To her pleasant surprise, Mickey herself answered the door. “Hi, Dr. Boudreau.”
“Hi, Mickey. I’d like to take you up on the babysitting offer. I know it’s short notice, but I wonder if after I put Nicholas down, you could come over for an hour or two. I really need to make a serious trip to Kingston’s Market. It’d be so much easier by myself.”
Mickey hesitated and glanced over her shoulder.
Molly heard someone approaching from inside the house.
Mickey said, “Sure. I’d love to.”
Mickey’s mother appeared at her daughter’s shoulder. Karen Kimball Fulton was every bit as pretty as she’d been in high school; as impeccably groomed as a magazine photograph, a strong contrast to the carefree wholesomeness of her daughter.
Molly said, “Hi, Karen. I’m Molly Boudreau, Lily’s sister.” She shifted Nicholas so she could offer to shake hands.
Karen smiled in a distant way and shook Molly’s hand as if it were distasteful to touch her. “I remember you.”
Molly smiled, slightly uneasy under the woman’s glare. Molly hadn’t really given a thought as to how Karen would react to anyone in the Boudreau family. She should have. A couple of summers ago, Riley had been responsible for exposing Karen’s ex-husband’s drug dealing. Tad Fulton was now sitting in the Pendleton men’s correctional facility.
Mickey didn’t seem to hold it against Molly. Apparently her mother felt differently.
Molly explained, “I was just asking Mickey to babysit later. I was afraid she’d be at the football game.”
Karen gave a bitter-sounding laugh. “Oh, no. Not Michaeline. Football isn’t cerebral enough for her.” She gave Mickey a condescending pat on the shoulder. “She’s our little oddball.”
Molly recoiled slightly, blinking at the backhanded insult.
But Mickey didn’t seem fazed. She simply moved slightly and Karen’s hand slid from the girl’s shoulder. Then she asked, as if her mother had said nothing at all, “What time do you need me?”
“About eight-thirty.”
Mickey smiled. “I’ll be over then.”
Karen remained standing in the background when Mickey closed the door.
As Molly went down the steps, she heard Karen’s raised voice, but couldn’t make out what she was saying.
Crap. She should have been thinking beyond her own circumstance and tested the waters with Karen before she actually asked Mickey to sit. She entered her own house feeling terrible for making trouble for the girl.
At eight-thirty precisely, Molly’s doorbell rang. Mickey stood there smiling with a novel in her hand. Molly went over the list she’d spent the past half hour composing about where everything could be found, what to do if Nicholas awakened, and a list of emergency numbers much longer than it needed to be.
Mickey took the list with a knowing smile. “I’m your first babysitter.”
Molly wiped her hands on her thighs. “Shows that much?”
“I’ve had worse,” she said with a playful tilt of her chin. But she dutifully looked over the list. “We’ll be fine. I’ve taken first aid and the babysitting class offered by the Red Cross. I’ve been sitting since I was thirteen. I’m the only one Mrs. Calverson lets babysit her twins.”
Molly felt ridiculous. “I know you’ll do fine—it’s me I worry about.” Then she glanced toward her bedroom where the crib was. “He really should sleep until I get back.”
Mickey nodded.
Molly picked up her purse. “I’m locking the door when I leave. Please don’t open it for anyone while I’m gone.”
This was the first thing that Molly had said that drew a surprised expression from the girl. Still, she said, “All right.”
Molly tried to explain. “I’ve been living in the city—you have to be so much more cautious. . . .”
Mickey said, “I won’t open the door. Promise.”
Molly couldn’t help but check the street for unfamiliar cars and figures lurking in the shadows as she left home. She saw neither.
Once in the market, she was swept back in time by its familiar aisles and burnt-orange-and-white checked tile floor. She had come here as a child with her father, and then with Lily once she’d gotten her driver’s license. Molly had always loved grocery day. Just entering the building gave her a taste of that happiness. Back then, her dad had patiently taught her how to select bananas that wouldn’t go brown too soon, cantaloupes that were ripened just right, apples that were tart and crunchy, and celery that wasn’t bitter. Molly’s dad knew more about produce than most mothers.
This was the “new” grocery store; in Glens Crossing that meant built in 1970 on the outskirts of town where it had plenty of parking. Everything was arranged as it had been for years; Molly completed her shopping as efficiently as if she’d been frequenting the store on a weekly basis. When she glanced at her watch, she was relieved that she’d only been gone for forty minutes. She felt like she was really getting a handle on her life, going forward.
The parking lot was nearly deserted at this hour. Kingston’s was right next to the park, which wasn’t lighted at night. It seemed this lot was a little island of weak yellow light in the press of dark woods. The land around Glens Crossing was very hilly, with deep ravines and heavy woodlands. The Hoosier National Forest was within a bicycle ride. When Molly had been growing up, she’d felt isolated here. Now she appreciated that feeling of isolation from the rest of the world.
As she loaded her groceries into the trunk, the faint strains of music reached her ears. It sounded like a soft string instrument playing alone. She put the last bag in the car, then paused, listening. She had to concentrate to put together the melody because it was so faint and broken. The evocative dreamlike quality of it made chills run down her spine.
A hand fell on her shoulder without her hearing anyone approach.
Yelping, she jumped away from the touch, swinging her purse at the assailant’s head.
Dean Coletta ducked and threw his arms up for protection.
Molly’s heavy bag thudded against his elbow.
“Don’t you know better than to sneak up on a woman alone in a dark parking lot?” she shouted, her body humming with adrenaline.
He slowly lowered his arms, peeking to see if she was going to take another swing at him. “I wasn’t sneaking. I just pulled in the space behind you; I assumed you saw me since we’re the only two cars in the lot—and I slammed my car door.” Then his gaze sharpened. “As a woman alone in a dark parking lot, maybe you should be more aware of your surroundings.” He paused. “Or maybe you did know it was me.”
“Hey! Don’t try and turn this around on me, mister.”
“Well, I am beginning to think you’ve got it in for me. This is twice in one day you’ve tried to knock me on my ass.”
A twinge of guilt nipped at Molly. She ignored it. “I did knock you on your ass this morning. And I obviously need to hone my self-defense skills, because I should have done it again right now.” She raised a brow. “Seems you’d learn to cut a wide berth around a woman like me.”
He tilted his head. “What kind of woman would that be?”
“Dangerous.” She’d meant it as a joke, but from the look on his face, he certainly hadn’t taken it that way.
He studied her for a moment. Then he asked, “What were you doing just standing here? I thought there was something wrong.”
“Listening. Violin music. If you’d be quiet for a second, you’d hear it, too.”
Pressing his lips together to emphasize his silence, he listened. After a second, he opened his mouth. “I don’t—”
Just then, the strains began again and Molly raised a finger in the air.
He gave a little shivery-shake. “Kinda creepy.”
“You see that radio tower? Those red lights on top of that hill.” She turned and pointed.
“Uh-huh.” He was right behind her right shoulder now, looking up toward the hilltop.
Molly felt a little shiver her
self that had nothing to do with the fall air—or the odd music. “That’s Fiddler’s Hill. It’s supposed to be haunted.” She couldn’t help the hushed, reverent tone that she remembered always accompanied talks of the Hill. “It used to scare the pants off of us as kids. You only went up there after dark on a dare.”
“And the music?” His voice was soft, as if not to disturb the faraway musician.
“Played by a ghost. No other explanation’s been found.”
Now hearing the faint tune herself, even though she’d never given much credence to the legend, she couldn’t come up with any better explanation. There was an undeniable otherworldly quality to it. She turned to Dean again. For some reason it seemed right to share this romantic tale with him as they stood with darkness surrounding them. “Legend says that in the early eighteen hundreds a young man brought his bride here from Virginia. This was the frontier then—very wild with Indians and bears and few settlers. He had a piece of property on Fiddler’s Hill, planned on starting a mill. During the first winter, the bride fell ill and died. Her husband was so grief stricken that he lost his mind. He spent the rest of his life wandering these hills, playing his fiddle so his love’s soul could find him.”
The music seemed to grow the slightest bit stronger.
Molly felt a full-fledged chill and her gaze locked on Dean’s.
He put a hand on her arm. It felt very protective and she nearly stepped closer. What would it be like to surrender to such protection, such a feeling of security? She couldn’t deny the appeal of letting someone else take on the safeguarding of her and Nicholas from fallout from the truth—even for just a little while.
That was nonsense. She barely knew the man. The weird music and romantic legend must be getting to her. She was very tired, which she knew made her vulnerable to such things.
Dean’s gaze cut quickly to the hill and back again. He whispered, “Have you heard it before?”
She shook her head and whispered back, “Never.”
Dean’s voice remained quiet when he said, “Maybe it’s just a radio.”
“Maybe.” But it didn’t sound like a radio, or a CD player. It seemed much more unearthly than that. And it didn’t sound as if it was coming from the same direction all of the time.
“The breeze is carrying it.” Dean looked into her eyes when he said, in a quiet, serious tone, “I don’t believe in ghosts.”
“Neither do I.” Even so, when Dean’s hand fell back to his side, Molly felt a little more vulnerable.
Although he wasn’t touching her, his gaze penetrated even deeper. “Or love that strong. People can’t stay committed for a mortal lifetime. A couple hundred years seems impossible.”
Molly thought for a second. Although the legend was romantic—it was hopelessly so. She’d watched real-life couples’ love die in violent explosions or in smoldering embers. Suddenly she wondered which her parents’ had been. Had her mother’s desertion taken her father totally unaware? Or had their relationship been slowly washed away, eroding bit by bit under the waves of everyday life?
“Maybe it was different back then,” she offered weakly.
He responded with a huffing noise.
Molly said, “I assume your parents stayed together—the way you spoke of them earlier.”
“They did—stayed married, at least.”
“Oh.” Molly was caught between curiosity and manners. In the end her curiosity won out. “Not happily?”
Dean lifted a shoulder. “I suppose it was their choice to stay together; so maybe they were happy in their own way. I think Mom just ignored the parts of life that would force her to make a different choice.”
“Your father was unfaithful?” Molly was shocked at her own brashness. But standing here with the romantic legend hanging in the air between them, she was compelled to discover more about him.
Dean cocked his head. “The music’s stopped.”
“So it has.” Molly closed the trunk of her car, her feelings torn between disappointment and embarrassment. “I’d better get going. Nicholas is with a sitter.”
“Yeah,” he said, but didn’t move away. “I need to get some things before the store closes.”
She stepped around him, but stopped halfway to the driver’s door and turned back around. After a second’s hesitation, she said, “I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to be rude.”
He grinned a boyish grin that took her totally by surprise. “That’s all right. You’re not the first woman to smack me with a purse.”
“That’s not—”
His laughter cut her off.
Okay, then. The man doesn’t like to talk about himself.
Molly waved and got in her car, feeling a little sorry that this conversation was over.
Mickey was reading at the kitchen table when Molly let herself in. This was the first time Molly had felt the lack of living room furniture.
“Is he still asleep?” Molly asked.
“Didn’t hear a thing from him. I peeked in again a minute ago.” Mickey put a bookmark in her novel and laid it down.
“I’ve got a couple more bags in the car.” Molly set the bag in her arms on the kitchen counter and turned to go back out.
“I’ll get them,” Mickey said, getting up.
“They’re both pretty heavy. We can each carry one.”
They went outside together and emptied the trunk. Once back inside, Molly said, “What are you reading?”
Mickey slid her bag onto the counter beside the others. “Rebecca.”
Molly raised a brow in surprise. “That’s an old one. For English class?”
“No, for me. I just like to read.”
“Classics are your favorite?”
“I love everything: mysteries, historicals, romances, suspense, biographies—even the ones we’re required to read in school. If you read authors from varying eras, you get more than the story, it’s like a window into their time. You see the language, the social viewpoints, the varying levels of what’s acceptable, all of it. How else can you do that?”
Molly paused in unloading a bag. “I guess I never thought of it that way.” She shook her head slightly. “I admit, I haven’t read much beyond what was required in school. Even now, I don’t seem to have the time for more than medical literature.”
Mickey sat down at the table and absently thumbed the pages of her novel. “I’d die without books.”
That single statement gave Molly a pretty clear view of Mickey’s lonely life: a mother who belittled her, Friday nights spent at home alone. Molly had seen several younger boys with a boy who she presumed to be Mickey’s brother, but she didn’t recall seeing Mickey come or go with friends. When Molly had mentioned to Riley that Mickey was her new neighbor, he’d acted as if he barely knew her. They had to be in the same grade and the school wasn’t that big.
Our little oddball.
Well, there was no reason for the girl to feel like an oddball. Maybe she was just more mature than her classmates. Her interests certainly were more intellectual than most.
“Have you made plans for college?” Molly asked. Even though it was two years away, she had the impression that Mickey planned ahead.
Mickey brightened. “I’d love to go to the east coast—like you did. But that’ll depend on scholarships.”
“The east coast has a lot of great colleges. What do you want to study?” Molly stopped putting things away and leaned against the counter.
“I’m thinking microbiology or chemistry.”
“Really? With your love of books, I figured you for a literature major.”
“I’ll always be able to read for myself. I’m not sure what you do with a literature major these days.”
“Good point. Unless you want to teach. I bet you’d make a great teacher.”
Mickey shook her head. “I’m not very good with groups of people—especially if I have to stand up and talk in front of a whole classroom.”
Molly gave a grimace and a visible shudder. “I can
’t say I like speaking to a crowd myself. In fact, I got nauseous before every oral presentation in college.”
Mickey gave her a look that said she didn’t believe it.
“I spent the fifteen minutes before class in the restroom, then I usually couldn’t speak clearly because my mouth was so dry,” Molly assured her. “I’m surprised I passed some of those classes.”
Mickey was quiet for a moment, then she stood and picked up her book. “Well . . . I guess I’d better go.”
“Oh.” Molly reached for her purse. “I’m sorry to keep you like this.” She took out a ten and handed it to Mickey. “It’s just nice to have company.”
“I really like talking to you—you seem to . . . understand.” Mickey looked at the money, and then tried to hand it back. “This is too much. I was only here an hour and he slept the entire time.”
“Keep it. The extra is for babysitting me. I know I sounded . . . overprotective when I left. You were a good sport about it.”
Mickey grinned. “No worse than any other new mother.” She put the bill in the pages of her book. “Thanks.”
Just as Mickey got to the door, Molly said, “I want to apologize.”
Mickey turned around, looking confused. “For what?”
“I didn’t mean to put you in a difficult position with your mom. I really didn’t think before I came over . . . I realize there may be some . . . hard feelings toward my family.”
“Don’t worry about it. Mother has hard feelings toward a lot of people—including me.” There was a moment of hesitance where Mickey looked like she wanted to say more, but she just said, “Good night,” and went out the door.
For a few minutes, Molly stood thinking about Mickey. Any parent should thank their lucky stars to have a daughter like that: focused, mature, respectful. Karen Fulton needed to get her priorities straight.
As Molly finished putting away her groceries, she thought about what an unusual day this had been. In fact, so many things had happened that she could hardly believe it was just one day. She’d gotten a job. Run over a man. Been “telephone rejected” by her father. Argued with her sister—again. Braved her first real public appearance in town. Eliminated Dean Coletta as a potential threat—and still accosted him in a parking lot. Heard the mysterious music of Fiddler’s Hill for the first time in her life. And had intriguing conversations with both Dean and Mickey—conversations that served to raise more questions, making her want to get to know each of them better.
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