All the Way Home

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  Daddy never was one to mince words, Rory thinks wryly, even as she eyes the Randalls’ screen, contemplating removing it and crawling through the window. If Lou Randall brains her with a baseball bat, she’ll have only herself to blame.

  Michelle is too far gone now to ask about Ozzie—­she’s fully dilated, lying on her back on the delivery table in the operating room, struggling to push the baby out.

  It’s not happening.

  The tremendous pressure in her lower spine and rectum is becoming unbearable, and she’s been trying to follow Dr. Kabir’s instructions, bearing down and pushing in a desperate, futile effort to deliver the baby, whose position is just not conducive to birth. Every time she feels the potent, painful tension taking over she moans, “It’s starting again,” and then the nurse grabs one of her legs and Lou grabs the other, and they pull her knees up to her shoulders and they count to ten and the doctor shouts, “Push, Michelle, push. You can do it.”

  “I can’t,” she groans in despair, time and time again, as the tension subsides momentarily, only to build again. There’s no relief, no end in sight to this torture.

  “I can’t do it, Lou,” she gasps, as he puts an ice chip between her parched lips.

  “How much more of this is she supposed to take?” she hears Lou bark at the doctor. “Can’t you do something to help her? She can’t do it.”

  “I can’t do it. Oh, God . . . oh, God . . . here it comes again. Noooo . . .”

  And they grab her legs, and the doctor tells her not to fight it, to push with it, and she hears savage, guttural sounds and she knows they’re coming from her, and this isn’t working, it isn’t working, it isn’t working.

  “Help me,” she begs the doctor, whose forced smile is beginning to show the strain of the situation.

  “I am helping you, Michelle,” he says soothingly, mopping his brow beneath his surgical cap.

  “Here it is again . . . God, no, make it stop,” she begs, besieged by another wave of torturous pressure.

  “Doctor Kabir, can you please look at this?” she hears one of the nurses say.

  “What? What is it?” Lou is asking, concerned.

  “The baby’s heart rate is dropping,” Dr. Kabir announces sharply. “He’s in distress.”

  Rory steps into the Randalls’ living room, hurriedly yet carefully replacing the screen in the window, and telling herself all the while that she’s really lost it. What does she think she’s doing, breaking into the neighbors’ house like this? They’re going to have her arrested and thrown into jail.

  But Molly’s supposed to be here, and she might be in trouble, she rationalizes, and, realizing she’s still holding the damned foil-­wrapped plate of brownies, sets it aside on a nearby table.

  She walks slowly across the room, glancing briefly at the television set, where The Drew Carey Show is in progress. Would Molly watch that show?

  She has no idea.

  She knows too little about her habits, what she likes to watch, what she likes to do . . .

  I’ve got to get to know you better, kid, she thinks wistfully. We can’t let old hurts stand in our way forever. You’re the only sister I’ve got.

  There’s no sign of her.

  There’s a baby monitor sitting on the low table by the couch. Rory notices, with a start, that it’s on. The red light is glowing. All is silent.

  Is Ozzie sleeping upstairs in his crib? He must be. Why else would the monitor be on?

  But where’s Molly? Why isn’t she here? She has to be here. She must be upstairs.

  Rory moves slowly through the first floor, reluctant to go up to the second, afraid of what she’ll find.

  Is Molly up there . . . unconscious? Or worse?

  There’s no sign of anything amiss. Everything seems to be in order. On the kitchen counter is the one piece of evidence that Molly has been here recently—­a message in her handwriting that reads, Michelle, call John when you have time.

  From the kitchen, Rory goes up the back stairs to the second floor, finding them as narrow and steep as she remembers. The Anghardts had rarely used them, and it appears the Randalls don’t, either. There are paint cans and tools stacked on the steps, a hazard to anyone trying to get up or down quickly.

  On the second floor, Rory stands in the hallway, calls softly, “Molly?”

  No reply.

  She fumbles on the wall for a light switch, finds none.

  Do you really want to walk along this dark hallway alone? she asks herself, hesitating, peering into the shadows, and then, Do you have a choice?

  “Let’s prep her for an emergency section,” Dr. Kabir orders tersely, his soothing manner having evaporated with the announcement that the baby is in distress. There’s a sudden storm of activity in the room, ­people bustling about, drawers opening, instruments clattering.

  “What’s going on?” Michelle gasps, looking from him to Lou, as the pressure on her lower torso intensifies again. “What’s wrong with my baby?”

  “Doctor Kabir?” Lou asks, squeezing her hand and looking at the doctor.

  “We’re going to have to do a cesarean section to save the baby,” he says, quickly yet patiently. “I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

  “Leave? I can’t leave her,” Lou protests.

  “No, Lou, don’t leave me,” Michelle wails, seized by panic, knowing something is terribly wrong.

  This is a nightmare, she thinks desperately. It’s got to be a nightmare, and I’m going to wake up.

  “She needs me here, Doctor.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Randall, but you’ll have to step out. The nurse will come and get you as soon as possible.”

  “But—­”

  “Please, Mr. Randall. This is an emergency,” Dr. Kabir says firmly.

  Lou looks down at Michelle.

  “Lou,” she whispers, exhausted, wracked with pain, yet suddenly able to think with more clarity than in the last several hours. “Call to check on Ozzie.”

  “Michelle, don’t—­”

  “Please, Lou.”

  “All right, I will,” he promises, his face grim, as he turns and allows himself to be hustled out of the room.

  “Molly?” Rory calls softly as she arrives in front of the last room, the one at the head of the stairs, the one that once belonged to Emily.

  This is the little boy’s bedroom, she knows. The door is closed. She reaches for the knob, turns it tentatively, wondering if he’s there, asleep in his crib.

  And if so, then where is Molly?

  Has she vanished, just as Rebecca Wasner did on Saturday night?

  Oh, God, please, no.

  Rory opens the door with a quiet click, sees the glow of the Barney night-light illuminating the small room. Her gaze flits over the window seat, the built-­in bookcase, the crib.

  The crib.

  It’s empty.

  “All right now, Michelle,” says the anesthesiologist, a pretty, efficient Asian woman with ice-­cold hands. “I’m going to place this mask over your face, and you’re going to start at ten and begin counting backward.”

  “And I’m going to . . . be . . . knocked out?” she asks, the sentence too long and exhausting, the pain too intense.

  “You’ll be unconscious for the surgery, yes,” the woman says, amidst the flurry of preparations still taking place around them. “It won’t take long. When you wake up, your baby will be here.”

  Yes, Michelle thinks. My baby will be here.

  She feels the mask come down over her mouth and nose.

  “All right, Michelle, let’s start counting.”

  Ten . . .

  Nine . . .

  Eight . . .

  Ozzie! she thinks groggily, just before blackness claims her.

  Lou feeds a quarter into the pay telephone in the small waiti
ng room next to the delivery room, his hands trembling so violently that he can barely push the buttons to dial the phone.

  All he can think is that his wife is about to go under the knife, and his baby is in trouble, and there must have been something he could have done, something along the way, to have changed the course of events leading up to this moment. He’s utterly overpowered by guilt.

  Guilt over the way he’s treated Michelle lately, and the long hours he’s been working. Sure, he was recently promoted, and of course the job is challenging. But mostly, he’s been using the office as an escape from . . .

  Well, from home.

  From his pregnant, moody wife and his rambunctious son and the knowledge that they both need him, they need and depend on him so desperately.

  And now there will be another baby, another person who will depend on him, and Lou is terrified that something’s going to happen—­that he’s going to let them down, somehow, the way his father and his stepfathers let him and his mother down.

  “I won’t,” he whispers, and turns, belatedly, to make sure he’s alone in the waiting room. Yes, he’s the only one here, the only one whose family’s hanging in the balance, whose wife is even now risking her life to deliver their child.

  You’re being too dramatic. It’ll be okay, he tells himself as the phone rings on the other end. Women have C-­sections all the time.

  But the baby is in distress.

  He’d seen it himself, on the fetal monitor—­the heart rate falling, the expressions of concern on the faces of the doctor and the nurses, the sudden rush to save his child’s life.

  He swallows hard, listening to the phone ring again, telling himself that he can’t fall apart here, in the waiting room.

  He never falls apart, period.

  It’s not allowed.

  When he was growing up, Iris told him once, when she found him sobbing into his pillow because of a black eye he’d gotten on the playground, that boys don’t cry. “Be strong, Louie,” his mother had said. “Nobody wants a man who isn’t strong. I know I sure don’t. I’ve had my share of that.”

  So here he is. Strong. In control.

  Wondering why the phone at his house is ringing again.

  And now, again.

  Where’s Molly? he wonders, stricken by an added burst of panic. And Ozzie? Where’s my son?

  This can’t be happening, he thinks, hanging up the phone and pacing across the room. The whole time Michelle was freaking out over leaving Ozzie and Molly alone there tonight, I was positive she was just her usual paranoid, hormonal self. But now . . .

  What if she was right? What if some crazed kidnapper has my kid?

  He has to get a grip. This is insane. There’s got to be some logical explanation for Molly not answering the phone. After all, there was a perfectly good reason she didn’t hear it the other day, when she and Ozzie were playing outside while he was trying to call.

  But it’s dark out. They can’t be playing outside.

  Okay, so maybe she’s got Ozzie in the tub and can’t get to the phone. Or maybe she chickened out about staying alone after what happened to her friend, and she brought him next door to her mother’s house.

  Yeah, that’s probably it.

  He can’t go running home now. Not with Michelle in surgery. One thing at a time, he thinks shakily, sitting on the edge of a vinyl-­upholstered couch and staring absently at the muted television set mounted on the wall, where The Drew Carey Show is just ending.

  “Lake Charlotte Police.”

  “Hello. I need to report a missing person,” Rory pants into the receiver, breathless from running down the stairs, out the Randalls’ front door, and all the way home. “I mean, two missing persons.”

  “One moment . . .”

  A click, a pause, another click.

  “Ma’am?” a new voice says promptly. “Can I help you?”

  “My sister is missing,” she says, hearing her voice come out high and plaintive. “And the little boy she was baby-­sitting, too.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m positive. I was just there. They were gone.”

  “Where are you now?”

  “I’m home. I didn’t want to stay there another second,” she confesses, nausea reeling through her, along with disbelief. “I was afraid.”

  “Ma’am, please stay calm . . . where is ‘home’?”

  “Fifty-­two Hayes Street.”

  “Hayes Street? And your name?”

  “Rory Connolly.”

  “Connolly?” comes the predictable echo.

  She can read the officer’s thoughts. Hayes Street . . . isn’t that the street where Rebecca Wasner lived? Connolly . . . isn’t that the same last name of one of those girls who disappeared from Lake Charlotte ten years ago?

  “All right, ma’am, please stay calm and stay right there. We’re on our way.”

  She hangs up slowly and sinks into a chair, paralyzed with horror that this is happening again.

  “Oh, Mama,” she whimpers, feeling once again like a helpless, frightened little girl, needing her mommy. “Mama . . .”

  “Rory?”

  She looks up to see Maura in the doorway, her face ashen.

  “Oh, God, Mom.”

  “Rory, what’s going on? Is Molly—­?”

  “She’s vanished, Mom,” Rory wails, tears streaming down her face. “She’s gone . . . just like Carleen.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  When he comes out of the shower on Thursday morning, he turns on the television set in his bedroom and flips to the Today Show, as he always does.

  He likes Katie Couric, with her upturned nose and that Irish pixie look. His wife had looked a lot like Katie.

  But he doesn’t want to go there.

  No, he doesn’t want to start the day by dwelling on his miserable past once again. He has vowed, for Kelly’s sake, to stop dwelling on it. What’s done is done.

  He pulls a plain white T-­shirt over his head and hunts through his closet for a shirt to wear.

  The show comes back from a margarine commercial. He glances over his shoulder at the screen and sees that Katie Couric’s face is grim.

  “This morning, police in Lake Charlotte, New York, a small town located north of Albany, in the Adirondack foothills, are looking into the mysterious disappearance of a teenaged baby-­sitter and the small boy in her care. Molly Connolly, who vanished last evening from a quiet, residential neighborhood, is the second teenager to disappear this week from this tiny, peaceful town. We go now to NBC News correspondent Bryan Taylor in Lake Charlotte.”

  Molly . . .

  It can’t be.

  He clutches the knob of the closet door, staring at the screen, hearing the reporter’s voice, but not his words.

  Molly’s missing. She’s missing. She’s in trouble.

  He knows what he has to do.

  It’s time to stop running from the past, time to face his responsibility—­the one he selfishly turned his back on, walked away from. Face it head-­on, no matter what the consequences.

  I have to go there.

  Now.

  Back to Lake Charlotte.

  “Katie, this peaceful town is the last place you’d ever expect to encounter something so sinister,” says the reporter, standing on what looks like Main Street, USA, with a row of charming shops, flowering plants hanging from old-­fashioned lampposts, a picturesque lake in the background. He’s holding an umbrella; rain is pouring down, the sky and water melding in a foggy gray backdrop behind him.

  Lydia McGovern sits in a doily-­draped wingback chair in her living room, sipping her lukewarm tea, intent on the television screen. Only moments ago, she had set aside the tea and put her glasses back into the case in a nearby desk drawer, ready to find her raincoat and head out to St. Malachy’s. Bu
t something the Today Show host had said captured her attention, made her stay and listen.

  Lake Charlotte—­that’s where David Anghardt’s family had lived when his sister Emily vanished.

  And Katie Couric said the latest missing girl is named Molly Connolly. Can she possibly be any relation to Rory Connolly?

  “But last night,” the reporter goes on, “thirteen-­year-­old Molly Connolly mysteriously vanished from the house where she was baby-­sitting, along with two-­year-­old Ozzie Randall, a child whose parents were at the local hospital, where his mother was giving birth to her second child. Just this past weekend, on Saturday night, Molly’s closest friend, Rebecca Wasner, also thirteen, similarly vanished from the house directly next door to the Randalls’. Both girls are being described as responsible, wholesome teenagers, and foul play is suspected. Earlier I spoke to Betty Shilling, who runs a bed and breakfast on Hayes Street, where Molly Connolly, Rebecca Wasner, and Ozzie Randall live.”

  The scene switches to show a taped interview clip with a ruddy-­faced woman standing on the porch of a large Victorian-­style home. “I know both Molly and Rebecca very well,” Betty Shilling comments, shaking her head sadly. “They’re both fine young ­people, not the kind of girls who would run off without telling anybody where they were going.” She adds darkly, “I just know somebody kidnapped them, just like what happened with Molly’s sister years ago.”

  The reporter is back, saying somberly, “Molly Connolly’s sister, Carleen Connolly, who was seventeen at the time, also vanished ten years ago this summer, along with three other young Lake Charlotte girls, Kirstin Stafford, thirteen, Allison Myers, fifteen, and Emily Anghardt, thirteen.”

  Lydia leans forward as the scene of the reporter standing on the street is replaced by a close-­up showing four photographs of pretty teenagers.