“Hey, don’t knock it. Looks like you have a Picasso in the making. Huh, little guy?” Rory reaches down and ruffles Ozzie’s hair. “Molly baby-sits for you, doesn’t she?”
“Molly? Where’s Molly?” Ozzie brightens and looks around.
“He loves your sister,” Michelle tells Rory. “She’s terrific with him.”
“She is?” Rory looks incredulous. “I mean, I don’t know her all that well these days. She’s just kind of quiet when she’s around here. Your typical sullen teen. But then, she’s a thirteen-year-old girl. I guess we all go through that stage—miserable at home, and all sweetness and light everywhere else.”
“The old adolescent angst,” Michelle says, nodding. “I should probably be happy with two boys. At least they don’t seem as moody as teenaged girls.”
“So you know what you’re having, then?” Rory asks with a gesture at Michelle’s stomach. “Another boy?”
“That’s what the doctor says.”
“When are you due?”
“Not soon enough. Early August, supposedly.” Michelle pushes a damp strand of hair out of her face. “But then, we’ve got a lot to do before the baby comes, so I guess I should hope the baby takes his time.”
“You’ve done a lot of work on the house,” Rory notes, bobbing her head toward the construction Dumpster near the garage. “Is it almost done?”
“Actually, no. I don’t think it’s ever going to be done. And now we’re going to rip off the back wall and add on a family room. Which reminds me . . . I have to call the architect. My husband’ll flip if I forget to do it again today.”
“Well, it was nice talking to you. Maybe you and Ozzie can come over to visit someday. It would be nice to have some company, especially a little kid. The place is too quiet.”
“Maybe we will,” Michelle says politely, though she can’t quite imagine dropping by the Connolly house.
Molly, Rory, and Kevin are all pleasant enough, but their mother is a different story. From what Michelle has seen, the woman is just plain weird. She scurries to and from church every morning with her head bent as if against a strong wind, and she never answers Michelle’s greetings or bothers to look up. Aside from those early-morning walks to Holy Father a few blocks away, she hardly sets foot outside of the house.
But sometimes at night, Michelle sees Maura Connolly standing in a second-floor window overlooking the Randalls’ house, just staring vacantly for hours. It’s eerie, though Lou insists Michelle shouldn’t worry about it.
“She’s just a harmless nutcase,” he’s always saying. “Who knows? Maybe you’d be nutty, too, if your kid vanished off the face of the earth.”
Maybe I would, Michelle thinks now, instinctively tightening her grip on Ozzie’s arm.
“Well, I guess I’ll see you around,” Rory says.
“Sure,” Michelle replies, and starts to turn toward home.
Rory gasps, causing her to spin around again to see her neighbor gaping at her bare legs, pointing.
Michelle looks down to see bright red blood streaked all over her thighs. “No! Oh, no! My baby!”
Startled by her outburst, Ozzie immediately starts crying.
“It’s okay, it’s okay, Ozzie. Don’t panic, Michelle.” Rory holds her steady, rubbing her arm.
Trembling, Michelle reaches down to touch the sticky blood—then nearly sobs in relief.
“It’s paint,” she says, shaken. “It’s only paint. Ozzie must have gotten it on me when I wasn’t looking.”
“Thank God.” Rory releases her arm and shakes her head. “I thought it was blood. I thought something had happened with the baby . . .”
“So did I. I . . . God. I’d better go in and get cleaned up.”
Her heart still pounding, Michelle walks slowly toward home, holding Ozzie’s hand tightly.
Just a false alarm, she tells herself up in the bathroom as she washes the red paint off her legs with a cool wet washcloth. Everything is fine.
But for some reason, she can’t quite shake the distinct feeling that something isn’t right.
“I met the little boy you baby-sit for when I was outside a little while ago.”
Molly looks up from the peanut butter sandwich she’s making. “Ozzie?”
“Yup. He’s cute,” Rory says, pausing with her paintbrush poised over the can. “And he really likes you.”
“Uh-huh.” Molly dips the knife into the almost-empty jar, spreads another glob on her bread, and then licks the knife. She’s about to scrape some more peanut butter from inside the rim of the jar when Rory stops her.
“Don’t do that, Molly.”
“Why not?”
“It’s gross, that’s why not. You get your spit into the peanut butter.”
Irritated, Molly tilts the jar and says, with exaggerated patience, “It’s almost empty. I’m just going to throw it away, not put it back into the cupboard. So don’t stress about it, okay?”
Rory shrugs and goes back to her painting.
Molly slaps the two pieces of bread together with one hand, still holding the knife with the other. She deliberately licks it again, slowly, and considers closing the jar and putting it back into the cupboard just to irk Rory.
Ooops, she’ll say. There’s more in here than I thought. I’ll just save it for later.
After all, what difference does it make if her spit gets into the peanut butter jar? Like she really cares. Besides, Mom doesn’t eat it. Kevin used to, but he’s gone. And it’s not as if Rory has any claim to anything in this house.
“Listen, Molly?”
“What?” Warily, she turns toward her sister, who’s perched on a chair, straining to reach the trim above the back door.
Rory says in a low voice, “I wanted to talk to you about Mom.”
“What about her?” Molly tosses the knife into the sink and the jar into the trash, half expecting Rory to remind her she’s supposed to wash it out and recycle it. What a pain that is—scrubbing out every trace of icky, gooey peanut butter just because there’s a new law in Lake Charlotte, thanks to a bunch of environmentalists. Rory’s probably one of those save-the-planet, granola-head types, Molly speculates.
Her sister carefully balances her paintbrush on the rim of the open can and climbs down from the chair to come face-to-face with Molly. “I’m worried about her.”
“About Mom? Why?” Molly’s stomach turns over. First Kevin leaves, now something’s wrong with her mother? “What happened to her?”
“She’s just . . . so out of it.”
“Well, duh!” Relieved, Molly picks up her sandwich and the glass of milk she’d poured for herself, and starts for the door.
“Where are you going?”
“Outside. To eat my lunch. On the back steps.”
“Can’t you eat it in here?”
Molly blinks. “Why would I? It smells like disgusting paint fumes in here.”
“It does not. The windows are open and, anyway, this kind of paint has no fumes.”
“It does, too.”
“Well, I’m not done talking to you yet.”
“What, you thought it was up to you to tell me that Mom’s off her rocker? It might be news to you, but I’ve been living here my whole life, helping Kevin take care of her,” she says pointedly.
Where have you been? she wants to add. Why haven’t you been with us? Why did you get to leave, to go out into the world and do whatever you feel like doing? And now Kevin’s gone, too. And pretty soon it’s just going to be me taking care of Mom for the rest of my life, because God knows you won’t stick around long.
She doesn’t say any of it, but she’s pretty certain Rory knows what she’s thinking. How could she not?
Her sister doesn’t quite meet her gaze when she says, “It’s much worse than it’s ever
been. She’s having imaginary conversations with Daddy.”
“She always does that. Carleen, too.”
“Oh.” Rory seems to be pondering that.
Molly shifts her weight. Rory’s standing in front of the chair, which is blocking the door. Molly can’t get out unless she asks her sister to move, and for some reason, she doesn’t do that. She just stands, holding her sandwich and milk, waiting.
“What about Sister Theodosia?” Rory asks after a moment.
“What about her?”
“Does she know what’s going on with Mom?”
“I have no idea. She visits her once in a great while; they go to church, whatever.”
“When was the last time she was here?”
Molly thinks about that. She never pays much attention to the dour nun’s visits, preferring to make herself scarce whenever Sister Theodosia is around. There’s something unpleasant about the woman. For someone who’s supposed to be spending her life helping people, she has a pretty lousy attitude. She’s not mean, exactly, but she never smiles, and she always looks as though she’s put out by something.
“I guess she was last here during Lent,” Molly says. “Like, in March. Because I remember that she caught Rebecca and me sitting here eating a can of Beefaroni by accident and she freaked.”
“By accident? You mean on a Friday?” A smile quirks Rory’s lips.
“Yeah. No meat on Fridays during Lent.”
“Right. Carleen once made a big point about eating a hot dog in front of Sister Theodosia on Good Friday. When she started freaking out, Carleen pulled out the package and waved it in her face. They were tofu wieners.”
Molly grins. “What’d she do?”
“Sister Theodosia? Oh, you know, probably sighed deeply and told Carleen she’d pray for her soul. She was always saying stuff like that about her.”
“About Carleen?”
“Yeah.” Rory’s smile fades.
Molly knows what she’s thinking. That all those prayers for Carleen’s soul didn’t do much good, because something awful happened to her.
“Anyway,” Rory says, all business again, “I thought I might call Sister Theodosia and talk to her. Maybe ask her to come for a visit.”
“What? A visit? Why?”
“So that she can give us some insight into Mom’s problems. She’s losing touch with reality, Molly. We can’t just sit here and do nothing.”
“Well, what’s Sister Theodosia supposed to do about it? Pray for Mom’s soul?”
“She knows Mom better than anyone. Mom trusts her. Maybe she can help.”
“That’s crazy. All you’re going to do is upset everyone. Why did you have to come back and start stirring things up, Rory? God, you have no right to go around starting trouble.”
“I’m trying to fix things, not start trouble!” Rory shot back. “And I have every right. She’s my mother.”
“So? She’s my mother, too.”
Rory’s mouth tightens into a straight line, and Molly waits for her to say something else, but for some reason she doesn’t. She just abruptly moves the chair out of the doorway, opening the escape route.
Molly takes it, making a beeline for the back steps and letting the screen door bang closed behind her.
“Here, kitty, kitty.” Rebecca Wasner stands on the back porch, surveying the yard for Sebastian, the kitten she’d convinced her mother to let her keep from Ralphi’s latest litter.
“Here, kitty, kitty.”
No sign of a scampering ball of peach-colored fur. At Rebecca’s feet, sunning herself on the top step, Ralphi lifts her head lazily, as if to search for her errant offspring.
“Don’t worry, I’ll find him,” Rebecca tells the cat, a fat tabby her parents had once thought was a boy, and thus named Ralph. When Ralph got pregnant the first time, his name was altered accordingly.
“Here, kitty, kitty. Come on, where are you?”
Rebecca walks down the steps and into the yard, careful not to brush against the lilies in bloom along the stone garden path. She knows from experience that their stamens leave ugly, permanent yellow stains on clothing, and she won’t have time to change before going baby-sitting.
Today she’s sitting for the Willeski family over on Lincoln Street, while their harried mother runs errands. Between the twin two-year-olds and a newborn, Rebecca figures she won’t have time to even open the library book she’s packed in her knapsack. It’s a new biography of the author Laura Ingalls Wilder, who wrote all the Little House books.
Molly had teased Rebecca when she selected that book from the shelf, saying, “Haven’t you outgrown all that ‘Little House on the Prairie’ stuff by now?”
And Rebecca, who cherishes her complete boxed set of pale-yellow paperbacks and still rereads them on occasion, had blushed and mumbled some inane reply.
Luckily, Molly had swiftly dropped the subject, either because she knew she’d embarrassed Rebecca, or because she was preoccupied with the encounter she’d just had with Ryan Baker.
That’s all she talks about lately. Ryan.
Rebecca loves her best friend, but they seem to have little in common lately. It started last year, actually, when Molly first stopped collecting Beanie Babies, then decided she wasn’t a Spice Girls fan anymore.
Although Rebecca can live with that. She’s not into Beanie Babies or the Spice Girls this year, either.
But now Molly’s no longer interested in making braided bead bracelets or clipping Matt Damon’s picture out of magazines, pastimes that had kept them both happily occupied on gray Saturday afternoons all winter and spring.
Meanwhile, Rebecca has absolutely no desire to stake out Ryan Baker’s house, which is Molly’s current idea of fun.
At this rate, Rebecca is starting to wonder whether their lifelong friendship will survive the summer. Especially with Molly wanting to go to that stupid party out at the Curl tomorrow night.
“You have to go with me,” she’d told Rebecca.
“How would we even get there? It’s not like I can ask my mom to drop us off.”
“I have it all figured out.”
“What, ride our bikes?”
“No!” Molly had looked horrified. “That would be so cheesy. No, we’d just hike down through the woods—”
“No way. At night? I don’t even like the woods during the day.”
“Oh, please, Rebecca. It would be so easy. You know that path behind the Randalls’ house? It comes out on Lakeshore Road, like right near the Curl.”
“Hike through the woods at night? With all those bugs and wild animals?” Rebecca had shuddered.
“Wild animals? Like, chipmunks?” Molly’s voice had been filled with disdain.
“Like coyotes. And wolves. And bears. No way.”
“Oh, come on, Rebecca. I can’t show up alone.”
“Why not? Ryan will be there. You can talk to him.”
“What if he’s with Jessica?”
“Then you can leave,” Rebecca had pointed out, with what she thought was the utmost logic.
Molly didn’t see it that way. “I can’t leave. I have to be there, no matter who he’s with. How else am I going to make him fall in love with me?”
“If he’s with Jessica or some other girl, how’s he supposed to fall in love with you?” Rebecca had asked, perplexed.
“God, you just don’t get it” was Molly’s eye-rolling reply.
Rebecca knows she’s right.
She just doesn’t get it. Maybe she never will. Maybe she’ll still be playing with her cats and baby-sitting and rereading The Long Winter while Molly and everyone else she’s known since kindergarten have a blast in high school.
“Doomed to be a goober,” Rebecca murmurs softly, walking across the yard, her eyes peeled for some sign of Sebastian. She sees so
mething moving in a thatch of pachysandra near the Randalls’ yard, but it turns out to be a chipmunk.
“Hi, Rebecca!”
She looks up to see little Ozzie Randall waving from a screened window on the second floor.
“Hi, Ozzie.”
Michelle appears behind him, saying, “Careful, Ozzie, there’s no guard on that window. Oh, hi, Rebecca.”
“Hi, Mrs. Randall.”
“You can call me Michelle, remember?” she says casually, as she has ever since they moved in next door to the Wasners.
But Rebecca feels funny doing that. Her parents always taught her to address adults as Mr. or Mrs. And even though Michelle seems young and laid back, she’s still an adult. So most of the time, Rebecca doesn’t call her neighbor anything at all. Molly, meanwhile, cheerfully calls Michelle and Lou by their first names, as though she’s known them her whole life.
Rebecca wonders if Michelle thinks she’s not as friendly and nice as Molly is. After all, she refused whenever Michelle asked her to baby-sit those first few months after they moved in. She always made some feeble excuse, and sensed that Michelle saw right through her.
But how could she come right out and say she couldn’t baby-sit next door because she’s terrified to be alone in that house?
Granted, it looks immensely better than it did before the Randalls moved in, when it was standing vacant and abandoned, as if in memorial to Emily Anghardt, who had lived there with her father until she disappeared ten years ago.
Rebecca was only three that summer, but she has vague memories of the unrest that had gripped the neighborhood after first Carleen Connolly, and then Emily, had vanished from their homes. She remembers that her mother, who used to let her play alone in the screened porch while she was busy in the kitchen, had suddenly refused to let her out there by herself. And she remembers lying in her bed at night hearing the squawk of a two-way radio through her open window, and seeing the revolving red pattern on the ceiling of her room, reflected from the dome light of a police car parked out front.
The experience left her perpetually haunted by the sense that she’s never quite safe, no matter how secure things seem. She can be sitting in the living room in front of a crackling fire, Christmas tree lights sparkling in one corner, cozily watching television with her parents and her younger brother, Casey, on one of those clear winter nights when the ground is blanketed in fresh snow, and still she’ll feel as though all isn’t right with the world. As though something dark and scary is looming.
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