Dead of night.
Now there’s a comforting phrase, she tells herself, standing with her forefinger in her mouth, mindlessly chewing on her fingernail.
Don’t be such a wimp. You have to go over there. What if Sebastian is there? What if he’s in trouble? What if he got into a fight with a coyote and dragged himself, bleeding, to the Randalls’ back porch?
Rebecca glances up again at the foreboding house, then takes a deep breath and lifts her bare foot to step forward.
A sudden burst of light stops her in her tracks.
“Rebecca? What are you doing out here?”
She spins around and sees her father standing on the back steps in his T-shirt and boxers, in the glow of the floodlight that now illuminates the yard.
“I’m looking for Sebastian, Daddy. I told you, he got outside before, and I’m worried about him.”
“He’ll come back in the morning.” Her father rubs his eyes sleepily. “Now get inside.”
“But he doesn’t have any claws—”
“He’ll be fine. Come on, before Casey and your mother wake up, too.”
“All right.” With an odd mixture of reluctance and relief, Rebecca turns away from the Randalls’ yard and walks briskly toward home.
The front door quietly clicks shut, an almost imperceptible sound, but one that causes Rory to sit up straight on her father’s old easy chair in the darkened front parlor.
She strains, listening. Quiet footsteps move toward the staircase.
“Molly?” she calls, standing and heading toward the archway leading to the hall.
There’s no reply, and for a moment, she hesitates, filled with doubt, the goose bumps prickling on the base of her neck. What if it isn’t Molly? What if it’s some dark intruder?
“What?”
At the sound of her sister’s voice, Rory expels the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding.
She looks into the hallway and sees Molly paused with one foot on the bottom step, gingerly placed as though in an effort to avoid creaking.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
Molly turns to face her, blue eyes flashing. Rory notices that she’s lined them with dark pencil, and her lashes are thicker than usual. Mascara. And she’s wearing lipstick. A cranberry color that’s too dark for her Irish-cream complexion.
“What does it look like I’m doing? I’m going up to bed.”
“Really? It looks an awful lot like you’re sneaking into the house in the middle of the night.”
“I’m not sneaking in. Why would I have to sneak in?”
“Maybe so that I won’t hear you?”
“Why would I care about that?” Molly tosses her head defiantly. ‘‘What would it matter to you when I come and go?”
“It would matter,” Rory says evenly, “because I’m in charge here.”
“You are not.”
“Oh, yes I am . . . Molly.” It takes every ounce of Rory’s willpower to use her name, not to call her young lady instead.
The stern phrase would come so naturally.
She’s transported back over the years, back to so many other hot, still summer nights, to another dark-haired, blue-eyed teenaged girl standing on these very steps, poised to sneak up the stairs to her room.
“Just what do you think you’re doing, young lady?”
Daddy’s voice would carry all the way up to Rory’s bed on the third floor, where she lay awake, wondering where on earth Carleen had been, what she could possibly have been up to, out at this hour.
“I don’t have to listen to you.”
Rory blinks, realizing the words have come from Molly, not Carleen. But it could have been her older sister speaking. Molly sounds like her, looks like her, acts like her.
“Look, you just can’t do things like this, Molly,” Rory says, trying to be reasonable. “You can’t stay out by yourself in the wee hours—”
“I wasn’t by myself.”
“Great,” Rory says flatly. “Who were you with?”
“Just . . . someone.”
“A boy,” Rory says, shaking her head. “You were with a boy, weren’t you? Molly, you’re going to get yourself into trouble just like— God, why don’t you stop to look at yourself, to think about what you’re doing?”
“What makes you think I don’t know what I’m doing? You have no right to—”
“I have every right!”
“You’re not my mother.”
“No, but you need one desperately,” Rory retorts, then bites down on her tongue.
Don’t lose your cool. Don’t fly off the handle. Don’t say anything you’ll regret. You can’t slip. You can’t let her know. You promised.
“Molly,” she says after a moment, keeping her voice level, “why don’t we talk about it? Why don’t you tell me where you were, what you were doing? I can give you advice—”
Molly rolls her eyes. “I don’t need your advice. I can take care of myself.”
“No, you can’t. You’re too young to run around with boys, letting them take advantage of you. You need to be careful!”
“That’s bullshit.”
“Watch your mouth!”
“Why should I? I can say whatever I want. I can do whatever I want, and you can’t stop me.”
“God, Molly, what are you trying to do to yourself? You’re going to ruin your life the way your mother ruined hers!”
The moment the words spill from her mouth, Rory realizes what she’s done. Oh, Christ. She gasps and claps a hand over her lips, hoping Molly didn’t catch what she said.
But her sister is staring at her through those eyes that are clumsily rimmed with too much makeup. “My mother?” Molly echoes.
“Mom,” Rory says quickly. “I’m talking about Mom.”
“No, you aren’t.”
“Of course I am.”
“No. Oh, my God.” Molly’s voice is an octave higher, a little-girl wail that makes Rory cringe, makes her sick with regret.
“Molly—”
“You’re not my sister, are you?”
“Molly—”
“And she wasn’t, either.” She flings a careless hand at the framed photo of Carleen that hangs above the stairway landing. “She was my mother, wasn’t she? And you’re my aunt.”
Rory can’t swallow over the miserable lump in her throat, can’t speak, can’t even meet Molly’s questioning gaze. All she can do is nod.
I’m sorry, Carleen. God, I’m so sorry. I promised you I’d never tell a soul. I promised Daddy, and Mom.
“Why didn’t anyone ever tell me?” Molly’s voice is barely a whisper. “Why didn’t Kevin tell me? He could have—he should have—if anyone would, Kevin should have.”
“He couldn’t,” Rory manages to say. “We both promised.”
“You promised who?”
“Mom and Daddy. And Carleen. We swore we would never say a word.”
Molly is silent, one fist clutched against her mouth. Rory can see that she’s trembling all over.
I should go to her. I should put my arms around her.
But she intuitively knows that if she does, Molly will freeze up or flee. Right now, she’s talking; she’s listening.
I have to keep her here. I can’t let her take off without knowing the truth. I owe her an explanation, Rory tells herself. She needs to know what happened, and why.
“Carleen was so young when she got pregnant,” she says softly, watching Molly. “Only thirteen. As old as you are now. But she was already so wild. Running around with kids who were much older, getting into trouble. She never told Mom and Daddy, but somebody—I guess it was Daddy—found a pregnancy kit in the trash. Carleen admitted it. She said she wanted an abortion, but Mom—well, you know. Mom’s so religious.”
She hears a strangled sound—a sob wrenched from Molly’s throat.
“She didn’t even want to have me?” Molly asks, her head bent, shoulders quaking.
“She was only thirteen, Molly,” Rory says, wanting her to understand, somehow—to forgive Carleen.
Even though I never did, Rory realizes with sudden clarity. I never forgave her for getting pregnant, for what it did to Mom, and Daddy—to all of us. We all suffered. We were all burdened with this horrible sense of shame, this dirty secret.
And maybe I blame Molly for being born, for destroying our family. Maybe I didn’t slip when I told her the truth just now. Maybe I subconsciously wanted to do it on purpose, to hurt her.
Oh, my God, what kind of person am I?
“Tell me,” Molly prods, refusing to look at Rory.
So she does, carefully keeping the bitterness from her voice as she says, “Carleen was always Mom’s favorite.”
No need to drag her own age-old resentment into this. No need to let Molly know how much it had always stung, knowing her mother loved her sister so much more. Or how she’d maybe felt a slight, fleeting satisfaction that Carleen had screwed up so royally. That was when she’d naively harbored a secret hope that she could replace her sister in her mother’s affections. Too soon, she’d realized that Mom would be even more distant, and not just from her. From all of them.
One more thing to blame on Carleen.
And Molly.
Oh, God. What have I done? She’s just a kid. She doesn’t deserve this. And it’s not her fault.
“Rory!” Molly prods.
“Sorry. I’ll tell you. It’s just . . . hard.”
Molly just looks at her.
Rory clears her throat. “When Mom found out what Carleen had done, she was devastated. She took it personally, like Carleen deliberately betrayed her morals to hurt Mom. She insisted that Carleen go through with it and have the baby—”
“Me.”
“Right,” Rory says reluctantly.
The baby is so much more impersonal. As if it will allow Molly to somehow separate her very existence from what had ultimately been such a devastating tragedy for their family.
“Mom and Daddy agreed that no one could know about it. This is such a small, gossipy town—they were so worried about what people would say—well, mostly Mom. She was worried. Daddy didn’t really give a damn about things like that. But he wanted to get the hell out of here, and if you ask me, Carleen’s pregnancy was the one chance he ever had to make Mom leave. So he took a sabbatical, like he always wanted to do. Mom didn’t argue. How could she? We went to California.”
“I was born there.”
Rory nods. “You knew that, didn’t you?”
“Of course I knew that. I just never knew Mom wasn’t the one who gave birth to me.”
“Molly, I know this is all so overwhelming—but try to understand that we all did what we had to do. Mom and Daddy, and Carleen—even me and Kevin. We all did what we thought was best. Mom and Daddy figured that if they pretended you were theirs, it would make life more bearable for everyone involved.”
She pauses, fully expecting another outburst from Molly, but there’s only silence.
She sees that her sister is still shaking, though—shaking all over, as though struggling to maintain her composure.
Fighting against the urge to touch her, knowing it will only alienate her, Rory takes a deep breath and goes on. “It was so awful in California. Carleen was sick the whole time, and miserable, and she wasn’t herself. She totally withdrew from the rest of us, and she didn’t make friends. Mom spent all her time in church, or praying. And Daddy was busy with his teaching position. Once in a while, he’d take me and Kevin someplace—we went to Disneyland, and we used to go to the beach sometimes.”
She thinks back on those hazy, long-ago California days, remembering how uncharacteristically subdued her father had been. He was finally out in the world, finally able to see some of the places he’d researched and taught, and he couldn’t enjoy it. He was burdened with a pregnant thirteen-year-old and a wife who was rapidly lapsing into the mental illness she’d always managed to hold at bay.
That, for Rory, had always been one of the most lamentable aspects of the whole damn tragedy. That her father’s fate was sealed in those grim months on the West Coast. He was so obviously trapped, destined to live the rest of his life fulfilling his obligation to his wife, to his children.
She closes her eyes briefly and sees him standing absolutely still on some Pacific beach, at the very edge of the water, looking out at the horizon.
Did he sense, even then, that he would die young? Did he realize that he would never be free, that his dreams would never come true?
“What about my father?” Molly asks.
And for a moment, Rory almost thinks Molly’s reading her thoughts. That she’s asking about Patrick Connolly, and his shattered life.
Then she realizes what her sister is asking, and she’s forced to burden her with yet another bleak reality of the past.
“We never knew who he was,” Rory says quietly. “Carleen wouldn’t tell us. Mom never pushed her to—she never wanted to know. But Daddy—he was furious about it for a long time. He used to demand the guy’s name, saying he was going to beat the hell out of him. As if that would make Carleen want to tell,” she adds with an acrid laugh.
“So nobody knows who my father is, then?” Molly asks in a small voice. “And there’s . . . there’s no way to find out?”
Rory shakes her head. “We never even knew whether he knew she was pregnant. Probably not. I wonder sometimes if Carleen would have told us about him eventually, if she hadn’t . . . disappeared.”
How close she had been to saying died.
But she never voices that likelihood to anyone, and she’s not going to start now. As long as what happened to Carleen remains a mystery, there’s hope, however slim, that she’s still alive someplace.
And that’s why I can’t talk to Barrett Maitland, Rory reminds herself. Because if he starts prying into the mystery after all these years, he might solve it. He might find out that Carleen and the others were murdered.
But isn’t it better to know?
No, she answers her own question. It isn’t better. How can it be better to find out someone you loved so much is dead?
She realizes tears are trickling from her eyes, and she wipes at her cheeks with the back of her hand.
Molly is staring off into space, that fist still pressed against her mouth, her skinny legs and arms still visibly trembling.
“Are you all right, Molly?” Instinctively, she reaches out and touches her sister’s shoulder, knowing even as she does that it’s a mistake.
Molly shrinks back under her touch, flinching as though Rory’s hand is a hot brand.
“Just . . . leave me alone!” she bites out, and then she’s on her way up the stairs, hurling herself toward the second floor so quickly, so blindly that she nearly crashes into the figure standing on the landing.
Rory gasps.
Her mother is standing there, wearing the flannel nightgown she insisted Rory put on her earlier. Her gray hair is disheveled, but for once, she doesn’t appear the least disoriented. She steps back slightly as Molly pushes by her and disappears around the corner.
“Mom?”
Rory’s gaze locks on her mother’s as Molly’s bedroom door bangs shut above. Maybe she just came down now. Maybe she didn’t hear a word of what she and Molly were talking about, or if she did, maybe she didn’t comprehend.
But those bottle-green eyes aren’t blank, as they had been when she’d caught Maura earlier in her wedding gown. Now they’re piercing and angry, boring into Rory’s consciousness and filling her with the sick, guilty awareness that she has broken a sacred promise made s
o many years ago.
“I’m sorry, Mom,” Rory says, putting a foot on the stairs, prepared to go to her mother, to explain what happened. “I didn’t mean to tell her, but—”
Without a word, her mother turns and swiftly goes back upstairs, her door echoing Molly’s moments earlier.
Wearily, Rory sinks down on the bottom step and buries her head in her hands, longing for someone to share this oppressive burden.
If only Kevin were here.
If only Daddy had lived . . .
I’m so alone. So totally alone.
As the stark truth settles over Rory, she fights the almost overpowering urge to just get up and walk away. Leave, like she had before, when she was younger and filled with restless longing, and didn’t give a damn about anything but herself.
How many times did Daddy feel this way? she wonders desolately. How many times was he tempted to turn his back on this whole messed-up family and just get the hell out of here?
But he never did.
And I can’t, either.
She takes a deep breath, lets it out slowly, and gingerly rises to her feet, making her way slowly up the stairs to bed.
CHAPTER SIX
Seated in a lawn chair in a skimpy patch of shade beneath a tall lilac shrub, Michelle carefully tears out the magazine page containing the potty-training article, which she’s finally just finished reading. One of the author’s tips is not to start training a toddler just before or after a new sibling’s birth.
“Guess what? You get to keep wearing those diapers a while longer, kiddo,” she says to Ozzie as she begins folding the page accordion-style.
“Diapers?” Ozzie looks up from the patch of dirt where he’s busily digging with his little plastic shovel, in search of pirate treasure, just like the little boy in the bedtime story she’d read him a few nights ago.
She’d planned to take him out to the beach at the Curl this afternoon since Lou is working, but she just doesn’t have the energy. Of course, once Ozzie found out he wouldn’t be able to dig in the sand as she’d promised, he’d thrown a major tantrum.
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