All the Way Home

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  It can’t be Russell Anghardt.

  Russell Anghardt is dead.

  But who killed him . . . and why?

  Barrett slams his hand into the unforgiving stone wall of the cell in sheer frustration, utterly baffled.

  “You shouldn’t ’a done that, Rory.”

  Her head is jerked back painfully by her hair, and she stares into the crazed eyes of Emily Anghardt. Then she feels the cool blade of the butcher knife pressing against her throat. If she moves, if she swallows, if she breathes, the blade will slice into her skin.

  Please let it be quick, she prays.

  She can hear Molly sobbing from somewhere nearby, and Rebecca, and Ozzie, too. The cell is filled with terrified cries, and all Rory can think is that they’re going to have to watch this, watch Emily slit her throat right in front of them. And then what will happen? Who will be next?

  “Say good-­bye to little Ozzie, Rory,” Emily says, laughing, pressing the knife, ever so slightly, into her skin.

  Rory feels a stinging pain; still she holds her breath.

  The knife is dull, she remembers. It had probably been in that drawer for years, with nobody using it. Maybe it isn’t sharp enough to—­

  “Say good-­bye to Rebecca.”

  More pressure from the knife.

  More pain.

  Rory remembers how she’d cut her hand only last night on the blade, how she’d bled.

  She braces herself.

  Closes her eyes.

  Begins praying the Hail Mary.

  “Say good-­bye to Carleen.”

  Rory’s eyes fly open.

  Carleen?

  What’s Emily talking about?

  “Where’s Carleen?” she asks, trying not to move as she speaks, even as she realizes what Emily is talking about.

  “What do you mean, where is she?” Emily sounds irritated.

  Rory’s ears catch a faint, distant sound.

  “Are you blind? Carleen’s right over there,” Emily says. “You know, I thought for sure she was dead for all these years. When I caught her sneakin’ across our yard in the dead of night all those years ago, I knew she’d have to pay. Trespassin’ isn’t right, is it? So I brought her inside, and I kept her there for a while, with the others. Then I thought I killed her—­I left her here to die, you know, with the rest of ’em, when I moved out of this house. But she didn’t die. How do you figure she got away? I almost fell over when I saw her come through that bedroom door last night—­”

  Emily turns her head toward Molly, shackled to the wall, looking exactly like Carleen in that dress, those earrings, that hairband.

  This time, Rory doesn’t hesitate.

  She writhes out of Emily’s grasp, and, once again, they’re scuffling on the floor, fighting for the knife, each one’s hands wrapped around the handle, vying for control.

  As she struggles with Emily, she’s vaguely aware of noises overhead.

  “Help! Help!”

  It’s Molly, shrieking.

  Rebecca joins in.

  “Help! We’re down here! Hurry!”

  In a haze, Rory remembers that she’d left the bookcase ajar. Maybe somebody is in the house, and noticed it.

  Yes!

  She hears pounding footsteps.

  “You bitch!” Emily is on top of her, suddenly, and has the knife against Rory’s throat again.

  Rory’s hand is closed over Emily’s on the handle, and she’s using every bit of might to keep Emily from pressing that dull blade into her neck again, and she knows she can’t hold on much longer.

  Just as her strength is giving out, the footsteps burst into the room.

  A moment later there’s a sharp, deafening explosion of sound.

  She feels Emily collapse on top of her, erupting into agonized shrieks; she tastes the unmistakable, tinny salt of blood in her mouth.

  It takes her a few moments to realize, amidst the commotion in the room, that it’s Emily’s blood; that the sound was a gunshot; that the police have stormed the room.

  Emily is pulled off of Rory, still screaming “I’ve been shot! My God, I’ve been shot.”

  Dazed, Rory allows Detective Mullen to help her sit up, hears him asking if she’s all right, but can’t muster a reply.

  She sees Ozzie, sobbing, cradled in one officer’s arms as another works to release Rebecca from the cuffs around her wrists.

  Molly is waiting her turn, watching Ozzie with concern, and then her worried gaze shifts to Rory.

  “Let me help you up. Can you stand?” Detective Mullen asks above Emily’s distraught shrieks and Ozzie’s frightened cries.

  Still Rory can’t find her voice.

  Her eyes are locked on Molly’s as the detective gently pulls her to her feet, asking if she’s been injured.

  She shakes her head, numb.

  “Rory, your neck,” Molly says, tears glistening in her blue eyes. “You’re bleeding. She cut you.”

  “Hmm?” She looks down, sees her own blood staining the open collar of her shirt, dripping onto the locket she’s never taken off.

  “It doesn’t look like a deep cut. Paramedics are on the way,” Detective Mullen tells her. “They’ll take care of you, Rory. And I’ll need to talk to you, of course . . . but it can wait until later.”

  “How . . . how did you know where to find us?”

  “Because of Michelle Randall’s cousin, John. He’s an architect. He had taken measurements of the house recently, and knew there must be a hidden room. He thought nothing of it at the time, just left a message for Michelle to call him.”

  Rory nods, remembering the phone message in Molly’s handwriting on the kitchen counter.

  “Anyway,” Detective Mullen goes on, “John was in New York on business today and didn’t find out what was going on here until a little while ago. When he called his wife and she told him about Molly and Ozzie disappearing from this house, he realized what might be going on and called Michelle and Lou at the hospital right away. Lou knew exactly where the opening would be—­he’d noticed one day recently that the bookcase in Ozzie’s room seemed askew, but had been too busy to take a look at it. And Michelle had been hearing strange noises coming from her son’s room.”

  “Thank God . . . thank God you got here in time,” Rory tells the detective.

  He smiles and touches her arm. “Are you sure you’re okay, Rory?”

  She nods, takes a step as he turns away, then stops, her knees wobbling.

  “Molly,” she asks her sister, “are you all right?”

  “I’m fine. Just shaken up. Rory, if you hadn’t come, she would have—­”

  “I know.” She heaves a shuddering breath as more footsteps pound down the stairs.

  “Ozzie? My God, Ozzie?”

  Lou Randall bursts into the room, glances around wildly, spots the little boy, and sobs, “Oh, God. Thank God!” He takes his son from the officer’s outstretched arms, holding him close, saying his name over and over again, as Ozzie whimpers, “Daddy! Daddy!”

  Feeling like she’s watching a surreal scene from a movie, Rory looks back at Molly, but her sister is obscured behind the officers who are now working to free her from her bonds.

  Across the room, Detective Mullen is winding a makeshift tourniquet around Emily’s bleeding arm, and someone else is reciting the Miranda.

  Tears are stinging Rory’s eyes now. She takes a tentative step, and then another, toward the skeletal remains on the floor, pushing past the detectives crouched beside them, knowing what she’ll see even before she spots it.

  There.

  It’s clearly visible around the neck of one corpse.

  A locket, identical to her own.

  Her father’s voice echoes in her ears.

  Never take them off. They will remind you that y
ou’re sisters, a part of each other forever. Someday you’ll be best friends. You’re lucky to have each other.

  One of the officers puts a hand on her arm, pulls her back, murmurs something about not disturbing the bodies.

  Tears stream down her cheeks, enormous sobs wracking her body as she absorbs the terrible, undeniable truth. The loss is crippling; somehow sudden, yet long delayed.

  And now she knows.

  After so many years of wondering, and praying, and hoping.

  Now she knows.

  Carleen is dead.

  You’re sisters, a part, of each other forever . . .

  “Rory?”

  She turns at the sound of her name.

  Molly’s standing there, freed from her shackles, looking pale and unnerved . . . and small. And alone.

  “Rory?” Her voice is quaking. “I’m so sorry I made you come here. She made me—­”

  “I know, Molly. God, I know.” She opens her arms, and her little sister steps into them, and then they’re both sobbing, and clinging to each other, and Molly is thanking her, over and over.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Molly says at last, pulling back and looking around with a shudder.

  “Okay,” Rory agrees, squeezing her hand. “Let’s go home.”

  EPILOGUE

  “Molly? Are you almost ready?”

  “God, Rory, cut me a break! I’ll be right down, okay?”

  Rory’s eyes meet Barrett’s, and they both smile.

  “Thirteen-­year-­old sisters,” she informs him, “can be a real pain in the—­”

  “Relax, Rory. She’s making herself beautiful. Can you blame her? We’re going to the fanciest restaurant in town.”

  “I still think we should have chosen someplace less . . .”

  “Expensive,” Barrett asks, reading her mind. “I know you do. After all, you’re a real starving artist now,” he adds, with a glance at the easel Rory set up in the living room, her unofficial “studio.” “But I told you, Rory, it’ll be my treat.”

  “And money is no object for you. Do you have to rub it in?” Rory asks with a grin. “Must be nice to be filthy rich.”

  “Oh, believe me, it is.” Barrett raises an eyebrow at her. “Maybe someday you’ll find out.”

  Her stomach flutters at the suggestive look on his face, even though she knows it’s too soon . . . much too soon to be thinking about settling down with him.

  Then again, she’s already made the decision to stay here in Lake Charlotte . . . at least for a while.

  And so has Barrett, having spent the rest of the summer and all of September staying in a house he rented in town, working on his book.

  It’s October now.

  Out on Hayes Street, the leaves are dazzling reds and pinks and oranges and golds, and there’s a perpetual hint of wood smoke in the crisp air. Mrs. Shilling has temporarily closed down her bed and breakfast and gone to visit her son Bucky down in Austin. Cheryl Wasner’s chrysanthemums are in full bloom, and there’s an artful display of pumpkins and cornstalks on their porch. And out on the sidewalk in front of the Randalls’ house, every night after supper, Ozzie has been learning to ride his new red tricycle with his father’s help, as Michelle and his baby sister, Joy, look on from the front steps.

  “Rory? Does this look all right?”

  She looks up to see her mother walking slowly down the stairs.

  “Mom! You changed your mind! You’re coming with us?”

  “If it’s not too late to invite myself along,” Maura says, clinging tightly to the bannister as she descends. “And if you think I look presentable.”

  Her mother’s hair is neatly combed, and there’s even a touch of lipstick and mascara to enhance her striking features. She’s wearing the simply cut navy wool dress and matching pumps that Rory bought her on a recent, memorable shopping trip, with a disapproving Sister Theodosia in tow.

  “You look beautiful, Mom,” Rory says truthfully. “Did you remember to take your medication?”

  Maura nods.

  She usually does remember, lately—­no longer needing to hide in the fog of her mental illness. She still has bad days, though they’re fewer and farther between as time goes on: days when she forgets, for a while, that Rory lives here now, and Kevin has moved into a place of his own in Saratoga, and Carleen . . .

  Carleen is never coming home.

  Rory spared her mother the vile details of Carleen’s imprisonment and death, not wanting her to be tortured by knowing how her beloved firstborn had suffered. Rory still can’t quite grasp that Carleen had been so close to home the whole time—­left to die a slow, agonizing death, abandoned by Russell Anghardt in the dungeon beneath the house next door.

  Carleen was laid to rest at last after the medical examiner released her remains to the family in July. Her grave is in the cemetery behind Holy Father Church, beside the simple stone marker where Patrick Connolly is buried.

  And somehow, seeing her father and sister united in death, Rory had felt the sense of closure that enabled her long-­delayed healing process to begin.

  Visiting David Anghardt again had helped, too. This time, she had brought him some chocolate-­covered raisins, and she had spent the entire day with him. She’d helped him string big wooden beads and sung songs, and had talked to him, rewarded when he smiled at the end of the day and tried to say her name. Choked up, she had promised him she’d be back soon. She hadn’t mentioned his sister; Lydia McGovern had said that she’d decided it would be better if she didn’t.

  “He’s really going to miss seeing her,” the director had said sadly. “It’s hard to believe that someone who loved her brother as much as she did could have been capable of such heinous crimes.”

  “She was her father’s first victim,” Rory pointed out. “It doesn’t make what she did any more tolerable, but I can understand how she got lost in her own tragic world.”

  After so many years of living under horrific circumstances—­first in her father’s house, then on the streets—­Emily must have just snapped. When she went to confront her father, she flew into a rage and killed him. Then, aghast at what she had done, she had gone over the edge into madness.

  “But why on earth was she wearing her father’s clothes, thinking she was him?” she’d wondered aloud to Barrett, bewildered, knowing she’d never shake the haunting memory of Emily’s creepy portrayal of Russell Anghardt.

  “It was her response to the overwhelming realization that she’d killed him. An escape, maybe, or a way of keeping him alive. Didn’t you ever see Psycho, with kooky Norman Bates impersonating his dead mother?” Barrett had asked, and Rory had shuddered.

  Now Emily is in a federal prison on kidnapping charges, and her lawyers are trying to prove her mentally unfit to stand trial. Either way, she’ll never be free again.

  And Rory has vowed to keep visiting David Anghardt.

  “Are Kevin and Katherine meeting us there?” Barrett asks, checking his watch.

  Rory nods. “They’re probably waiting already. Come on, Molly, move it!”

  “All right, already. I’m coming!”

  A door bangs open upstairs, and, moments later, Molly appears at the head of the stairs. She’s wearing a red dress that shows off curves Rory didn’t realize she has, and teetering in a pair of too-­high heels.

  “Careful,” Rory and her mother say simultaneously, then look at each other and smile.

  Molly rolls her eyes.

  Barrett says, “Are you ready? Because Kevin and Katherine are waiting. And Travis will be there, too, by now.”

  “I’m ready,” Molly says, walking down the stairs on wobbly feet, clinging to the railing.

  Rory wants to tell her to go change into a pair of flats, but she holds her tongue. She knows how she would have reacted if Carleen had said something like that, in that
annoying, superior, big-­sister tone of hers.

  She waits for Molly to descend the stairs as Barrett and her mother start out to the car.

  “Are you nervous?” she asks her sister in a low voice when Molly reaches the bottom step.

  Tonight’s meeting with Travis is all Molly’s talked about for days. She’s finally ready to meet her father—­the man who has spent the last thirteen years living in Boston, wondering about her, so concerned that he’d hired a private detective to keep tabs on her, to make sure she was all right.

  It had taken a while for Molly to agree to see him.

  After all, it hadn’t been easy for her, for any of them, to accept that he had been much older than Carleen, and married, when they became involved. Travis was an instructor at a nearby college, and, as he’d told Rory, his marriage was already in trouble when he met Carleen, who passed herself off as twenty-­one with no problem. It wasn’t until she came to him and told him she was pregnant that he’d discovered the truth.

  Stunned and horrified, he’d asked her if she was sure the baby was his—­and she’d flown off the handle. Stormed away, refusing to speak to him, though he tried to get in touch with her afterward, wanting to own up to his responsibility.

  The next thing he knew, she’d moved to California with her family, and his marriage was falling apart. So he’d gone to Boston to make a fresh start, and managed to pull his life together over the years. He’s teaching at Harvard, he told Rory, and is getting married again over the holidays.

  “But I want to be a part of Molly’s life,” he’d said earnestly. “If she’ll let me.”

  For a while, Rory hadn’t thought Molly would.

  With a stubborn streak that would have done her mother proud, Molly had refused to see him when he turned up in town the day of her rescue—­but then, she was still shell-­shocked from the trauma of what she’d been through.

  Gradually, though, as summer turned to fall, Molly had shown a growing interest in the letters and gifts Travis had been sending to her.

  And now, finally, she’s agreed to let him come back to Lake Charlotte on Columbus Day weekend. In just a short while, she’ll meet him face to face.

  “Am I nervous?” she echoes Rory’s question. “No! God, why would I be—­Whoops!”