It’s because you let him go too far and now he thinks you’re a slut, Molly tells herself guiltily. You shouldn’t have done that.
Yeah, but it wasn’t as if they’d gone that far. They were just making out. True, she’d let him unfasten her bra and touch her, but only above the waist, and . . .
“Molly?” Amanda prods. “You there?”
“Yeah, I’m here. Okay, I’ll come,” she decides.
“Great.”
“Are you going to call Ryan?”
“Sure, I’ll call him right now,” Amanda promises, and Molly feels a pinprick of happiness for the first time in what seems like ages.
She hears Rory’s footsteps heading back down the stairs and wonders briefly if she should tell her about the boating trip. Then she thinks better of it. She doesn’t owe Rory any explanations about where she goes or what she does.
No. Like you said, you don’t owe Rory a damned thing.
He’s late for work this morning. Overslept, and no wonder. He spent all of last night tossing and turning, tormented by nightmares about Carleen.
Carleen, tossing that silky hair of hers and taunting him.
Carleen’s tear-streaked face, accusing eyes.
Carleen pounding him with her fists, screaming, “How could you do this to me?”
Now he flips pages of his newspaper as he sits restlessly on the T, taking the Red Line as he does every weekday toward Cambridge. He has a car, and tried driving to campus the first few weeks he was living in the city, but soon discovered that it’s just not worth it. Boston traffic is notoriously congested, and it’s much more pleasant to take the T, where he can relax and catch up on the morning news.
Today he tries to focus on the paper, tries to think about something other than Carleen.
Kelly will be back later this afternoon from her weekend with her family in Washington. She’d flown home to look for wedding gowns and meet with the caterers her mother had hired to do the reception. She’d asked him to come, too, but he made some excuse about having too much work to catch up on.
In truth, he’s been thinking for a while now that she’s going a bit overboard on the wedding plans, but he hasn’t thought of a way to say it without crushing her.
She’d called last night to say she’d hired a band instead of the pianist they’d agreed would provide simple, quiet background music at the reception. “They played at my sister’s wedding, and they were just so wonderful,” she’d told him. “I knew you wouldn’t mind.”
And her parents had talked her into a sit-down dinner instead of a buffet. “I know we said buffet, but they’re paying for it and I didn’t think it would matter so much to you.”
She’d found her gown, and had to go back down for a fitting over the Fourth of July weekend.
“You understand, don’t you?” she’d said, though they had plans to stroll around the Harborfest here the way they had last year, after hearing the annual reading of the Declaration of Independence over at the State House.
“Sure, honey,” he’d said, quelling his misgivings. “I understand.”
And he does. She’s younger than he is; this is her first marriage; she can’t help but want a big wedding with all the trimmings, no matter what she said when he finally proposed to her last year.
Oh, Kelly. You would have said yes to anything, just to get me to marry you, he thinks sadly. You knew I had so many misgivings. You were too young, and you were my student, and I was trying to be so careful after everything that happened with Carleen—
But then, Kelly doesn’t know about that.
Nobody in his new life knows about that. For the most part, he has managed to virtually erase his past, as though he has simply always been this sophisticated, urbane Harvard professor, a fine, upstanding citizen.
The train pulls into a station. He glances up to see which one, having lost track of where he is. Charles. A few more stops to go.
He flips the page of his paper and scans the national news page distractedly.
More brush fires in California.
A recess in that racism trial in Texas.
Something catches his eye.
His heart skips a beat.
Two words jump out at him from the caption beneath a photo of a nondescript teenaged girl.
Lake Charlotte.
For a moment, he simply can’t breathe.
He stares at the photo, belatedly recognizing the girl, and then at the caption, reading and rereading it.
Rebecca Wasner, 13, mysteriously vanished from her Lake Charlotte, NY, home this weekend.
Rebecca Wasner.
Molly’s friend.
Trembling, he shifts his gaze to the article. He skims it until he gets to the paragraph about the uncanny coincidence that the girl turned up missing on the tenth anniversary of the first Lake Charlotte disappearance. It goes on to list the girls who had vanished that summer.
His gaze lingers on Carleen’s name.
He forces himself to move past it, to keep reading, straight through to the end, where the author mentions that the strange disappearances of a decade ago were never solved, and police are working overtime to determine whether this new case can possibly be related. There’s an eight hundred phone number listed for people to call if they have any relevant information about Rebecca Wasner, or any of the four girls who disappeared ten years ago.
“Maybe somebody out there knows something about one of them, something that they’ve been keeping a secret for all these years,” a Lake Charlotte police detective is quoted as saying. “Something that seemed insignificant at the time, but might ultimately lead us to a suspect. We’re not saying that whoever took those four girls is responsible for taking Rebecca, but we’re not ruling it out, either.”
The train pulls into a station. He glances absently out the window at the sign on the platform, then jumps up, realizing it’s his destination. Harvard. He scurries through the doors just as they’re starting to close, getting out in the nick of time.
Lost in thought, he begins walking slowly toward the steps as the train pulls past him, leaving the station.
Rory tilts the plastic pitcher to pour herself a glass of iced tea and spills most of it all over the counter.
“Damn,” she says under her breath.
“Rory, please.” Sister Theodosia looks up from her Bible.
“I’m sorry, Sister.”
The nun gives a slight nod, tight-lipped, and goes back to her reading, the cup of tea she made earlier sitting untouched in front of her on the table.
Why don’t you just go home? Rory asks her silently as she grabs a sponge and mops up the mess on the counter. You’re not doing anyone any good here. Mom is nuttier than ever.
Earlier, her mother had babbled something about Rory running along outside to play hide-and-seek. “Carleen and Emily are already out there, hiding,” she said. “I saw them.”
Sister Theodosia hadn’t seemed the least bit bothered by Maura’s comment, nor had she allowed Rory to catch her eye.
With a sigh, Rory had said, “Okay, Mom, I’ll go out later.”
Rather than make repeated, futile attempts to bring her mother back to reality, Rory figures she might as well placate her, at least for now.
Meanwhile, there’s Molly to worry about. She took off without telling Rory where she was going or when she’d be back.
Now Rory picks up her glass of iced tea and glances at Sister Theodosia sitting at the table, her lips moving as she pores over her Bible. With a sigh, Rory carries her drink into the living room and sits in her father’s old chair, wishing, not for the first time, that he were here with her.
We need you, Daddy. We all need you so much. If you were still out there someplace. If only you could come back to rescue us.
She stares dismally out the window at the
street, noting the police car still parked in front of the Wasners’. That poor family.
Poor Molly.
For a fleeting moment, when she told Molly she understood how she must be feeling, she thought she might have reached her. But no, Molly’s stone wall was intact. She made it more than clear that she wants to be left alone, that she isn’t going to let Rory comfort her.
Maybe that’s just as well.
Rory sips her iced tea, her thoughts flitting back to what Barrett Maitland told her about Emily having a brother.
It’s just so hard to believe that Emily kept such a deep, dark secret from Rory for so long, never letting on.
Then again, Rory, too, had kept a family secret. She had never told Emily the truth about Molly’s birth—had never even considered it.
But I had to keep the secret. I didn’t have a choice. I promised Daddy and Mom.
Maybe that’s why Emily kept her secret. Maybe her father made her swear never to reveal it. Maybe having a mentally challenged child was as shameful to him as having a pregnant teenaged daughter was to Maura Connolly.
Rory wonders again about Emily’s brother. Barrett said he’s still living in that home down in Poughkeepsie.
St. Malachy’s, wasn’t it?
For some reason, that’s been in the back of her mind ever since he told her.
That Emily’s brother is there.
That, if she wanted to, she could actually go there. To Poughkeepsie. To see him.
But why would you want to?
Maybe because, she realizes, if he really does exist, he’s the only remaining link to Emily.
Maybe because Rory desperately needs to put the past to rest so that she can begin to heal.
And maybe, she admits, because there’s a chance that David Anghardt might hold some clue to what happened that summer. After all, he must have been the mystery visitor Emily had mentioned. And if he was here . . .
Could he have had something to do with the disappearances of those girls?
It isn’t something she’s even dared to think about until now, much less mention to Barrett Maitland.
For a moment, she considers asking him to come with her.
Then she thinks better of it. She still doesn’t trust him.
No, she’ll go alone.
She’ll go tomorrow.
There’s a thump overhead. Then another.
Frowning, Rory looks up at the ceiling. Maura must be up to something.
With a sigh, she puts down her glass of iced tea and goes up to the second floor. Her mother’s bedroom door is open.
“Mom?”
No reply.
Another thump from overhead.
Sighing again, she heads up the second flight to the third floor, passing the closed door to her room and the one that had once belonged to Carleen. The last door, leading to the large, unfinished attic storage room, is cracked open.
As she walks toward it, Rory becomes aware of the slightest hint of perfume in the air.
Poison.
Carleen’s perfume.
She stands absolutely still, sniffing. Yes, that’s definitely what it is.
Can her mother be wearing it?
“Mom?” she calls, pushing the attic room door open and poking her head inside. But here, the air is close and smells only musty. There’s no evidence of the perfume that lingered in the hallway.
“Mom? What are you doing?”
Her mother turns away from an old trunk open on the floor, and Rory sees that she’s holding an armful of clothes. Old clothes Rory and Carleen used to use as little girls when they played dress-up.
“I need a costume,” her mother says. “For the Halloween party at the church hall.”
“It isn’t Halloween, Mom,” Rory tells her flatly.
Ignoring her, Maura turns back to the trunk, pulling out a long black feather boa that had belonged to her great-grandmother.
Rory remembers Carleen wrapping it around her neck and mincing around the dusty attic floor in a pair of Maura’s old, too-big high heels, telling Rory, “I’m the queen, and you’re my subject, and you have to do whatever I say.”
“But that’s not a good game. I don’t want to play anymore.”
“Come on, Rory, don’t be a baby. Just a little while longer. Here, put this apron on. You can be my lady in waiting.”
“What’s a lady in waiting?”
“You know . . . like a maid.”
“No way! I don’t want to be your maid, Carleen.”
“Oh, come on, Rory . . . it’ll be fun.”
She finds herself smiling slightly as those little-girl voices echo in her ears.
You were so bossy, Carleen. Such a typical big sister. What would you be like now? God, I wish you were here with me to laugh about those days.
Her mother is softly humming something.
Rory listens, recognizes the tune.
“ ‘I’ll Be Seeing You.’ ”
It’s an old song, really old, like from the forties. But her father’d had a record collection that contained a bunch of sappy old songs, and she and Carleen had once caught her parents dancing to that particular one in the kitchen, of all places, on a rainy afternoon.
They’d looked all embarrassed when she and Carleen had popped up unexpectedly, but they kept on dancing, with Mom giggling as Daddy twirled her around and around. It’s one of the only memories Rory has of her parents laughing together. Happy. In love.
Until then, she’d never really believed that they’d loved each other.
And she’d forgotten all about it, until now, hearing that tune again. The words echo in her mind.
I’ll be seeing you . . . in all the old, familiar places . . .
They loved each other. Yes. They really did. He really loved her. It must have killed him to see her drifting away from him, with all of her problems.
“Mom . . . are you all right?” she asks cautiously.
Her mother doesn’t reply, humming, rummaging through the trunk.
Rory watches her for a moment. Then, feeling as though she’s spying on an intensely private moment, just as she had that long-ago rainy day in the kitchen, she quietly slips away.
And in the hallway, she again becomes aware of the merest whiff of her sister’s favorite perfume.
Frowning, Rory walks slowly toward Carleen’s door. She opens it, poking her head into the room.
The scent is stronger here.
Her heart pounding, Rory closes the door and hurries down the stairs.
“There’s no such thing as ghosts,” she tells herself once she’s back in the living room.
“What did you say, Rory?”
She looks up to see Sister Theodosia standing in the doorway.
None of your business what I said.
“Nothing,” Rory tells her.
“Where’s your mother? I’d like to do the rosary with her now.”
“Mom is busy. I think she needs to be alone.”
“It’s time to do the rosary.” The nun turns toward the stairs.
“Leave her alone right now, Sister,” Rory says sharply.
Sister Theodosia turns back, her black eyes narrowing at Rory. “I don’t appreciate that tone, Rory.”
“Sister, maybe it would be better if you left. I think Mom and Molly and I need some time alone together. I mean, I do appreciate your coming here and everything, but maybe you should go.”
“I plan to,” the nun says, and adds, “in a day or two.”
With that, she walks away.
A day or two.
Great.
Rolling her eyes, Rory picks up her iced tea again and sinks into her father’s chair.
“John?”
“Shelly! How’s it going?”
&nb
sp; Her cousin’s warm greeting takes Michelle by surprise. For some reason, she’d been expecting him to be as glum as her world suddenly seems. But John is his usual sunny self, thank God.
She contemplates mentioning the trip to the hospital yesterday, and decides against it. “I’m fine,” she tells him instead. “How are you? How’s Nancy and the kids?”
“Everyone’s doing well. I heard about what happened over there, though. That’s really a terrible shame.”
He’s talking about Rebecca’s disappearance, she realizes. Not only is the news all over the local papers, but it seems to be causing a widespread stir. Lou called home at lunchtime to tell Michelle that the wire services had picked up the story and there was even a blurb about it in USA Today.
“But why?” Michelle had asked, bewildered.
“Because it’s the anniversary of the disappearance of all those other girls, Michelle,” Lou had said with exaggerated patience, as though a hormonal basket case like her wasn’t capable of figuring out the connection. “That’s either a morbid coincidence, or it means Rebecca’s disappearance is linked to those cases.”
“It is a shame,” she echoes her cousin John’s comment, propping the cordless phone between her ear and shoulder and walking absently to the living-room window. She parts the sheer curtains and peers out into the street. In addition to the squad car that’s become a fixture at the curb in front of the Wasners’ house, there are a few other unfamiliar vehicles now. Michelle suspects that they belong to the press.
“Listen, Shelly, it’s funny that you called, because I was about to get in touch with you just now anyway. I was wondering if I could come over tonight to talk about that addition.”
“I didn’t think you could make it until later in the week.”
“Actually, I forgot all about a conference I’m going to in New York. I’m leaving early Thursday morning, so—”
“Then our thing can wait, John. It’s really no rush.”
“No, it’s not a problem. I just found out Nancy invited her mother over for supper. So I figured I’d work late tonight after all.”
Michelle smiles, having met her cousin’s mother-in-law a few times before. The woman made Iris look like an absolute dear.
All the Way Home Page 22
