last hug, and then I'm out the door.

On the walk home, I can't stop thinking.

It's like my brain took a while to wake up, but now I'm up and about it's gone into overdrive. And what it won't give up on is the other key part of last night's conversation.

Hanna wasn't behind the letter.

And if things weren't already complicated, she doesn't know the identity of her source, either.

So I'm back where I started.

With an entire campus of possibilities, and only one night to narrow it down. There'd previously been a question mark over Cat, but I wasn't so sure that was a solid lead anymore. She was pretty sober that night: sober enough, in fact, to take responsibility for Hanna when things went downhill. Plus the conversation that originally made her a suspect happened way before that night.

No. She's off the list.

That means I have no remaining options—but I'm also now wondering if that's for the best. Knowing the letter was purposely anonymous changes the game. If this girl didn't feel comfortable trusting even Hanna with her identity, she definitely wouldn't want anyone else to start digging. Least of all the girlfriend of her abuser.

Continuing to speculate feels like an invasion of her privacy, and I'm no longer comfortable doing it.

So that's it. I'm done. I'm almost expecting to feel the weight release from my shoulders, but it's more like the slow, dull fade of a buzz inside my brain.

Campus is peaceful at this time of morning. Even the earliest classes don't start for another hour; aside from a few red-eyed stragglers, who don't appear to have slept at all, the rest of Davidson have only begun to stir. A delivery truck is parked in the loading bay behind one of the bigger food halls; two guys in baseball caps unload pallets of milk, while the sounds of a busy kitchen prepping for the breakfast rush drift out of an open window. As I skirt the edge of campus, a bus pulls up at the university stop, its brakes hissing loudly as the doors open to let a couple of students hop off. They both look tired, but scurry off in the direction of the library regardless, pulling their coats tighter as they go.

It is a particularly cold morning, even for late November. The chill in the air is biting. I really should've wrapped up warmer—if only I hadn't been in such a messy headspace last night.

But it's not too much further. I'm past the quad now, which means it's five minutes tops to the residential section. I quicken my pace and start digging in my pocket for my key, already daydreaming of the moment I cross into the warm lobby of Marshall Hall...

That's when the first snowflake lands on my face.

I'm wearing a white rain jacket, which means the first few specks that have begun to dot my arms and shoulders have gone unnoticed. The gray-white sky doesn't help, either. But once I blink and find that a flake has settled on my eyelashes, obscuring my view of campus with a great white blob, there's no ignoring the turn in the weather.

It settles on my face, my hair, my bare outstretched hand.

I feel the cold sting my skin like thousands of tiny needles.

I'm not dressed for snow.

That's when it comes back. A flicker at first, like rays of light finding their way through a crack, before force bursts the whole thing wide open. Then it all comes flooding in. The faces, the voices, the scream in my throat—everything I've been searching for all these months.

Everything I've blocked out from the night Josh died.

And suddenly, I remember.

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This was a short one, and I hope you'll forgive me. I've finally learned to end the chapter where it needs to end, not once I've reached some arbitrary word count (bad habit of mine that lasted years). What's about to happen deserves its own chapter (or more!)

Revelations are coming...

As always, thanks so much for reading and commenting. I'll get the next one up a little earlier for you ❤️

- Leigh