All the Way Home (45 page)

“Jack, like I’ve been telling you, ten days ago, I was in Lake Charlotte—”

“And the Grayson Cove police are checking out your alibi as we speak, Barrett. But I’ve got to warn you, this could get complicated anyway.”

“I know. Now that two girls have disappeared there again, and I just happened to be in town this summer—”

“Again.”

“Again,” Barrett echoes, looking his lawyer in the eye. “But I swear, Jack, it was just like I said. A coincidence. Last time, and this time.”

The lawyer eyes him intently. “And you’re sure nobody knows about you and Carleen Connolly?”

“I’m positive. She told me she hadn’t told anyone about us.”

“You’re sure? You don’t think a seventeen-year-old girl would go bragging to her friends about sleeping with a rich guy, a college graduate spending the summer at his parents’ estate?”

“I’m positive she wouldn’t have done that. For one thing, she didn’t have girlfriends—not the way most teenagers seem to. She was more of a loner. And she went out with a lot of older guys. Maybe not rich, but the money didn’t mean much to her. It was more a power trip thing with her. She liked the excitement. And she was a classic rebel. Snuck around behind her parents’ backs. Her father, mostly—she was always talking about how strict he was, how he would kill me if he ever found us together.”

“Nice,” Jack comments, steepling his fingers.

“The only one who might have ever seen us together would be her younger sister, Molly. She was there once, on the playground, when I went to talk to Carleen. But she was so little, I doubt she’d remember . . .” He thinks about what Molly Connolly had said on the phone the other day, though. She had asked him if she knew him, saying he sounded familiar.

“And now Molly’s missing,” Jack reminds him. “What if she did remember? What if she had told someone that she thought she knew you from someplace? They’re going to try to link you to her disappearance.”

“I know. I’ve been thinking about that ever since you told me what happened to her. But look, Jack, I’m obviously innocent. I wasn’t even in town last night when Molly disappeared. I was sitting here under lock and key in this godforsaken North Carolina jail cell. Somebody else is behind this, probably the same person who kidnapped Carleen and the others ten years ago.”

“Possibly. But I wish you had stayed out of it, Barrett. If anyone recognizes you from hanging around town that summer—”

“I didn’t hang around town much. You know where my parents’ place is, way the hell up in the foothills, totally out of the way. I was working on a mystery novel that summer, my first one. It sucked,” he adds ruefully, wrinkling his nose at the memory. ‘‘The only time I ever really came to town that summer was to meet Carleen, and that was always after dark. She’d sneak down through the woods in her backyard to the road by the lake, and I’d pick her up there, and we’d go back up to my parents’ place. That was the summer they were in Europe; there was no one around except me.”

“And you left immediately when you heard what had happened to Carleen?”

“Exactly.”

“Why?”

“Because I was afraid. I’d been sneaking around with this girl, and she was underage, and it was like a witchhunt around there at that point—people just going nuts, suspicious of everyone. And . . .”

“And?”

“Because the night she vanished, she was supposed to meet me. I was waiting in my car on Lakeshore Road. She never showed up. So I finally went home. I couldn’t call her. And the next morning, I heard on the radio that she was missing. So I left.”

“Jesus, Barrett. Do you think she had told anyone she was meeting you that night?”

“I told you, I’m pretty positive she didn’t.”

Jack sighs. “What did you do when you left Lake Charlotte?”

“I went straight to New York to stay with my brother, found a job in publishing right afterward, and that was that
.
My parents sold their place that fall and bought the villa in Tuscany, and that was the last time I ever set foot in the Adirondacks.”

“Until this summer.”

“Until this summer,” Barrett repeats, nodding.

“Why did you decide to write this particular book?”

“Guilt, like I said.” He shrugs. “I guess I never forgave myself for running away like a coward that summer. Hell, or for sneaking around with Carleen, when I knew she was young and screwed up. I should have known better than to get involved with her; and when she disappeared, I shouldn’t have run scared, thinking that somebody was going to think I did it.”

“That very well could have happened, Barrett,” Jack says with a shrug. “I can see why you’d want to get out of there. You were just a kid. But to go back to Lake Charlotte now, when it’s been behind you for ten years . . .”

“I don’t know why I did it, exactly, Jack. When I proposed the book to my agent, it was just, you know, an idea that had been eating away at me for a while. And my agent happened to mention it to my editor, and the next thing I knew, they wanted to see a proposal, and wham! I had a book deal.”

“You could have said no. God knows you don’t need the money,” Jack says. He, of all people, is well versed in the Maitland family’s financial status. The bottom line, of course, is that Barrett will never have to worry about money, thanks to the trust fund courtesy of his great-great-grandfather’s vast New England banking fortune.

“You’re right, Jack. I could have said no to the deal,” Barrett agrees. “But I guess, in a way, it’s like I told Rory—that I was hoping to find something in my research, some clue that would point to the person who abducted all those girls. And even if I don’t solve the mystery, I feel like writing this book as a way of doing something, somehow, for Carleen. In her memory. Because I really think she’s dead, Jack. I really do. And I wish to God that I could find out what the hell happened to her.”

T
ears stream down Michelle’s cheeks as she stares at the miniature red face of her newborn daughter in Lou’s arms. He stands next to the bed, handling her with utmost gentle care now that she’s been released from the ICU nursery.

“Can I hold her?” Michelle asks, looking from her husband to the nurse, Patty.

“It would be difficult with your incision,” the woman says hesitantly.

“Please.” Michelle desperately needs to hold that tiny bundle close.

“All right,” the nurse says, coming closer to the bed and pressing a button to raise the mattress, bringing Michelle’s head and shoulders a bit more upright. “Put her up near Michelle’s shoulders,” she instructs Lou. “Careful not to touch anywhere near her stomach.”

Lou obeys, gingerly laying the blanket-wrapped bundle across Michelle’s chest just below her neck. He stands there, holding the baby steady, and her daughter’s eyes blink, staring into Michelle’s from mere inches away. They’re puffy from the drops placed in them after birth, and the slate-blue color Ozzie’s were for months after he was born.

Michelle sobs, thinking of her son, and clings to this child she battled to bring into the world, trying somehow to draw strength from her very existence, needing to believe that another miracle—
just one more miracle, please, God
—is possible.

R
ory drums her fingertips on the kitchen table, still clutching the telephone receiver
.

Lydia McGovern’s words ring in her ears, chilling her to the bone
.

Sister Mary Frances, David Anghardt’s mysterious visitor, is actually one of the girls who disappeared?

Which girl is it; which girl is still alive?

Which girl has become a nun, and is visiting St. Malachy’s?

“It has to be Emily,” Rory murmurs aloud, pacing across the kitchen floor. That’s the only thing that makes the slightest bit of sense. She had barely known Kirstin Stafford and Allison Myers, but she dismisses the notion that one of them would have any connection to David Anghardt. Carleen, either.

But Emily—
she
would need to keep visiting her twin brother, bringing him little gifts: chocolate-covered raisins, and the quilt and paintings for his room.

But why would Emily have become a nun? And why wouldn’t she tell anyone at the home who she was? Surely someone would have recognized her—

Rory suddenly remembers something else Lydia McGovern had said. That the entire staff had been replaced not long after Emily vanished, and that the former director of the home, Sister Margaret, had been suffering from glaucoma and eventually went blind. It stood to reason that her eyesight would have been failing long before her retirement
.
So she probably wouldn’t have been able to recognize Emily even if Emily came face-to-face with her, if Emily didn’t tell her who she was
.
Only David would have known that the nun was his sister
.

But again, why, if Emily’s still alive, would she have faked her disappearance?

What possible reason could she have had to vanish, abandoning her poor widowed father, whom she loved so much?

It doesn’t make sense.

But then, Rory obviously hadn’t known her best friend as well as she’d thought. Emily hadn’t trusted her enough to tell her about David, or about the shoplifting arrest—

Rory stops pacing and frowns.

Emily had been caught shoplifting a ring.

Rory had already concluded that she must have shoplifted most or all of the things she had claimed her father had given her. What she couldn’t figure out was why.

Now she wonders, not for the first time, if Emily was desperate to convince herself that her father loved her . . . because maybe he didn’t. Maybe he blamed Emily for his wife’s death. After all, Emily’s mother had died giving birth to her and David.

It makes perfect sense,
Rory realizes.

Maybe that was why Mr. Anghardt had shut David away in that home, and why he was always so gruff and distant with Emily.

Maybe he resented his own children’s very existence.

And maybe Emily took advantage of what was happening in Lake Charlotte that summer, with the missing girls. Maybe she simply faked her disappearance and ran away to some convent.

Hadn’t she suggested to Rory that Carleen might have done that very thing? Not the convent part, of course, but Rory clearly remembers Emily saying that Carleen must have run away, trying to reassure her that Carleen was alive, and that she’d turn up again someplace, someday
.

Only Carleen never did.

But . . .

What if the person visiting David Anghardt at St. Malachy’s isn’t Emily, but Carleen? It seems unlikely, but . . .

There’s always a chance.

Rory feels a twinge of exhilaration at the prospect that her sister might still be alive. It’s quickly replaced by doubt.

It doesn’t make sense that Carleen would be out there somewhere, dressing up as a nun and visiting David Anghardt in Poughkeepsie. As far as Rory knows, Carleen hadn’t been aware of his existence, either.

No, it has to be Emily.

But even if Emily faked her disappearance and is still alive, where is Carleen?

Where are the others? This strange discovery about Emily doesn’t explain what happened to the rest of them.

Or to Molly,
Rory thinks desolately, swallowing hard over the lump in her throat.

I’ve got to find Emily Anghardt, if she’s still alive. I’ve got to find out where her church is. Lydia McGovern said it was someplace near Albany.

Then, suddenly, it occurs to her that Emily might not actually be a nun. That the habit might be a disguise.

But why?

A disguise would make sense if she didn’t want anyone to know she was still alive, but a
nun?
Sister Mary Frances
.

“Sister, sister . . .”

David Anghardt’s urgent cries echo in Rory’s ears, and she’s sure she gets why Emily would choose to disguise herself as a nun. Because she knew David would recognize her anyway, and if she didn’t want anyone else to know who she really was, it would be okay if he called her Sister
.
Nobody would suspect that she was really Emily, his lost sister.

So, most likely, she isn’t really Sister Mary Frances living near Albany.

Where are you, Emily?

And why did you run away?

Rory realizes it doesn’t matter
.
Not now. When this is all over, and Molly is home where she belongs, maybe she’ll look for Emily, and find out what happened
.

But right now, she has to concentrate on finding Molly
.

What if it’s already too late?
she wonders, staring out the window at the rain pouring down
.