All the Way Home (15 page)

Wait till I tell Rebecca about this,
Molly thinks, then catches herself, remembering the fight she and Rebecca had.

She wonders if their friendship is over.

Well, so what if it is?
she thinks stubbornly. Rebecca’s been such a bore lately, it’ll be no great loss.

Besides, Molly can always make new friends
.

“So, who did you come with?” she asks Amanda, banishing her thoughts of Rebecca.

“Dana and Noelle and Lisa. They’re over there. Want to come and say hi?”

“I don’t know.” Molly scans the beach over by the campfire, looking for Ryan.

Amanda laughs and grabs her arm. “Don’t worry, he’ll find you. Come on.”

“Okay,” Molly says, and allows herself to be pulled over to the most popular girls in her class.

“H
ere, kitty, kitty,” Rebecca calls softly, standing in the middle of the deserted backyard. “Here, kitty, kitty.”

Where on earth is Sebastian? She hasn’t been able to sleep all night, knowing her kitten is outside wandering around. It wouldn’t be so bad if her mother hadn’t insisted that they have his claws removed so he wouldn’t shred the furniture. That left him virtually defenseless against whatever predators roam the woods.

Rebecca can’t stand thinking about what could happen to poor Sebastian out here alone. Now, it’s past one in the morning and she finally snuck downstairs to see if she can find him.

“Sebastian!” she hisses into the still night air. “Where are you?”

No telltale rustling in the woods.

This is all Molly’s fault, Rebecca thinks bitterly, creeping along the row of blooming peonies toward the dense patch of pachysandra near the Randalls’ yard, where Sebastian sometimes likes to hide.

If she didn’t make me so angry when she was here earlier, I never would have told her to get out. I would have been paying more attention to Sebastian, and he never would have gotten away when Molly opened the door.

She knows Molly’s sister Rory called earlier, looking for her. She heard her father answer the phone, and figured out what was going on by eavesdropping on his end of the conversation. She wanted to feel glad that Molly was going to find herself in trouble with her sister, but, instead, she was plagued by guilt, adding to her difficulty in falling asleep.

If she couldn’t go to the party with Molly, the least she could have done was offer to cover for her.

Then again, why should she?

What’s Molly done for me lately? Absolutely nothing, that’s what,
she thinks churlishly now.
And I’ve lost poor Sebastian because of her.

“Here, kitty, kitty . . .”

She prowls along at the edge of the pachysandra, listening for the kitten. Not a sound to stir the still night air.

It’s almost eerily quiet, Rebecca notices. There’s not even a slight breeze.

The calm before the storm,
she finds herself thinking, though she’s pretty sure there’s no rain in the forecast
.

“Here, kitty, kitty . . . Here, Sebastian . . .”

She stops at the rusted post marking the property line between the Wasners’ house and the Randalls’. Does she dare cross into the yard next door?

She glances up at the house; sees that it’s looming above her, dark and silent. Not that it would matter if the lights were on and Michelle or Lou were awake. They wouldn’t mind if she went into their yard looking for her cat.

But I mind,
Rebecca thinks nervously.
I’m too spooked to go over there in broad daylight, let alone in the dead of night.

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.

T
he 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.