No Safe Secret

by Fern Michaels

  She watched television to her heart’s content and read the copy of the Brunswick Times that was placed outside her door each morning. She had scanned the HELP WANTED section and noticed several possibilities, but this was too close to Blossom City. She wanted more than a few hundred miles between her and her attackers. And, of course, the law.

  She put her bags in the trunk before going to the office to return her room key. As usual, Mrs. Wilkins was busy with paperwork. She wore her glasses and looked up when she entered.

  “Have you decided to stay longer?” she asked the young woman. Maddy/Molly had told her how much she had enjoyed staying here yesterday as she’d waited her turn for a pastry.

  If only, she thought. “No, I’m heading to my friend’s for two weeks, remember?” Why she’d brought up the story that Mrs. Wilkins had probably figured out was a lie, she wasn’t sure. Maybe she wanted to be like all the other guests who had a clear destination. “I came in to give you back the room key, and to thank you. This is the nicest motel I’ve ever stayed in.” Her heart fluttered when she realized what she’d said. Not wanting to listen to Mrs. Wilkins’s probing questions, or see that look of suspicion in her eye, she said, “On this trip. Of course I have stayed in fancy hotels, but this was . . . uh nice. For this town.”

  Mrs. Wilkins smiled and shook her head. “That’s good to know. Make sure you spread the word. Now, young lady, if you wish to stay with us at another time, the front desk will be open all night during the summer months.”

  Maddy smiled, and said. “Thanks, but I’m off to college in two weeks. I’m staying at the dorm.” Before she spurted out another lie, she turned around and walked out the door, giving a quick wave to Mrs. Wilkins. Yes, this had been a nice place to stay when it was the only motel you’d ever stayed in. In the future, she would have to be very careful, watch every word she said, because if she didn’t, her freedom could be taken away in the blink of an eye.

  Before she pulled out onto Main Street, she counted her cash again. She had four hundred and fifty-five dollars left after paying for her motel room, clothing, incidentals, and gas. She figured gas averaged about a dollar twenty a gallon. The Mustang didn’t have the greatest record as a gas saver, but she’d been getting around twenty miles a gallon on the open road. She roughly calculated that she had enough money to get her to Boston. She’d always had Harvard on her brain and thought this would be as good a place as any to start her new life. Once she’d had dreams of attending the esteemed university. Now she knew that that would never happen, but nothing said she could not live nearby and dream, did it?

  In the beginning, she planned on getting some kind of menial job, save her money, and sleep in her car. If she didn’t like the town or the job, she would move on. With this sketchy plan in mind, she pulled onto Main Street and headed for the interstate.

  Wednesday-morning traffic on State Road 25 was minimal. She’d filled the Mustang up in Brunswick, then grabbed a large black coffee and two blueberry muffins in a cellophane package. She munched on one as she drove along at a safe speed of fifty miles per hour. If she’d expected these to taste like the muffins at the hotel—which she hadn’t, but if she had—she would have been greatly disappointed. These tasted like the cellophane in which they were wrapped. Still, she ate the second one, too. Not because she was particularly hungry but because she wasn’t wasteful.

  She remembered what hunger was like.

  Driving down the long stretch of open road, memories of her life in Blossom City came to her in flashes, like random bits from a movie reel. It seemed she had always been hungry. Maddy recalled the gnawing feeling in the pit of her stomach the times when it had been empty, the many times when even a cracker would have sufficed. How a mother could allow her child to suffer like that, she still hadn’t figured out. But one thing she did know: when and if she ever had a child, she vowed to be the best mother she could be.

  She’d been driving for a few hours when she made a quick stop in Florence, South Carolina. She liked the name, but still, it wasn’t far enough. She filled her gas tank, bought a soda and a pack of peanut-butter crackers, then returned to I-95.

  She cruised along, staying in the right-hand lane, carefully following all the traffic laws. Again, her thoughts returned to Blossom City and her sad life there.

  She recalled a time years ago—she had to have been around eleven or twelve—when her mother had decided to take her and Marcus to Texas, telling them she had come into a large inheritance. Florida to Texas had been a long, boring car ride, she recalled. Her mother stopped only when they needed to gas up or use the restroom, but that was it. Not once had they stopped for a meal. Not even a quick stop at a fast-food restaurant. Maddy remembered being so hungry she’d rummaged through her mother’s purse when she’d been given instructions to keep her eye on it while her mother went to the restroom. Her mother’s purse was always off-limits to her. If her mother had caught her even looking at her purse, there would have been hell to pay. She never knew why, maybe she’d been hiding drugs or something equally bad, but she knew she’d be in a heap of trouble if her mother caught her rummaging through her purse.

  She’d looked in the front seat to make sure Marcus was still slumped against the passenger door sleeping. He was. Drool dangled from his chin, and his mouth hung open like a door. He was out like a light. Quickly, she crammed her hand inside her mother’s purse, using her fingers to feel around for the loose change her mother always tossed in her purse when she was in a hurry, which seemed like most of the time on this trip. She scooped up a handful of change and quickly sneaked inside the service station, where she saw a vending machine. She dropped thirty-five cents in and pulled on a knobbed handle. A package of Chuckles dropped to the bottom, and she grabbed it and hurried back to the car before her mother returned. She’d tucked the candies inside her shorts. Her heart was beating so loudly, she was sure her mother would hear it when she returned, but she’d ignored her as usual, grabbed a cigarette from her purse, and continued their long drive to Texas.

  Years later she would learn that her mother, Lenore, which is what she preferred Maddy to call her, had learned that her own mother, Maddy’s grandmother, had passed away. A life insurance policy had listed Lenore as the sole beneficiary to the tune of a measly five hundred dollars. Her mother had thrown a hellacious fit when she’d left her grandmother’s attorney’s office. She’d raised hell the entire ride back to Blossom City. Scared to utter a word, Maddy had focused on allotting herself one Chuckle every four hours. If she could keep this up, the jellied fake-fruit squares would ward off the hunger pains until they reached Blossom City. There, she knew she would get at least one meal a day at school.

  She didn’t care that she was on the free lunch program and that several of her classmates whispered behind her back when she held out the pale-green meal card for the lunch lady to punch. Everyone knew the pale-green cards were for the poor white trash. She’d been humiliated when she was old enough to realize her family life was very different from that of most of her classmates. But when your stomach kept you awake most of the night, and drinking well water from the bathroom sink didn’t cure your hunger, humiliation was a small price to pay for a full stomach, even if it was only one meal a day. Sometimes her friend Cassie, who got free lunches, too, would save a roll for her and slip it to her, wrapped in a napkin, beneath the table in the cafeteria. She’d always thanked her, and Cassie and she had been best of friends until Cassie’s family moved away when they were in sixth grade.

  After Cassie left Blossom City, there were no more yeast rolls to stave off the hunger at night. It wasn’t too bad, really. She hardly ever saw her mother, had no clue if she even had a job, or why she only occasionally made an appearance at home, but Marcus always had a pocketful of money, and he never complained about being hungry. She suspected he stole from various people, but if she were to tell this to their mother, again there would be hell to pay.

  By the time she was thirteen, Maddy had
started offering babysitting services to a few families in the trailer park. Word got around. She was good to the kids, they all seemed to like her, and she could change a diaper like a pro and never complained when it was messy. With this job, she earned enough money to keep a few nonperishable food items hidden in her closet-size bedroom. If she had any cash left over, she would hide it, knowing the day would come when she would need it.

  That day came at the beginning of seventh grade. While the junior high school provided textbooks for all of her classes, three of those classes—English, math, and science—required the students to purchase the accompanying workbooks. These were sold in the school bookstore. Maddy knew she had enough money stashed from her babysitting to pay for the workbooks, so she didn’t think too much about it until the next morning when she pulled out the small jewelry box hidden inside a shoe box at the back of her tiny closet and saw that it had been emptied. She cried, and for the first time, she wished she were someone else, someone who belonged to a loving, kind family.

  She recalled the humiliation she’d felt when her homeroom teacher, Mrs. Swan, took out a supply of last year’s workbooks and gave a set to her after she had erased a former student’s answers. She’d been thankful but still wished for a real family. A mother and a father. Parents who paid for her school supplies. Parents who made sure she never went to bed hungry, and parents who loved her.

  More than anything, Maddy wished that her mother loved her. The other things really weren’t all that important, but she guessed that if she had a mother who truly loved her, having things she needed would be taken care of. She’d had neither, and she accepted her life, though as she grew older, she became more aware of her mother and her mother’s actions.

  Put simply, her mother was a whore and a drug addict. She only cared about the next man, and it didn’t matter who he was as long as he could provide her with drugs, alcohol, and a place to flop when she needed one.

  By the time Maddy was fifteen, she had three part-time jobs as well as continuing with school, studying as hard as she could, and making straight As. It was then that she’d started paying rent on the trailer. She’d thought her mother owned the tin box, and she had at one time, but she’d sold it to some guy for a wad of cash on the condition her kids could live there, explaining to him that her daughter would pay the rent. It was a great deal for her mother. It was a terrible deal for Maddy, but she didn’t really have much choice.

  But now, she thought, as she continued down I-95, she had a choice. And she was not going to live like white trash ever again.

  She’d arrived in Boston at four o’clock the next morning. Exhausted, she’d driven through the city, stopping in Cambridge, just north of Boston, at an all-night diner near Harvard, a place called Lou’s. It reminded her of the diner on Happy Days. She and Cassie had spent many hours laughing at the characters’ antics, both secretly wishing for the normal and often silly lives of the characters they admired so much.

  Inside the diner, the floor had large black-and-white-checkered tiles, the booths were red faux leather and the tabletops a pale-gray Formica.

  Even though it was still early, the place was pretty full. Students, she thought, as she glanced at the diners. Some had piles of books on their tables, with notebooks and cups of coffee beside them. Others were dressed in business suits, and some wore what looked like hospital scrubs. Quite a mix, she observed, as she found a seat at the long counter that stretched across the entire restaurant.

  She sat down on a high stool at the counter. A young girl about her age asked, “What’ll you have?” She quickly ordered black coffee, two scrambled eggs, toast, sausage, and a side of bacon, with home fries and a large glass of milk. When the food was placed in front of her, she focused her attention on eating every single morsel she’d been served. This wasn’t going to be an everyday thing, she told herself. But as a reward of sorts, she’d decided to start her new life with a good, hot meal.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a girl eat that much in my life,” the man seated two seats down from her commented.

  Maddy looked at him, her eyes doubling in size. Had he followed her? Were they on to her already?

  “I’m Tanner. Dr. Tanner McCann. And you are?”

  Maddy wanted to faint, but instead, she held out her hand, offered a slight smile, and said, “I’m Molly Hall.” It was then she realized how she must look and realized how stupid it was to give him her name, even if it was fake.

  Dr. Tanner McCann was older than she, but not so old that she didn’t appreciate his good looks. His coal-black hair and compelling blue eyes, the assured set of his shoulders, the way he held her hand when she’d offered it—all left no room for doubt: this guy was somebody, and she had no business pretending she’d fit in with his kind.

  “Well, Molly Hall, what brings you to Lou’s this hour of the morning?” He let go of her hand, but not before giving it a slight squeeze.

  Chapter Five

  Molly returned home, unloaded her purchases, and for the next three hours, she chopped, mixed, chilled, and sautéed. When she finished, she set the formal dining-room table with her best china and the eighteen-karat gold utensils that Tanner had insisted on purchasing years ago when he’d decided that their dinner parties needed a touch of class, that having the best of the best would impress his colleagues. Personally, Molly thought they were just a bit gauche. But if Tanner wanted her to use gold utensils at their dinner parties, she would. She removed crystal flutes from the hutch and put one at each place setting. For the next hour, she decorated the dining table. She’d used her newest cloth napkins, white linen with tiny, hemstitched crosses done by hand, given to her as a gift after Tanner’s hygienist, Regina, had taken a trip to Italy. Sure that they’d cost her a small fortune, Molly remembered being shocked when she’d received them but was reminded that all of Tanner’s employees, right down to the receptionist, knew of his immaculate taste in every aspect, so she’d accepted the napkins.

  Tonight would be the first time she’d actually used them. Maybe Tanner would take notice and appreciate her extra attention to detail in order to make everything perfect, just as he’d commanded this morning before he left.

  As Molly adjusted each place setting, straightening a knife here and there, making sure each plate was perfectly aligned with the matched set on either side, she took a deep breath, stepped back, and viewed her work. She could not see anything out of place. Not even a speck of dust reflected off the highly polished china. Taking her time, she slowly circled the formal dining table that could seat as many as twenty guests. Tanner had said ten, so adding herself and Tanner, there would be twelve. Earlier, she had removed the eight extra dining chairs to the large walk-in pantry in the kitchen. Had Graham or Holden been at home, she would’ve asked them to take the chairs to the basement. Molly felt sure that their guests, all of them in the medical profession—at least this was what Tanner told her last night when he’d said he wanted to host a dinner party for his new investors—would not be visiting the pantry. She straightened another knife, made sure the calla lilies were centered and that the white creamy flowers were all in full bloom. A droopy calla lily could bring on an evening of Tanner’s rage.

  Satisfied that all was as perfect as could be, she had an hour to bathe, do her hair, and dress. She’d called Sally, her weekly housekeeper and occasional cook, to assist her tonight. Sally quickly agreed, knowing Molly would stuff an extra hundred-dollar bill in her pocket. Tanner said these extra duties were part of Sally’s job, and he saw no reason to pay her any more than her normal hourly wage. Molly thought otherwise. Tanner, for all his wealth, could be a stingy curmudgeon when he wanted to be, which was most of the time.

  Molly hurried upstairs. She’d wanted to soak in the tub and shave her legs, but she’d taken too long prepping and had to settle for a quick shower. She didn’t have time to wash her hair either, which Tanner was sure to comment on later. The smell of basil clung to it.

  As she dried o
ff in the elegant master bath, Molly felt uncomfortable. Why did they need such a bathroom if she never had time to enjoy such a luxury? A deep-set tub was positioned in the center with a view of the beautiful city park that was, in her opinion, one of Goldenhills’ most scenic views, but Molly couldn’t remember the last time she’d actually had a chance to soak in the tub and enjoy the view. She had a fleeting thought about the marble fireplace in her bedroom that was flanked by two antique club chairs and a tea table. To her knowledge, the tub and the chairs had been used only a handful of times since they’d remodeled the master bedroom in the home they’d purchased shortly after their marriage.

  Tanner had insisted they periodically remodel and update the kitchen and baths so that they would always look up to date, pristine, and perfect. About the time she became comfortable with the rooms, a team of contractors and decorators would storm through the house, making swift changes as per Tanner’s ideas. Only once had he bothered to ask her opinion on any of the changes: did she have a preference on the type of wood to use for the custom-built cabinets? She truly didn’t care if they were made out of cardboard. She didn’t enjoy spending time in the kitchen as much as she had in the early years of her marriage. With the twins and then when Kristen came along, she’d loved preparing healthful meals for them and was totally thrilled when they would ask her to make them their favorite cookies and cakes. Her children had never gone to bed hungry.

  Where did that come from, she thought as she brushed her graying blond hair into a sleek chignon.

  Shaking her head to focus on the here and now, she turned her attention back to her hair. She took a hand mirror and turned around so she could view the back of her handiwork in the large mirror mounted on the wall. Deciding it wasn’t going to get any better, she misted a light hair spray to ensure there wasn’t a hair out of place. Tanner would be sure to notice that, too. She applied her makeup, hoping to take off at least a couple of years, but when she looked into her magnifying mirror, she saw her foundation had settled into her fine lines, and the light pink lipstick she’d applied moments ago had fanned out just beyond her lip line. She removed the lipstick with a tissue, then lined her lips with a matching lip pencil, assuring herself that she wouldn’t look like a clown within minutes of greeting their dinner guests.