“Okay, John, come on over,” she says, grateful for the distraction. “I’ll call Lou and tell him, to make sure he’ll be here.”
“Sounds good. What was that clicking sound? Did you hear it?”
“Just the baby monitor,” she tells him. “Ozzie’s upstairs napping and I’ve got it turned on. It messes with the cordless phone. Anyway, why don’t you stay for supper? I made a meat loaf and I just finished mashing the potatoes.”
“Meat loaf and mashed potatoes? Why all the fuss? Shouldn’t you be sitting around with your feet up reading baby-name books right about now, Shelly?”
“I guess so. But for some reason I woke up in the mood to make like Martha Stewart.”
“Uh-oh,” John says with a chuckle. “When did you say you were due?”
“August. Why?”
“I was going to say you might be going into labor. The day she had Ashley, Nancy woke up and decided to bake a dozen fruitcakes. The night before she had Jason, she wallpapered the hall closet.”
“Why?”
“God knows. She just went into this nesting frenzy. The doctor said it happens. Mother Nature’s way of preparing you for motherhood—you know, feathering the nest and all that. Are you sure about that August due date?”
Michelle laughs. “Positive. I’ll see you tonight, John,” she says, and hangs up.
She returns to the kitchen and eyes the batch of chocolate chip cookie dough she was just whipping up.
She thinks about those contractions yesterday, then about John’s comment, and laughs softly, shaking her head.
There’s no way she’s going into labor anytime soon. Dr. Kabir said her cervix hadn’t started to dilate.
Still . . .
Nope.
No way.
She sticks her finger into the cookie dough, picks out a chocolate chip, and thoughtfully pops it into her mouth.
“So, like, you saw her the day before she disappeared?” Dana asks Molly, running a hand through her long, wavy, light-brown hair that’s blowing back from her face as the boat picks up speed.
Molly nods, feeling weary, wondering how many times they’re going to go over this. Ever since they got on the boat, Dana and Amanda and Lisa have been probing her about Rebecca, wanting to know every detail about her.
At first, Molly couldn’t help liking the attention a little, especially when Lisa’s brother Will and his friend Danny talked to her about it. They were both pretty cute, and it was fun to have them all interested in every word she had to say, although of course they’re much too old for her. They’re, like, Kevin’s age. They’re drinking beer. They offered it to the girls, and Molly took one, not wanting to be the only one not to. Will grinned, winking at her as he popped the cap off the cold green bottle and handed it to her, and she found herself wondering what the wink meant.
Does he like her? Wouldn’t that be something?
No. He’s too old.
Besides, she’s not interested in anyone except Ryan, and, to her disappointment, she found when she met the others at the dock that he wasn’t going boating with them.
“I couldn’t get a hold of him,” Amanda had said so casually that Molly wondered if she’d even tried. Had she merely dropped Ryan’s name to get Molly here?
Her sudden interest in being pals was no doubt due to Molly’s connection to Rebecca. And she’s beginning to find herself irritated that these girls who never paid any attention to Rebecca before are now so riveted by every detail about her life. It just seems so . . . sick.
I shouldn’t he here, Molly thinks, looking back at the distant shore that marks the Curl jutting out into Lake Charlotte.
“Wow, I can’t believe it, Molly,” Lisa says. “First your own sister disappears. Now your best friend. It’s just so creepy.”
Startled, Molly can’t think of anything to say. Nobody has ever brought up the subject of Carleen to her. At least, none of the kids from school have ever done it. It just happened so long ago, nobody her age seems to spend any time dwelling on it. They’re too young to remember that summer.
But now, with Rebecca missing, and the newspapers making a big deal about the anniversary of the other girls’ disappearances, the whole thing has apparently become relevant to everyone in Lake Charlotte. Molly feels sick to her stomach, and not just from the constant bump-bump-bump of the boat chopping over the water.
“I bet it’s some psycho killer on the loose again,” Amanda says. “I bet he killed those girls ten years ago, and he’s going to start doing it again.”
“None of us are safe,” Lisa agrees solemnly. “Especially you, Molly. I mean, Rebecca was your friend. And your own sister was another one of the victims. And, God, you live right next door to the house where another victim lived. That girl Emily.”
“Emma,” Dana corrects her. “Yeah, Molly, I heard you even baby-sit over there. Is it scary?”
Molly thinks of the Randalls’ house.
Of the footsteps she thought she heard yesterday.
“Not that scary,” she lies to Lisa.
But she already knows that she’ll absolutely, positively never be alone there again. Lisa’s right.
No one is safe.
A shudder runs down her spine.
Especially not Molly.
CHAPTER TWELVE
St. Malachy’s Home turns out to be a sprawling stone mansion located on a steep bluff rising high above the Hudson River.
Rory guides Kevin’s little red car through the open gates and up the winding drive to the home, noticing that the place has an air of neglect about it. The too-tall lawn is dotted with dandelions and the shrubs are overgrown, and the white paint on the sign at the front entrance is peeling.
How depressing, she thinks, looking up at the gloomy three-story building before walking up the wide, cracked concrete steps to the door. Poor David Anghardt, locked away here for all these years, without even his own father coming to visit him.
Then again, that was just Barrett Maitland’s take on the situation. For all Rory knows, he’s completely wrong. Or he could be making the whole thing up for some reason. Emily might never have had a twin brother.
Still, she’d been vaguely surprised when she called Information last night and discovered there really was a St. Malachy’s in Poughkeepsie.
But that doesn’t mean David Anghardt also exists.
You should have called here and asked about him before you drove all this way, she tells herself belatedly. What if you made the trip for nothing?
Who cares? At least it’s a day away from Mom, and Molly, and Sister Theodosia, and Lake Charlotte. In fact, that’s precisely why she didn’t bother to call and check. She desperately needs an escape, if only for a few hours.
When she left, she didn’t bother to tell any of them where she was going. She doubts Mom and Sister Theodosia will even miss her. And if Molly does, well, it’ll be a taste of her own medicine. Let her see how it feels to wonder where someone is.
Molly didn’t get home until well after midnight last night.
Rory, lying awake in her third-floor bedroom, heard her come in, not even trying to be quiet. It’s as though she no longer cares what anyone thinks.
Just the way Carleen eventually acted.
Rory sighs and opens the door, stepping into what must once have been a grand foyer when this was a private home, as it must have been.
Now it is a shabby reception area, with a tall counter tucked against the wall beside a sweeping, curved staircase. There’s a middle-aged blond woman seated behind it, reading a hardcover Nora Roberts novel in a library’s shiny plastic sleeve. She looks up at Rory, as though annoyed she has to interrupt her reading.
“Yes? Can I help you?”
“Yes. I’m here to visit a patient . . . David Anghardt?”
The woman’s ove
rly tweezed eyebrows disappear beneath her curled bangs. “David Anghardt?”
Rory nods, clenching her purse strap, not wanting to betray her overwhelming sense of anticipation.
“Are you a relative?” the woman asks at last, sounding incredulous.
So he does exist. And he is here.
“No,” Rory tells the receptionist, “I’m just a friend.”
“Your name?”
“Rory Connolly. But he won’t know it,” she adds quickly.
The woman’s mouth purses. “Obviously not.”
And Rory realizes from her expression that David Anghardt must be so severely handicapped that he can’t be expected to recognize a name. Can he even speak? Should Rory have bothered to come at all?
The poor boy—man, Rory corrects herself. He’ll be an adult now, her own age. And he’s been locked away here for years, with no visitors. Even if he can’t help her, maybe her visit will help him, somehow. It’s the least she can do for Emily’s brother.
“All right . . . please wait here for a moment.” The receptionist sticks a straw wrapper into the page of her book and tosses it onto the counter, then strides away, disappearing behind a closed door.
Rory waits, looking around at the two uncomfortable-looking vinyl chairs separated by a low table covered in dated, dull-looking magazines—Popular Science, Reader’s Digest. The walls are paneled in a rich, dark, ornately carved wainscot that must once have been highly polished. Now it’s dull and dotted with ugly prints—birds, cats—in cheap metal frames. There’s a large floor-to-ceiling window on one wall, the bottom half obscured by an oversized window air conditioner that must not be working very well, because the room feels close and warm.
Rory paces anxiously over and looks out the top half to see a wide lawn sweeping toward the bluff above the river. A chain-link fence runs along the back of the property. There are a few people out by a picnic table beneath a grove of tree-sized lilacs—some of them in wheelchairs, one in a white nurse’s uniform.
“May I help you? I’m Lydia McGovern, the director of St. Malachy’s.”
She turns to see an older woman stepping into the room, the receptionist on her heels. She’s as tall and angular as Sister Theodosia, her gray cardigan and black slacks baggy on her bony frame. But her face is softer than Sister Theodosia’s, and her eyes, behind a pair of glasses perched low on her nose, are somehow both kind and wary as they focus on Rory.
“I’d like to see David Anghardt,” Rory tells the woman, a fact she’s certain she already knows.
The receptionist slips back behind her counter, but doesn’t pick up her book again. She, too, is watching Rory with unveiled curiosity.
“You’re a friend of the family?”
“I was. A long time ago. I was a friend of his sister.”
“Emily.” There’s a flicker of sadness in the woman’s eyes.
“You knew her?”
“No. I’ve only been here a few years. But Sister Margaret, the former director, told me what happened.”
“She isn’t here anymore?”
“No. Nobody’s here, actually, from ten years ago. Almost everyone was laid off and the whole place nearly shut down at one point. David Anghardt was one of the few residents who stayed, probably because there was no place else to send him. Anyway, then we got our federal grant money, and Sister Margaret was able to bring me on board as her assistant director, and the two of us hired a new staff—”
“Where is Sister Margaret now?” Rory asks, impatient with the woman’s painstaking history of the home and its financial woes.
“Oh, the poor dear had been suffering from glaucoma for years. She finally went completely blind. She’s living at a retirement home in Kingston, but we still keep in touch.”
“So she knew David’s family?”
“Absolutely. She said that David adored his sister. And she felt the same about him. Such a terrible tragedy. Sister Margaret said that David was never the same since she vanished,” Lydia says, shaking her head.
“No wonder,” the receptionist puts in. “His own father—”
“Susan, please,” Lydia McGovern says in a warning tone.
The receptionist picks up her book again.
The director turns back to Rory. “So you were Emily’s friend? That would mean you must be from . . . ?”
“Lake Charlotte,” Rory supplies. “It’s north of Albany. Emily and her father lived next door to my family before she disappeared.”
“You wouldn’t, by any chance, have kept in touch with Mr. Anghardt?”
Rory senses that the woman is attempting to make the question casual, and keeps her reply on the same level. “No, I haven’t,” she says. “The last I knew, he moved away. Actually, I never saw him again after Emily disappeared.”
“Neither did David,” Lydia McGovern says. “In fact, Sister Margaret mentioned that she believed the father might very well have died soon after his daughter went missing. The loss must have devastated him. He lost his wife, you know, when she gave birth to the twins. She was from a wealthy family down South, and David’s care is paid for by her trust fund.”
“So that’s how he’s able to stay here. I thought maybe his father was sending money to pay for that.”
“No. As I said, we’ve never heard from him again. That’s why, when Susan said there was an old friend here to see David, I thought perhaps you would know.”
“No,” Rory says, “I wish I did.”
She almost tells the woman that until a few days ago, she didn’t even know David existed, but she thinks better of it. She wants to see him, and if she reveals that she’s a total stranger to him, the director might not let her.
“Can I see him?” she asks, hoping she doesn’t sound too eager.
Lydia McGovern eyes her cautiously again. Then, with a nod, she says, “I suppose so. It’ll be nice for him to have a visitor. Nobody comes to see him except that nun.”
Rory’s stomach flips over. “Nun?” she echoes, frowning. “Which nun?”
“Sister Mary Frances. She’s from a parish upstate, somewhere near Albany, I believe. She’s been coming for years to visit all the patients here—”
“Oh.”
Why did Rory speculate, for a moment, that it was Sister Theodosia coming to see David?
There are hundreds of thousands of nuns in the world, she reminds herself. And the vast majority are wonderful people. The kind of people who, out of the goodness of their hearts, visit strangers in depressing places like this.
She shoves aside a prickle of guilt for having come here for selfish reasons.
Even now that I know he won’t shed any light on what happened, I’ll spend more time with Emily’s brother, and with the other patients, too, she promises herself.
“Anyway,” the director goes on, “Sister Mary Frances seems to have taken a special liking to David, and he clearly feels the same way about her. He lights up whenever she’s here. I wish she could get here more often, since it makes him so happy. But there are times when months go by without a sign of her.”
“She just visited this past week,” Susan pipes up, clearly not as absorbed in her book as she appeared to be.
“Oh? I didn’t realize. It must have been on my day off. Well, that’s good,” Lydia says. “David needs a lift every now and then. Seeing you will be good for him, too,” she tells Rory. “Come with me. I’ll take you up to his room.”
Molly wakes up, glances at the clock, and sees that it’s past noon. She groans and rolls over onto her back, staring at the ceiling, thinking about last night. After docking the boat, she and Amanda and the others had gone to a party out at the Curl.
She slowly becomes aware that her head is pounding and her mouth feels strangely dry.
It must be a hangover, she realizes. So this is what
it feels like.
Why had she drunk those beers? In part, because people kept handing them to her. She was treated like a celebrity by kids who never would have given her a second glance a week ago. And not just Amanda and her friends. The older kids who were there were all interested in her.
Well, not in me, she admits to herself.
They wanted to know all about Rebecca. About whether anyone was stalking her, and whether Molly had heard any screams the night she disappeared.
Disturbing questions, all of them.
God, why didn’t you just leave? she asks herself guiltily. Why did you humor those people? They couldn’t care less about Rebecca.
Or about me.
But at the time, she couldn’t seem to keep herself from talking to everyone. She’d even said that sure, Rebecca could have had a stalker without her knowing.
After all, anything was possible
And everyone seemed to pay more attention to her when she said things like that, instead of just, constantly, “I don’t know.”
Okay, she might have humored them with their nosy questions, but at least she hadn’t said anything she’d regret, and she certainly hadn’t done anything she’d regret, like Saturday night with Ryan . . . had she?
Her memories, especially of the end of the night, are a bit fuzzy.
But she’s positive Ryan wasn’t even there. That, she wouldn’t forget.
Some of the other guys—older, high school guys—were flirting with her, but she hadn’t been interested in any of them. All the questions about Rebecca upset her, reminding her that her best friend was missing, might even be—
God. The last thing she wanted to do was hook up with some guy she barely knew.
She just kept drinking beer, hoping to numb the pain, and looking around for Ryan, wishing he’d show up, disappointed when he didn’t.
Disappointed enough about him, and upset enough about Rebecca, to drink more than she should have, and say things that she shouldn’t have.
Okay, stop beating yourself up. It’s over.
All the Way Home Page 23
