She had over a thousand emails from friends, acquaintances, old coworkers and volunteers she had worked with, Tanya Martin. So many people, offering condolences, asking for her to get in touch, sending good wishes. The volume was overwhelming.
There wasn’t anything from her mother, but email was not Gloria’s preferred method of communication. She had an email account that she checked from time to time, but the phone was how she chose to reach out, and Molly knew her old phone number had been deactivated after the bill had gone unpaid.
Julia had sent dozens of emails. Dozens. Molly covered her mouth as she scrolled through them. She opened some at random and read through them. The first ones sounded calmer, but the later emails were more erratic. She let her head hang and sighed.
She was a bad friend. Julia had listened to her so many times over the past several years, and Molly had dropped her without so much as a word.
And she was here to confront everything she had left dangling from her old life, not just to deal with legalities, possibly confront bad guys, or claim her estate.
First things first. She composed a blast email that was warm and reassuring but not apologetic. She would not apologize for doing what she needed to do to stay safe. She also didn’t go into details. The fact that she was a person of interest in an ongoing police investigation was nobody’s business.
She sent the blast email off to everybody except for her mother, Julia, and her real estate agent, Tanya. For each of them, she composed personal messages and added her new phone number. After sending those, there was nothing more she could do that night, so she went to bed.
Where was Josiah resting? Was his coven looking out for him like Molly’s was looking after her? She stared sightlessly at the darkened ceiling until her eyelids closed and she drifted into a doze.
Her phone shrilled. Josiah. Bolting to a sitting position, she snatched it up. “Hello?”
Julia’s choked voice sounded on the other end. “Molly, is that really you?”
Disappointment plunged her eagerness into a downward spiral. She glanced at the motel’s luminous red bedside alarm clock. The time was just after midnight. It was stupid to think he might have called. If he was anything like she was when she’d been injured, he must be deeply asleep. He might not wake up until the next afternoon, if then.
“Yes,” she said. “It’s really me.”
“Oh my God.” Julia started sobbing.
It took several minutes of disjointed conversation to calm her down. It sounded like Julia had been drinking, but Molly stuck with it.
“I still can’t believe I’m talking to you,” Julia said. “I have to see you in person. When can we get together?”
“I don’t know,” she replied. “There’s so much going on right now. I spent hours at the police station. They wanted to question me about what happened the night Austin died.”
“Why did you disappear without a word? Not even your mother knew where you’d gone.”
“Austin attacked me that night,” she said bluntly. Not everybody needed to know every little thing about her life, but she was also done with pulling her punches or sugarcoating reality. “I got away, but I was afraid he might try again.”
“Oh. My. God,” Julia breathed. “Where are you? I really need to see you.”
“Now?” She glanced at the clock again. “It’s almost one in the morning. What about Drew and Philip?”
“A lot has changed since you left. I left Philip and went into therapy, a-and my parents have taken Drew for the summer so I can get my shit together. They’re taking great care of him.” Julia sounded bitter. “They’re taking him to s-swim lessons and riding therapy, and he loves it. He’s better off with them than he ever was with me.”
“I don’t believe that,” Molly said in a gentle voice.
“I do.” Julia laughed wildly. She sounded dangerously unsteady. “I don’t know what I’m going to do, Molly.”
“Well, speaking for tonight, I don’t know that you should come here. It sounds like you’ve been drinking. You shouldn’t be on the road.”
“Yes, I’ve been drinking, but so what? Who cares!” Julia exclaimed. “I can get a taxi. Come on. I’ve got things I need to say to you, and I’ve had them bottled up inside for months. Please?”
Ugh. She let her head hang again as she considered. It might be one in the morning in Atlanta, but her body clock thought it was three hours earlier, and now she’d napped she felt wide awake. “Sure, come on over.” She gave Julia the address of the motel and her room number.
Julia promised, “I’ll be there soon.”
Once they disconnected, Molly climbed out of bed. She didn’t want to meet Julia in her pajamas, so she dressed in jeans, athletic shoes, and a comfortable pullover sweater. After twitching the bedspread back into place, she brushed her hair and ate a large handful of dried fruit and nuts.
A knock sounded at her door. Looking through the peephole, she saw Julia standing with one of the uniformed police officers. It had started raining at some point, and the parking lot was full of puddles.
The officer wore a severe expression. When Molly opened the door, she jingled a set of car keys. “When Miss Oliver pulled up, I came over to make sure everything was all right and smelled alcohol on her breath. Do you two know each other?”
Molly looked at Julia’s familiar Volvo parked at the wrong angle, and then she confronted a miserable-looking Julia. “You promised to take a taxi.”
“I know, but I didn’t want to wait for one,” Julia replied tearfully. “I thought, what could be the harm? Everybody would be in bed. How could I know there would be a cop car sitting in the middle of the parking lot?”
Molly bit back another sigh. She asked the officer, “Is there any way you can let this go?”
“Yes. Take her keys and don’t give them back until she’s sober. It’s not my job to book her for a DUI while I’m on another assignment.” The officer gave her a significant look.
“You got it,” Molly promised. She accepted the keys and stuck them in her pocket. Then she turned to Julia, who slammed into her, hugging her tight.
“My God, it’s so good to see you!”
Molly returned her hug and pulled her inside. After locking the door, she ran her gaze over Julia.
Julia didn’t look good. Normally she wore makeup, but not now. Stress lined her pretty face, and her skin was puffy.
“I can’t believe how great you look,” Julia said when they separated. “You’re so tanned, and your hair is amazing. The weather here has been awful.”
“You look good too,” Molly said.
“Liar,” Julia said without heat. “I know I look horrible. But hey, I brought us some pinot noir. It’s not a lemon drop martini lunch, but at least it’s something.”
As she fished two bottles out of her leather tote bag, Molly told her, “I won’t have any, but I’ve got your keys now, so you go ahead if you want.”
Looking disappointed, Julia squinted at her. “Are you sure? It’s not like you to turn down a good pinot. Red wine was always your favorite.”
“I’m sure.”
“Well, I’m going to have some.”
Looking defiant, Julia went into the bathroom to grab a plastic motel cup while Molly sat at the small dinette table near the window. Julia opened the wine, poured herself a full cup, and sat in the opposite chair.
She asked, “What are you doing that’s making you look so happy? And is there any chance you’ve got any left over that you can give to me?”
Julia took a big gulp of wine. Her smile looked sharp and desperate, and after that first tight hug, she had avoided looking directly at Molly.
Molly replied carefully, “I don’t think happiness works like that, Juls. Everybody’s got to work things out for themselves. You said you started therapy. When did that happen?”
“About a month after you disappeared, and… and… and Austin died.” Julia drank more wine. “I really felt it when you were no longer
around to listen to me vent, you know?”
Molly watched her pour more wine into her cup. “How’s therapy going?”
“Hell, I don’t know.” Julia’s chuckle sounded unamused. “I hate it actually, but nobody promised me it would be fun. I’m seeing the guy Janet went to. You remember when she and Todd went through their rough patch? Janet strongly recommended this guy and said he was in network. Since we all have the same insurance through the firm, I thought I might as well give him a try.”
It felt jarring to discuss old acquaintances from her past life. Todd was an associate at Sherman & Associates. While Molly hadn’t been close to the couple, she knew Todd had missed making partner the previous year, and it had put a strain on his and Janet’s marriage.
“I hope seeing someone helps.”
Abruptly, Julia set her cup down and gave Molly the first direct look since she had arrived. “We don’t have the same connection anymore, do we? You’re not drinking with me, and I can see that you’re wondering why I had to come in the middle of the night.”
She tried to be diplomatic. “Don’t take it personally. Things have really changed for me, but it means a lot that you wanted to get together.”
Julia clasped her hands together on the table and looked at them. “I actually needed to tell you something.”
“So you said. What’s going on?”
“I owe you an apology. A really big one.” Julia’s knuckles whitened, and her voice shook. “I guess it’s one of the biggest apologies I’ve owed anybody in my life. Robert—my therapist—insisted I needed to talk to you as part of my healing. At first I resisted, but when he wouldn’t let it go, I realized he was right. I had to do this in person if I could.”
Molly frowned. “Okay, just spit it out. What’s wrong?”
Julia’s reddened gaze lifted to meet hers. “I’m the one who slept with Austin.”
For a moment the words didn’t sink in. Then Molly shook her head sharply. “You were the other woman? You always said you detested him.”
“I did!” Julia swiped at her nose and sniffled. “He was an asshole. He was never good enough for you.”
Molly’s stomach lurched. “This doesn’t make any sense.”
Julia barked out another wild, unsteady laugh. “That’s par for the course. Nothing I’ve done over the past few years has made much sense. I told myself it didn’t mean anything. He was going to cheat on you anyway, and I said it was just sex. Nasty sex, the kind you don’t ask your h-husband for, not when you’re a mother and your husband is chronically short on sleep from working too much and your five-year-old boy sleeps across the hall, and God, this is coming out all wrong.”
“Unbelievable,” Molly muttered.
The purple panties would have looked good on Julia, with her petite, rounded figure, pale skin, and dark hair. Remembering how Molly had found the panties that afternoon brought back an echo of the sharp, desolate pain.
Julia had been the one in her bed, cheating with her husband.
Tears spilled down Julia’s pale cheeks. “I am so, so sorry. If I could take it all back, I would. I never meant to hurt you. None of it was ever about you, at least not until the end.”
“You always did say you envied us.” Molly felt herself grow distant, as if she were watching herself talking with Julia from a great distance.
Julia eagerly latched on to that sentence. “That’s exactly it. It all got tangled together in my messed-up head. I felt trapped in my marriage, and I always needed to be available for Drew, and I never found time for myself. That turned into looking for ways to escape. I began drinking too much. I still drink too much. Then, after a few months, the affair started to make me feel sick. I thought I could keep it separate from our friendship, but I couldn’t. You deserved better. You deserved to know.”
“It lasted a few months?” It took a few moments before she could speak again. “And instead of facing up to what you did, you pretended to lose your panties so I would find out that way.”
She felt like an idiot. All the supposition she had gone through when she had held that imaginary conversation with Austin’s mistress. She had been right on some things, but mostly she had been wrong. Austin had acted against his “type,” and she had never once suspected Julia.
Julia wiped her cheeks and searched Molly’s face. “I can’t tell what you’re thinking or feeling right now.”
Mindful of how thin motel walls were, she bit out quietly, “How do you think I feel? I’m over what Austin did. That’s old news. But you did that in my bed, and you met for me lunch afterward. I was gutted that week. You looked me in the eye, and you never said a goddamn word. What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“I know.” Julia started crying again. “I just didn’t want to lose you.”
“You know what I keep hearing you say? It was always about what you wanted, what you needed.” Breathing hard, Molly stared at Julia until the other woman’s gaze fell. She said, almost conversationally, “I’m tired of people trying to take things that don’t belong to them.”
Austin and Julia with their infidelities. The witch who had done so much damage to Josiah and others.
Julia straightened. “Just because I’m ready to apologize doesn’t mean you’re ready to forgive me. I understand that.”
Molly stared at her like she was a bug. “You think?”
Julia flinched. “I deserve everything you’ve got to say, and you deserve the chance to say it. I only hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me. I still don’t want to lose your friendship.”
“Again, that’s all about you.” Molly fought the urge to slap her. “Did you see him after we met for lunch?”
The other woman recoiled. “Only once or twice, and then I ended things. I didn’t even do it in person. I broke up with him over the phone the Friday before he… before he died.”
Only once or twice…
Suddenly Molly felt done with the whole conversation, done with talking with Julia, done with living through the old, bad feelings from the breakup of her marriage. Done.
She wanted to be back in Everwood, cooking healing foods in Sarah’s large, serene kitchen. She wanted to eat lunch at the seafood restaurant on the pier while watching the moody, restless water. She wanted to practice spellcasting with Delphine and train with Lauren. She wanted Josiah to come join her. She wanted to live her new, good life.
“I don’t want to see or talk to you again,” she said abruptly. “I don’t want to think or speak your name. I may never forgive you, and whether I do or not is none of your business. I hope you get your shit together—because that’s a lot of shit, and Drew deserves better from his mother. And I hope this conversation did you some good, because it didn’t do a goddamn thing for me. Maybe I did deserve to know, but I deserved to know months ago. Right now all this did was pull up a lot of old bad stuff I’d left behind me. Get out.”
“No, please. Wait!” Lunging forward, Julia grabbed Molly’s hand.
Such a tiny lunge forward. Julia liked to touch people. Molly had seen her do it a dozen times before.
When Julia’s palm connected with the back of her hand, something flared to life and burrowed underneath Molly’s skin.
A spell.
An unknown spell penetrated her body.
Shock made the rest of the room recede. She snatched her hand away. “What did you do?”
Looking pale and bewildered, Julia stood too. “I didn’t do anything. What do you mean?”
“You touched me!” Molly stared at the back of her hand. Was it poison? Would it kill her? The spell was so subtle, and her skin looked unblemished and smooth.
“I-I just didn’t want you to leave.”
Molly barely listened as the back of her mind ignited. Someone had set a magical trap and laid it quietly. Now it was locked on her. She could feel them. They knew where she was now, in real time, which meant they could track her.
Which meant, if they were close by, they could find her quickly.
And they had found her using magic.
She raced to the bathroom to scrub her hands with soap and water. It didn’t help. The spell had entered her bloodstream. She could feel it coursing through her veins, alien and unwelcome.
Julia had followed her. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”
Molly rounded on her. “What was on your hands?”
“What do you mean?” Julia’s expression was pinched. “You’re starting to scare me.”
“Your hands!” she snapped. “You had something on your hands!”
Looking completely mystified and more than half-panicked, Julia stared at her own hands. “I used a hand lotion from a toiletry basket the firm gave the partners’ families at the Memorial Day picnic. That was before I left Philip. I was impressed. It’s high-end stuff, and they gave us a lot of different things. There’s face cream, and body and hand lotion, and shampoo and conditioner. They even had hair spray. Why, are you allergic?”
If the spell had been hidden in the unguents Julia was using, why hadn’t it activated before, when they’d hugged?
But Julia hadn’t actually made contact with her skin earlier. They both wore sweaters, and Julia had worn a jacket.
And the searchers were local, very close. They had never gone searching for Molly. Instead, they had planted traps and waited. Julia and Molly had done the rest.
Julia, who apologized to Molly at the insistence of her therapist, whom she had found through people who worked at Sherman & Associates. Maybe Julia’s therapist wasn’t really a therapist. At that point, Molly was willing to believe anything.
“You fool,” she whispered to herself. She needed to leave, now, as fast as she could. She told Julia, “We’re done, but I need your car. Go home.”
“What do you mean, you need my car?” Julia followed her. “We can’t leave things like this. We need to work through our feelings.”
“Fuck your feelings!” She didn’t have time to waste. The spotlight of attention was traveling closer.
She needed her phone, her purse, and her kit of magic items from her suitcase. And she already had Julia’s keys. Grabbing everything, she raced out the door, unlocked the Volvo with the key fob, and jumped in.
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