CHAPTER 33 - Molly

CHAPTER 33MollyALICE AND I SIT ON THE SOFA THAT FACES THE BACKYARD TOWARD the mountains. Several sheriff’s deputies are trudging through the snow, back and forth.“What do they think they’ll find out there?” Alice asks, standing, hands on her hips.I’d told her about the necklace and that the detectives think it belonged to a local woman who disappeared last summer.“I don’t know.”“They’re making a mess,” she says, and she’s right. When we first got here, the view was like a postcard. Mountains in the background, beyond our pristine snow-covered lawn that runs downhill until meeting a stand of pine trees, where the river lies. “It was so pretty,” Alice says. “So white and still. Can we go out and take a walk before they mess it all up?”I glance toward the staircase and don’t hear the detectives.“Sure. Sadie probably could use a walk anyway.”We put our coats on. Alice pulls her red hat firmly over her ears, and we head out and around the house.“Let’s take the path to the river,” I say. That way we can avoid the deputies, who seem to be concentrated closer to the house. But before we can set off, a deputy waves me over to where he stands halfway down the sloping lawn. I trudge through the snow to reach him while Alice and Sadie wait for me by the path.“Where do these doors go to, Mrs. Bradley?” He’s pointing to metal double doors that are recessed into the side of the slope. You can’t see them from the house.I shove my hands deep into my pockets. “The basement.” The first time Jay brought me to the mountain house, he was eager to show me around. He asked if I was okay to go down into the basement, and I’d said, of course. I wanted to be like everyone else, be the normal woman I thought Jay deserved, so with my arm through his, we descended the wooden staircase. But when that moist, fetid air hit me, I went into a full-blown panic attack, and Jay whisked me back upstairs. I was humiliated, but Jay simply dried my tears and held me in his arms until I stopped shaking. I haven’t been down there since.“Are they locked?”“They should be. The keys are in the house if you really need to get in there.”“I’ll let the sheriff know.” He nods and walks back toward the deputies.Alice and I head off through the pines and down the path. The snow’s only about three inches deep, so it’s not too hard to navigate. Sadie takes the lead, tilting her head in the pine-scented air periodically and pulling in deep breaths. I’m cold, but this is a good diversion. We can hear the voices of the deputies, growing distant now, as we make our way through the woods along the winding path.The sound of the river reaches us sooner than it does in summer. It’s running faster too, as if in a hurry to get to the bottom of the mountain. And the leaves that would muffle its sound are, of course, dead and buried under the snow. We see it sooner as well through the barren trees.“I picked wildflowers down here, remember?” Alice says.I smile. “You put them in a vase on the kitchen table, and Laken had a sneezing fit.”We both laugh. “And then my dad got mad because I’d been down here by myself.”“He was afraid you’d fall in, Alice. It’s a pretty deep river, and there are waterfalls not far from here.”“He worries about everything.”“You’re his whole world, you know.”“Yeah. I know. But I’m nearly twelve. He’s got to let up on me sometime.”We stand still and listen to the water rushing by, carrying a chilly breeze with it. My nose and cheeks tingle. The path has wound back closer to the house. This bend in the river isn’t far from the end of the lawn. We can hear the deputies’ voices again.“Maybe we should head back. You cold?”She shrugs. “A little. Can we walk on the bridge first?”There’s a little footbridge that allows access to the other side of the river. “Then we’ll go back, okay?”Alice nods, and we walk slowly, as the bridge is icy, and stop at the halfway point. The gray water rushes beneath us.“There’s something over there.” Alice points at what looks like a branch sticking awkwardly out of the bank on the other side of the river.We step carefully across the bridge, Sadie trying to pull ahead, and I have to use both hands on her leash to hold her back. But as we get nearer, the stray branch comes into focus. Sadie is barking now, her hackles raised and quivering. Alice grabs me around the waist and buries her head in my shoulder.It’s not a branch. It’s an arm.