All the Way Home

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  ‘‘Do mine now, Mommy,” she would beg, and her mother would smile and pretend to tame her daughter’s wild, flaming locks into some semblance of her own hairstyle.

  And though Daddy would make a point of commenting on her “grown-­up ’do,” Rory would know she looked nothing like her mother, or Carleen. They both had that exquisite ebony-­and-­ivory coloring; dark, dark hair and pale, flawless skin.

  But Rory had inherited her father’s red hair and freckles. Not even silky, soft red hair, but wiry, unruly curls that tangled past her neck and refused to lie flat against her scalp.

  “Molly?” her mother suddenly says, turning her head and looking over her shoulder, toward the screen door at the other end of the kitchen. “Where’s Molly?”

  “She’s baby-­sitting next door, Mom. Remember?”

  “Kevin?”

  “He’s not here, Mom,” she says patiently.

  She thinks about how she’d hugged her kid brother that last time at the airport, wishing they’d had more time together, thinking that maybe she’ll stick around awhile after he comes home in September.

  “Go ahead, Rory,” he’d said gruffly, squirming as though he wasn’t used to hugs. “Get out of here. Your parking meter is going to expire.”

  “Don’t you want me to wait until you get on the plane so I can see you off?” she’d asked, only half teasingly.

  “Nah,” he’d said with a casual wave of his hand, and she wondered whether he was worried she’d make some big emotional scene telling him good-­bye, or whether he was afraid he’d change his own mind about leaving.

  ‘‘Kevin’s in Europe for the summer, Mom,” Rory says now. “Remember?”

  Her mother nods, but her eyes are blank.

  Rory takes a bite of the salad she made for their dinner, noticing her mother’s still-­heaping plate.

  “Eat, Mom,” she says.

  “It’s too hot to eat.” The words are expressionless.

  “That’s why I made just a salad. It’s light, and it’s healthy. You love salad,” Rory adds, then wonders why on earth she would say such a thing. She has no idea whether her mother loves salad; has no idea what her mother likes to eat.

  Maura never was much of a cook. Occasionally, she’d surprise the rest of them and whip up something that actually looked and tasted good. Like the loaf of Irish soda bread she made one St. Patrick’s Day, or the pots of vegetable soup she’d concoct when the summer garden yielded more tomatoes and beans and zucchini than they knew what to do with.

  But most of the time, she boiled hot dogs and served spaghetti made with sauce from a jar and, when all else failed, which was several times a week, ordered pizza.

  No one seemed to mind.

  “So, Mom,” Rory says brightly, looking around the kitchen so she won’t have to gaze into that disconcerting emptiness any longer. “I was thinking that we should fix the house up a little while I’m here.”

  No reply.

  But her mother does take a bite of her salad, putting it gingerly into her mouth and setting her fork down again while she chews. Her movements are slow, mechanical.

  “We can take down that wallpaper,” Rory goes on, gesturing at the faded ivy pattern covering the kitchen walls, “and put up something new. Or maybe just paint everything white. Brighten it up a little. What do you think?”

  No reply.

  Rory points to the window above the scarred old porcelain sink. “We can get some pretty curtains to hang there,” she suggests, wondering what ever happened to the white priscillas with red rickrack trim that used to be there. “And the cabinets are so dark—­maybe we can strip that stain, or paint them. The pantry cupboards, too.”

  She glances at the narrow galley space adjoining the kitchen, its three walls lined with glass-­fronted storage space above rows of drawers below. It would be nice, she thinks, if the cupboards were painted white and if, beyond the glass, you saw pretty china or sparkling glassware instead of the jumble of canned goods and cereal boxes stored there now.

  This place has so much potential, Rory thinks wistfully, noting the elaborate crown moldings and hardwood floors and high ceilings.

  But no one has ever bothered to do anything with the sprawling Victorian. Not the previous owners, and certainly not Daddy and Mom. He was the least handy person on the planet, and Mom was the least creative. They had simply bought the place when Mom was pregnant with Rory, realizing they’d outgrown their one-­bedroom apartment over Talucci’s Pizza Parlor, and they’d moved in.

  And that was that.

  Growing up here, Rory had never appreciated the house as anything more than a roof over her head, a place where she had her own room, a big yard to play in, and, at the back of the property, the vast bank of woods that eventually led down to the lake.

  Only now does she realize that this must once have been a grand home, set far back on a sloping, shady, brick-­paved street above the downtown district. These days, the more upscale citizens of Lake Charlotte live in the new network of cul-­de-­sacs west of town, a development called Green Haven Glen. But before the turn of the century, Hayes Street had been one of the most fashionable addresses in town.

  The other houses on the block are similar to this one—­gingerbread monstrosities displaying architectural quirks typical of the previous century: turrets and cupolas and wraparound verandas. Most of them, like this one, are surrounded by tall black iron fences and shaded by vast, spreading trees, their stone foundations and latticework obscured by old-­fashioned blooming shrubs and perennials—­lilacs, hydrangeas, peonies, lilies, irises.

  And most of them, unlike this one, have been painstakingly restored in the years since Rory left home. Now that nearby Saratoga Springs has once again become a popular resort town, the once-­depressed local economy has slowly bounced back, and it shows.

  When she drove into town last night, Rory had noticed that the streetlamps on Main Street are bedecked with hanging pots trailing colorful petunias and impatiens, and that the 1950’s-­era aluminum façades and neon signs of the commercial buildings seem to have been replaced by charming, old-­fashioned wooden storefronts, some with a hand-­painted shingle dangling above the entrance. There’s a bagel shop now, and several conspicuously trendy cafes, and right here on Hayes Street, the Shillings’ old house is now a bed and breakfast.

  The Connollys’ rattletrap home stands out more than ever. Even the place next door, once occupied by Miss Prendergrast, and after that, by Emily’s family, is sporting new coats of paint: contrasting shades of rose and plum, which, Molly informed Rory this afternoon, were the original colors of the house a hundred years ago.

  “How do you know that?” Rory had asked, amused by her sister’s authoritarian air.

  “I’m friends with the ­couple that lives there. The Randalls. I baby-­sit for their little boy.”

  That’s where she is now. Rory can hear her voice drifting in the open windows as she pushes the toddler in a tire swing in the backyard next door.

  Rory supposes it’s good that the old house is finally lived in after all these years. Not long after Emily vanished, her family picked up and moved away, and as far as Rory knows, the house, already in disrepair, had stood empty ever since.

  She tries to tear her thoughts away from that depressing subject. She rarely allows herself to think of the friend she had lost a decade ago. Or of her sister.

  But now that she’s back in Lake Charlotte, the topic isn’t going to be easy to avoid, even if it happened . . . nine years ago? No, ten.

  Ten years ago this week, the first girl had disappeared.

  How could it be that four girls could simply evaporate into thin air, leaving not a single clue?

  In the back of her mind, Rory had assumed for a long time that someday one or more of the bodies would be found. If you follow this type of thing on the evening news, it seems
as though missing persons always turn up dead sooner or later, and the cases are solved, or at least put to rest.

  The Lake Charlotte Police Department had worked around the clock trying to come up with some evidence that would at least reveal what might have happened. But there was nothing.

  Various theories had been discussed on playgrounds and at lunch counters and over back fences. Some ­people thought the girls had been kidnapped, drugged and taken out of the country, where they were sold into white slavery. Others—­mostly middle school boys—­guessed that they had been abducted by aliens. And then there was the grisly speculation that they had simply been butchered by some serial killer, their bodies burned or buried or weighted and dumped in the lake.

  Of course, no one ever voiced those theories to Rory’s face. She still recalls how many conversations drew to an awkward, abrupt halt when she would appear. As the sister of one victim and closest friend of another, she had become something of a celebrity. And despite her typical middle-­child hunger for attention, this was the last kind of notoriety she—­

  “Where’s Kevin?”

  Her mother’s words snap her back to the present, and she sighs softly. “He’s not here, Mom. We just talked about it a few minutes ago. Remember?”

  “Is he upstairs?”

  “No.”

  Across the ocean. And you won’t see him for months.

  “He’s on vacation,” Rory says gently. “But I’m here now. And I’m going to take care of you and Molly. If there’s anything you need, you just tell me and I’ll get it for you. Okay?”

  Her mother’s eyes are aimed toward her face, but they’re eerily unfocused, as though she isn’t really seeing anything. She’s faded again, retreating to that distant place where no one can reach her . . . and, perhaps, where nothing can hurt her.

  Rory goes back to her own salad, forcing herself to eat, though she suddenly has no appetite.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Molly carries little Ozzie into the house and sets him on the floor in the kitchen.

  She stoops beside him and brushes dirt off his little khaki shorts. It lands on the worn green linoleum, but she figures it doesn’t matter. The entire house is under do-­it-­yourself construction; there’s plaster dust and dirt and clutter everywhere. And it’s only going to get worse when they rip off most of the back wall of the house to add the big family room Michelle has been talking about.

  “Look at you, you’re filthy,” she tells Ozzie, picking dandelion fluff out of his curly white-­blond hair.

  “Fil-­see,” Ozzie echoes, grinning.

  “Yup, filthy. You need a bath before bed—­”

  At the mention of the word bed, the two-­year-­old opens his mouth and lets out a piercing screech.

  “No, you don’t have to go to bed yet,” Molly hastily assures him.

  “No bed!” he bellows. “No bed!”

  “No bed,” Molly agrees. “First a bath. You want a bath? It’ll cool you off. It’s so sticky out tonight. Come on, let’s go right up the back stairs.”

  He allows her to pick him up and carry him across the kitchen, where she tugs on a wooden door until it opens to reveal a steep flight to the second floor.

  The treads creak as she ventures up through the shadows, and she keeps up a steady stream of cheerful conversation with Ozzie to keep herself from being spooked.

  There’s something about this old house that makes her uneasy, but she doesn’t like to dwell on it, because if she lets it bother her, she won’t be able to baby-­sit for Ozzie anymore, or come visit Lou and Michelle and the new baby, who is due in August.

  Until the Randalls moved in here last year, this place was known to Molly and her friends—­in fact, to every kid in Lake Charlotte—­as the “haunted house.” Everyone knows what happened to the last kid who lived here, Emily Anghardt.

  Well, actually, no one knows what happened to her, but that’s the scary thing.

  Emily—­and Molly’s older sister Carleen—­and two other girls fell off the face of the earth ten years ago.

  Molly remembers Careen, even though everyone says she couldn’t possibly. She remembers Careen giving her a present, a doll with black curls so like Molly’s, and that Carleen kept an eye on her while she played on the playground at Point Cedar Park. She remembers Carleen getting her undressed for her bath, touching each of her bare toes gently as she recited the nursery rhyme Molly loved:

  This little piggy went to market

  This little piggy stayed home

  This little piggy had roast beef

  This little piggy had none

  And this little piggy cried “wee wee wee wee”

  All the way home.

  She remembers how Carleen would then tickle her feet as Molly screamed in delight, begging her sister to recite the rhyme again. And again.

  And she remembers that Carleen always would.

  She doesn’t remember anything about Carleen’s disappearance, which is strange, if you think about it, because you’d think a kid would be aware of something that traumatic happening in her household.

  She does remember Daddy dying—­how Mom had started screaming from the bedroom one night and how Kevin, who had been reading her a story, had dashed down the hall, and then the sirens had wailed up to the front door and men came pounding up the stairs. Mom screamed through it all, nonstop screeching at the top of her lungs.

  And after that, she never screamed again, or even raised her voice. From that day on, she has spoken in a soft monotone, and she never smiles, or cries. Never betrays any hint of emotion.

  Kevin says she’s depressed, but Molly doesn’t know about that. Molly’s been depressed before, plenty of times—­most recently, when she found out last month that her current crush, Ryan Baker, likes Jessica Thomerson. But when she feels bad about something, she doesn’t act like Mom.

  Mom’s basically just . . .

  Well, crazy.

  It’s not something Molly has ever acknowledged to anyone, not even her friend Rebecca Wasner, who lives two doors down and must have a pretty good idea. But who wants to go around admitting their mother’s crazy?

  Still, there’s no other word for it. Mom’s pretty much always spaced out, and she asks questions that make no sense, and half the time she’s talking to ­people that aren’t there.

  “Bath?” Ozzie says, as they walk down the second-­floor hall past the open bathroom door.

  “Oh, right. Bath,” Molly agrees. “I almost forgot what we were doing up here.”

  She makes a detour into the bathroom and starts the water running into the old claw-­foot tub, plugging the drain with the rubber stopper attached to a silver, beaded chain.

  Then she carries Ozzie down the narrow, dark hall with its peeling wallpaper, going into his room at the far end, at the head of the wide, graceful, open front staircase.

  The little boy’s room is one of the few areas in the house that isn’t being renovated. Lou and Michelle fixed it up right after they moved in, patching the walls and painting them white and refinishing the hardwood floor so that it’s shiny and smooth, so different from the floors in the rest of the house.

  A bright pink cast-­iron doorstop shaped like a pig keeps the door to the hallway from swinging closed; Michelle had mentioned that her husband keeps saying he’ll fix the hinges, but he hasn’t gotten a chance yet, so she bought this doorstop at a craft fair recently. “They had all kinds of different animals,” she’d told Molly, “but Ozzie chose the pig, because he loves when you do ‘This Little Piggy,’ Molly.”

  There’s a built-­in bookcase on the wall to the right of the door, jammed with children’s books. And a colorful mural is painted on one wall, courtesy of Michelle, an artist. A plump, bespectacled Mother Goose is surrounded by characters from her nursery rhymes: Humpty-­Dumpty and Little Jack Horner and Mary, Mary, Q
uite Contrary, and others Molly doesn’t recognize.

  Probably because after Carleen disappeared, they weren’t very big on nursery rhymes in the Connolly household. She remembers Kevin reading to her now and then, usually from books that had no pictures and were adventure or science fiction stories about boys his age.

  Nobody else ever bothered to read to her, although Kevin claims Daddy used to tell her stories before tucking her into bed at night.

  She wishes she could remember that. She wishes she could remember more of him, more things they did together, so at least she’d have that. A solid memory of his face and his voice and his love.

  But there’s so little left of him in her mind, just snatches of songs he would sing to her and fragments of scenes where he would be kissing or hugging her.

  She can’t remember Mom ever being affectionate.

  Rory, either, although when she came yesterday, she had folded Molly into her arms in a stiff hug.

  Molly sets Ozzie on his changing table and begins absently stripping off his clothes.

  Well, she amends, maybe it’s half my fault that the hug was so stiff. After all, she’s hardly feeling warm-­hearted toward her sister.

  How can she, when Rory’s stayed as far away as possible for most of Molly’s life? Kevin says it’s Rory’s way of dealing with what happened to Carleen and Emily, and to Dad.

  As far as Molly’s concerned, it’s a lousy way of dealing. She barely knows her one remaining older sister, a sister Kevin claims loves and cares about her, about all of them.

  “Doesn’t she always remember your birthday, and send you Christmas presents?” he points out whenever Molly grumbles about Rory’s absence. As if a few presents—­most of them inappropriate, like a Barbie doll, when Molly has never played with dolls in her life—­can make up for the fact that Rory never bothers with any of them.

  And now here she is, home for the summer, acting as though she and Molly are going to become all chummy while Kevin’s away.