Forget to Remember (10 page)

Paul looked slowly from one of them to the
other. “If you’re not related, why do I get the impression you’re
working together? What do you want?”

Mrs. Horton gave a hint of a smile. “For
starters, don’t try to con me again. You’re playing with the
emotions of an old woman. I’m quite sure Cynthia’s dead, but go
ahead and look for her. Earn your probate fee even if you don’t get
the five million. Perhaps I’m wrong. I hope I’m wrong. Now let’s
talk about Carol.”

Paul turned his head to look at Carol. With
all this head swiveling, he was going to need a chiropractor. She
felt emboldened since she had Mrs. Horton backing her.

“I want to continue to search for my
identity. I need some help. I’d like five thousand dollars in a
checking account with an ATM card. I need a passport in the name of
Carol Golden. Also, I’d like a new driver’s license for Carol
Golden. I’m not Cynthia Sakai.”

Paul whistled. “That’s all you want? How
about the moon on a string? What makes you think I can do those
things, including get the money?”

“The driver’s license you already made for
Carol proves you have connections.” Mrs. Horton sniffed. “I don’t
want to know what they are. I’m sure a passport is within your
capability. Take the money out of the Sakai estate. It’s not enough
to have a significant effect on the total. And it’s certainly no
skin off your nose. When Carol goes to England, which she plans to
do, she’ll look for Cynthia, so it’s search expense.”

Paul, who’d been acting like a caged beast,
now had a crafty look on his face. “What if I just say no?”

“What if I just take my driver’s license to
the authorities and tell them where I got it?” Carol had learned
she could meet Paul’s best stare. She did so now.

“Using an invalid license can get you into a
lot of trouble.”

“Not nearly as much as it can get
you
into. I have nothing to lose since I’m a non-person.”

Paul suddenly pushed his chair back hard so
it fell over with a bang as he stood up. Carol was startled and
wondered whether he would try to wrest the driver’s license and
picture from her. She had placed them in another room for
safekeeping.

Mrs. Horton had told Audrey to listen to
their conversation from the next room after she served lunch, and
to have a phone with her in case she needed to call for help. Mrs.
Horton had said she didn’t think Paul would get violent, but she
added, “It doesn’t hurt to take precautions.”

Paul backed up and leaned against the
granite kitchen counter. He appeared to be thinking. “I need an
address for the passport and driver’s license.”

This sounded like a concession to Carol.

Mrs. Horton said, “Use my address.”

“That could get
you
into trouble.”
Carol didn’t want to endanger her. She was amazed Mrs. Horton would
condone breaking the law, but she had said upon hearing Carol’s
story that if laws didn’t protect you, they weren’t good laws.

“Paul will see to it I don’t get into
trouble, because if I do, I’ll bring him down with me.”

Paul was consulting his Blackberry. “Give me
three days.”

Watching him gave Carol an idea. “There’s
one more thing. I want my own cell phone—paid for.”

“Come to my office on Friday afternoon at
five thirty.”

Paul handed Carol one of his business cards,
took his coat and attaché case, and left without another word.

CHAPTER 12

Since Paul hadn’t said anything to the
contrary, Carol assumed she could keep her room at the Carolina Inn
while she waited for him to produce the documents. When they kicked
her out into the street, she would know she had overstayed her
welcome.

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?