“I guess not.” She shakes her head. “They were coming fast and furious at home, though. After the first one at breakfast I thought it was just Braxton-Hicks, but—”
“Braxton-Hicks?”
“You know, false labor. But then it really kicked in. And I thought, I’m going to have this baby more than a month early.”
“I hope not.”
“So do I. It’s too soon. I just want the baby to be all right, Lou,” she says, and her voice cracks. She swallows hard and adds, “I’ve had this feeling lately, like something bad is going to happen.”
“That’s just because you’re pregnant. It’s your hormones.”
“No, I don’t think so. I really feel like something’s going to go wrong.” She finds herself bursting into tears.
“Michelle, come on.” Lou stands and looks down at her, after a moment, reaching down to briefly pat her arm. “It’s going to be okay.”
“Are you sure?”
He nods, but she notices his expression isn’t exactly comforting. Well, he hasn’t ever had the best bedside manner. Probably thanks to Iris, who isn’t the most nurturing person in the world.
“I’m sorry for falling apart,” Michelle says, sniffling.
“Don’t worry about it.” He looks edgy even as he says calmly, “After what happened this morning at the Wasners’, you’re just emotional.”
“I know. Maybe that whole thing brought on the stronger contractions, Lou.”
“Maybe. You were upset, and the stress might have triggered false labor.”
“Right.”
They’re silent for a moment.
He sits again, looking at the monitor. “The baby’s heart rate is staying in the range the nurse said is safe,” he comments. “So that’s good.”
“Yeah. That’s good.”
“All right, Michelle,” Dr. Kabir says, stepping abruptly back through the curtain and flashing his white, white teeth at her. “Let’s have a look.”
“Is everything okay?” she asks, nervously watching him lift and examine the long strip of paper printing out from the monitoring device.
“The contractions have stopped,” he says, nodding. “But then, you probably were aware of that. No more pain?”
“None. I feel completely normal . . . well, as normal as a person can feel in this condition,” she adds, glancing at her mountain of a belly sticking up from beneath the white sheet.
“It was probably just Braxton-Hicks,” the doctor says, glancing at the clipboard in his hand. “Even so, I want to do a level two ultrasound to check the baby’s condition, and I want to keep you here for a while, under observation.”
“For a while?” She thinks of Ozzie, back home with Molly. “How long?”
He shrugs. “At least a few hours. If the sonogram is normal and there are no more contractions, we’ll let you go.”
“So I don’t have to stay overnight?”
“Not unless the baby is in distress or there’s reason to think you’re going into active labor.”
“Good.” She glances at Lou. “If I have to stay overnight I don’t know what we’ll do with Ozzie.”
“Don’t worry. Molly is there. She’s a responsible kid.”
She’s a responsible kid.
She’d said almost the exact same thing about Rebecca just a few hours ago. The connection sends a chill down her spine.
“I know she’s responsible, Lou,” she almost snaps, “but after what’s happened next door, I don’t want her alone with Ozzie at night.”
“Calm down, Michelle. Nothing’s going to happen to Ozzie. Or Molly, for that matter. Stop worrying and focus on the baby.”
“Is something wrong at home?” Dr. Kabir glances from Michelle to Lou.
“It’s our next-door neighbor,” Lou answers before Michelle can open her mouth. “A teenaged girl. Her parents think she’s missing and—”
“They don’t think she’s missing,” Michelle cuts in. “Don’t downplay this, Lou. She was kidnapped from her bed last night, Doctor.”
His thick, dark eyebrows shoot up. “Kidnapped?”
“Possibly,” Lou says, shooting a look at Michelle, “but there’s a chance it could just be a misunderstanding between her and her parents. Or she might have run away—it’s still too early to tell. The police are looking into it.”
“I see. Well, that’s certainly a distressing situation, Michelle, but try not to fret about it,” the doctor says.
Lou promptly flashes her an I told you so look, which she ignores, feeling inexplicably irritated with him.
“The main thing for us to focus on now is making sure that this baby is in good condition. I’m going to order the sonogram for you. Someone will come up to get you and bring you downstairs for that shortly. Okay?”
Michelle nods and watches him slip back out through the curtain.
She turns to Lou. “Call home and check on Ozzie, will you, Lou?”
“You heard what the doctor said. I’m sure everything is—”
“Call home, Lou,” she repeats, urgently. She tries not to let a sense of panic move in, but she can tell her pulse is racing. “What if something’s wrong with the baby?”
“Then the doctor will fix it.”
“What if I go into labor?”
“Then you’ll have the baby. It’s early, but he’ll be fine, I’m sure.”
“But that means I’ll have to stay overnight,” she protests, feeling frantic despite her efforts. “Ozzie—”
“If you have to stay overnight, we’ll get a hold of my mother and she’ll come to stay with Ozzie.”
“Yeah, sure.” Michelle shakes her head. “We’ll never get a hold of Iris on a weekend. She’s probably out of town.”
“You’re getting all worked up for nothing, Michelle. Calm down,” Lou says in a stern tone he reserves for when Ozzie is doing something he shouldn’t.
“Don’t talk to me that way.”
Lou seems poised to snap back, but apparently thinks better. He sighs and says, “Okay. I won’t talk to you that way. I’m sorry.”
“Please call home, Lou.”
He throws up his hands. “Fine.” He looks around the curtained area. “There’s no phone.”
“I think I saw a pay phone down the hall when we were coming in. Out by the nurses’ station.”
“Right. I’ll find it.” With that, he disappears through the curtain.
While he’s gone, Michelle watches the computer screen beside the bed, reassured by the sound of the regular, rapid-fire staccato rhythm of the baby’s heart.
“You’ve got to be okay,” she whispers to her unborn child. “I need you to be okay. And Ozzie, too.”
Long minutes pass.
Michelle taps her fingers nervously on the bed rail. How long can it take to make a simple phone call? Something is wrong at home. She’s certain of it.
Relax. He probably stopped to use the bathroom after he called Molly. Or maybe they’re still talking.
Lou and Molly engaged in a long conversation?
That’s hard to imagine. Her husband isn’t the type to pay much attention to a teenaged baby-sitter. He usually offers little more than a nod and a gruff “hi” when he sees Molly, or Rebecca.
Rebecca.
Michelle battles a renewed surge of panic.
After several more agonizing minutes, she hears footsteps. She wonders if it’s just the orderly coming to take her downstairs for the sonogram. Can she persuade him to wait until Lou gets back? How can she focus on one baby when her other baby might be in trouble?
But it isn’t an orderly who parts the curtain, it’s Lou.
“No answer,” he says abruptly. “That’s what took me so long. I tried a few times.”
“No answer?!”
“Relax, Michelle. They’re probably just playing outside.”
Her heart is throbbing. “Lou, you have to go home to check on them.”
“Go home? But you’re having a sonogram in—”
“I don’t need you here for that. I’ll be fine. Just go home and check on Ozzie, Lou. Please?”
He stares at her for a long time, and she realizes that his features betray some of the tension she feels.
“Okay, I’ll go,” he finally says. “But I’ll come straight back here. And don’t worry, Michelle, I’m sure everything is fine.”
“With the baby, you mean?”
“With Ozzie. The baby, too,” he adds. “All of it. Everything’s going to be okay. You’ll see.”
Really? Then why don’t you sound convinced? she asks herself, watching him retreat out of sight.
On this last Sunday afternoon in June, despite the overcast skies, the path through the Public Garden is predictably crowded with strolling couples, college students, and tourists.
He weaves his way among them, careful not to splash anyone as his jogging shoes land in pools of water left over from the earlier thunderstorm. He crosses the bridge spanning the pond bordered by sweeping weeping willows and dotted with the famous swan boats, and makes his way toward the Arlington Street Gate, wiping trickles of sweat from his forehead.
The weather is clearing now, and he knows, having heard this morning’s forecast, that the sun is supposed to poke through by midafternoon.
He emerges onto Arlington Street, crossing it just as the light turns green, and covers another block, then turns the corner. Newbury Street, in the heart of the Back Bay, is Boston’s quintessential upscale thoroughfare. He doesn’t bother to glance at the majestic Ritz-Carlton Hotel on the corner, nor, as he passes them, at the row of fine boutiques including Giorgio Armani, Burberry, Brooks Brothers, Cartier, nor the sprawling NIKE TOWN superstore, part of a new wave of businesses that are popping up here to challenge the Back Bay’s old-money atmosphere.
There was a time when all of it had taken his breath away, when he’d been dazzled by the glamour and excitement of the city. A time when he couldn’t imagine ever fitting in here on Newbury Street, ever setting foot inside of the upscale Louis, Boston, a palace of a men’s clothing store on the corner of Berkeley Street, or dining at one of the pricey cafes with their intimidating wine lists and exotic daily specials.
But that was when he had newly arrived, a shell-shocked small-town transplant needing desperately to make a fresh start in a place that felt a world away from his tiny hometown—even though Lake Charlotte was merely a short drive away, less than three hours.
Lake Charlotte.
Molly.
Rory.
Carleen.
He tries desperately to shove the intruding image from his mind, but it persists. Carleen, with her long, glossy dark hair, her infectious laugh, her biting sense of humor.
You were years ahead of yourself, honey, he tells the image. Trying to be a woman before you’d finished being a kid. I tried to warn you.
You wouldn’t listen.
“Hey, watch it!”
Startled, he glances up just in time to avoid crashing into a waiter at a sidewalk cafe, carrying a tray of drinks.
“Sorry,” he calls over his shoulder, noting that he’s almost home. He slows his pace, breathing hard, cooling down, doing his best not to think about the past.
About a beautiful, rebellious girl named Carleen Connolly.
About the tragic mistakes they’d both made.
“Treasure, Molly!”
“Good, Ozzie. Treasure.” She widens her eyes, smiles, and nods at him in that condescending way you do with small children, as though you’re as fascinated as they are about some trivial thing like digging in a pile of dirt.
She hadn’t wanted to trek out here to the backyard, but Ozzie insisted, crying and pointing to the dirt pile and managing to convey to her, in his limited toddler vocabulary, that his mommy had promised he could dig for treasure today.
So here she is, sitting in a lawn chair in a patch of shade beneath the lilac tree, in full view of the police investigation taking place at the house next door. Ozzie seems happily oblivious to the uniformed detectives combing the Wasner house, inside and out, for some clue to what happened to Rebecca. No, Ozzie lives the blessedly insulated life of a two-year-old, in which the worst thing that can happen is for someone to take your shovel away from you.
Molly tried, a few minutes ago, only to inspire a bloodcurdling scream that caused several police officers to look up from dusting the Wasners’ back door for fingerprints.
So she let Ozzie keep digging, even though she’s tired and hungry and ready to get inside, away from the blatant reminder that her best friend is gone, and nobody knows what happened to her.
“Treasure! Treasure!”
Ozzie’s shovel has struck something buried in the dirt.
“Molly help!” he cries excitedly, hurrying over to her and pulling her up from her chair.
“No, Ozzie, Molly doesn’t want to get all dirty.”
“Help, Molly. Pwease?”
Charmed by his polite request and his big brown eyes, she relents. “Okay, I’ll help. It’s probably a rock. I’ll get it out of the way so you can keep digging.”
“Dig,” Ozzie agrees, and hands her the orange plastic shovel.
Molly crouches at the edge of the grass, surprised at how deep a hole he’s managed to dig. “Not bad for a little guy,” she tells him, poking his shovel into the hole, keeping an eye out for worms and bugs.
The plastic strikes something hard, and she tries to pry it loose.
If it’s a rock, it’s not just some small pebble, she realizes, scraping some dirt away with the shovel and seeing that the object extends beyond the hole Ozzie dug.
“I can’t get it out, Ozzie,” she says, offering him the shovel. “Just dig someplace else, okay?”
He scrunches his features like he’s going to burst into another scream, and she says, with a quick glance toward the cops still working on the doorknob of the Wasners’ house, “Okay, Ozzie, just calm down. I’ll move the rock, or whatever it is, so you can keep digging.”
With a sigh, she steps gingerly with her sandaled feet from the grass into the dirt, positioning herself directly over the hole. She scrapes away more dirt, widening the hole so that she can get to whatever it is that’s stuck in here.
Ozzie is crouched next to her as she works, silently engrossed in her progress. She hears one of the detectives next door call to another, “Hey, Bob, was that blood on the front sidewalk?”
Blood?
Oh, God.
Molly feels like she’s going to throw up.
“Nah,” replies the other cop. “Turned out to be a spot of paint from when they did the trim last fall.”
“Treasure, Molly?”
“Ozzie, I think we need to go inside,” she says, swallowing hard.
“No! Treasure.”
“Okay, I’ll do this for one more . . . what is this?”
She peers into the hole, having uncovered the edge of the buried object. Now she can see that it’s curved and somewhat pliable, like some kind of tire. That’s what it is, she realizes, brushing more dirt away with her hands to reveal spokes.
Just an old bike tire.
“Molly?”
She glances up at the sound of a male voice calling her name and sees Lou Randall on the driveway.
“Daddy!” Ozzie shouts, running toward him. “Buried treasure!”
“Mr. Randall? Is everything okay?” Molly asks, standing and dusting herself off before following Ozzie.
“Everything’s fine. I figured you guys were just playing outside.”
“Ozzie told me his mommy promised he could play with his shovel in
the dirt this afternoon.”
“She probably did.”
“Buried treasure,” Ozzie says again, as Lou scoops him into his arms and gives him a quick peck on the cheek.
“How’s Michelle?” Molly looks past him, expecting to see his pregnant wife getting out of the Ford Explorer.
“She’s still at the hospital, actually.”
“Is she in labor?”
“They don’t think so. She’s about to have some tests to check on the baby. I tried to call home to check on you guys, but when I couldn’t get through, she got worried and sent me home to check.”
“God, I’m sorry. I didn’t hear the phone ringing. We shouldn’t have come outside,” Molly says.
“It’s okay. But do me a favor and stay in now, so I can reach you if I need to. I’ve got to dash back to the hospital,” he adds, checking his watch as he sets Ozzie back on his feet. “Be a good boy for Molly, sport.”
“Tell Michelle I hope everything’s okay.”
“Thanks, Molly, I will,” he calls, already striding back to the car. The Explorer’s motor is still running. He starts to get in, and then, as an afterthought, glances at the house next door and calls, “Any news about your friend?”
Molly swallows hard, afraid to try to speak, and shakes her head.
“Are you okay, Molly?”
“I’m fine,” she manages to answer. “Don’t worry about me and Ozzie. I’ll take good care of him.”
“Bye bye, Daddy,” Ozzie calls, waving as his father pulls out of the driveway.
“Come on, Ozzie,” Molly says, grabbing his grubby hand in her own. “Let’s go in and wash up.”
“No! Dig!”
“You heard your dad. He wants us to stay inside. I’ll read you a story and we’ll have some ice cream or something, okay?” she asks as they step through the back door into the kitchen.
“Ice cream!” Ozzie echoes with his usual enthusiasm.
She stops short.
Something just creaked overhead.
“Ice cream!” Ozzie shouts again.
“Shh, Ozzie,” Molly says, grabbing him by the shoulders to keep him still. “What was that?”
“Ice cream!”
“Ozzie, be quiet!” She cocks her head, listening.
All the Way Home Page 17
