“Molly, I didn’t raise you like this.”
She didn’t turn around. She pulled a coffee cup from the shelf and filled it most of the way with water from the sink. She plunked it in the microwave and pushed a button.
“You’re punishing me, and I don’t deserve it.”
I’m protecting you! Molly wanted to scream.
She still didn’t turn around. “I’m not punishing you, Mom. You’re just asking for something I can’t give you.”
“Molly…”
“No.” She whirled around. “Mom, when I first went to college, then, then was the time you should have been worried. I was flunking every class and making a colossal ass of myself. This semester, my lowest grade was a B. One B. I’m working like crazy, I’m happy, and my only problem is that I have a lack of time.”
“Maybe if you came home and got some sleep once in a while…”
Molly kept talking. She wasn’t in the habit of interrupting her mother, which made it all the more potent. “And because I have so little time, I don’t want to spend it arguing with you.”
“Then just tell me what’s going on in your life.”
Molly shook her head and looked down. “I found something. It’s something amazing and wonderful, and terrifying all at the same time. The craziest thing is that it’s something I’m kind of good at. But I want it to be mine. I don’t want to share it with you, and it’s not because I don’t love you, but because right now I need something to be only for me. You need to trust that, because I’m not going to give you any other choice.”
“Trust is a two-way street, young lady, and you’re not showing me any.”
Molly had no answer. The microwave beeped at her, so she pulled out the cup and extracted a tea bag from the can set on top of the stove. Personally, Molly despised chamomile, but she knew her mother often drank it.
Her mother came up from behind and pulled Molly around to face her. “You’re my daughter. Do you really think that whatever you have to say to me, I won’t support you?”
Molly almost laughed. This was the same woman who had refused to let Molly go to Texas on spring break because of the killer bees moving north from Mexico. Lydia Martin hoarded worries like Scrooge hoarded money. If there was terror to imagine, she would and could make it even worse. The idea of letting this woman know that Molly was purposefully putting herself in danger on a nightly basis, it was ludicrous.
“That’s just it, Mom. I don’t have anything to say to you. Confession is only good for the soul if you’ve got a guilty conscience.” Molly leaned forward and kissed her mother on the cheek. “Enjoy the tea,” she said as she headed to the door.
“Are you a lesbian?”
“No, Mom.”
“I would still love you.”
Molly turned to face her as she opened the door. “I know that. I’m not a lesbian, and I love you too. I always will.” She stepped outside. “Even when you don’t listen to me.”
When she closed the door, she leaned against it and swallowed back the sobs in her throat. It was killing her. Keeping her family out of her life as Etherya was the right decision. She had come to that conclusion early on, and confirmed it again after her father had passed away. No matter how much her mother might be terrified of the phantoms in her own head, telling her the full story would be worse. Even if it weren’t, telling her would not end the arguments and Molly was afraid of the lengths her mother might go to in order to keep Molly in the house.
As for her sisters, she might be able to share it with Holly, the oldest, but Holly could never keep it a secret from their mother. Candy wasn’t in a good place, and Brandy never wanted to talk about anything but her dance classes or cheerleading.
It really wasn’t fair to any of them, not even to Molly herself, but she had already cast her die. Time to be a big girl and eat the bread she had buttered. Molly took a deep breath…
… and wondered who was in the filthy green pickup behind her car.
Sadness evaporating, Molly shifted into wariness. She took a step away from the door, arms tense at her sides. She couldn’t see the driver’s side door, but she heard it slam closed. A stocky young man stumbled out. She might not have recognized him except for the red jacket and the drunken stance.
“Can I help you?” she said in a clear confident voice. He evidently hadn’t seen her yet, because he stopped short, nearly falling over in the process. He stared at her in complete non-comprehension before slurring out a response.
“Wanna talk ta Candy.”
Molly fastened a look on him that put him in the same category as pond scum. If he had been sober, he might have noticed. “You abandoned my sister at a party full of strangers to make a beer run from which you never returned. She’s not going to talk to you.”
“Wanna ‘pologize.”
“That’s very big of you, I’m sure, but you’re fall-down drunk, and despite that you drove that steroid-enhanced pickup all the way over here. Moreover, it’s past midnight, and my sister is in bed.”
“I just wanna…”
“Give me your keys.”
“What?”
“You are too drunk to drive, so give me your keys. I’ll call you a cab and you can come pick up your truck tomorrow morning.”
“I ain’t giving you…”
He had stumbled closer as they were talking. It was particularly poor judgment for him to come within arm’s reach.
Standing on the steps up to the porch, she was high enough to grab the sides of his head. An eyeblink later, she’d brought his forehead down for a little chat with her knee.
Molly frowned down at his sprawling form. If picking a fight with this loser was supposed to help her vent her frustrations, a one kick fight was completely unsatisfying.
She crouched down closer to his face and added several drops of acid to her voice. “I hope you’re still conscious, because listening might keep you alive longer.” She reached into his coat pocket and drew forth the keys. “You are a drunken idiot, a lousy date, and you just got beat up by a girl. Candy is so far out of your class that you might as well ask out Queen Elizabeth. Now you have two choices: You can go find some bimbo who isn’t worth the lipstick Candy wipes off her lips every evening, or you can spend every waking hour trying to make yourself good enough for her. In two or three years, you might come close.”
With no more ceremony than that, she hauled him to a sitting position. He stared at her uncomprehendingly, and Molly rolled her eyes. A few more tugs and she had him mostly on his feet. Her plan was to put him into the cab of his truck and then call a cab to come pick him up. She hadn’t expected her mother to open the door.
“Molly?” she stared out at the man balanced on Molly’s shoulder. “What’s going on?”
“Mom, this is Candy’s date.” She shot the man a look as he moaned piteously. “He fell.”
Lydia Martin frowned down at them. “This is the man who kept your sister out all night?”
“Yeah.”
Quick as a blink, Molly’s mother had come down the stairs and let fly with a slap that echoed off the young man’s cheek like a whip crack. “Stay away from my daughter.”
Like she said, Molly knew some of the coolest people.
✽✽✽
Events passed in a blur for the next twenty minutes or so. Molly knew she’d gone with her mother to the table where the other campaign workers were handing out buttons and yard signs of all kinds. Molly dimly remembered curiosity that such things could be mass produced so quickly. Her mother gave the rest of the team a brief explanation about meeting her long-lost daughter and apologized profusely.
Molly also knew that she and her mother had taken the walk to Molly’s car. Her arm was sore from her mother’s desperate clutch on her forearm throughout the entire walk.
She knew these things had happened, and she knew she had driven back to her house, but she didn’t have any specific memories of doing any of it. All she could really remember was turning off the i
gnition.
“So, this is my house.”
Lydia blinked a few times. “They gave you a whole house?”
“They” could only have been the Witness Protection Program which Molly was supposed to be partaking in. Molly flashed a shy smile, but she didn’t respond. Telling her mother a direct lie right now wasn’t a good opener.
“Come on.”
She got out of her car and had barely shut her own door when another car door slammed nearby. She looked up to see Sean walking toward her.
“Molly?”
She blinked rapidly. There was too much stimulation, too many things going on in her mind. With his long legs, he was next to her in a handful of steps.
“Look, I hate how we left things last night. How I left things. I got home after my shift ended and spent hours not sleeping. I’ve done everything from wanting to kiss you to wanting to put you in handcuffs.”
“Sean!” she squeaked, needing him to stop. He wasn’t wearing his uniform, and Molly shuddered to think where her mother’s mind would take that last sentence without context. She gestured over her shoulder to the other side of the Cobalt. Sean’s eyebrows knit, then nearly flew off of the top of his forehead when she said, “While I was in town, I bumped into my mother.”
Everybody stopped talking.
It got uncomfortable.
Molly took a deep breath and went for small talk. “Mom, this is Sean Cedar. He’s a state policeman and we’ve been dating for a few months now. Sean, this is my mother, Lydia Martin.”
“We’ve… met. Haven’t we?” Sean responded, awe in his tone.
Lydia nodded in agreement. “Right after my house burned down.”
Molly felt her head snap back hard enough to give her a crick. “The house burned down?!”
Lydia looked chagrined. “I’m sorry, dear, but yes. About two years ago most of the houses on our block had to be rebuilt.”
Sean took up the story. “The Defender Squad tried to stop Professor Skeleton from… something. I don’t think it was ever made clear. Some kind of energy pulse struck a propane tank.”
Molly looked to her mother. “You never mentioned anything in your letters.”
“Perhaps if I’d known you were so close, I might have.” Her tone was colder than the November weather. “As it was, I had my hands full with Brandy.”
Molly’s heart sank. “Brandy?”
“Almost a full year in a wheelchair. One of the support beams fell on her legs, broke them in a dozen places. She still needs a cane to walk.”
Molly’s mind registered a dozen facts in the space of a few seconds. Any of her childhood treasures her mother had kept were now gone. The house where Molly and her sisters had grown was no more. The room where Molly and her family had cared for her father in the weeks before he passed away was only a memory. Brandy, who had been the most athletic of Molly’s sisters, had no doubt lost any hope at a cheerleading scholarship, which had seemed likely when Molly had left home.
Perhaps worst of all, Molly hadn’t been there to help her sister over the months of trauma. She had provided no comfort to her mother as she cared for her youngest girl. She had failed in the most fundamental responsibility of being part of a family. She hadn’t been there when they needed her.
“Mom…”
“We didn’t lose anything but things, Molly. Brandy would tell you herself that in some ways it was the best thing that could have happened to her. She’s learned that she has many more talents than being able to jump high and shake pom-poms. It was hard, but we got through it.”
She turned to Sean with a thoughtful glance. “This young man was very helpful to us, to the whole neighborhood, really. He got us in touch with relief services and helped us find some legal counsel for the lawsuit the neighborhood filed.”
“You tried to sue Professor Skeleton?”
Sean cleared his throat. “Well, Skeleton was named in the lawsuit, but most of his assets were obtained illegally, so suing him was kind of like getting blood from a stone.”
Molly had no trouble following the logic, only with accepting it. Her voice quavered. “You sued the Defender Squad?”
“We tried. They’re not really a legal entity, and most of their properties are owned by that alien. Since she has diplomatic immunity, we were told we had no legal recourse. That’s how I met Mr. Nelson.”
She gestured to the hat on her head. Molly could see Sean filling in the blanks.
“Right,” said the big man. “Look, Molly, we need to talk, but I can see now won’t be the best time. Call me when… when you can.”
“Just a moment, young man.” Lydia’s voice was commanding without being overbearing. “You have been seeing my daughter?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Sean responded warily.
“Are you taking care of her?”
Sean swallowed as he exchanged a glance with Molly. “I’d say right now we’re going through a rough patch, but…”
Molly put a hand on his arm to interrupt him. “Mom, Sean is one of the kindest men I’ve ever met. He’s very good to me.” She looked at Sean and tried hard to say the right thing. “Right now, we’re just trying to figure out if we’re good for each other.”
Sean nodded, affirming that it was a fair description. “I’m sure you two have a lot to talk about, and I don’t want to intrude on that.” He looked at Molly, then at her mother. “We can talk later. It was nice to meet you again, Mrs. Martin.”
Lydia smiled at Sean the way she had smiled at all of Molly’s ex-boyfriends. Molly tried to find a descriptor other than “predatory,” but she didn’t succeed.”
Molly opened her trunk and took out some of the parcels inside. Her mother grabbed one of the bags as well. It was comforting somehow. How many of their grocery store trips had ended the same way?
“Mrs. Martin?” Sean winced. Evidently his mouth had opened before his brain had checked in about it.
“Your daughter is an amazing woman. I just wanted you to know that.”
Lydia smiled graciously. Molly blushed and stared at Sean. Oh yes. They had to talk.
“I see you’re still a fan of Halloween.” Her mother pointed to the tombstones in Molly’s garden a few moments later.
Molly nodded as she opened the storm door. There was a beaded curtain of skulls on the backside of the door. As she stuck the key into the main door, she could sense her mother stiffen as she stared at Molly’s mailbox. Molly didn’t think the eyeballs stuck on either side of the box were all that disturbing, but Lydia had never shared Molly’s love of Halloween.
Buster greeted her with a few sharp barks. Molly set the bags on the coffee table, then leaned down to scratch his ears. She picked the dog and showed him to her mother.
“Mom, this is Buster.”
“You have a dog?”
“He’s pretty new for me. He used to belong to my neighbor, but she passed on.” The gruesome details of Mrs. Carlson’s death didn’t bear repeating.
Molly brought Buster over so her mother could give him his petting due. She was amazed to see tears form in her mother’s eyes.
“I… I have a grand-dog.”
Molly had no idea how to respond to that. Molly had come to think of Buster as more of a roommate than a fur-baby. “I guess so. Do you want to hold him?”
“He’s adorable.” Lydia took the dog and soon his tail was thumping against her ribcage like a kick drum.
“Can I get you something to drink, Mom?”
“I think we’ll both need a glass of water, dear.”
Molly nodded and went into the kitchen. She filled two glasses from the sink. When she returned, her mother sat on one end of the couch, Buster at her feet. Molly set both glasses in the center and took the opposite end of the couch. She felt like they were two boxers starting off from opposite corners.
“So why don’t you tell me why you’ve been lying to me for five years?”
And Mom opens up with a haymaker.
“What do…”
<
br /> “I read a lot about the Witness Protection Program. They do forward your mail for you and they sometimes might let you stay within a county or two of where you were originally from, but what they don’t do is let you own your own home and put your own name on the mailbox.”
Molly stared at her mother for a moment. She hadn’t wanted it to come to this, but she couldn’t think of another way to handle it. She stood up from the couch.
“Don’t you dare walk away from me again, Molly!”
“I’m not, Mom. This is a demonstration.”
She took a breath and ghosted. She walked into the center of the coffee table, letting the table appear to have cut her off at the knees.
When she had demonstrated her powers to Heather, her best friend’s confusion had quickly turned into awe. Her father, on his deathbed, had laughed, thinking his medications had gotten the better of him. Bri Miller, who lived a few houses down repeatedly begged to see Molly walk through solid objects once she learned her identity. The teenager had described the feat as “wicked cool.”
Molly’s mother just screamed.
Chapter Six
Molly sat on her steps with her head in her hands. She wanted to cry, but she simply felt numb. She was probably not the only one in her house who felt that way.
The doorbell rang three times before she identified what it was. Blearily, she got up and walked to the door. She opened it on autopilot.
“I brought coffee and dark chocolate brownies.”
Bri Duncan smiled and pulled the cover off the glass baking pan. The smell of the coffee and chocolate hit Molly like a slap in the face. She came back to herself enough to put on a bland smile.
“You know, any possible good this exercise program might be doing us is cancelled out by your baking.”
Bri shrugged. “It’s four degrees outside. I bake when it gets cold.”
Rolling her eyes felt like too much work, but Molly was tempted. Bri baked when it was cold, when it was hot, when there was nothing good on TV, and on days ending in a y. The girl stepped inside with a bright smile. It faded as she removed her coat and hung it in the closet. “You look terrible, Ms. Martin. Are you feeling okay?”
Ex-Cape | Book 2 | Ex-Cape From A Small Town Page 7