All the Way Home (16 page)

One more thing to blame on Carleen.

And Molly.

Oh, God. What have I done? She’s just a kid. She doesn’t deserve this. And it’s not her fault.

“Rory!” Molly prods.

“Sorry. I’ll tell you. It’s just . . . hard.”

Molly just looks at her.

Rory clears her throat. “When Mom found out what Carleen had done, she was devastated. She took it personally, like Carleen deliberately betrayed her morals to hurt Mom. She insisted that Carleen go through with it and have the baby—”

“Me.”

“Right,” Rory says reluctantly.

The baby
is so much more impersonal
.
As if it will allow Molly to somehow separate her very existence from what had ultimately been such a devastating tragedy for their family
.

“Mom and Daddy agreed that no one could know about it
.
This is such a small, gossipy town—they were so worried about what people would say—well, mostly Mom.
She
was worried
.
Daddy didn’t really give a damn about things like that. But he wanted to get the hell out of here, and if you ask me, Carleen’s pregnancy was the one chance he ever had to make Mom leave. So he took a sabbatical, like he always wanted to do. Mom didn’t argue. How could she? We went to California.”

“I was born there.”

Rory nods. “You knew that, didn’t you?”

“Of course I knew that. I just never knew Mom wasn’t the one who gave birth to me.”

“Molly, I know this is all so overwhelming—but try to understand that we all did what we had to do. Mom and Daddy, and Carleen—even me and Kevin. We all did what we thought was best. Mom and Daddy figured that if they pretended you were theirs, it would make life more bearable for everyone involved.”

She pauses, fully expecting another outburst from Molly, but there’s only silence.

She sees that her sister is still shaking, though—shaking all over, as though struggling to maintain her composure.

Fighting against the urge to touch her, knowing it will only alienate her, Rory takes a deep breath and goes on. “It was so awful in California. Carleen was sick the whole time, and miserable, and she wasn’t herself. She totally withdrew from the rest of us, and she didn’t make friends. Mom spent all her time in church, or praying. And Daddy was busy with his teaching position. Once in a while, he’d take me and Kevin someplace—we went to Disneyland, and we used to go to the beach sometimes.”

She thinks back on those hazy, long-ago California days, remembering how uncharacteristically subdued her father had been. He was finally out in the world, finally able to see some of the places he’d researched and taught, and he couldn’t enjoy it. He was burdened with a pregnant thirteen-year-old and a wife who was rapidly lapsing into the mental illness she’d always managed to hold at bay.

That, for Rory, had always been one of the most lamentable aspects of the whole damn tragedy. That her father’s fate was sealed in those grim months on the West Coast. He was so obviously trapped, destined to live the rest of his life fulfilling his obligation to his wife, to his children.

She closes her eyes briefly and sees him standing absolutely still on some Pacific beach, at the very edge of the water, looking out at the horizon.

Did he sense, even then, that he would die young? Did he realize that he would never be free, that his dreams would never come true?

“What about my father?” Molly asks.

And for a moment, Rory almost thinks Molly’s reading her thoughts. That she’s asking about Patrick Connolly, and his shattered life.

Then she realizes what her sister is asking, and she’s forced to burden her with yet another bleak reality of the past.

“We never knew who he was,” Rory says quietly. “Carleen wouldn’t tell us. Mom never pushed her to—she never wanted to know. But Daddy—he was furious about it for a long time. He used to demand the guy’s name, saying he was going to beat the hell out of him. As if that would make Carleen want to tell,” she adds with an acrid laugh.

“So nobody knows who my father is, then?” Molly asks in a small voice. “And there’s . . . there’s no way to find out?”

Rory shakes her head. “We never even knew whether he knew she was pregnant. Probably not. I wonder sometimes if Carleen would have told us about him eventually, if she hadn’t . . . disappeared.”

How close she had been to saying
died
.

But she never voices that likelihood to anyone, and she’s not going to start now. As long as what happened to Carleen remains a mystery, there’s hope, however slim, that she’s still alive someplace.

And that’s why I can’t talk to Barrett Maitland,
Rory reminds herself.
Because if he starts prying into the mystery after all these years, he might solve it. He might find out that Carleen and the others were murdered.

But isn’t it better to know?

No,
she answers her own question.
It isn’t better. How can it be better to find out someone you loved so much is dead?

She realizes tears are trickling from her eyes, and she wipes at her cheeks with the back of her hand.

Molly is staring off into space, that fist still pressed against her mouth, her skinny legs and arms still visibly trembling.

“Are you all right, Molly?” Instinctively, she reaches out and touches her sister’s shoulder, knowing even as she does that it’s a mistake.

Molly shrinks back under her touch, flinching as though Rory’s hand is a hot brand.

“Just . . . leave me alone!” she bites out, and then she’s on her way up the stairs, hurling herself toward the second floor so quickly, so blindly that she nearly crashes into the figure standing on the landing.

Rory gasps.

Her mother is standing there, wearing the flannel nightgown she insisted Rory put on her earlier. Her gray hair is disheveled, but for once, she doesn’t appear the least disoriented. She steps back slightly as Molly pushes by her and disappears around the corner.

“Mom?”

Rory’s gaze locks on her mother’s as Molly’s bedroom door bangs shut above. Maybe she just came down now. Maybe she didn’t hear a word of what she and Molly were talking about, or if she did, maybe she didn’t comprehend.

But those bottle-green eyes aren’t blank, as they had been when she’d caught Maura earlier in her wedding gown. Now they’re piercing and angry, boring into Rory’s consciousness and filling her with the sick, guilty awareness that she has broken a sacred promise made so many years ago.

“I’m sorry, Mom,” Rory says, putting a foot on the stairs, prepared to go to her mother, to explain what happened. “I didn’t mean to tell her, but—”

Without a word, her mother turns and swiftly goes back upstairs, her door echoing Molly’s moments earlier.

Wearily, Rory sinks down on the bottom step and buries her head in her hands, longing for someone to share this oppressive burden.

If only Kevin were here.

If only Daddy had lived . . .

I’m so alone. So totally alone.

As the stark truth settles over Rory, she fights the almost overpowering urge to just get up and walk away. Leave, like she had before, when she was younger and filled with restless longing, and didn’t give a damn about anything but herself.

How many times did Daddy feel this way?
she wonders desolately.
How many times was he tempted to turn his back on this whole messed-up family and just get the hell out of here?

But he never did.

And I can’t, either.

She takes a deep breath, lets it out slowly, and gingerly rises to her feet, making her way slowly up the stairs to bed.

C
HAPTER
S
IX

S
eated in a lawn chair in a skimpy patch of shade beneath a tall lilac shrub, Michelle carefully tears out the magazine page containing the potty-training article, which she’s finally just finished reading. One of the author’s tips is not to start training a toddler just before or after a new sibling’s birth.

“Guess what? You get to keep wearing those diapers a while longer, kiddo,” she says to Ozzie as she begins folding the page accordion-style.

“Diapers?” Ozzie looks up from the patch of dirt where he’s busily digging with his little plastic shovel, in search of pirate treasure, just like the little boy in the bedtime story she’d read him a few nights ago.

She’d planned to take him out to the beach at the Curl this afternoon since Lou is working, but she just doesn’t have the energy. Of course, once Ozzie found out he wouldn’t be able to dig in the sand as she’d promised, he’d thrown a major tantrum.

Which is why he’s now happily engaged in excavating what should have been a flower garden in full bloom. Last fall, she’d dug up this wide patch of earth at the back of the yard, planning to fill it with snapdragons and cosmos and petunias, like her mother had always done. But by the time spring arrived and the annuals would have been ready to put in, she’d thought better of gardening.

Her doctor had warned that it was possible to pick up the disease toxoplasmosis from soil that’s frequented by cats. It isn’t usually serious unless someone is pregnant, since it can cause birth defects in infants. Knowing that the Wasners’ cats are always using her yard as a litter box, Michelle had decided not to take chances.

When she’d mentioned it to Lou, he’d told her she should start chasing Ralphi and Sebastian away from their yard, anyway. “I can’t stand those damn animals always coming around here,” he’d said, and added, as if she didn’t know, “After all, I’m allergic.”

“Treasure, Mommy!” Ozzie says, jabbing his little orange shovel into the surprisingly deep hole he’s managed to create.

“That’s right, Ozzie, you’re digging for treasure.” She finishes folding the magazine page and uses it as a makeshift fan, waving it in front of her sweat-dampened face.

Later, she’ll take Ozzie over to Carvel for ice cream. The place is air-conditioned, and she wouldn’t mind a hot fudge sundae.

Might as well take advantage of this pregnancy while it lasts,
she tells herself, knowing she’ll have to diet like crazy to get all this weight off once the baby’s born.

It seems like all she’s done these past few days is sit around and eat everything in sight—except, of course, those corn nuts, no matter what Lou thinks.

As far as Michelle is concerned, they just vanished from the cupboard, a thought that is so troubling it kept her awake most of the night while Lou snored peacefully beside her.

Could someone possibly have broken into their house, not once, but twice, and stolen food from the kitchen cupboards?

Bizarre as it seems, Michelle is really starting to believe it—in part because the only other remotely plausible explanation for the missing corn nuts and crackers is that she’s losing her mind.

She turns her attention back to her magazine, flipping through to see if there are any other articles she wants to read before she tosses it into the recycling bin. Nope, not really. The only other piece pertaining to the mother of a two-year-old is one entitled, “How to Tame Your Toddler’s Temper,” by Dr. Electra Van Dyke, presumably a child psychologist.

“Treasure, Mommy!” Ozzie says excitedly, pounding his shovel into the dirt. It makes a dull sound, scraping against a rock or something.

“Mmm hmm.” She closes the magazine again and absently brushes her bangs away from her damp forehead, wondering when this heat wave is ever going to break. She caught this morning’s weather forecast on television, and temperatures are supposed to stay in the high nineties over the weekend, though there’s a chance of a thunderstorm tonight that might cool things down.

“Help, Mommy,” Ozzie says urgently, tossing his shovel aside and digging in the dirt with his chubby bare hands.

“No, don’t do that, Ozzie. You’re going to get filthy,” Michelle says wearily, getting out of her lawn chair and bending to pull him back from the dirt. “Come on, let’s go get cleaned up and go to Carvel.”

“No!” He stomps his little blue sandals and screws up his face in fury, brewing another tantrum. “Treasure, Mommy! Treasure there!”

“We’ll dig for treasure again tomorrow,” she quickly promises, knowing that of course he’ll hold her to it. For a two-year-old, he has an amazing memory.

Unlike his mom,
she thinks as she makes her way toward the house, pulling a protesting Ozzie along.

Did I eat those damn corn nuts and forget? Did I eat the crackers and forget? Am I going to open the freezer tomorrow and find an entire roasting chicken or a half-gallon of ice cream missing, too?

She sighs and drags Ozzie to the kitchen sink to scrub the dirt from his hands, taking Dr. Electra Van Dyke’s advice and pointedly ignoring his ear-splitting wails about the buried treasure in the backyard.