All the Difference (20 page)

Jack wiped his mouth with a paper napkin and took a long glance at the floor, where Molly's large hobo bag lay. She noticed her keys hanging out of the open side pocket, the weathered Audi key fob in plain sight, and sighed.

“I know what you're going to say, Pop,” she said. “Don't rub it in.”

“Hey, I didn't say anything,” her father replied. He held up his hands in mock denial. “You're a smart girl. You'll figure out what you have to do.”

Molly didn't reply. She'd once made the mistake of telling her frugal parents the cost of her monthly car payments, and she didn't think they'd ever gotten over the shock. But at the time she'd easily been able to afford them.

“But,” Jack continued, “I do have a friend who works at that Subaru dealership in town if you want to trade it in and get a good deal on a used car.”

Emily walked back out onto the porch and sank down into the brown wicker chair next to Molly.

“They have some really nice family wagons over there, dear,” she said. “Your father and I drove by it the other day.”

Molly inhaled and gave her father a sidelong stare, raising an eyebrow.

“Oh, eat your cookies, Molly,” Jack chuckled. “We're only trying to help.”

Again, Molly was silent. From the ornamental cherry tree to their right, a cardinal called out with an insistent, desperate voice, looking for his mate. Molly tried to imagine living at her parents' house again, sitting on this porch every day with them and the baby. She thought about withstanding the constant flow of Emily's advice, about stepping around her father's projects as she hurried to work and came home. She pictured what she knew of her parents' peaceful nights in the family room, quietly doing crosswords or watching the news, their routine interrupted by an infant's cries echoing through the house. She couldn't see how it could work. It wasn't going to be all fresh cookies and iced tea, not once she and the baby were actually here. From what she knew, babies were loud. Molly's parents were not used to loud.

Molly sensed the closed-in feeling swoop in on her again. Her parents started talking about the steep rise in gas prices along Route 30, and Molly looked around for something else to grab her attention. Her gaze landed on the old guitar her father had left propped in the corner, and she smiled a little to herself. Molly's most favorite mornings as a child were on days like this, sitting on that very porch on her father's lap while he cradled the guitar and taught her how to pick out the first notes to “Quinn the Eskimo.” It had been her favorite song, and she still asked him to play it sometimes when she came home to visit. Molly's father caught her eye and gave her a knowing smile.

Emily had fallen silent, too, and the three of them quietly looked out at the backyard. It was a pitch-perfect, gorgeous summer day. The tree leaves were reflecting sunlight in a way that made them look shiny, and there was just enough breeze to make sitting on the back porch under the ceiling fans comfortable. Molly was always impressed that her parents kept the yard so immaculate. It overflowed with trees that were covered with blossoms in the spring, framing the small house with an illusion of luxury, and they managed to keep gardens full of plants that bloomed at different times throughout the summer. There was a constant, vibrant flow of glorious blossoms in the yard from May through September. It had taken years for her parents to achieve what they were looking at now.

Molly glanced at her mother, who sat in her chair with her head bent toward the sound of her wind chimes, smiling at Jack across the table. Molly sighed, sank back against the cushions, and looked out over the backyard again. Liam had been to her parents' house a few times before they'd broken up. He'd loved to sit on the porch, and used to joke with her parents that they should turn the backyard into a spa retreat. Molly wondered if she'd be sitting here now, having this conversation, if he had been the father of the baby.

The breeze picked up and rustled the chimes, making them clang furiously for a brief moment. As they shouted their tinny song, a couple of puffy seedpods flew across the lawn. Another gust of air rustled the cocktail napkins Emily had placed beneath the cookie platter. Molly realized without a doubt that if she had been expecting this baby with Liam, she would still be sitting there, on the back porch of her parents' house, listening to the breeze whistle by, just as she was now. But the difference was
that Liam would be in the seat beside her, chatting with Jack, offering Molly a plate with the last cookie. That didn't matter, though, Molly knew, because that image wasn't her reality. She turned the past few weeks over in her head, rubbing the spot where her baby's foot had just kicked, and watched the purple irises, brilliant and regal, stand tall among the other foliage in this peaceful setting. Molly wondered what a heavy rain would do to all of these majestic flowers, and for a strange, twisted moment, wished a thunderstorm would blow in and shred all of the happy damned blossoms to pieces.

An hour and a half later, Molly locked her car, carefully looking up and down the quiet sidewalk of her narrow street, her keys and phone gripped in her hand. Almost all of the parking spots were taken at that time of night in her residential neighborhood, and she'd had to park at the end of the block, farther away from home than she felt comfortable with. The sun had set, and the last soft rays of dappled light seemed to hover in the gaps of the densely leaved tree branches overhead. She walked quickly, briskly, planting the heel of each foot hard enough that she could break into a run if necessary.

Molly climbed the stairs to her brownstone and entered the living room, ensuring the door was still locked on her arrival as always. Instinctively, she checked the time on the clock above the mantel. It was almost eight thirty. From what she knew of children, most of the young ones had long been tucked into bed by this time. She had concocted a fantasy of a working single mom's evening at home. But the reality was, that mom probably wasn't doing something idyllic like putting a casserole into the oven this
late in the evening. She was more likely frantically trying to feed and change her child and put her to bed without so much as a bath or a book, because she knew the crying baby was so overtired by this point she'd take hours to settle down. Dinner for the mother would be a bowl of cereal at eleven o'clock while wearing pajamas she pulled out of the hamper because there weren't any clean clothes in the drawers. She would collapse into bed, exhausted, promising herself that she'd wake up early to prepare that last report for work, that she'd wash the bottles tomorrow, spend time with the baby the next night. Molly's fantasy was evaporating like the bubbles from the imaginary bath she wouldn't have the luxury to give.

Molly set her pocketbook on the entranceway table and looked around her tidy living room. She placed a hand on her belly and took one more glance at the clock, thinking of herself months from now, a woman with her arms full of all she was responsible for in the world. That woman was alone, and Molly would bet good money that having the support of people who loved her was a security she needed more than just being able to say she could do it on her own. Molly took a deep breath and leaned back against the closed door, defeated.

She'd just made a decision.

August

Yes

“J
enny, I don't know about this. I swear, if Scott weren't working late, and if I hadn't spent the entire day scrubbing baseboards, I never would have let you talk me into this.”

They were in Midtown Village, standing in the middle of Drury Street outside of McGillin's Olde Ale House, their old go-to for work happy hours. They had purchased tickets months earlier to see a concert later that evening, and Jenny had talked Molly into making a night of it. Jenny was now trying to psych her up to go into the pub and meet a large group of their old friends, but Molly remained planted in her spot on the pavement. Most of their former coworkers from Shulzster & Grace were already inside, and Molly dreaded having to face them for the first time since her mortifying exit. She felt uncomfortable and lumpy in black stretch capris and a silky pink tunic-style maternity tank top. Even with some cute flat flip-flops she'd picked up at Bloomingdale's and a couple of funky silver bangles on her arms and big
hoops in her ears, she felt like a fraud. Only little, hip, cute people should be out at bars like this, she thought, looking over her friend. Jenny was wearing skinny jeans paired with an incredibly high pair of metallic gold sandals. Like Molly, she'd worn them with a tank top, but hers was shimmering and backless. She wore her hair down and had loaded up on the beaded jewelry.
She looks like a hippie goddess,
Molly thought.
And I look like Buddha.

“Come
on
, preggers.” Jenny did a sort of bounce in front of Molly and tugged on her hand. “It'll be fun. They're supposed to be our friends, remember? And when was the last time you actually went out and had a good time? I swear, that fiancé of yours is keeping you locked in your tower like Rapunzel.”

“Well, my hair
has
gotten a little too long for my tastes . . .” Molly twirled the ends of her dark hair around her finger.

“You're ridiculous, and you're kind of driving me crazy a little bit. Your hair looks beautiful, as does the rest of you, lady. Have you taken a good look at yourself in a mirror?” Jenny waved both of her hands up and down at Molly's now-voluptuous form. “You're working this baby bump you've got going to the max, and you have that glow I always thought people were lying about. So, look. I didn't get all dressed up to stand outside in this heat. I'm trying to forget my sorrows, and we've got a fun night ahead of us. Let's go inside and get it started. What do you say?”

Jenny seized Molly's arm and pulled her to the doorway. Molly was no more looking forward to standing in that crowded bar than she was to childbirth, but she had to laugh at her friend's enthusiasm, and allowed herself to be pulled up to the bouncer before hesitating again.

“Wait a minute, Jenny,” she said to her friend's back. “What sorrows are you talking about? You've got a perfectly good
husband sitting at home, weeping into his spaghetti, wondering why you want to be anywhere but with him.
Especially
when he didn't do anything wrong.”

“Don't you try bringing up my personal life as a stalling tactic, Molly,” Jenny said. “I'm not falling for it.”

Molly saw that Jenny had slowed down, though. “All I'm saying is that you guys are supposed to have patched this all up. I'm all about a girls' night, but you moved back home so you could make it better. I'm sensing some avoidance here.”

Her friend was pointedly ignoring her. Molly tugged on Jenny's arm until she stopped walking.

“Jenny. It's like the only thing keeping you from being happy again with Dan is your own stubbornness. You can't be afraid of being content. It's not going to jinx you. It doesn't work that way.”

Molly knew her best friend, and she also knew tonight was just another way for Jenny to run away from her issues. Jenny only knew how to walk a straight line, and any deviation from that paralyzed her. She'd always done so well in her life that she'd never had a chance to learn how to fix the bad when it happened. And now Molly was so exasperated she let the words tumble out of her mouth before she could run them through her usual filter.

“You know how you asked me if you were being a shit?” Molly finally asked. Jenny's eyes widened before she even finished her thought. “Well, you're kind of being a shit.” She paused. “No offense.”

Jenny gaped at Molly in shock. “When did Molly Sullivan get so blunt?”

Molly laughed. “When she saw her best friend making a dumb mistake, that's when. Isn't that what I'm supposed to do, save you from yourself?”

Jenny chuckled. “Yeah, I suppose so. I'll just have to remember that when it's your turn to get a talking-to.”

Molly shook her head. “Nah. I've got my life locked down and under control. You know me.”

She smirked, but the words didn't come out as blithely as she'd intended. Molly saw Jenny's look of concern and ignored it by digging around in her bag for her wallet. Ever since their last big disagreement, Scott had acted like an extraordinarily good-looking puppy that had been caught misbehaving. He spoke overly softly now, showering her with kisses and enthusiastic compliments, bringing her frequent bouquets of massive flowers. Molly was trying so hard to forget his gloating, his refusal to budge, but it was difficult with Scott's constant reminders that he'd hurt her in the first place, that he had something to make up for.

“I'm right, aren't I, though?” Molly asked. “About Dan?
I
feel guilty knowing he's got to be totally confused and heartbroken, and he's not even my husband.”

“Yeah.” Jenny tried to laugh. “But that's just because you like to fix everything.”

“Still.”

Jenny started to take a step, then stopped again. “I know, okay?” Her voice was tight. “You're right. Fine. I said it.”

“So why don't you call him? Invite him out with us?”

“Because I don't really want to, Molly. I mean, I do, but . . . I don't know. I've been stubborn, and I admit I possibly made a dumbass move by moving out. And moving back in hasn't gone so well, either.” Jenny used one hand to rub at her eyes. The air around them was heavy with humidity. They were just steps away from the air conditioning—and noise, and people, and sticky floors—of the bar. “But honestly, Mol, I was just looking
forward to a night out when I didn't have to
think
about any of that stuff. Does that make sense?”

She was standing beside Molly on the sidewalk between the street and bar, frozen. “Can I tell you something, Molly? Since we're being blunt? It was almost a relief to think that maybe Dan had cheated on me, that maybe he just wanted out, or was just as selfish as my dad. Then I wouldn't have to feel like I was disappointing him anymore.” Jenny looked down at the sidewalk.

“Disappointing Dan? The guy's been in love with you since high school,” Molly protested.

“Yeah, I know,” Jenny said. “And I can't help feeling like I should stop wasting his time. That maybe this marriage has run its course.”

Molly shook her head. “You're Catholic. Even if you don't go to church, I know you. That's not a possibility.”

“I'm serious, Molly. Maybe this was a sign he should get out while he can. Find someone who can give him income and babies and the perfect family life. A woman whose body works the way it should.” She took a breath. “Somebody who isn't broken.”

“Shit, Jenny.”

“Yeah, I know.” Jenny looked to the side. “It finally hits the fan, right?”

“Girl, what am I going to do with you?” Molly threw her arm around her friend's shoulders and squeezed. “Dan didn't marry you just to break up during an incredibly rough spot. It makes total sense for you to need to take a breather. But for the last time, you should let Dan be with you during that breather. Let him help you. It's all he wants to do.”

She was so exasperated. Of course Jenny was right about Molly's impulse to fix problems, but this issue had an easy solution.
Molly had always wondered why people needed to complicate perfectly good lives. Tonight, though, she could admit that it was often easier to see the answer to a question when you stood outside of the equation.

Jenny chuckled, then shook her head. “Okay, but you're still not getting out of this tonight. I'll sit down with him tomorrow and have a proper talk, get it all out on the table, I promise. But right now I just need something to shake me up. Get me out of this funk.”

“Well,” Molly said, showing the bouncer outside the front entrance her ID, “a margarita should get you started.”

As soon as they entered the dark confines of the historic pub, Molly and Jenny spotted their old friends from S&G crowded around groups of two-tops shoved together, forming large islands of tables filled with bottles and half-full glasses. Laughter rang out at frequent intervals, bouncing back down from the dark wooden beams on the ceiling. Large mirrors that reflected the weak light to the packed room hung on walls that also featured framed photos of celebrities and antique photographs of the city. A gigantic American flag hung from the same dark rafters.

Someone in the group saw them enter and waved them over. The two women exchanged one uncomfortable glance before pasting brave smiles on their faces to approach their old colleagues. Molly maneuvered her belly around drunk men in loosened ties, their dark hair gelled and faces beginning to show the stubble of Friday night, and squealing women with South Philly accents, all freed for the weekend from the pressures of their work in the publishing and government and insurance offices of Center City. At the very least, she figured, she might run into somebody who had a lead or a contact for her—even if, as Scott kept reminding her, no one was going to want to hire a pregnant
woman. Molly shook the thought out of her head. One of her favorite songs from the Pogues, “Fairtytale of New York,” began playing over the loudspeakers, and she bounced a little to the sound as she walked. Within minutes, she and Jenny were engulfed in laughter with their old friends. Molly allowed herself, finally, to relax, knowing it wouldn't be for very long.

An hour later, she stood between two stools at the long, straight bar on the first floor. She'd been surrounded by a throng of people three deep, but Pat, the middle-aged Friday night bartender, had recognized her and motioned for people to give her space to get through. Jenny was still back at the tables in the center of the room, surrounded by people and laughing her way through her third margarita.

“Molly Sullivan, old girl!” Pat reached out for one of her hands in a jolly, familiar gesture as his other pulled a pint from the tap. Liquor bottles stood like sentinels on the glass shelves behind him, stacked against the mirrored wall like guards of her past.

“Hey, Pat! It's good to see you!” Molly exclaimed, and leaned forward, using her forearms to prop herself on the bar. “It's been a long time, buddy.”

“I'll say,” Pat replied. “It's not often I get to see a beautiful face like yours around these parts.” He didn't seem to notice the glare of the woman standing next to Molly. “What'll you have, Molly? Your usual?”

He dropped a handful of ice in a short glass with practiced speed and had his hand around a bottle of Johnnie Walker before she could stop him.

“Not for me, Pat, not today,” she laughed, and backed away from the bar. “Or for the next couple of months or so.” The bartender's eyes widened when he saw the reason for her restraint.
He quietly opened a bottle of sparkling water and poured it, instead of the whiskey, into the glass. He was nodding, but to Molly's relief, not asking questions. He tucked a slice of lime onto the rim and slid it across the bar to her without a sound.

“Well, you certainly made somebody speechless.” Molly heard the laughing voice from beside her, and a forgotten shiver ran through her body. “I see you haven't lost your touch.”

The shock from hearing a memory speak aloud rooted her into place for a moment. Then Molly turned to face the man who was now grinning at her, his nose scrunching up between the blue of his deep-set eyes in exactly the way she remembered. Her heart lurched in her chest, and Molly felt her face break open into a wide smile before she could catch herself.

“Liam.”

His dusty brown hair was the same as it had been, his eyelashes dark and thick, and his eyes a shining cobalt. Molly felt her cheeks flush hot. The din of the bar seemed to fall away, and for a moment, neither of them said a word.

Liam was facing her, leaning against the bar with a casual lack of self-consciousness. His expression was open, and his genuine, elated grin made Molly feel for a moment like she did when she drove her car down an open highway: exhilarated, free, but still with the assurance that she was buckled up safely. Liam watched her, taking in her face with an appreciation that was honest, yet tentative. He held a full pint of Guinness in one hand.