All the Way Home

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  Things sure have changed, he thinks, glancing at the recent family photo. Still, despite his receding hairline and Nancy’s extra twenty pounds, they’re still looking pretty contented. In this picture, they’re joined by Jason, ducking those dark curls and wearing the embarrassed, forced smile one might expect of an adolescent boy forced to accompany his parents and sister to a shopping mall, wearing—­gulp—­a suit. Meanwhile, there’s Ashley, blond, pretty in her velvet jumper, and flashing the camera one of those knowing, slightly exasperated expressions so typical of girls who are fifteen-­going-­on-­twenty-­one.

  Looking at Ashley makes him think, again, of Rebecca Wasner’s parents, and wonder how on earth they can possibly bear not knowing where she is, whether she’s dead or alive. If anything ever happened to Ashley—­or Jason—­

  But it won’t, he reassures himself. Just because one girl happens to be missing doesn’t mean someone’s going to start kidnapping teenaged girls in Lake Charlotte again. No matter what the media is saying.

  Needing a distraction, he reaches for the file filled with notes and measurements he made the other night over at Shelly and Lou’s. When he started working on some preliminary sketches late last night, he made a startling discovery. It was too late to call them then, and so far, this morning has been too busy.

  But now he’d better get in touch with them, before something else comes up. He’s leaving to drive to New York for that conference before dawn tomorrow, and he won’t be back until late Friday night.

  He picks up the phone and dials the number, thinking, as he does, that he and Nancy really should invite the Randalls over for a barbecue some Sunday afternoon. They all live right here in town, but, somehow, they seem to get caught up in other things and never make time for each other. He has a brother and sister, and his parents are living in Florida, but Shelly has no family left. Such a shame that Aunt Joy died so young, he thinks, shaking his head.

  Shelly was completely devastated by that loss. In fact, she’s never entirely gone back to being her cheerful self.

  The other night, she had seemed particularly stressed. In fact, she and Lou both had, he’d noticed at the tension-­filled dinner table. Later, Lou had mentioned, as he and John were walking around the upstairs bedrooms while Shelly was ironing downstairs, that she’s been moody lately, imagining things, worried about the baby, who’s in a breech position. He’d said they’d spent all day Sunday at the hospital, enduring tests that had ultimately proven everything normal, aside from the baby’s position.

  Lou had also told John about his recent promotion at the law firm, and that he’s in the midst of a difficult case at work, buried in research. Meanwhile, Ozzie’s in the throes of the terrible twos, and they’re trying to remodel the house.

  Thinking back, John remembers the early days of his own marriage, when he’d been trying to get his architectural firm off the ground, and Nancy always seemed to be pregnant, or breast-­feeding, and nagging him about something or other. He knows how challenging toddlers and infants can be, not to mention the frustration caused by a house that’s falling apart even as you struggle to fix it up. He and Nance had completely gutted their own fixer-­upper, bringing babies home to stripped wallpaper and bare beams and gaping holes in plaster.

  We’ve come a long way, he thinks, looking back on that now-­distant time of domestic discord.

  Shelly and Lou need to know that everyone goes through times like this. We really should get together.

  As the phone rings on the other end, he decides to ask his cousin right now to pick a Sunday so they can mark it on the calendar. If they don’t reserve a day, it’ll never happen. It’ll be Christmas before they see each other again.

  Then he remembers the baby. It isn’t due until August, but she probably won’t want to make plans for anything in the meantime. After all, it might come early. Both Ashley and Jason did. And given those early labor pains—­and the way she was bustling around the kitchen the other night . . .

  The “nesting instinct”—­that was what Nancy called it.

  There’s a click in his ear, and an answering machine picks up.

  Hmm. Maybe she’s in the hospital having the baby right now, he thinks, as he listens to his cousin’s recorded voice.

  “Hi, you’ve reached the Randalls. Michelle and Lou can’t come to the phone right now, but if you’ll leave a message at the sound of the tone, we’ll be sure to get back to you as soon as we can. Thanks!”

  There’s a beep.

  “Shelly, it’s John. Listen, I was going over the measurements I took the other night, and I noticed something very interesting. I’ll be out of town tomorrow, but I’ll be back Friday night. Call me back as soon as you have a minute—­if you aren’t in the hospital in labor or anything,” he adds with a laugh.

  He hangs up the telephone and looks back at the folder, at the rows of numbers he’d jotted down the other night.

  Unless he somehow managed to make several mistakes with the tape measure—­which is highly unlikely—­there’s quite a discrepancy in the dimensions of the inside and outside walls of the Randalls’ home.

  He’s pretty sure he knows what that must mean. The place is a classic Victorian, built in the mid-­1800’s, when this area of northern New York State was a prime spot on the underground railroad route transporting slaves to Canada. John has seen quite a few houses built in Lake Charlotte during that era that have secret rooms, tunnels, even staircases, usually concealed behind false panels or bookcases.

  Unless he’s mistaken, the house at 52 Hayes Street is one of them.

  Molly stands in front of the full-­length mirror on the inside of Carleen’s closet door, inspecting her reflection, comparing it to the sheet of photographs in her hand. They’re wallet-­sized senior portraits, and only one is missing, leaving an unevenly cut rectangular gap on one corner of the sheet.

  Same color hair, Molly thinks, but I wish mine was straight, like hers.

  Same complexion—­not freckled, like Rory’s and Kevin’s. I have her pale skin, and her eyes, too.

  But not her nose.

  Whose nose do I have?

  But she knows. In the mirror, she sees the inquisitive expression darken at the realization that it must be his.

  The nameless, faceless someone who impregnated a thirteen-­year-­old girl, then obviously took off and abandoned her.

  What kind of jerk would do such a thing?

  Maybe he never knew, she speculates, needing, for some reason, to give him the benefit of the doubt. So he won’t be a total jerk.

  Maybe Carleen never told him, about me.

  But why wouldn’t she? She was so young, Molly thinks, and she must have been freaked out. Why wouldn’t she turn to the one other person who could share the responsibility for what had happened?

  Downstairs, she hears a door slam. Must be Rory, going out. Mom and Sister Theodosia have already left for mass.

  She never told Rory about the message from that guy, Barrett whatever-­his-­name-­was, with the familiar voice. She had thought of it earlier, when they were both sitting in the kitchen eating breakfast. Rory’s inquiry about Kevin calling had triggered her memory. She had been about to get up and take the message off the refrigerator door, where she realized Rory would never see it, when Rory had made that comment about Sister Theodosia still being here.

  And then I just got sidetracked, Molly tells herself defensively. I mean, it’s not like I’m deliberately keeping messages from her, just to be a brat, just to get her back for . . .

  Well, for never being here.

  Like missing one stupid phone message could ever be payback for that.

  She frowns and turns away from Carleen’s open closet door, putting the sheet of pictures back into the envelope in the dresser drawer where she’d found it.

  I should really take this off, she thinks, looking down at
the black lycra minidress she’d found hanging among her sister’s—­no, her mother’s—­things. She’d told herself that she was only trying it on because she wanted to see if she and Carleen were the same size—­not because she wanted to feel close to her, or anything creepy like that.

  The clingy dress, with its peekaboo cutouts in the sleeves and neckline, is so purely eighties, like the enormous hoop earrings she’d found in Carleen’s jewelry box. She’d tried those on, too, and she tease-­combed her hair and put a black lace hairband around it so that it looks like Madonna’s did years ago, back when she was first getting famous.

  The dress, and the earrings, and the hairdo have created an interesting kind of retro look. Molly tells herself she might be able to get away with wearing them in public. If she had someplace interesting to go, or someone interesting to go with.

  Which you don’t.

  Ryan and Jessica are officially back together, according to Amanda, who reluctantly admitted as much when Molly called and confronted her last night. Amanda also asked if it was true that the police were combing the woods with bloodhounds, looking for Rebecca, and if Molly thought they were going to drag the lake.

  Molly was so taken aback, so horrified by the very thought, that all she could do was stammer, “I . . . I don’t know . . .”

  Then Amanda asked if Molly wanted to come to a cookout with Lisa and Dana and Will and his friends.

  She hadn’t hesitated before saying no, making something up about having to help her mother around the house—­such a typical excuse, something a normal person with a normal mother might say. But Amanda must not have thought anything of it, because she’d simply said that was too bad, adding a breezy “catch you later.”

  And now Molly’s wondering if she should have gone last night, or if she should call Amanda and try to make plans for today. After all, she can’t hang around this house by herself, dwelling on Carleen, and Rebecca, for the rest of her life.

  Carleen is long gone, probably dead, and Rebecca—­

  Please, God, please let Rebecca be okay, Molly thinks, tears springing to her eyes. She can’t take much more of this. She’s seen the reporters and police coming and going from the Wasners’ house, and she knows she should work up her courage and go down there, say something, anything, to Rebecca’s parents.

  But for some reason, she just can’t. She can’t, because what if Rebecca told them about the fight Molly had picked with her the night before she disappeared? What if they’re somehow blaming everything on Molly?

  Oh, God, oh God, what if it’s somehow my fault?

  Rory had said that it isn’t.

  But what does Rory know? She, of all ­people, doesn’t have a clue about accepting responsibility for your mistakes.

  That might not be quite fair, Molly amends, admitting to herself that Rory’s done her best to pick up the pieces in Kevin’s absence. But then again, her efforts are too little, too late, and Molly isn’t going to forgive her, just like that, for taking off for so many years, and then for popping back up and dropping that bombshell about her being Carleen’s illegitimate daughter.

  For all I know, it isn’t even true, she tells herself, idly toying with a snow globe on Carleen’s dresser. For all I know, Rory made the whole thing up, out of spite, just to hurt me, or to smudge Carleen’s memory.

  But deep in her heart, she knows better.

  Deep in her heart, she knows that her dark-­haired big sister, whom Molly so closely resembles, was actually her mother.

  That’s why she’s here, in this room, poking among Carleen’s things as she has ever since she found out. That’s why she’s wearing her clothes, why she borrowed her makeup and some perfume before going out with Ryan and Amanda and their crowd.

  As if maybe, some of Carleen’s devil-­may-­care confidence might rub off on her, so she won’t always have to feel so utterly lost and alone.

  Barrett Maitland stands on the sidewalk, staring at the shabby bungalow on a shady side street a few blocks from Grayson’s Cove’s waterfront. Last night, after dark, the place had given off an air of abandonment, and foreboding.

  Today, it isn’t any less so.

  He eyes the sagging front steps, the loose shutters, the overgrown patch of yard. The windows are all still covered by blinds, but there’s a pickup truck in the driveway this morning, just as there was last night. Yet no one had answered his knock then, and no one answered it earlier, when he came by just after breakfast.

  He’d gone to the local library after that, spent some time looking through old newspapers and records for information about Russell Anghardt. All he’d found was a reprint of the obituary of his wife, the same write-­up that had originally appeared in a Raleigh paper, which he had already seen. It stated that Jane Anghardt had died in childbirth, leaving behind her loving husband and newborn twin son and daughter, as well as extended family in Raleigh. She was buried there, rather than here in Grayson’s Cove.

  Local real estate records showed that Russell and his wife had bought this house back in the seventies, in what would have been the year before the twins’ birth and Jane’s death. Barrett wonders why they moved up North for that short time, why Russell never sold the place, and whether it stood empty while they were gone.

  He knows Russell Anghardt was originally from a small town in the Adirondacks, and figures maybe he was homesick for New York State. But then, after losing Emily, he must have been tormented by memories of her in Lake Charlotte, and decided to come back here, where he’d apparently lived quietly ever since. It makes sense.

  “Looking for someone?”

  He turns, startled, to see an elderly woman standing on the sidewalk, holding an oversized black poodle on a leash.

  “Actually, I am,” he says, pleased. He’d been about to either start knocking on neighbors’ doors, asking whether anyone knows where he can find Russell, or to give up on the whole thing and go back to Lake Charlotte. And Rory.

  “Who? Mr. Anghardt?”

  “Exactly. This is his place, right?”

  “Oh, that’s it, all right.” The woman wrinkles her nose slightly, glancing at the overgrown grass. “And his lawn sure could use a cutting. Ain’t like him to let it go. He might not keep up with repairs around here, but it’s hard to be fixin’ things with that bum leg of his. Still, you always see him pushin’ that lawn mower of his, limpin’ along.”

  “He hurt his leg?”

  “Years ago. While he was livin’ in New York—­”

  Barrett decides to play dumb. “He lived in New York?”

  “For a year, maybe more. Rented this place to a coupla no-­good motorcycle riders. Kept poor Angel barking all night long.”

  Angel, presumably, is the dog. And this woman, like Mrs. Shilling of Lake Charlotte, appears to keep tabs on neighborhood happenings.

  Barrett asks, “Did he have children?”

  “A daughter—­purty little thing. Emily. And there was a son, too. But he was mentally retarded. Bunch of older kids on the street used to tease him all the time. Throw rocks at him. Make fun of him. Rotten stuff like that. Used to make poor Emily cry. I think that’s partly why they moved out of here for a while.”

  “What about when they came back?” Barrett resists the urge to nudge Angel, who’s poking his clammy nose against Barrett’s bare ankles.

  “Only Mr. Anghardt came back. Must be seven or eight years ago now. I remember, it was the autumn after my mama passed away . . . Wait a minute, that was ten years ago. Ten years ago this coming autumn.”

  “What about his children?”

  “Oh, that’s the saddest thing,” the woman says, shaking her head and pulling the poodle’s leash so that it stops sniffing Barrett’s ankles. “Poor man had already lost his wife. Never seemed to get over that. I always thought that was why he kept to himself. And then the kids—­”

  “What h
appened?”

  “Both those kids were killed in a real bad car wreck up in New York State. Guess that’s how he got his limp.”

  At first, Michelle thinks Ozzie poured his apple juice onto the kitchen floor while she wasn’t looking. Why else would there be a yellowish puddle in the middle of the linoleum?

  She puts the jar of peanut butter back into the cupboard, grabs the sponge, and bends over to clean it up, telling Ozzie, who’s standing in front of the table, drinking from his sippy cup, “Get back into your booster seat, mister. Look at the mess you made on the floor with your juice.”

  Then she realizes that her legs are dripping wet.

  Her shorts.

  Her underpants.

  It isn’t apple juice.

  Her water has broken.

  “Oh, my God,” Michelle murmurs, straightening and rubbing her forehead in disbelief. How can this be happening?

  She’s going to have the baby early after all.

  Now.

  She’s going to have the baby now.

  Not now, she corrects herself, fighting back panic. Soon.

  “Mommy?” Ozzie asks, watching her, a tentative expression on his face.

  “It’s okay, sweetheart. Finish your juice. I have to call Daddy. And then the doctor.”

  Or should she call the doctor first?

  She goes to the phone, careful not to slip in the puddle on the floor. She can’t believe that her water has broken. With Ozzie, they had to break it during her labor, to help speed things along.

  First she calls Dr. Kabir, who asks if she’s having contractions, and orders her to go straight to the hospital.

  “What about the baby’s position?” she asks.

  “We’ll worry about that when we get there,” the doctor says in his clipped middle-­eastern accent. “Don’t drive yourself, Michelle.”

  “I won’t. My husband will come right home to get me.”