Forget to Remember

had been erased. The name on the license was Cynthia Sakai, and the address was Chapel Hill.
    Carol went back to the letter. Below the usual addresses, dates, and such at the top of a business letter it read:

    Dear Carol,

    I talked to Elizabeth Horton about you and she wants to meet you as soon as possible. The enclosed ticket will allow you to fly to Raleigh-Durham using the name Cynthia Sakai. After all, this may be your name! The driver’s license will serve as your identification. It is a legitimate North Carolina license and nobody will question it. It isn’t the license Cynthia had when she disappeared, but that disappeared with her.

    I have made reservations for you at a local hotel. All your expenses will be paid while you’re here. To cover any incidental expenses you might have I’m enclosing $500.

    It’s in the best interests of all of us (you, Mrs. Horton and myself) that we establish whether or not you are actually Cynthia Sakai without delay.

    Please feel free to call me if you have any questions. I look forward to seeing you on Monday evening. Somebody will meet you at the airport.

    Yours sincerely,
    Paul Vigiano
    Attorney at Law

    Carol looked at the driver’s license again. It said she had been born on August 10, 1984, which would make her twenty-five years old. That was all right with her. It sounded like a good age. Could she really do this? By using a fake driver’s license, she’d be breaking the law.
    She felt guilty. She’d probably always been a law-abiding citizen. Her fingerprints weren’t on file. But almost anything she did broke the law. Just by living she was probably breaking the law because she didn’t have the documentation the law required. When she looked at the problem like that, it didn’t really matter what she did. A growing excitement and anticipation inside told her she was no longer worried about the law.
    She heard a noise at the front door. Tina and Ernie were home. She stuffed everything back into the cardboard container and ran up the stairs with it. She placed it in the drawer of the dresser in her room, underneath the underwear Tina had bought for her. She wasn’t sure why she was doing this. She only knew she wasn’t ready to discuss it with them.

    CHAPTER 9
    The alarm went off at five a.m. It startled Carol, even though she’d been in and out of sleep for a couple of hours, waiting for the buzz. She reached under the pillow, where she’d placed the clock to muffle the sound, and throttled it.
    She jumped out of bed and turned on the light, listening for any other noise in the house. She didn’t think the alarm had awakened anybody. Ernie and Tina arose about six on a work day, and Rigo, who had worked the Sunday evening shift last night, would sleep for several more hours.
    She quickly dressed, including putting on the sweater she would need against the morning chill. She picked up the small suitcase she had found in the garage and went downstairs, barefoot. She used the downstairs bathroom, gulped a glass of water, and grabbed a muffin before she walked out the front door and quietly closed it behind her.
    It was still dark outside, but streetlights lit her way, and she had sidewalks to walk on here in Rancho Palos Verdes, unlike a couple of the four cities that made up the Palos Verdes Peninsula. She had a short walk to the bus stop on Hawthorne Boulevard, mostly downhill. The suitcase couldn’t weigh much more than ten pounds. It contained her clothes, a comb, a toothbrush, and a few makeup essentials—in other words, all her possessions.
    She had checked out the Los Angeles metropolitan bus system on the Internet. She could get to LAX with just one transfer. She had broken one of her twenty dollar bills at a bank in the shopping center on Hawthorne, so she had the correct change. Even if Ernie and Tina got up before the bus came, they probably wouldn’t realize she was gone. If for some reason they became aware of her departure, they would think she was out for an early morning walk. She had taken such walks on Saturday and Sunday to condition them. They wouldn’t send out a search party this early.
    There was already some commuter traffic on Hawthorne, heading down the hill to offices and stores and factories that could be anywhere from a few miles to an arduous drive away. The residents of Palos Verdes worked everywhere, and the earlier they got started in the morning the easier their commute became.
    She crossed Hawthorne with the