All the Way Home (22 page)

“About what?” he’d asked, preoccupied.

“Second weddings. Have you ever been married?”

“No.”

“Neither have I. But if I was ever going to get married, and then married again, I wouldn’t have a bridal party. Not at my age. Not for a second wedding. It’s just tacky.”

The woman talks too much. And Barrett is hardly in the mood.

Mrs. Shilling bustles back into the room, all aflutter, untying the old-fashioned apron she wears over her pink polyester shorts set. “I’m going down there,” she announces to her guests. “I’ll be back shortly. I just want to make sure everything is all right. After all, I
am
a neighbor.”

Barrett pushes back his chair and says, without glancing at the woman across the table, “I’ll go with you.”

M
olly pulls the pillow over her head to drown out the sound of sirens. All she wants to do is sleep.

And go back to her dream about Ryan.

Where was I? He was kissing me passionately . . 
.

But was that the dream, or a sweet memory of what had happened between them the night before, on his parents’ chintz living room couch?

She smiles faintly, burrowing into her thin summer quilt and waiting to drift away again.

But the sirens are still at it. Louder than before. And they’re not going by.

They’re groaning to a lower octave, as though they’re stopping right out in front.

Molly’s heart begins to pound.

No,
please, let me get back to my dream
.

The squawk of a police radio reaches her ears.

She squeezes her eyes closed in a futile effort to escape the sudden certainty that something has happened. Something awful.

“W
hat is it?” Sister Theodosia asks Rory.

She turns away from the front door to find the nun walking down the stairs, her spine held perfectly erect, as always, beneath her somber black habit.

“The police,” Rory says briefly, biting her lower lip as she looks out at the street again, at the three patrol cars that make up the entire local police force. They’re pulling up at the curb two doors down, on the other side of the Randalls’ house.

“What’s going on?”

“I’m not sure.”

Several officers emerge from the cars and move swiftly across the neatly clipped lawn toward the house, disappearing from Rory’s view.

“Your mother and I are going to morning mass,” Sister Theodosia says, effectively pulling Rory’s attention away from the scene outside.

“Where
is
Mom?”

“In her room, getting ready for church.”

“Did you talk to her last night?”

“We spoke, yes.”

“Did you notice that she’s . . . having problems?”

“We prayed together” is the nun’s cryptic answer.

Rory studies the woman’s angular face, searching for some hint of warmth in her bottomless black eyes. There is none.

“Are you coming to mass with us, Rory?”

She hesitates only briefly before lying, “I went yesterday.”

Lying to a nun about going to church?

Jeez, Rory, how low can you go?

She glances back at the police cars on the street, an unsettled feeling stealing over her. If Molly wasn’t safely asleep in her bed, she might have a reason to be worried. But she peeked in on her sister on the way downstairs just ten minutes ago, and was relieved to see a familiar tangle of dark hair on the pink-and-white checkered pillow.

Still, the police seem to be parked in front of Molly’s friend Rebecca Wasner’s house. Rory remembers Rebecca, who had always been a pudgy, serious-faced little girl, wearing glasses even as a toddler, and following sunny Molly around like a devoted puppy.

“I’m going to go down there and see what’s going on,” Rory decides aloud, turning back to Sister Theodosia.

The nun has vanished.

After a moment, Rory hears the clatter of the teakettle being set on the stove in the kitchen.

Sister Theodosia always did have a way of coming and going in absolute silence. How many times, in Rory’s childhood, did she seem to sneak up on Rory and Carleen, startling them?

It’s like she doesn’t walk around the way a regular person does,
Carleen had once commented.
She just seeps in and out,
like a creepy ghost. How does she manage to not make a sound in those big clunky shoes of hers, anyway?

It’s just too eerie. Sister Theodosia being here, the scent of Carleen’s perfume last night . . .

Shoving those disconcerting thoughts from her mind, Rory heads quickly up the stairs to get dressed. She sees her mother just coming out of her room, clad in a dark winter dress and a heavy cardigan sweater.

“Mom, you’re going to be too warm in those clothes,” Rory tells her wearily. “Come on, I’ll help you change.”

Her mother frowns. “Rory, I thought I told you to go outside and play. Stop bothering me. Can’t you see I’m busy?”

Oh, God. How many times has she heard those words in her lifetime?

Go outside and play . . . Can’t you see I’m busy?

Busy.

Uh-huh. Her mother would invariably be sitting in a chair, staring out the window when she’d say it. Just sitting and staring, as though expecting to see Daddy or Carleen lurking out there among the trees.

“Mom, I can’t go outside and play. I’m a grown woman. Remember?”

“Emily is out there looking for you. Go play with her.”

“Emily?” Rory’s stomach turns over at the sound of that name. The name of her best friend in the world, who, like her sister, had simply disappeared.

“She’s waiting in her yard. Go ahead.”

“Mom, that was years ago. Emily’s gone. She’s been . . . gone for a long time. Remember, Mom?”

Just like Carleen
.

Rory’s mother’s eyes drift past her.

“Mom, please change your clothes.”

“I’m cold.”

“It isn’t cold out.” The rain has cooled things down and broken the unbearable humidity of the day before, but it’s hardly cool enough for a jacket, and certainly not a woolen dress and sweater.

“I’m cold,” her mother says again.

Rory contemplates arguing, then thinks better of it.

“Fine,” she says shortly, continuing to the staircase leading up to the third floor.

If her mother thinks she’s cold, let her wear whatever she has to. Those sirens are still audible in front of the Wasners’ house, and Rory is anxious to find out what’s going on.

“W
hat is it, Lou?” Michelle gets up the minute her husband comes back inside, shoving her hefty body out of the easy chair so quickly, she feels distinctly dizzy once she’s on her feet.

“It’s their daughter. Rebecca.”

Michelle holds on to the back of the chair to steady herself. “What happened to her?”

“Are you all right, Michelle?”

“I just stood up too fast. I’m fine.”

“I told you to take it easy.” He crosses over to her, puts a hand on her arm, and with a gentle push, forces her to sit again.

He’s been all concerned ever since she had a contraction during breakfast. False labor, she’s certain—it’s too early.

But Lou was so worried about her, insisting that she rest with her feet up while he settled Ozzie in front of a video, that she decided not to tell him it’s probably nothing.

When those sirens raced up to the house next door a few minutes ago, Lou wouldn’t hear of her coming with him to investigate. “Just stay here and keep an eye on Ozzie,” he’d said firmly.

Now he’s wearing a grim expression.

Michelle asks, again, filled with dread, “What happened to Rebecca?”

“She’s gone.”

“Gone?”

“Vanished from her bed sometime last night. Her parents are frantic.”

“Oh, my God.” Michelle glances at Ozzie, who’s oblivious, sitting cross-legged on the floor, engrossed in a Barney tape he’s watched hundreds of times. “How could she vanish from her bed? You mean someone broke into their house and kidnapped her?”

“That’s what it looks like. I don’t know the details. The police just got there.”

“I just saw her.” Michelle thinks of her last encounter with the slightly gawky, soft-spoken neighbor girl. “She was looking for her kitten. She was so worried, poor thing. She just dotes on those cats of hers.”

“I know.”

For once there’s no trace of Lou’s usual derision for anything feline. He appears to be as distraught over the disappearance as Michelle is.

“Maybe there’s been some mistake,” she suggests hopefully. “Maybe she was sleeping over a friend’s house and forgot to tell them.”

“Maybe,” Lou says. “But her parents are hysterical.”

“Oh, God. Oh, my God. Did you see the local paper yesterday?” Michelle asks, remembering. “This is just like—”

“I know. I thought the same thing. It was ten years ago last night that the first girl disappeared. Kirstin Stafford. You weren’t around here that summer, Michelle. You don’t know what it was like.”

“I remember what it was like when I came back,” she points out. “Everyone on edge. People suspicious of their own friends and neighbors . . . And they never caught whoever did it.”

“No,” Lou says, shaking his head. “They never did.”

“Lou, I’m scared. The Wasners live right next door. What if something happens to Ozzie—”

“He’ll be fine, Michelle. Relax. Nobody’s going to kidnap Ozzie. Anyway, you were probably right. There’s probably a logical explanation. The girl probably ran away.”

She knows he’s just pacifying her, but she sees that Ozzie has glanced up at them, having heard his name mentioned. She doesn’t want to scare him. “Right. She probably ran away,” she says to Lou.

“And she’ll turn up sooner or later.”

“Maybe.” Ozzie has gone back to his video. Michelle adds, in a low voice, “It’s just . . . she’s not the type to run away, Lou. I know her—maybe not all that well, but still, I get the sense that she’s the responsible type.”

“Even responsible kids find ways to rebel at some point, Michelle. When my senior class in high school voted on superlatives, I was elected Mr. Straightlace. Little did anyone know I had spent that Halloween setting mailbox fires.”

“That’s terrible!”

“I know. Don’t ask what got into me. I surprised myself.”

“Yeah, well, by the time I met you, you weren’t all that straightlaced.”

“I changed in college. The dorm was one big party—there was no escape. I learned how to have fun.” Lou walks back over to the picture window facing the porch, parts the sheer drapes, and looks out. “The police are still there. And now a bunch of people are standing on the curb. Mrs. Shilling is front and center, of course.”

“Of course.” Michelle knows the woman is the neighborhood gossip. “Then again, Lou, here we are, peeking out the windows to see what’s going on.”

He drops the curtains and turns away from the window. “I’m going to go finish my coffee.”

“Okay. I’ll be here.” She props her swollen legs onto the footstool again.

“Any more contractions?”

“Nope.”

But she’s still feeling a little woozy, even though she’s sitting down. Must be her nerves.

Poor Rebecca Wasner. What on earth could have happened?

Michelle focuses her gaze on the back of her son’s head.

If anything ever happened to Ozzie, I would die. I would just curl up and die,
she thinks grimly.

Then doubles over as another contraction clenches her belly.

M
olly is filled with an acute sensation of dread as she makes her way toward the knot of people gathered in front of the Wasners’ house. Most are familiar faces from the street.

She spots Rory right away. She’s talking to Mrs. Shilling and a dark-haired guy Molly doesn’t know. All of them are wearing serious expressions, talking in low voices.

Molly slows her pace, needing to put off knowing.

Because it’s Rebecca.

She’s certain about that.

And it’s something awful. And if nobody says it out loud, it won’t become real.

She concentrates on other things. On the way everything seems to sparkle after last night’s downpour. On the fresh, damp, grassy scent in the air, and the tiny droplets of water still clinging to the leaves of the hedge separating the Randalls’ front yard from the sidewalk.

She thinks about the Randalls, about how she’s supposed to baby-sit there this afternoon while they go to a childbirth preparation class at the hospital.