CHAPTER 38 - Molly

CHAPTER 38MollyWHEN I WAKE UP, IT’S NEARLY ELEVEN A.M. HAYES DROVE ME HOME last night and sat up with me until midnight. We shared a bottle of pinot noir and talked about books and movies, our favorite topics during normal times, while Alice watched a documentary on the rain forest on TV. Finally, I felt sleepy, like a child who’d cried herself out, and they went home.The afternoon is gray, with thick winter clouds, but no snow other than what’s already on the ground. I plug in the Christmas tree, and the white lights and colorful ornaments twinkle. I really should take it down, but I can’t. Not yet. It’ll seem like another way of putting Jay away, wrapping him up and moving on.My doorbell chimes, and I rush to my laptop to check the camera. Kim. Shit. I haven’t seen her since before I discovered Josh and Laken at the spa. We’ve spoken a few times on the phone, but I made the conversations short.We sit in the kitchen after hugs at the door. She seems okay. Josh must not have told her yet. Damn him.“I wanted to make sure you were all right after what happened at the mountain house,” Kim says.“I’m fine. I feel sorry for Alice, though. She was pretty shaken up. I never would’ve taken her with me if I’d thought anything like that would’ve happened.” I take a deep breath.“It’s not your fault. How could you have possibly known that missing woman would be found on your property?”I shake my head. “It’s all been a nightmare, Kim. I just want it to stop.” I try to smile at her. “Josh told me you’re pregnant.”Her face flushes. “He did?” She lets go an irritated breath. “I wanted to tell you, eventually.”“I’m happy for you, really.”“Well, nothing other than the baby has turned out right lately.”“That’s not your fault. Have you told Willow?”“Not yet. We wanted to wait until I’m further along after what happened last time.”I think back to Willow’s birth, seeing her through the glass in the NICU. She was in an incubator, covered in tubes, her eyes shielded with a cloth mask. It was painful to see her so little, fighting for her life. “Is everything all right so far?” I ask.Kim nods. “My doctor says all is well, so hopefully I’ll carry to term this time.”Anger starts to bubble up in my chest when I think about Josh and Laken. I push it down as best I can. Not the time and not for me to tell. But I have no compunction about putting pressure on Josh, just as Jay was doing before he died.“When are you due?”“The end of June.”“Well, that’s something good to look forward to,” I say, and squeeze her hand. “We need something good to happen.”“Thanks, Molly. I’m just sorry for the timing.”I shrug. “Life happens. I’ll be okay.”We talk about mindless things, school, the bookstore. Things that seemed so important a few weeks ago. It’s nice to talk to my friend and pretend for a little while that everything is normal.Kim checks her phone. It’s getting toward dinnertime. I stand on the porch and wave as she starts her car. Just after she pulls away from the curb, a dark sedan slides to a stop in front of the house. A man with a backpack gets out. Is it the same guy from the bookstore? I head inside, slam the door quickly, and shoot the dead bolt.Sadie and I hide in the laundry room, computer on my lap. I watch the man stride up the walkway. I peer closely at the black-and-white screen. I can’t tell if it’s the same man. Don’t know if he’s a reporter. But now that a body has been found on our property, they will come. People seeking me out by any means necessary. The coverage will escalate. There’s a sensational story here. Murdered psychologist. A missing woman found dead and some connection between them.I hold my breath as I watch him lean on the doorbell. My phone rings, and I pick it up without taking my eyes off my laptop.“Molly?”“Mom, hi.”“Are you all right?”“Yes. Fine.” The man looks like he’s giving up. I watch him turn and head down the porch steps. I strain to see if he has a phone in his hand. Will he try to call me? Is he the one who’s harassing me, or is he just a reporter looking for a story?“Molly?”“What?”“Do you want Dad and me to come over?” I hear please say no in her voice.“I’m okay, really.” I can just see the man’s car at the curb. He’s pulling away. I draw a deep breath. “I’m keeping busy around the house today. Maybe tomorrow would be better.”We say our goodbyes, and I heave a sigh of relief.My parents have been their usual perplexed selves. Mom calls daily to “check on me,” but they rely on Corrine to do the heavy lifting. That’s been their way from the start. Why not leverage that much older sibling, especially when the youngest wasn’t planned? When I was little, not long after we’d moved to Graybridge, my mother’s aunts came for a visit, and I heard my Aunt Ellen tell our neighbor that I’d been an oops baby. I thought that meant I was clumsy, which my mother was always saying was the case. But then I asked Corrine, and she told me I hadn’t been expected, whatever that meant. It was only years later that I realized why there was such a gap between me and Corrine and what the expression really meant.My dad is an accountant and mom a math professor. Their lives were planned and ordered, and having me had been an aberration. Something they never quite figured out. Mom was working on her doctorate that fateful summer. She was up at the college when she entrusted me to our neighbor, Mrs. Arndt, on the day that would change all our lives. I’d been missing for hours before she got home and found out. I’ve never been able to quite rid myself of the feeling that I’d let them all down, ruined their lives. No one ever said that, of course, but people don’t have to say everything for you to feel it.And now, just when they were comfortable that I’d married a man who would keep me from sinking back into the abyss, everything has gone to hell again, and I’m right in the center of it, dragging them down with me.* * *I need to take Sadie for her evening walk, so I check my camera feeds, look out the windows to make sure there’s no one around. The coast looks clear, and since it’s almost dark, I need to get going.Sadie walks obediently at my side as we head down the sidewalk. I fidget with my phone, nestled in my coat pocket, fearful the man will call again. My gaze lands on every shrub, every tree, every place someone could possibly hide. I glance over my shoulder periodically. I’ve got to stay vigilant. I wonder why he’s bothering me. What could he possibly want?Sadie and I cross the street and head home. Snow starts to fall, and I try to concentrate on the white flakes falling through the light of the lampposts. I love snow. I love how it deadens sound and covers up all the gray. It’s the opposite of the oppressive summer sun that burns and smothers.I stop at our mailbox before going in and grab a handful of envelopes and sales flyers and tuck the bundle under my arm.Inside, I fill Sadie’s bowl and refresh her water. The mail lies splayed on the countertop, and I weed through it. An envelope catches my eye. The return address is marked OSSINING, NEW YORK. SING SING CORRECTIONAL FACILITY. My heart feels like it’s going to beat out of my chest. The letter is addressed to Dr. Jay Bradley.I sink into a kitchen chair and tear it open.I’m trembling. I can’t breathe. Sadie whimpers as she nudges me with her nose. This can’t be real. It can’t be right. I drop the letter as though it’s on fire. I don’t want to touch anything that he touched. Why can’t this ever be over? How can he still, all these years later, intrude on my life?Then it dawns on me. Jay had written to him. That can’t be. Even if he wanted to interview prisoners for his book. Why would he reach out to Keith Russell? How could he do that to me?I pace through the house, wrapping my arms around my stomach to try to still my shaking, but I can’t.* * *When I couldn’t settle down, I called Corrine, and she came over.“What’s going on, Molly?” she asks. I hadn’t told her anything on the phone, just that I needed her.I drop the letter in front of her. She reads quickly. “Oh my God.” Her eyes meet mine. “Why would Jay want to talk to Keith Russell?” She spits out his name like it’s poison. “Couldn’t he find enough demented killers for his fucking book without talking to that asshole?”I shake my head. How could my husband have betrayed me this way? “What if . . .” I can’t bring myself to meet Corrine’s gaze, and my breath catches in my throat as I try to speak. “What if Jay only wanted to marry me because of who I am? Maybe I was just an interesting study for him. Maybe he just wanted to write a book about me and my sorry life . . .”Corrine wraps me in her arms. “No. Molly. Jay loved you. He just made a huge mistake. Huge. But he loved you.”I cry in her arms, and she cries too. I agree to go back to her place for the night. Somehow my house has lost its luster, so Sadie and I pack up and leave.On the drive, I tell Corrine about the phone calls I’ve gotten.“Why didn’t you tell me before?”“They’re just crank calls, don’t you think?” I don’t want her to think I’m paranoid, hysterical.She slams her hand on the steering wheel. “After all this time? I don’t like it, Moll. Why now, all these years later?”“I don’t know.” I lean my head against the passenger window, pick at my sleeve.Corrine drives quickly, making sharp turns until we get on the highway headed downtown. She cruises along in the fast lane, her brow furled.“We’re going to the police station tomorrow morning and telling Detective Myers about those phone calls,” she says.“I’ll have to tell her about me, Corrine.”“Well, you’ll just have to. It’s not like she’s going to tell anybody or call the newspaper. Maybe they can find out who’s harassing you and why. Maybe they can talk to somebody at the prison. Check that that bastard isn’t causing any trouble.”I’ve always been haunted by the possibility. Could he still hurt me somehow? Would a prison cell really hold him?By the time we reach the apartment, it’s snowing again, not the big fluffy flakes that have fallen lately, but small, hard pellets. I curl up on the guest room bed and listen to the sleet ping against the window. Too much has happened in recent days for me to process, one disaster after another, and I’m too weak, too beaten down to keep the nightmares at bay. Despite my best efforts, my mind goes back to that day.On July third, a day after my sixth birthday, the sun blazed unimpeded in a blue sky. I was playing in the neighbors’ backyard with their four-year-old, Indie. Short for India. She was a little young for me, but we were the only two kids in the neighborhood under ten, so we made the best of it. Her mom was watching us or was supposed to be. She’d walk out on the patio every so often, but quickly retreat into the house to watch her soaps and sip vodka from a coffee cup.My mom was at the college, working on a paper in the media center before it closed for the holiday. Corrine had gone to the mall with a friend, and my dad was at work, so I was left with the neighbors.Summers in upstate New York can be cool or mercilessly hot. That summer was the latter. So hot your hair stuck to your neck where sweat bees menacingly buzzed by your ears, where your skin sizzled if you forgot your sunscreen. Indie and I had been on the swing set, pumping our plump legs and soaring to the metallic music of the chains as we swung back and forth. Tiring of that, we moved to the back of the yard, where a faded plastic playhouse sat among tall weeds that Indie’s dad’s mower couldn’t reach. Something my mother often grumbled about. “He needs to get in there with a weed whacker,” she’d say. “He’s drawing ticks.”Indie and I knew less than nothing about ticks and tromped through the thick overgrowth, picking the wildflowers that fought their way through the tangle of vegetation, looking for the sun. With a sticky handful of Queen Anne’s lace and blue daisies, I saw someone moving through the thin line of trees that ran behind the houses. At first, I stood still like a rabbit who’d spotted a hawk, but relaxed when he came from behind an oak tree.Keith Russell, Indie’s cousin from Poughkeepsie, was eighteen and was spending the summer with his aunt and uncle. He was really tall, or he seemed so to me at the time, and thin, with a bulging pointed Adam’s apple that bobbed when he talked. His hair was thick and brown and hung over his bushy eyebrows. His teeth were too big for his mouth, and shiny red spots covered his chin. But he was nice to me and Indie. He liked to play with us in the yard, pushing us on the swings or chasing us in a game of tag. When he’d catch us, he’d grab us from behind and lift us high in the air. It was strange that he was coming through the woods. I’d heard him tell his aunt that he was going to the movies when I showed up at their door earlier. Maybe he changed his mind, I thought, and we were glad to see him as we had run through all our usual routines and were looking for something to do. Keith beckoned to us from the trees, and we eagerly climbed through the hole in the chain-link fence.“Let’s go get ice cream,” he’d said, and led us through the woods to his car, which was parked on the next street. The lure of adventure and ice cream trumped all worry about running off without letting anybody know. And it was Keith. He must’ve told Indie’s mom.I remember everything clearly as we rode through the street in Keith’s rusted blue car, the windows rolled down and hot, dusty air blowing over us. He gave us each a warm bottle of orange soda, and we drank eagerly. He had the radio on, and the song that was playing is forever the backdrop of that fateful ride. A ride into a new life, something that could never be undone. But, at the time, I anticipated a strawberry sundae topped with lots of whipped cream. I remember looking back over my shoulder as the ice cream parlor faded into the distance.“You missed it, Keith,” Indie said. “It’s back there.” She’d stood up on tiptoe and was pointing. We were both crowded onto the passenger’s seat up front. He yanked her top to get her to sit back down but kept his eyes on the road.“Keith!” Indie shouted, her long dark hair sweaty and tangled.“I’ll turn around in a minute. Sit still. Drink your soda.” His voice had become strange, so we sat, our little thighs sticking together in the heat, and wondered what we’d done wrong. Obediently, we sipped our drinks, and the hot day began to grow woozy around me.I don’t want to tell this story to Detective Myers or to anyone else for that matter. But maybe she already knows. Maybe she’s already dug into my past. People do that. They pick and dig and peer into our most private lives as if it is their privilege to unearth our secrets.As always when I think of that day, I’m filled with anger. What right had Keith Russell to do this to me? What right did he have to destroy my life before it had barely started? Afterward, therapists had all pointed out that I was in control of my own life. How I responded and chose to live the rest of it was what was important. But I don’t think that’s entirely true. Like every other child who’s been the victim of an abuser, your life is different, altered, and there’s nothing you can do about that.* * *I finally grow drowsy, with Sadie stretched out on the floor next to me, where I can reach my hand down and touch her back, feel her even breathing.My phone vibrates on my pillow. Unknown caller. I want to kill the bastard.“Hello!”“Hello, Melinda Wright.”“What the fuck do you want from me?”Big raspy breath. “I’m the one who knows, and I won’t be happy until you’re back in that cellar for good.”