All the Way Home

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  All the Way Home

  WENDY CORSI STAUB

  DEDICATION

  For my boys,

  Brody and Morgan—

  and my guy, Mark.

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  EPILOGUE

  An Excerpt from The Good Sister

  An Excerpt from Nightwatcher

  An Excerpt from Sleepwalker

  An Excerpt from Shadowkiller

  About the Author

  By Wendy Corsi Staub

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  PROLOGUE

  Carleen Connolly is the third to disappear.

  Rory realizes, after it has happened, that she has somehow, somewhere in the back of her mind, been expecting it all along—­that perhaps she’s always understood that one day she would wake up to find her older sister gone forever.

  The thing is, she had pretty much figured on Carleen—­reckless, impulsive Carleen—­getting into a terrible accident with the Chevy, which she has been sneaking out of the garage at night for years, long before she actually turned sixteen and got her license. Whenever Rory heard the ominous wail of ambulance sirens from her bed at night, she would brace herself for a ringing phone or a knock on the door—­for the imminent news that her sister was dead, that she’d gone and wrapped the Chevy around a pole or missed a curve out on winding Lakeshore Road.

  Or maybe she had believed Carleen would run off with one of the older boys she was always seeing—­elope to Maryland the way Mrs. Shilling’s daughter, Diana, had a few years back.

  Then again, Carleen might just leave home alone, on her own, headed for New York City a few hours south. How many times, after a screaming battle with their parents, had Carleen threatened to do just that? “I’m going to run away! You wait and see. I’m out of here!”

  And Daddy would shout back, “You want to leave? Go ahead. See how far you get with no money and no high school diploma.”

  And Rory, when she had been young enough to think her sister was serious about leaving, would cry and beg Carleen not to run away. Because, even though there always seemed to be some kind of trouble when Carleen was around, the thought of life without her was depressing.

  Well, now Carleen is gone.

  And Rory’s life isn’t just depressing; it has turned into a nightmare.

  Because her sister hasn’t had an accident.

  And she hasn’t eloped, or run away.

  Carleen has simply disappeared.

  Just like the two teenaged girls before her.

  Nice, wholesome girls who grew up here in Lake Charlotte, New York, a sleepy village in the foothills of the Adirondack Mountains, where ­people chat with each other from front porches and keep an eye on each other’s children and leave their doors unlocked at night . . .

  Until this summer.

  Everything changed when the first girl vanished. Kirstin Stafford. Age thirteen. Never came home from an after-­dinner bike ride around the lake on a hot June evening.

  Then, a few weeks later, it was Allison Myers, a fifteen-­year-­old who disappeared from a Fourth of July picnic out at Point Cedar Park.

  No trace of either girl was ever found.

  Now there is Carleen Connolly, seventeen, whose mother found her canopy bed empty one morning in late July in the third-­story bedroom of the big old house at 52 Hayes Street.

  For years after, Rory Connolly will do a double take every time she sees a girl with long, straight black hair, or catches a whiff of Poison perfume, or hears a piercing, high-­pitched whistle, the kind you make by sticking two fingers into your mouth.

  Carleen had long, straight black hair.

  Carleen wore Poison perfume.

  Carleen used to whistle like that.

  But Carleen is gone.

  “She probably just ran away,” Rory’s next-­door neighbor, Emily Anghardt, keeps saying reassuringly, her big brown eyes solemn and her voice, still retaining a hint of a southern accent, low and soothing. “You know how Carleen is.”

  Yes, Rory knows how Carleen is. Everyone in Lake Charlotte knows how Carleen Connolly is.

  How she seemed like such a nice girl until she became a teenager, when she started smoking and drinking and got caught shoplifting beer at the A&P. How she disrespectfully calls her parents by their first names behind their backs and sometimes even to their faces, and how she brags about stealing money from her mother’s purse, and how she curses and cuts classes and cheats her way through school.

  What most ­people don’t remember, though, is that Carleen has another side—­a vulnerable side.

  Carleen once came sobbing out of the woods carrying a rabbit whose leg had been bloodied and broken in a hunter’s trap, and she insisted on paying for the veterinarian bill out of her allowance, then held the suffering animal in her lap while the vet put it out of its misery, stroking its matted fur as it heaved its last shuddering breath.

  Carleen used to go over and play the piano for old Miss Prendergrast next door, and shovel her walk when it snowed, and of all the neighborhood children, only Carleen was allowed to pick the raspberries from the briars that grew along Mrs. Prendergrast’s back fence.

  And sometimes—­long after Carleen had outgrown the Barbie dolls she and Rory had always shared and she had taken to making fun of her little sister’s “babyish games” whenever anyone else was in earshot—­she would pop into Rory’s bedroom and play Barbies with her, making her swear not to tell a soul.

  Rory never had.

  Rory knows something else about her big sister that she wouldn’t dare tell anyone, not even Emily, even though they’ve been best friends ever since Emily’s family moved into Mrs. Prendergrast’s house almost two years ago.

  Rory must keep her sister’s deepest, darkest secret, even now that Carleen is gone. After all, she promised.

  “Don’t worry, Rory,” Emily says daily. “Carleen’ll be back sooner or later.”

  And Rory wants to scream at her to stop saying it, to just shut up, even though she knows Emily is only trying to make her feel better. After all, what else can one friend say to another under circumstances like these? Emily can hardly voice what’s on everyone’s mind as the grim, steamy August days drift by with no evidence, no leads, no word.

  No, Emily can hardly say to Rory, “Carleen has obviously been kidnapped and probably murdered by some psycho child molester, and it’s only a matter of time before he strikes again.”

  So Rory mutely lets Emily reassure her, and she constantly looks over her shoulder, and there never seems to be a moment during that endless, humid summer when she isn’t wondering about Carleen, and what has happened to her.

  And when it happens again—­when her best friend Emily Anghardt disappears just before Labor Day weekend—­Rory realizes that no matter where her life takes her, no matter what happens to her from now until the day she dies, she
will never feel safe again.

  CHAPTER ONE

  “So, Rory . . . thanks. For coming,” Kevin says gruffly, his eyes focused on the Departures screen above their heads, as if he’s looking for his commuter flight to JFK in New York, which he’s checked and double-­checked countless times already.

  Gate four, On Time, 4:35 P.M.

  It’s only three-­thirty now.

  Rory watches the earnest expression on her younger brother’s face, wondering when he turned into a man. It’s as though she hasn’t looked at him, really looked, on the few occasions she’s seen him since she left home.

  Last night, she hadn’t gotten in until late, and she was so exhausted from the long hours of driving that she hadn’t stayed up to socialize. Today there was a flurry of activity as she settled in and Kevin prepared to leave.

  And then she was driving him to the airport, and here they are, and she’s noticing for the first time that there’s a shadow of a beard covering Kevin’s jaw and that his always lanky frame has picked up some bulk, filling out the thin cotton shirt and snug faded jeans he’s wearing. He’s grown up, and for the first time, he’s striking out on his own.

  She realizes he’s talking to her, thanking her.

  “You’re welcome,” she tells him, reaching up to brush a clump of sandy hair out of his eyes.

  “Tell Mom . . .” He trails off, shrugging. “Never mind. I guess it doesn’t matter what you tell her. She won’t understand. She doesn’t understand anything, except that I’m leaving. She can’t figure out why, or that I’ll be back, even though I’ve told her . . .”

  “She’ll be all right,” Rory assures him, noting the worry in his green eyes, trying to push back a wave of guilt that sweeps over her.

  He’s old beyond his years, her kid brother.

  Thanks to her.

  He’s the one who was at home to pick up the pieces when Daddy dropped dead of a brain aneurysm a year and a half after that terrible summer.

  That was what had done their mother in. Becoming a widow. No longer having a husband there to take care of her, the way Daddy had in the twenty years they were married.

  Maura Connolly had always been fragile, always nervous, always unstable.

  After Kevin’s birth, she had gone into a deep depression that lasted almost a year, Rory remembered. She locked herself away in her room, not even emerging to attend daily mass, as she always had, and Daddy hired a nanny to take care of the baby and Rory and Carleen, and he finally forced Mom to go see a doctor. Nobody ever said psychiatrist, but that must have been it, Rory later realized. The doctor had put her on some kind of medication, and eventually, she had come back to life. She was never quite the same, but at least she could function as a normal human being.

  But when she lost first Carleen, and then Daddy, she went off the deep end again, this time for good. Her eyes had gradually grown vacant; her body weak and frail; her voice listless; her mind, apparently, ultimately retreating to some distant place.

  Rory had realized it was happening, of course. She would have to be blind not to notice her mother’s withdrawal from the world.

  But she was away at college by then—­way out in California, as far from Lake Charlotte as she could get. And she rarely came home once she left, unable—­or maybe just unwilling—­to face the echoing emptiness in the big old house on Hayes Street, and the three ­people who lived there still, amidst the memories.

  Just Mom, and Kevin, and Molly, who had just turned three when Carleen vanished, and who couldn’t possibly remember her sister very well, or Daddy, either, even though she liked to claim that she could.

  There had been a time when Molly, as a preschooler, had insisted on calling Kevin “Daddy.” She wouldn’t stop for a year or two, though he corrected her repeatedly.

  Well, Kevin has been a father to Molly, Rory reminds herself. The only real parent Molly has known, with Mom the way she is.

  And now Kevin, who has just graduated from the Albany college he attended as a commuter student, is leaving to spend the summer in Europe.

  Which is why Rory has come home at last.

  Because Molly, at thirteen, is too young to take care of herself full time.

  And Mom . . .

  Well, Mom needs to be taken care of, too.

  “She leaves the stove burners on, Rory,” Kevin is saying, as he toys with the strap of his conspicuously new carryon duffel bag. “So be sure that you check the stove every night before you go to bed. She makes tea, and then she forgets.”

  “I’ll check them.” She doesn’t mention that this is the third time he warned her about Mom and the burners.

  “And she’ll want to wear a sweater every day, even when it’s ninety degrees out. Don’t let her. She’ll pass out from heat exhaustion, like last summer. I put most of her sweaters—­”

  “I know. In the black trunk in the attic.”

  “But she might find them. She’s always up there lately, poking around. God knows why. Anyway, the trunk is locked. The key is—­”

  “In the drawer above the bread bin in the pantry.”

  “Sorry.” He flashes a tight smile. “I can’t remember what I’ve told you and what I haven’t. There’s so much you have to worry about, between Mom and Molly . . .”

  Rory nods. Molly, with her dark curls and flashing blue eyes, has reportedly been a handful lately.

  “I just worry, Rory,” Kevin says, inhaling deeply, then puffing his cheeks and letting the air out audibly, rocking back on his heels.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of everything. Please don’t worry.”

  It’s my turn, Rory adds silently, as guilt once again creeps over her. How could she have turned her back on the three of them for so many years? How could she have left Kevin, barely an adult even now, to cope alone?

  Simple.

  She just hasn’t allowed herself to look back. Hasn’t allowed the painful memories to haunt her. And the more time that passed, the easier it was to forget about the sister and father and best friend she had lost—­and the family she’d basically abandoned.

  Meanwhile, she had gotten her art degree from Berkeley, then wandered the country for a ­couple of years, footloose and unfettered, as though she hadn’t a care in the world. She worked as a ski instructor in Colorado one winter and sold insurance in Texas the following spring. She wandered north to New York and was a temp secretary on Wall Street until she grew tired of the corporate world and urban life and returned to the West Coast, becoming an artist’s model in Santa Cruz.

  She never cut herself off completely from her family, of course. She called home every ­couple of weeks or sometimes every other month, checking in, telling them where she could be reached—­just in case.

  What?

  In case something happened to Mom? Or Molly? Or Kevin?

  In case one of them fell off the face of the earth, the way Carleen and Emily had, or dropped dead, as Daddy had?

  She had been living in Miami this winter when Kevin tracked her down, told her about the summer trip he wanted to take.

  “I’ve been seeing this girl, Katherine, all year,” he told Rory, “and she’s spending the summer backpacking across Europe. She wants me to come with her—­”

  “Oh, wow, you’ve got to go!” Rory burst out enthusiastically. “I did that between my junior and senior years, remember? I almost didn’t come back to the States. It was incredible. You’d better be going, Kev.”

  Silence.

  And then it had dawned on her, why he was calling her.

  Because he wouldn’t be able to go if she didn’t come home to take care of Mom and Molly.

  And so, here she is.

  She’s home for the summer.

  In Lake Charlotte, where ­people still talk about the long-­ago summer when four teenaged girls mysteriously vanished and were neve
r heard from again.

  “You grew your hair.”

  Rory looks up at her mother, who’s sitting across the table, watching her.

  Unnerved by the sudden steady gaze from those familiar green eyes the exact shade of her own, Rory isn’t sure what to say. Her shoulder-­length auburn hair is shorter, actually, than she’d worn it all winter in Miami, when she would pull it into a thick braid and let it dangle down her back. Then again, it’s longer than the boyish bob she’d worn for a year or so a while back, which, come to think of it, might very well have been the last time she had seen her mother.

  Maura is toying with the heavy silver cross hanging from a chain around her neck as she watches Rory. She’s always worn that cross, Rory recalls. She once said it was a confirmation gift from her own mother. When Carleen, and then Rory, made their confirmations, Maura had bought them similar crosses. Rory remembers wearing it just once, until someone said, “Hey, what’re you, a nun all of a sudden?” After that, Rory had put it away in the bottom drawer of her dresser and hoped her mother would never mention it.

  She hadn’t.

  “Why did you grow it?” her mother wants to know, still looking at her head.

  “I just . . . I like long hair.”

  Her mother’s hand flies to her own shorn gray locks. Kevin said he takes her to the beautician every six weeks to have it trimmed in this easy-­care style, reminding Rory not to miss the next appointment.

  When Rory was growing up, Maura Connolly’s thick, glossy black hair had hung down to her waist. Most of the time she wore it loose, but sometimes, on hot summer days, she coiled it at the back of her neck in some intricate twist that deceptively required only a few pins. Rory would sit on the big queen-­sized bed upstairs and watch her, marveling at her mother’s expert movements at the back of her head that didn’t allow a single tuft of hair to escape, even though she couldn’t see what she was doing.