Forget to Remember, page 8
part #1 of Carol Golden Series
Mrs. Horton offered to let her use the spare upstairs bedroom at the farm. It was a tempting offer, but as much as she liked Mrs. Horton, she didn’t want to hang out with her all day. In addition, the farm was a long way from anywhere.
She could always downgrade to a cheaper motel and pay for it with some of the $500 Paul had sent her. She’d been hoarding it and had almost all of it left. Her biggest expense had been her haircut before she left L.A. Because of the uncertainty of her situation, she wasn’t spending a penny she didn’t have to. The only other asset she had was an open-ended e-ticket for a return flight.
Audrey drove Carol back to the inn in mid-afternoon at Carol’s request. She promised Mrs. Horton she would see her again before she returned to L.A. The first thing she did when she got to her room was to call the Ramirez residence, hoping she would catch Rigo. He answered on the third ring.
“Hi, Rigo, it’s Carol.”
“Carol. How are you?” He sounded surprised and, perhaps, relieved.
“I’m fine. How are you doing?” This felt awkward.
“I’m doing well. Are you Cynthia Sakai?”
“I’m afraid not. I look like her, but I’m not her.” She didn’t want to go into detail.
“When are you coming back here?”
“Not for a few days. I have some things I want to do first.”
“My parents are very worried about you. They want you home so they can keep an eye on you. Are you able to get back? Do you need help?”
Only your parents are worried? “That’s very sweet. No thanks, I don’t need help. I can get back.” At least she had somewhere to go. “I’m working on my identity.” That was only half a lie.
“Would it help if you had an e-mail address? I can add new addresses to my account.”
“That would be great.”
“What would you like it to be?”
“How about carolg2009, since it feels like I was just born.”
“Hold on.”
Rigo got back on the line and told her the address was acceptable. He gave her the suffix and all the information she needed to access it from any computer. She thanked him, and they chatted for a few minutes. He said he’d had a good job interview. He was optimistic. She told him a little about Mrs. Horton and the farm. Then she reluctantly hung up. He was one of her few friends, and he was thousands of miles away. Maybe she should catch the next flight back to L.A. and then quit breaking the law.
She knew she couldn’t do that. She had to do everything possible to find out who she was. Laws were enacted by governments, ostensibly for the protection of their citizens. She wasn’t a citizen of the United States because she had no documentation. No other country would recognize her, either. As a non-citizen, non-person, she wasn’t under the protection of any government. Why, then, should she obey laws?
She couldn’t tell Rigo and his parents what she was doing because they were law-abiding citizens. Rigo hadn’t asked her how she’d been able to fly, probably because he didn’t want to know the answer. However, she was sure he’d ask when she returned. She didn’t know what she’d tell him.
***
Carol wandered around downtown Chapel Hill until she found an Internet café. She bought an hour of time and sent a test e-mail to Rigo. She surfed the net but didn’t find any useful information that might lead to discovering her identity. She walked along the streets teeming with scruffy looking college students from the University of North Carolina.
She knew UNC was a basketball power, but she didn’t know how she knew. She was sure she hadn’t gone to college here, but it was entirely possible she had attended another university. She had vague memories of walking on a college campus and taking classes in ivy covered buildings. Perhaps she’d gone to a school that was a rival of UNC in basketball.
She ate a cheap dinner at a fast-food restaurant while reading a copy of the News and Observer, the newspaper that had carried the obituaries of the Sakais. There was a story in the paper about Duke University, in nearby Durham. She knew Duke was also a basketball power and a rival of UNC. Maybe she had attended Duke. The chances were infinitesimal, but it would give her something to do tomorrow.
***
On Wednesday morning, Carol rented a car from an Avis agency within easy walking distance of the Carolina Inn, showing her fake driver’s license and giving the clerk cash for a deposit, since she didn’t have a credit card. She was glad they accepted cash, but maybe she should have asked Paul for a credit card. She suspected that was too much to ask. He would have told her to go to hell.
She almost climbed into the right side of the car before she remembered the steering wheel was on the left. As soon as she got behind the wheel, she knew she could drive the compact car, but it felt strange, somehow. It had an automatic transmission. She had to check to see where Reverse and Drive were. It occurred to her she was used to driving a stick shift. Not only that, but she had an urge to shift with her left hand.
When Carol pulled out onto the street and almost drove head-on into another car she realized what the problem was. She must have been driving in England where the driver sat on the right and drove on the left, and where most cars had stick-shifts, operated with the left hand. If she’d been driving there, she must have lived in England for some time. She was more than ever determined to go back. Maybe it held the key to her identity.
Using the map Avis gave her, she drove to the Duke University campus in Durham. She quickly adjusted to driving on the right, and shifting wasn’t a problem because she didn’t have to do it. Duke had a beautiful campus with lots of green—green trees, green lawns. Sturdy buildings protected the accumulated knowledge of the academic setting and nurtured new research and discoveries in the arts and sciences. These thoughts convinced her that she had gone to college somewhere.
Carol walked around the campus, looking for something familiar—a building, a walkway, a vista that would connect with some sleeping cell in her brain, but she didn’t find anything. She went to the library and asked where the Duke yearbooks were kept. She browsed through several from the early twenty-first century, looking at group photos, individual photos, any kind of photo. She kept the picture Paul had given her on the table where she could look at it, because she still had trouble remembering what she looked like.
Two hours of doing this netted her tired arms, from turning pages, and blurry vision. She returned to her car and on a whim drove north toward Virginia, intending to go for a while and then return to Chapel Hill. She got off the Interstate and drove along narrow country roads, reveling in the fact that nobody knew where she was. She discovered she enjoyed being by herself.
The problem was, nobody cared. At least nobody she was related to. She did have some friends: Rigo, his parents, Frances, Mrs. Horton. Yes, Mrs. Horton might not be her grandmother, but she counted her as a friend. She couldn’t desert them. They were her connection to the real world. Without them she would be completely lost.
She would have liked to keep driving all the way to Massachusetts, where she felt she had a connection. However, that wasn’t practical right now. Maybe on another trip.
It became late enough that she decided not to make the drive back to Chapel Hill. She stayed the night in a small motel in southern Virginia, but the next morning she returned to Chapel Hill and drove directly to Mrs. Horton’s house. She saw Mrs. Horton and Audrey working in the garden. Actually, Audrey appeared to be doing most of the work while Mrs. Horton sat in a plastic lawn chair.
Carol parked the car in front of the garage and was greeted by an exultant Butch, his tail wagging like a propeller. She rubbed behind his ears and walked along the path to where most of the garden was located in front of the house. She greeted the two women.
“I was wondering when you were going to show up. I called the inn this morning but you weren’t there.”
Was there a note of concern in Mrs. Horton’s voice? There were people who cared about her.
“I took a little trip. Now I’d like to work in the garden and find out more about Cynthia, so when I go to England I can look for her. You told Paul I was going to do that.” Mainly, this would enable her to justify taking the money from Paul. She had discovered she had a conscience.
“All right, but if you’re going to work in the garden you can’t wear those good clothes. Audrey will find you something appropriately old—although it might not quite fit you.”
CHAPTER 13
One thing Carol discovered from two days of working in the garden and talking about Cynthia was that she wasn’t a natural gardener. She didn’t know the names of most of the plants and flowers, and she didn’t have a feel for planting, watering, pruning, fertilizing—all the chores gardeners did. She suspected that rather than having a green thumb, she probably had a black thumb.
She remembered, from somewhere in the recesses of her brain, what Thomas Edison was supposed to have said when a detractor chided him for all the failed experiments he and his staff had done while trying to invent a light bulb. He said he hadn’t failed. He had discovered 10,000 ways not to make a light bulb.
Carol was learning some of the things she wasn’t, and some of the places she hadn’t been. She was sure she hadn’t attended either Duke or the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and she was positive she wasn’t a gardener.
She liked having the rental car. It gave her freedom; with it she felt less dependent on the kindness of others. She didn’t like the restrictions that came with not having money. She must have had money once.
As she drove to Paul’s office, she hoped he had done the things she had asked for. What if he hadn’t? Would she have the guts to turn him in for creating a phony driver’s license or faking a photograph to convince her she was who she wasn’t? Was he willing to take a chance that she wouldn’t rat on him?
She found the small office building on a side street, just off one of the main Chapel Hill thoroughfares. She parked in the lot in front of the new-looking brick building. A newscaster she had been listening to on the radio gave the time as five fourteen. She was early. Well, better to be early than late.
Paul’s office was on the first floor. She found his name on the door, opened it, and entered a small waiting room furnished with chairs and magazines. On the other side of a Plexiglas barrier she saw Rose standing beside what must be her desk, dressed in a business skirt and white blouse. She looked up at Carol and surprise registered on her face.
Her voice carried through a speaking hole in the Plexiglas. “Carol…are you here to see Mr. Vigiano?”
“He said to meet him here at five thirty.”
“You’re not on his appointment schedule. He’s on the phone right now. I’ll give him a note saying you’re here. Then I have to leave. I have a class on Friday evenings. I try to get out of here right at five. I’m late.”
Rose scribbled a note on a message pad, opened a door behind her desk, disappeared for a few seconds, and then came back out and closed the door behind her. While the door was open, Carol heard Paul’s voice droning, sounding like a lawyer.
Rose picked up her purse from her desk and came through a doorway that separated the waiting area from her office. “He knows you’re here. I understand you’re not Cynthia Sakai. I’m sorry. That means you’re still in limbo.”
Carol smiled. “I’ll find out who I am. Thanks for your help.”
“You’re welcome. Gotta run. Bye.”
Rose disappeared through the doorway to the corridor of the building. Carol found she was too nervous to sit down. What did it mean that she wasn’t on Paul’s appointment schedule? She paced the floor and picked up magazines at random. There were the usual family magazines and a copy of Sports Illustrated. She also saw The American Lawyer. Appropriate for a law office. She thumbed through its pages, not looking for anything in particular.
“I see you made it.”
Carol looked up and saw Paul coming out of his inside office. He strode over to the door separating the waiting room from the office area and held it open for her.
“How did you get here?”
As she went through the doorway past him, she noted he was wearing a blue shirt today with a snazzy tie. His belt contained some sort of blue, semi-precious stone that matched the shirt in what looked like a silver mounting. He smelled pleasantly of aftershave. The aroma jogged something in her memory, but she couldn’t place it. She decided he was better looking than she’d given him credit for.
“I drove. I got a rental car.”
Paul’s eyebrows lifted, but he didn’t say anything. He took her elbow and ushered her into his office. His wooden desk was larger than Rose’s. An expensive-looking pen and pencil set were stuck in holders on a black and gold base and sat on top, as did a large protective pad. Otherwise, the desktop was empty. The main desk had a side piece projecting from it at a right angle. A laptop computer sat on this. Shelves containing law books lined one wall. There was a two-person sofa against another wall.
Paul motioned toward a padded chair in front of the desk. “Sit down.”
Carol didn’t want to sit. She wanted to take the goodies and run, but she realized it wasn’t going to be that easy. She sat on the comfortable chair and watched Paul watch her cross her legs. Maybe she shouldn’t have worn a skirt.
Paul went around to the other side of the desk, but he didn’t sit down. He stood, looking her up and down. Carol felt exposed and uncomfortable as she waited for him to speak. He finished his appraisal.
“You look very nice today.”
“Thank you. So do you.”
He laughed self-consciously, apparently not having expected a return compliment. “Thanks. I didn’t know whether you’d come.”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“I don’t know. I thought you might call and say you needed a ride or something.”
Carol realized Paul was as nervous as she was. Why was that? He was in control of the situation. “I got the car so I wouldn’t be a burden to anybody.”
“Commendable. Well, on to business.” He took a key case out of his pocket and unlocked a four-drawer file cabinet that stood against the wall behind the desk. He opened one of the drawers and withdrew a legal-sized file folder. He placed this on the desktop and opened it.
“I think you’ll find that everything’s here. Passport, driver’s license, ATM card, papers to sign for the bank account, and a deposit slip for five thousands dollars. Oh, and here’s the cell phone you wanted.”
Paul opened his middle desk drawer, pulled out a phone, and flipped it to her. Surprised, Carol reached for it, fumbled it, and almost dropped it. She finally grabbed it and slipped it into her purse. She stood up.
“What do I need to sign?”
Paul placed the bank forms so she could lean over the desk and sign them. “By the way, your middle initial is P. Use it in your signature.”
“What does the P stand for?”
“Nothing. I used P because my name starts with P.”
“So I guess my middle name is Paul.”
She meant it to be a joke, but nobody laughed. Carol signed the forms and glanced up at Paul to see if there were any more. She realized he was staring at her cleavage, which her fashionable v-neck top accentuated. Since she was bent over, he had a straight shot. She straightened abruptly.
“I’d like to look over the passport and driver’s license.”
She picked up the documents from the desk and sat back down in the chair. The passport looked familiar. She had obviously used one before. Of course. If she’d been to England she would have had to have one.
Paul came around the desk and stood behind her chair. Was he going to look down her cleavage again? He placed his hands on her shoulders and started to massage them. It felt good and she relaxed her guard momentarily. Then his fingers started to slide—down into her cleavage.
Carol stiffened. She was suddenly terrified. How had she let this happen? What could she do? In the next few seconds his fingers made their way inside her bra and reached her nipples. She was shaking. He was going to rape her right here. She had an urge to grab his hands, but she knew, intuitively, that wouldn’t do any good.
All at once, completely unexpectedly, she became very calm. From somewhere the thought appeared in her head that she knew exactly what to do. She could even hurt him if she had to. She didn’t think that would be necessary, however.
As he continued to fondle her breasts, she heard his breathing accelerate behind her. Carol dropped the passport and grabbed the arms of the chair. She gave a strong pull on the wooden arms while at the same time dropping her body down and out of Paul’s grasp. She slid off the seat of the chair and landed on the carpet on her butt.
She quickly stood up and whirled around, facing Paul across the chair. He had a surprised look on his face. She wanted to keep her advantage. “Wait. Don’t move. We need to talk about this.”
Paul placed his hands on the chair back, which was obviously not where he wanted them to be right now, and watched her, as if he were expecting her to pull something else. “Do you know what risks I took to get those documents? I had to invent a Social Security number for you to open your bank account. I could be thrown in jail. Who would you use for a sugar daddy then?”
He was almost pleading. That was better. “Mrs. Horton tells me you’re married.” Carol tucked her breasts back into her bra and discovered her nipples were hard, perhaps because she was gratified to know Paul desired her. She was also curious about her own sexuality.
“Married, yes, but in name only. We’re separated. I haven’t seen my wife for a month.”
That squared with what Mrs. Horton had said. At least she wouldn’t have a guilty conscience. “All right, we’ll do it…but not here. This is too…sordid.”
“We can go to the inn.”
“No, I’ve been there all week and have gotten to know some of the staff. I don’t want to get a reputation as a slut. Take me to dinner, just as if you really liked me. Give me the full treatment, wine and everything. I’m sure you can find a way to charge it to the Sakai estate. Then we’ll go to your place. I just have to get back to the inn by midnight. I’m Cinderella.” Carol found herself chuckling.
