They Forgot Me at a Rest Stop, I Forgot Them Forever novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Lemon Cake

Samantha walks into her sister's engagement toast in front of forty guests, takes back her phone and her cake, and finds the text sent in her name at 2:14 and the family photo missing from her camera roll.

The lake house had white string lights on the porch and forty people on the lawn holding plastic flutes.

Waylon stopped the truck at the end of the gravel drive and kept the engine running.

"I'll be at the gas station on the corner," he said. "Forty minutes. If you're not out, I'll come to the door."

"You don't have to."

"I know."

I climbed down and walked up the drive in my gray hoodie, with a twenty-dollar bill in my pocket and cold air on my face.

Nobody looked at me until I reached the lawn.

The silver van was parked by the garage with my tote bag visible through the window.

Then I saw the table under the porch lights.

My lemon cake sat in the middle of it, boxless, with a sugar ring on top and a knife already through the first slice.

Someone had stuck a candle in it that said 31.

Camille stood next to it in her cream blazer with a glass in her hand, and Brent had his arm around her waist.

"And I just want to say," she was saying, in her toast voice, "how lucky I am to have a family that shows up. All of us. Together."

She saw me over the heads of the crowd.

Her smile did not change at all.

"There she is!" she said, and everybody turned.

"Samantha! You made it! Oh my God, you took the bus?"

Forty faces looked at me, kind and a little curious, holding paper plates.

I walked straight through the middle of them.

"I didn't take the bus," I said.

Mom was at my elbow before I reached the table, in her lilac cardigan, her smile bright and fixed.

"Samantha, honey, let's go inside," she said, low. "You're tired."

"I'm not tired."

"People are watching."

"I know," I said.

I stopped in front of Camille.

"I'd like my phone and my bag, please."

"Your phone?" Camille laughed lightly and reached into her blazer.

She took it out and held it toward me, still plugged into a short white cord.

"You left it charging in the van. I was going to bring it up to you later. It's fully charged."

"You told me to leave it there."

"Did I?" She turned to the guests. "I swear, she'd lose her head. Didn't you tell me you might ride up with a friend?"

"No."

"In the bathroom line, you said it. You said, I might just take the bus."

"I was in the bathroom line. You were not."

A man near the cake cleared his throat.

Brent smiled at me, easy, and looked at the grass.

"Samantha," Camille said, very gently, so the whole lawn would hear how gently. "Nobody left you. It was a misunderstanding. We are so happy you're here."

I took the phone out of her hand.

"You sent a text from this at 2:14," I said. "Out loud, please, tell everybody what it said."

"Oh, Samantha."

"Read it, Mom. You saw it."

Mom didn't move.

"Sam," Dad said, from somewhere behind the crowd. He had his reading glasses in his hand and a paper plate in the other, and he did not meet my eyes.

"Dad, did you see where I was when you drove off? Did anybody count heads?"

He looked at Mom.

Mom looked at the guests.

"We counted," she said. "Camille said you texted."

"Then you counted three. There were only three of you in that van."

Someone in the back actually laughed, and stopped.

My face was hot, but my voice was level, and I was proud of that.

I put my hand in my pocket and took out the twenty Dad had given me.

I laid it flat on the table next to the cake.

"For the snacks," I said.

Then I put the knife down, slid my hands under the cake plate, and lifted the whole lemon cake into my arms with the candle still in it.

"I baked this," I said. "It isn't a party favor."

"Samantha," Mom said. "Put it down."

"No."

"You are making a scene."

"Yes," I said. "I'm making a scene. You told me not to, and I heard you."

Camille's smile finally slipped, and what showed under it was not hurt.

It was fear.

It lasted less than a second, and then she laughed again, brightly, and said, "She's tired, everyone, please, eat."

I went to the van, took my tote bag out of the open side door, and checked it.

Wallet, keys, my work badge.

Everything was where it should be.

I walked back down the drive with a lemon cake in one arm and a phone in the other hand.

Nobody followed me.

Halfway down the gravel I unlocked the phone and opened the messages.

There it was in a gray bubble sent to my sister, at 2:14: Got a ride with a friend, don't wait, I'll bus up tomorrow.

At 2:14 I had been standing in the line for the women's room.

I opened my photos to find the picture I had taken by the van, the one of all four of them in the sun.

The last photo in the roll was a blurry shot of a parking meter from last week.

The family picture was gone.

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