Read Forgotten: A Novel for Free Online Page A

moves toward the horizon, a lioness charges out of the tall grass and leaps at the throat of a zebra that’s lazily strayed away from the herd. With her victim dying at her feet, she emits a series of low roars, calling her pride to the feast.
    I roll down my dusty window to get a better look. I can smell the blood and hear flesh being ripped apart. I’m repelled, yet I can’t look away. My fellow travelers snap pictures and shoot video until the zebra is carrion.
    When we get back to camp, we’re excited and chatty in a way we haven’t been till now. Roy and Dorothy, a white-haired retired couple, sit at the rough picnic table scrolling through the pictures they took on their camera.
    “Look, Do, he took that leg right off.”
    “ She took that leg off, dear. It’s the females that do the killing.”
    Bill the ex-army guy is telling Max the still-hippie about the wildebeest he killed on his last trip to Africa. Laurie, Max’s girlfriend, tells me she thinks Max brought her on the trip to propose, and she’s feeling nervous, wondering when he’ll do it.
    The guides make us dinner. Banga-just-Bob complains that he has a headache. I see him pop a couple of aspirin while he stirs the meat stew. When it’s ready, I tuck into a large serving. It tastes good but foreign.
    I feel a hand on my shoulder. My mother is standing next to me. She looks like she did before her illness, only less substantial somehow. Diaphanous.
    “Don’t eat that,” she says. “He’s sick.”
    Before I can say anything, she turns and walks away. I drop my bowl. It lands with a thud in the dirt, shattering. The dusty ground sops up the gravy thirstily. I call out to her, but she doesn’t react; she just keeps slowly walking away, wearing something white and floaty.
    I try to run after her, but I can’t make my legs work. The sun disappears below the horizon. I can’t see her anymore; there’s just a white spot where she was a minute ago—the trace of her like a bright light leaves on the cornea. I feel as I did when she died, like I’ve lost her all over again.
    Banga-just-Bob strikes a match and tosses it into the waiting fire ring. The flames leap up as a troupe of performers circle the fire, their red robes the only flash of color in a suddenly black-and-white world.
    The stars dance above them in the massive sky. I watch their ceremony like I watched the lions earlier that day, barely breathing. The fire dies down. One of the performers locks his eyes onto mine and beckons me with a flick of his wrist. I walk toward him slowly, still searching for my mother out there in the blackness. He places his long, cool fingers on my forehead, pressing gently.
    “You’re sick,” he says. “You’re sick.”
    I awake with a start. My head is throbbing and my stomach feels empty. Yesterday, after several belts of liquor, all I wanted to do was crawl back into bed and disappear. So I did. I slept and dreamt, and slept and dreamt, and now it’s Monday morning.
    I push off the covers and cross the cold floor. I climb back into Dominic’s clothes and go to the kitchen for something to eat. The sight of the phone on the counter sends a pang through my gut. I really, really need to speak to someone in my life. I carry the phone to the table and dial the never-forgotten number for Stephanie’s parents. It’s early—just after seven—but they’ll be up. I can imagine them even: Lucy in her workout clothes drinking orange juice before she meets her “girls” for a morning walk, Brian reading the newspaper in a starched shirt and tie even though he retired five years ago.
    “Good morning!” Lucy chirps into the phone.
    “Hi, Lucy. It’s Emma. Emma Tupper.”
    I hear the sucking in of breath and a loud smack! “Brian, Brian!”
    “Lucy? Hello, Lucy?”
    There’s a scuffling noise and then a deep male voice. “Who is this?”
    “It’s me, Brian. It’s Emma.”
    “If this is some kind of sick joke—”
    “No. It’s really me.