She hears it again.
A faint creak.
Like a footstep on a loose floorboard.
Paralyzed with fear, Molly listens, and even Ozzie is motionless, as though he, too, senses that something is wrong.
Several moments pass.
There’s nothing but silence.
Calm down. Don’t panic. This is an old house, Molly tells herself. Old houses are always creaking, making settling noises.
Settling noises that sound like footsteps?
Don’t jump to conclusions. Or, if you’re that freaked out, call Rory. She said she’ll come over if you need her.
You don’t need her, of all people.
You can take care of yourself, and Ozzie, too.
Besides, what is there to worry about? There’s a bunch of police officers right outside.
Right. Police officers who are investigating what happened to Rebecca—who vanished off the face of the earth last night. Just like Carleen.
What if the same person who abducted all those girls years ago is back? What if he’s the one who took Rebecca? What if the kidnapper is hiding here, in this house, right now?
Molly swallows.
‘‘Ice cream, Molly?” Ozzie asks in a small, hopeful voice.
“In a minute, Ozzie,” she says absently, turning to glance out the kitchen window toward her own house next door. Should she bring Ozzie right over there?
No. She can’t. She just promised his father she’d stay here, inside, in case he tries to call again from the hospital.
Besides, Mom and Sister Theodosia are home. She saw the big black car pull into the driveway next door earlier. She doesn’t want to drag them into this.
No, she’ll have to call Rory and ask her to come over here.
To do what? Save you from the kidnapper?
Molly hesitates, not wanting to call.
Not wanting to admit to anyone, least of all Rory, how scared and vulnerable she is.
But she thinks again of Rebecca, and of the sound she thought she heard overhead, and a chill slips down her spine.
Setting her jaw resolutely, Molly moves toward the phone, picks up the receiver in a trembling hand, and begins to dial.
The phone rings just as Rory, her mother, and Sister Theodosia are finishing their mostly silent lunch around the kitchen table. Sister Theodosia made watery scrambled eggs when they returned from mass, and Rory was so starved she agreed to join them when she came downstairs after her shower.
Big mistake.
The eggs are disgusting, and the tension at the table is palpable.
She can’t think of a solitary thing to say.
She can hardly confide in them about her earlier conversation with Barrett Maitland, who is turning out to be a nice guy, after all. So nice that she agreed to meet him again tonight for coffee, against her better judgment. But maybe she was being too hard on him earlier, too suspicious for no good reason . . .
Nor can she bring up the topic of her mother’s problems so that the three of them can have a nice little chat and fix everything. No, she never should have asked Sister Theodosia for help.
The only person who can help her mother, she now realizes, is a psychiatrist. She’ll just have to convince her to see one. And she’s not about to do that in front of Sister Theodosia, who made it clear that she thinks prayer is the answer.
So Rory sits silently at the kitchen table and pokes at her eggs with her fork, and when the phone rings, she leaps up to answer it, grabbing it gratefully, like it’s a rope and she’s struggling in a riptide.
“Hello?”
“Rory?”
“Molly?”
“Can you come over?”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, just . . . can you come?”
“I’ll be right there.” Rory hangs up and turns to see both her mother and Sister Theodosia watching her expectantly.
“That was Molly—”
“Where is she?” her mother asks, knitting her brows in obvious confusion.
“Baby-sitting. Next door. Remember? I mentioned that earlier, when you asked me about her when you got home from church,” Rory says, darting a See? I told you glance at Sister Theodosia.
“What’s wrong over there?” the nun asks.
“Nothing. She just wants me to come over. I think she just wants someone to keep her company,” Rory says, heading for the door. “I’ll be back in a little while.”
She steps outside and looks toward the house next door, realizing she hasn’t set foot inside the place in years. Not since Emily . . .
Shoving that unsettling thought out of her mind, Rory quickly crosses the yard to the honeysuckle hedge, glancing toward the street as she emerges from the well-worn path between the branches. From here she can glimpse police cars still parked at the curb of the Wasners’ house next door.
Did they find something? Is that why Molly’s upset?
Please, don’t let it be that, Rory prays as she hurries toward the back door.
Molly’s waiting behind the screen, holding a squirming, protesting Ozzie.
“What’s wrong?” Rory asks, alarmed, seeing that her sister’s face is even paler than usual.
“Nothing. I—”
“Ice cream, Molly! Pwease!” Ozzie hollers.
“He wants ice cream,” Molly says wanly. “I told him he could have some, and . . .”
“I’ll get it for him.” Rory steps inside, past her sister, and looks around. “Tell me what’s going on, Molly.”
“It’s nothing, really. I shouldn’t have called.”
Rory crosses the familiar kitchen to the freezer, trying not to notice that the place is laid out exactly as it was when the Anghardts lived here. Everything looks the same, right down to the worn linoleum. The appliances and furniture are different, but in the same spots: stove and refrigerator opposite the back door, table in the nook by the window.
Emily and her father had never used their table. It was always piled with clutter, Rory recalls. She had once asked Emily where they sat when they ate their meals, and Emily had shrugged and replied, “Wherever. In front of the television, or sometimes I just stand at the counter. It’s not like we have these real sit-down meals with just the two of us.”
Shutting out the memory of her lost friend, Rory opens the freezer and spots a carton of fudge ripple. Ozzie breaks into an excited dance at her feet as she removes it.
“Something must be happening for you to have called me over here,” Rory says quietly to Molly, who just shrugs.
She opens and closes cupboard doors and drawers until she locates a spoon and a small plastic bowl. She scoops out a small portion of ice cream for Ozzie, sets it in front of the booster chair at the table, and lifts him into it. He grabs his spoon and digs in with gusto.
“It’s just . . . I thought I heard this noise, and I guess I panicked,” Molly says when Rory turns back to her.
“What kind of noise?”
“A footstep. Actually, two footsteps. Coming from upstairs.”
Rory stares at her. “Are you sure?”
“No. In fact, I’m pretty positive now that it was just my imagination. I’m just freaked out by this whole thing with Rebecca. I guess my mind is getting carried away. Like there’s some crazed kidnapper on the loose in the house,” she says with a forced, derisive laugh that comes out sounding hollow.
“That’s understandable, Molly. You’ve been through so much these last few days. But still . . . did you look upstairs so you can put your mind at ease?”
“No way!” her sister replies promptly.
“Do you want me to?”
“No . . . Yes. If you wouldn’t mind.”
“I don’t mind.”
Yes, I do.
And not because I
think there’s some psycho kidnapper lurking in a closet up there, either.
I mind because I don’t want to walk up those stairs and down that hall. I don’t want to look into Emily’s old bedroom, and I don’t want to remember her, and I don’t want to wonder what happened to her.
“Do you . . . do you want me to come with you?” Molly asks, watching her, as though she senses Rory’s reluctance.
“No. Just stay here with Ozzie. I’ll be right back.”
“Rory, be careful, okay?” Molly calls after her.
“Molly, don’t worry.”
At least the rest of the first floor looks different from when the Anghardts lived here. Now, despite the obvious signs that it’s undergoing renovation—like the half-stripped wallpaper in the front foyer and the rough, patched living-room walls where dark paneling had been ripped away—it’s more homey. The dining room has been painted a soft raspberry color framed by white crown molding, and there are soft floral balloon curtains framing the bay windows. The living-room furniture is oversized and upholstered in a comfortable-looking chintz with contrasting throw pillows, and there’s a row of children’s videos in the glass-fronted cupboard by the fireplace, where Emily’s father had kept his hunting rifles.
It’s clear that a family lives here now.
The Anghardts’ home had lacked any hint of coziness. Their furniture was boxy and functional, and the windows had been covered by ugly Venetian blinds. What the place had lacked, Rory realizes now, was a woman’s touch. Emily didn’t have a mother; she’d mentioned once that her mom had died giving birth to her, and that the loss had shattered her father.
Rory barely remembers him; he was a quiet, brooding type, usually clad in a plaid flannel shirt or a T-shirt, jeans, work boots, and, in colder weather, one of those tweedy caps with a visor and ear flaps. He wasn’t home a whole lot. He worked the night shift at some plant and spent his days sleeping, which was why Rory and Emily spent most of their days playing in the yard, or over at Rory’s house, and evenings at Emily’s, where there was no one home to care whether they watched R-rated movies on HBO or made a mess of the kitchen baking cookies or brownies.
There were times when Rory felt sorry for Emily, living alone with her father in that big, quiet, shabby old house, and other times when she envied her for the peace and quiet and privacy. Mr. Anghardt never bothered them when they were playing in Emily’s room, the way Rory’s family was always barging in when they played in hers.
Patrick Connolly, with his flaming hair and an Irish temper to match, had been the kind of father who was known to fly off the handle, yelling and throwing things around once in a while, but he would also grab you unexpectedly and give you a bear hug.
Meanwhile, Mr. Anghardt never yelled, but he never seemed to show any warmth toward his daughter, either—at least, not when Rory was around. Once in a while, Emily would show Rory a pretty bracelet or ring, or a new stuffed animal for her collection, saying proudly, “See what Daddy gave me?” She would cling to those tokens of her father’s affection, as though they proved that he loved her—that he didn’t resent her for being born, and killing her mother in the process.
You were so lonely, so desperate to be loved, Emily, Rory thinks now, looking back with a new perspective on her friend’s unconventional home life. Just like Molly is now.
She sighs and hesitates only briefly at the foot of the steps before starting up, dragging her fingers slowly along the polished wooden railing she and Emily used to slide down when her father wasn’t home.
I’ve never had another friend like Emily, she thinks wistfully, stopping on the landing to look out the small round leaded window that overlooks the well-worn path through the honeysuckle hedge. I’ve never let another person get that close to me. It would hurt too much to lose anyone else.
She reaches the upstairs hall which is dim and high-ceilinged and tunnellike as she remembers, and she walks slowly to the doorway of Emily’s old room. A fresh, fierce wave of pain unexpectedly sweeps over her and she presses a tightly clenched fist against her trembling mouth as she looks around at the crib and the colorful nursery rhyme mural and the basket of toy trucks and cars.
The only thing that is remotely the same about the room is a pile of stuffed animals on the window-seat alcove where Emily used to keep her collection, and the built-in bookshelf beside the closet door, which now holds copies of Pat the Cat and Goodnight Moon and what looks like the complete works of Beatrix Potter, instead of those Sweet Valley High books Rory and Emily would trade back and forth.
For the first time, Rory allows herself to absorb a profound loss that had somehow gotten swept up into the one that had preceded it and the one that had followed it. Sandwiched between the trauma of Carleen vanishing and the devastation of Daddy’s death, Emily’s disappearance had somehow never hit her with full force . . .
Until now.
Now, she stands sobbing in the doorway of what had once been her best friend’s room. She sees Emily curled up there on the cushioned window seat; Emily, with her sweet, smiling face and her clear, sky-colored eyes and the long, silky blond hair Rory had always coveted.
She hears Emily’s voice saying, “Come on, Rory, let’s play Monopoly—you can be the banker this time,” or, “Look, Rory, see the new ring Daddy bought for me? It’s jade. That’s my birthstone.”
Poor Mr. Anghardt, losing first his wife, then his daughter. He’d been so overwhelmed by his grief that he’d packed up and moved away not long after that horrible summer. Rory thinks about him now; hopes he’s found happiness, wherever he is.
But you haven’t, she reminds herself. You never got over losing so many people who were close to you. Why would he? Why would anyone?
Maybe if there were some sense of closure, she realizes suddenly. Maybe if she had gone to Daddy’s funeral, or if Carleen and Emily’s bodies had been found, maybe then she would have been able to finish grieving, put it to rest, and go on.
As it is, it’s as though everything’s hanging in limbo—no sense of whether people she loved are alive or dead.
But of course they’re dead, she tells herself. Certainly Daddy is, and after all these years with no sign of them, Carleen and Emily must be, too.
Then again . . .
What if they’re not?
What if Daddy faked his death so he could escape his miserable life here?
What if Carleen ran away?
What if Emily . . .
Well, there’s no plausible explanation for what had happened to Emily, or the other two girls who had vanished in Lake Charlotte that summer.
And, Rory tells herself, it’s completely irrational and childish to even go around pretending, for one second, that Carleen or Daddy or Emily might still be alive somewhere.
With a sigh, she turns away from her best friend’s former bedroom, remembering, as she does, what she’s supposed to be doing up here. Looking for a hidden intruder.
That’s about as likely as Daddy walking through the door someday, she tells herself, but for Molly’s sake, she makes her way down the hall and starts opening doors, giving each room a cursory inspection before moving on.
She can only hope that Rebecca Wasner will turn up safe and sound, so Molly won’t spend a lifetime not knowing what happened to her best friend.
That doesn’t change the fact that Molly already lost Carleen and Daddy, just like I did. Or that Molly just discovered—thanks to my big mouth—that Carleen wasn’t her sister and Daddy was’t her father.
Now there’s something that’ll screw a person up royally.
Molly, she thinks desolately, doesn’t have a chance.
“Owww!” Michelle winces at the pressure on her belly as the ultrasound technician presses the transducer down hard beneath her navel.
“Sorry . . . I just need to get a better look at the pla
centa before we call it quits,” the woman says, her eyes intently focused on the screen beside the table where Michelle is lying, uncomfortably flat on her back, with her stomach sticking out and slicked with a film of gel.
In the darkness of the small room, the screen glows with the image of the fetus curled up inside her womb. Moments ago, the technician had showed Michelle the reassuring sight of the baby’s small heart beating rapidly, and the dark blob that she’s fairly sure is the baby’s testicles, which means the first test was right and it’s going to be another boy.
“Does the placenta look all right?’ Michelle asks the woman anxiously, as the transducer glides across her belly, then probes again.
“Mmm” is all the woman says.
She already told Michelle she can only perform the test, not discuss the results. That’s for the doctor to do. But every time the woman rapidly presses the buttons on her keyboard to freeze the image on the screen and zero in on some part of the baby, Michelle wonders what she’s doing, what she’s found; whether anything is terribly wrong.
And the whole time, her worry about the baby mingles with her fear over Ozzie’s safety. They came to get her for the test moments after Lou left.
“Can you please have my husband meet me downstairs?” she called to the woman at the nurses’ station, who had promised to send Lou right down.
But he still hasn’t arrived.
The ultrasound technician freezes the screen, zooms in, and prints another image.
Was that the baby’s brain?
What’s wrong with the baby?
Where’s Lou?
Is Ozzie all right?
Just when Michelle thinks I can’t stand another second of this, there’s a knock on the door.
“Yes?” calls the woman, looking up expectantly from her keyboard.
The door opens and Lou’s face appears in the shaft of light from the corridor. “I’m her husband,” he says.
Michelle struggles to raise herself on her elbows. “Lou! Is Ozzie—”
“He’s fine,” Lou says. “They were playing outside.”
“Lie back,” the technician says.
Lou comes to stand beside the table, peering at the screen. “Is the baby—”
All the Way Home Page 18
