Page 21 of A Future To Remember

Bouncing it a little to get the last of the water out, I opened it to inspect the inside, taking out my flashlight again to train the beam to the black interior. The thing smelled god-awful, but I wasn’t about to stop giving it a closer inspection.

The handbag hadn’t suffered any damage besides being ruined by submersion in river water for the past thirty to sixty days. For a long, tense moment, it seemed like I’d contaminated the crime scene for nothing.

I used my hand to swipe around the suede interior and was surprised to find it empty.

Abby didn’t carry a lot in The Carry-On, and I knew that because I’d seen her both pack it and unpack it most every day of the previous summer. She’d tote her laptop, her phone, a hairbrush, some makeup, a baggie filled with snacks—goldfish crackers, trail mix, whatever she was in the mood for that day—and that was about it. She didn’t carry a wallet because she had a small magnetic credit card holder that attached to the back of her phone, so on most days that she wasn’t getting one over on us in the conference room, she packed light.

She always told me that the bag was fashion over function. Still, I’d expected to find something of hers inside, even though I knew that her phone had either been destroyed or turned off shortly after she’d left the grocery store. The last ping from it had put her in the parking lot of the campground grocery store. Before we flew out of Austin, she’d made a point to leave her laptop at home, so it wouldn’t have been inside the handbag anyway. There was a flash of a memory that swirled up from the depths. The day she went missing, right before leaving the cabin, Abby had made a point to pack herself a snack of trail mix for the ride to the store, but I couldn’t remember if there were any other personal items she’d tossed inside the bag before she headed out. Whatever had been in there could’ve floated out of the interior and become lost among the muck inside the Tahoe, I supposed.

To be thorough, however, I unzipped the small inside pocket toward the top of the bag.

I was surprised to find something squished into it.

“What’s that?” Oscar asked as I began to tease it out of the pocket.

“Don’t know yet.” And then I did. “It’s just a baggie. Abby took some trail mix for the road when she left to go to the store.”

I pulled out the baggie to show him and was shocked to see that it was sealed tight, the interior protected from the water. Within the baggie, I realized there was a piece of scrap paper bearing small brown smudges. I recognized the sight of dried blood immediately. After wiping my gloves on my pants, I very carefully unlocked the zip closure of the baggie, opened it, and retrieved the paper. I then just as carefully unfolded it and saw that it was a receipt for the grocery store. On the receipt were all the items Abby had intended to purchase that day: a couple of cans of soup, bread, butter, cheese, potato chips, pickles, milk, eggs, bacon, and bananas. That, however, wasn’t the most shocking thing about that scrap piece of paper. When I flipped the receipt over, I saw that the paper wasn’t simply smudged with blood.

The smudges were letters, written perhaps with Abby’s own blood. In clear, rust-colored lettering the note read:

I’m alive

CHAPTER 7

Her

Wanda was a surprise.

For starters, she was radiantly beautiful, looking far younger than her years. I guessed, solely by her hands, that she was maybe ten to fifteen years older than me, with long blond hair, light blue eyes, a heart-shaped face, and a dazzling smile.

Beyond that, she was trim and fit, and there was a bounce to her step. I’d had this preconceived notion that anyone named “Wanda” who owned a diner in a small town in Idaho was gonna look…well…weathered. Worn down by a hardscrabble life. But Wanda appeared to be thriving.

“Nice to meetcha,” she said with that warm and welcoming smile when Cash made the introductions at the counter of her midsize diner. “Can I get you somethin’ to eat, Maddy?”

Conscious of the fact that I had zero dollars to my name, I politely declined. And then my stomach rumbled. Loudly.

She grinned anew and winked at Cash. Pointing to a pair of barstools, she said, “Come on, sit down, you two. I’ve got some chili simmering, and I can have Gus whip you up a grilled cheese, if you’d like.”

The words “grilled cheese” hit me like a bright light coming on in a darkened room, and I tried to stare into it, hoping the illumination would spread, but all I could make out were shadows.

“Maddy?” Cash asked. “You okay?”

I blinked. “I…yeah. Yeah. I’m…fine. It’s just…”

Cash and Wanda were both staring at me expectantly, but I didn’t know how to explain something I didn’t myself understand.

“Just what?” Wanda prodded.

“Grilled cheese,” I said, forcing a smile that I knew must’ve looked like a grimace. Why couldn’t I remember the context? Why would a sandwich send a jolt of something almost recognizable into my mind?

“You don’t like them? We have other sandwiches, hon. How about a BLT?”

“No!”

Her eyes widened and I felt like an asshole.

“I mean, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…I actually want a grilled cheese. I think…I think they’re a favorite of mine?”