Remember This✔

Chapter Nineteen

Molly grabs her food and coffee and Charlie follows her over to a table on the other side of the room to the exit. She wouldn't get far anyway; Charlie would be able to stop her in seconds if she decided to run. The strange thing is, she doesn't want to run. She wants to sit. So, she does. She sits and he sits opposite her and her nerves somehow vanish.

"Don't you have better things to be doing on a Saturday night?" Molly asks him.

Charlie looks over and grins. "Are you a mind reader? I was just thinking the same thing."

"Funny."

"There'll be thousands of other Saturday nights," Charlie says. "They're not going anywhere."

"What about your girlfriend? Don't you have plans with her?"

Charlie stares at her in confusion. "How do you know that I have a girlfriend?"

"On the bridge," Molly mumbles. "You said you can relate to having relationship problems."

"I didn't think you were listening," he says.

"I always listen. It's better than talking." Molly takes a sip of her coffee and glances around the room.

"Her name is Aubrey," Charlie says as opens his sandwich packet. "She's uh. . . a handful. Relationships can be more trouble than they're worth. If you want my advice then stay single."

"Why is she a handful?"

"She can get argumentative sometimes. Blows up over nothing. We've been dating for a year and I'm still figuring her out. But it's nice to have someone, you know? Even if they drive you crazy."

Molly drops her eyes and thinks about the first and only relationship she ever had. She was twelve and the boy lived across the street. His name was Peter. They were together for a year. They did everything together. They rode bicycles around the parks, played games in the basement, broke into abandoned houses to ghost hunt. She remembers her first kiss with Peter and how nervous she was, she thought she was going to throw up. She wonders what he's doing now, how much he's changed, if he'd even remember her.

"Do you ever think about it?" Charlie asks her suddenly. "Relationships?"

She shakes her head. "Not in a long time. Even if I did, I moved too much for it to be possible. The FBI were constantly relocating me."

"FBI?" he says.

"Yeah, the uh. . . the man that killed my family, the FBI have known of him for years. He killed two families before mine, left no one alive."

"And they think because you survived that he'd come after you?"

"I didn't survive," she says quietly. "I wasn't there. They think he made a mistake, that he thought I would be. But I was at school, rehearsing for this production. They put me into protective custody after my grandparents died. They said that killers like him. . . they become obsessed with completing their. . ." Molly can't say the words, she gulps it down and shies away.

"Jesus," he mutters. "Does that mean that Molly isn't your name? Did they give you a new identity or...?"

"No," she says. "They wanted to but I refused. He already took my life, I wasn't prepared to give him my name too."

Molly clenches her jaw and reaches for the dog. He senses it and sits up so she can stroke the fur. She takes deep breaths. She's never been able to talk about this so openly, she doesn't understand it yet.

"Are you worried he's coming for you or something?"

Molly wipes underneath her eyes. "The murders in Salt Lake City, you heard about them?" Charlie nods. "It's him, I know it is."