Forget to Remember

her.
    “She apparently wasn’t very forthcoming with her parents on that point. We never found the artist, assuming he existed. When I hired someone to look for Cynthia, he heard a story about an artist who had died in an auto accident and could have been the one, but nobody seemed to know much about him. The trail was already cold.”
    “Tell me more about her parents.”
    Vigiano told about a girl from North Carolina who had fallen in love with a brilliant Japanese boy; he had gone through M.I.T. on a scholarship and then worked in the Research Triangle bordered by Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill; his patents on high-tech inventions had made them a lot of money that they used for, among other things, learning to fly and buying their own airplane; they had a boy named Michael and a girl named Cynthia; she grew up and attended a college in Massachusetts and then went to London to write; one morning, a month ago, the parents’ plane crashed in the ocean soon after takeoff while they, and their son, were flying home from a business conference in New England.
    Carol felt overwhelmed by all the information and her lack of response to it. She knew she should react in some way, but to her it sounded like a family she might have read about in a novel. She asked Vigiano what Cynthia was like as a child.
    “She was, as I recall, headstrong, independent, creative, and fun loving.”
    Carol laughed. “That’s almost exactly what the handwriting expert said about me.”
    “She was editor of her high school newspaper. I remember she interviewed me once for a story she was writing. She liked to have her own way, and she usually got it.”
    “I can relate to that.”
    “Carol, I’d really like to meet you in person.”
    “Are you coming to Los Angeles?”
    “Not in the near future. No, I mean I’d like to have you come here. Then you can meet Mrs. Horton also. She would be able to tell if you’re Cynthia.”
    “I don’t have any money. Besides that, I can’t fly because I don’t have a government-issued I.D. I can’t get one because I don’t have a birth certificate.”
    “Yes, that’s a problem—not the money; I can pay for the trip out of the estate, since I have reason to believe you may be Cynthia. But the inability to fly is a problem. You could go AMTRAK, but that would take several days each way. Going by Greyhound would take even longer.”
    “I’m sorry; I don’t know what to suggest.”
    “Let me think about it. Give me the telephone number and address where you’re staying.”
    Carol glanced at Frances. Frances didn’t shake her head no and Carol didn’t know why she shouldn’t give out the information. Everything seemed to be on the up and up. Mr. Vigiano—Paul—sounded straightforward and honest. She recited the address and phone number of Tina and Ernie, and Vigiano said he’d get back to her.
    The call ended and Carol looked at Frances with mixed feelings. “Do you think I’m Cynthia?”
    “It’s too soon to tell for sure. You could be. Did anything in the call jog your memory?”
    “Not really. I’m not sure I could do what Cynthia was doing in London.”
    Rigo had shared the receiver with Frances and heard most of the call. “You mean the nude modeling?”
    “No, writing a novel. I know I can write, and I can picture myself being an editor of a school newspaper. I seem to have a basic command of the English language. I can write a declarative sentence. But a whole book? What would I write about? I mean, even when I had my memory I probably didn’t have enough life experience to do that.”
    Frances said, “Unfortunately, we’ll probably never know since the manuscript appears to be lost. It might provide valuable clues to your identity for anyone who found it, despite the fact it’s supposed to be fiction. They say a writer’s first novel has autobiographical elements. Or maybe they all do.”
    A desire was growing inside Carol. “I’d like to go to North Carolina and find out the truth. Am I Cynthia or aren’t I? Even if I have to go by train. It would be fun to take a train across the country. It might help me remember things. Maybe I picked the name Carol because it’s part of Carolina.”
    Rigo showed alarm. “Going cross-country without an identity is a dangerous business.”
    Frances nodded her agreement. “Why don’t you wait until we have the results of the DNA tests—yours and Mrs. Horton’s? If you don’t match, there’s no need to go, because