All the Way Home (42 page)

Only one coherent thought makes its way through Molly Connolly’s mind before the intruder slams something into her head.

It’s you. But that’s impossible . . . What are you doing here?

C
HAPTER
F
IFTEEN

R
ory knocks again, impatient, carefully balancing the plate of brownies in one hand.

There’s no answer.

How can there be no answer?

She’s been standing here for at least five minutes, knocking, calling Molly’s name.

She knows there’s someone inside. The lights are on, and she can hear the television set blaring through the screen.

An uneasy feeling has stolen over her.

What if something’s happened to Molly and Ozzie?

She glances next door, at Rebecca Wasner’s house, and feels sick inside. She should never have let Molly stay here alone all day and all night. The minute she came home and found that note about baby-sitting next door, she should have come right over and insisted on staying until the Randalls came home.

Maybe, she thinks hopefully, they’ve already come back from wherever they were, and Molly went out instead of coming straight home.

That would make sense, given the way she’s been staying out until all hours with her friends this past week . . . Except, if the Randalls were home, wouldn’t they be answering Rory’s knocks?

Well, maybe they came home, let Molly leave, and then took Ozzie and went somewhere, Rory thinks, grasping for any possible explanation.

And that one makes marginal sense.

Except that the television set is still on.

Wouldn’t the Randalls have shut it off if they went out?

Something isn’t right.

Still, Rory hesitates, uncertain what to do. If she goes home and calls the police and it turns out that there’s a logical explanation for this—say, Michelle is here, but sleeping, or Molly is here, but in the bathroom or something—she’s going to look like a complete idiot.

But if she goes home and does nothing, and something has happened to her sister, she will never forgive herself
.

What do I do? What do I do?

Her gaze falls on the window overlooking the front porch. It’s one of those old-fashioned types, with an expanding wooden screen you pop into the frame, instead of one of those built-in vinyl ones.

The same kind of screen the Connollys always had on their windows.

Once, when Carleen snuck out of the house and forgot her keys, she had climbed in a living-room window to get back in, bragging later to Rory about how easy it had been. Naturally, Rory had tattled to her father, who had been enraged that Carleen would pull what he had called “a stupid stunt. What are you trying to do, get yourself killed? If I happened to wake up and hear you crawling in a window in the middle of the night, I’d think you were a burglar, come downstairs with my baseball bat, and brain you.”

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.

M
ichelle 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.”

R
ory 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?

“L
et’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.

“M
olly?” 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.

“A
ll 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.

L
ou feeds a quarter into the pay telephone in the small waiting 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.