All the Way Home (43 page)

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.

“L
ake 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.”

C
HAPTER
S
IXTEEN

W
hen 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.

“K
atie, 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. But 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.

As she stares at the girls’ faces, Lydia McGovern gasps in shock.

The bone-china teacup slips from her trembling hand, splashing tea on her ankles as it shatters on the parquet floor.

M
ichelle gradually becomes aware of the faint, fuzzy sound of voices.

Hushed voices, floating someplace above her head, she thinks vaguely as she fights her way from under the thick, gauzy shroud that doesn’t seem to want to release her.

“No, she doesn’t know yet, but I’m going to have to tell her as soon as she wakes up.”

That was Lou’s voice, she realizes groggily.

What is he talking about?

Who doesn’t know what?

Confused, she tries to get her bearings. She feels battered, raw . . . her stomach is sore, so very sore.

What happened?

The baby!

Reality comes rushing back to her, and she fights to open her eyes.

“Lou!” she calls, letting her lids flutter closed again against the bright light in the room. She must be in the hospital.

Lou’s still talking in that whisper, ignoring her.

She realizes her attempt to get his attention must not have been audible. She’s so tired . . . so tired.

“Lou!” she calls again, and this time she hears herself, her voice a rasping croak.

“Michelle?”

She opens her eyes and sees him standing above her, his face drawn, deep trenches under his red-rimmed eyes.

Has Lou been
crying?

“Lou . . . the baby . . .”

“It’s okay, Michelle, take it easy. The baby
’
s in the ICU nursery—”

“What’s wrong with him?”

“Her,
Michelle. It was a girl.”

“A girl?” Dazed, she tries to grasp that astonishing news. “But . . .”

“I know. The ultrasound was wrong. Doctor Kabir said that happens sometimes. He said the technicians shouldn’t venture a guess about the baby’s sex unless they’re pretty positive.”

“A daughter,” Michelle says, stunned.

“And she’s going to be okay. They’re keeping a close eye on her, but she’s already doing much better than she was last night.”

“Last night? It’s morning?”

Lou nods.

“The baby’s okay?” she says again, just to be sure.

“The baby’s going to be fine.”

She gropes her clouded mind, aware that there’s still something . . .

No, she doesn’t know yet, but I’m going to have to tell her as soon as she wakes up.

What had Lou been talking about?

Another face appears beside her husband’s. An unfamiliar one, belonging to a nurse.

“Hello, Mrs. Randall, I’m Patty, and I just came on the morning shift. I’ll be taking care of you. How are you feeling?”

“Hurts,” she manages, trying to shift her weight in the bed.

“I’ll get you some more pain medicine. You’ve been through quite an ordeal. We’ve had you pretty doped up. You’re going to feel kind of out of it for a while.”

“Lou,” Michelle says, uneasy, ignoring the nurse, “where’s Ozzie?”

And then she knows, from the look in her husband’s eyes, that something is wrong.

Terribly wrong.

R
ory offers her mother a steaming mug of tea. “Here, Mom, try to drink some of this.”

There’s no reply. Maura just sits there at the kitchen table, staring off into space, as she has been since last night, when Rory told her the crushing news.

Rory sets the mug in front of her, slides the sugar bowl toward it, and walks back to the sink. She busies herself putting away the dishes in the draining rack, dishes that have been sitting here all night. The bowl she’d mixed the brownies in, the beaters she’d licked, the spatula . . .

It seems like so long ago that she was standing at the counter, baking brownies, thinking of bringing some next door to Molly.