Shortly after losing my best friend, I met Alan and his daughter, Sabrina, at a local support group. Over the years I lived through Lori’s biopsy, diagnosis, chemotherapy, radiation, remission, reoccurrence, and then her agonizingly slow death as she fruitlessly sought more trials and more treatments. Alan and Sabrina’s loss was much more abrupt. A man behind the wheel after too many hours in front of the bar took a wife and mother in a head-on collision. He escaped with bruises and a broken collarbone. She died in an ambulance.
I warmed to Alan’s kind open face right away. Sabrina was another story. Her closely set blue eyes never seemed to blink beneath short, blunt bangs, and her square jaw and snub nose made for an unusually ugly child.
I’d been attending the weekly group at the community center for a few months when one evening, as our meeting broke up, Alan invited me to dinner. Or rather he asked Sabrina, who hovered behind him, if she would mind if I joined them. Sabrina shrugged, which Alan took as a yes and turned to me inquiringly.
“I’d be happy to,” I said. I tried a big smile at Sabrina but she’d taken a sudden interest in the scuffed floor tiles.
Over pasta at a nearby Italian restaurant Sabrina stared at me from underneath those awful bangs. Alan had excused himself for an urgent business call, leaving an awkward silence. We’d already run through the usual topics; Sabrina was almost thirteen, her favorite school subject was history, and on the weekends she enjoyed picking the wings off flies. No, that last one was my own mean-spirited addition. When I asked about hobbies, she simply shrugged again.
Sabrina broke the quiet by clattering her fork on her plate. “Do you believe in ghosts?”
“Uh, no,” I replied, taken aback. “Do you?”
She leaned forward over her buttered penne, her voice lowering to a whisper. “Yes. My mom promised me she’d never leave me and she didn’t. She leaves me notes on my bathroom mirror.”
“Does your dad know about this?”
“I showed him once but he got really sad. Now I just wipe them off after I read them.”
Alternating between pity and feeling slightly unnerved by the girl, I took an easy way out and repeated a platitude from our support group. “Our loved ones will always be with us.”
Sabrina drew back in her chair and fixed me with a scornful look. Over her right shoulder Alan approached our table. “Sorry about that. Ready to go, ladies?’
Her face cleared and she smiled up at him. “Ready to go, Dad.”
I married Alan six months later. The like at first sight had matured into love and I felt ready to be a wife for the first time. And a mother figure, too, I supposed, although I didn’t dwell on that. I’d asked Sabrina to be my junior attendant but on the day of the wedding she claimed a nasty cold and refused to leave her room. After an all too brief honeymoon while Sabrina stayed with a distant cousin, I sold my condo and moved across town into their sprawling home.
Although Alan assured me I could do what I liked with the house, I hesitated to make changes. I didn’t know what Sabrina was contemplating behind those unblinking eyes and I didn’t want to disturb our fragile co-existence. In the end I took the modest step of replacing the austere pale gray walls of our master bedroom and bath with a cheerful butter yellow.
Alan said he loved the new color. Sabrina didn’t say anything. For the next week she wore only gray sweats.
One morning a message greeted me on my bathroom mirror. Neatly printed in blue marker read the words: Please Don’t Forget Me. I snatched up a washcloth to wipe away the letters. Sabrina, I thought. What kind of game was she playing?
Alan was away on a business trip so I took matters into my own hands and stalked into her room. “Did you write on the mirror?”
Sabrina looked up from her book with interest. “It must be your friend, Lori. What did she say?”
I shook my head. “Don’t lie to me. Just don’t do it again.”
But she did. The same message appeared on the mirror over the next few weeks. Each time I scrubbed it away. I didn’t complain to Alan; this was between me and Sabrina. Instead I devised a plan to persuade him to get her out of the house.
“Boarding school?” she asked skeptically when we told her.
Alan nodded. “Mom went there. She loved it. Obviously it’s a little far just to pop home for dinner but you’d be here on holiday breaks and even on some weekends if you’d like.”
Those weekends would be few and far between, I silently vowed.
After some consideration Sabrina agreed to go. Alan took her to the school to get her situated while I enjoyed the luxury of a childless home and a clean bathroom mirror.
When the distraught phone calls began I urged Alan to ignore them. “It’s an adjustment, sweetheart. She’s going to be fine.” The school agreed with my advice even as they escalated. Then, one evening, silence.
Alan answered when the school head called the next morning. I had to pry the phone from his fingers as he moaned, “No, I don’t believe it. It can’t be.”
Sabrina was dead. She’d climbed to the top of the clock tower on campus and flung herself a hundred feet to a brick walkway below.
I tried to comfort Alan but he could barely look at me. It’s not my fault, I wanted to scream. I left him sobbing in the kitchen and retreated to our bedroom suite.
A fresh message, this time scrawled in black marker, awaited on my bathroom mirror: You Will Never Forget Me.