All the Way Home (2 page)

But when she lost first Carleen, and then Daddy, she went off the deep end again, this time for good. Her eyes had gradually grown vacant; her body weak and frail; her voice listless; her mind, apparently, ultimately retreating to some distant place.

Rory had realized it was happening, of course. She would have to be blind not to notice her mother’s withdrawal from the world.

But she was away at college by then—way out in California, as far from Lake Charlotte as she could get. And she rarely came home once she left, unable—or maybe just unwilling—to face the echoing emptiness in the big old house on Hayes Street, and the three people who lived there still, amidst the memories.

Just Mom, and Kevin, and Molly, who had just turned three when Carleen vanished, and who couldn’t possibly remember her sister very well, or Daddy, either, even though she liked to claim that she could.

There had been a time when Molly, as a preschooler, had insisted on calling Kevin “Daddy.” She wouldn’t stop for a year or two, though he corrected her repeatedly.

Well, Kevin
has
been a father to Molly, Rory reminds herself. The only real parent Molly has known, with Mom the way she is.

And now Kevin, who has just graduated from the Albany college he attended as a commuter student, is leaving to spend the summer in Europe.

Which is why Rory has come home at last.

Because Molly, at thirteen, is too young to take care of herself full time.

And Mom . . .

Well, Mom needs to be taken care of, too.

“She leaves the stove burners on, Rory,” Kevin is saying, as he toys with the strap of his conspicuously new carryon duffel bag. “So be sure that you check the stove every night before you go to bed. She makes tea, and then she forgets.”

“I’ll check them.” She doesn’t mention that this is the third time he warned her about Mom and the burners.

“And she’ll want to wear a sweater every day, even when it’s ninety degrees out. Don’t let her. She’ll pass out from heat exhaustion, like last summer
.
I put most of her sweaters—”

“I know. In the black trunk in the attic.”

“But she might find them. She’s always up there lately, poking around. God knows why. Anyway, the trunk is locked. The key is—”

“In the drawer above the bread bin in the pantry.”

“Sorry.” He flashes a tight smile. “I can’t remember what I’ve told you and what I haven’t. There’s so much you have to worry about, between Mom and Molly . . .”

Rory nods. Molly, with her dark curls and flashing blue eyes, has reportedly been a handful lately.

“I just worry, Rory,” Kevin says, inhaling deeply, then puffing his cheeks and letting the air out audibly, rocking back on his heels.

“Don’t worry. I’ll take care of everything. Please don’t worry.”

It’s my turn
, Rory adds silently, as guilt once again creeps over her. How could she have turned her back on the three of them for so many years? How could she have left Kevin, barely an adult even now, to cope alone?

Simple.

She just hasn’t allowed herself to look back. Hasn’t allowed the painful memories to haunt her. And the more time that passed, the easier it was to forget about the sister and father and best friend she had lost—and the family she’d basically abandoned.

Meanwhile, she had gotten her art degree from Berkeley, then wandered the country for a couple of years, footloose and unfettered, as though she hadn’t a care in the world. She worked as a ski instructor in Colorado one winter and sold insurance in Texas the following spring. She wandered north to New York and was a temp secretary on Wall Street until she grew tired of the corporate world and urban life and returned to the West Coast, becoming an artist’s model in Santa Cruz.

She never cut herself off completely from her family, of course. She called home every couple of weeks or sometimes every other month, checking in, telling them where she could be reached—just in case.

What?

In case something happened to Mom? Or Molly? Or Kevin?

In case one of them fell off the face of the earth, the way Carleen and Emily had, or dropped dead, as Daddy had?

She had been living in Miami this winter when Kevin tracked her down, told her about the summer trip he wanted to take
.

“I’ve been seeing this girl, Katherine, all year,” he told Rory, “and she’s spending the summer backpacking across Europe. She wants me to come with her—”

“Oh, wow, you’ve
got
to go!” Rory burst out enthusiastically
.
“I did that between my junior and senior years, remember? I almost didn’t come back to the States
.
It was incredible
.
You’d better be going, Kev.”

Silence.

And then it had dawned on her,
why
he was calling her.

Because he wouldn’t be able to go if she didn’t come home to take care of Mom and Molly.

And so, here she is.

She’s home for the summer.

In Lake Charlotte, where people still talk about the long-ago summer when four teenaged girls mysteriously vanished and were never heard from again.

“Y
ou grew your hair.”

Rory looks up at her mother, who’s sitting across the table, watching her.

Unnerved by the sudden steady gaze from those familiar green eyes the exact shade of her own, Rory isn’t sure what to say. Her shoulder-length auburn hair is shorter, actually, than she’d worn it all winter in Miami, when she would pull it into a thick braid and let it dangle down her back. Then again, it’s longer than the boyish bob she’d worn for a year or so a while back, which, come to think of it, might very well have been the last time she had seen her mother.

Maura is toying with the heavy silver cross hanging from a chain around her neck as she watches Rory. She’s always worn that cross, Rory recalls. She once said it was a confirmation gift from her own mother. When Carleen, and then Rory, made their confirmations, Maura had bought them similar crosses. Rory remembers wearing it just once, until someone said, “Hey, what’re you, a nun all of a sudden?” After that, Rory had put it away in the bottom drawer of her dresser and hoped her mother would never mention it.

She hadn’t.

“Why did you grow it?” her mother wants to know, still looking at her head.

“I just . . . I like long hair.”

Her mother’s hand flies to her own shorn gray locks. Kevin said he takes her to the beautician every six weeks to have it trimmed in this easy-care style, reminding Rory not to miss the next appointment.

When Rory was growing up, Maura Connolly’s thick, glossy black hair had hung down to her waist. Most of the time she wore it loose, but sometimes, on hot summer days, she coiled it at the back of her neck in some intricate twist that deceptively required only a few pins. Rory would sit on the big queen-sized bed upstairs and watch her, marveling at her mother’s expert movements at the back of her head that didn’t allow a single tuft of hair to escape, even though she couldn’t see what she was doing.

‘‘Do mine now, Mommy,” she would beg, and her mother would smile and pretend to tame her daughter’s wild, flaming locks into some semblance of her own hairstyle.

And though Daddy would make a point of commenting on her “grown-up ’do,” Rory would know she looked nothing like her mother, or Carleen. They both had that exquisite ebony-and-ivory coloring; dark, dark hair and pale, flawless skin.

But Rory had inherited her father’s red hair and freckles. Not even silky, soft red hair, but wiry, unruly curls that tangled past her neck and refused to lie flat against her scalp.

“Molly?” her mother suddenly says, turning her head and looking over her shoulder, toward the screen door at the other end of the kitchen
.
“Where’s Molly?”

“She’s baby-sitting next door, Mom. Remember?”

“Kevin?”

“He’s not here, Mom,” she says patiently.

She thinks about how she’d hugged her kid brother that last time at the airport, wishing they’d had more time together, thinking that maybe she’ll stick around awhile after he comes home in September.

“Go ahead, Rory,” he’d said gruffly, squirming as though he wasn’t used to hugs. “Get out of here. Your parking meter is going to expire.”

“Don’t you want me to wait until you get on the plane so I can see you off?” she’d asked, only half teasingly.

“Nah,” he’d said with a casual wave of his hand, and she wondered whether he was worried she’d make some big emotional scene telling him good-bye, or whether he was afraid he’d change his own mind about leaving.

‘‘Kevin’s in Europe for the summer, Mom,” Rory says now. “Remember?”

Her mother nods, but her eyes are blank.

Rory takes a bite of the salad she made for their dinner, noticing her mother’s still-heaping plate.

“Eat, Mom,” she says.

“It’s too hot to eat.” The words are expressionless.

“That’s why I made just a salad. It’s light, and it’s healthy. You love salad,” Rory adds, then wonders why on earth she would say such a thing. She has no idea whether her mother loves salad; has no idea what her mother likes to eat.

Maura never was much of a cook. Occasionally, she’d surprise the rest of them and whip up something that actually looked and tasted good. Like the loaf of Irish soda bread she made one St. Patrick’s Day, or the pots of vegetable soup she’d concoct when the summer garden yielded more tomatoes and beans and zucchini than they knew what to do with.

But most of the time, she boiled hot dogs and served spaghetti made with sauce from a jar and, when all else failed, which was several times a week, ordered pizza.

No one seemed to mind.

“So, Mom,” Rory says brightly, looking around the kitchen so she won’t have to gaze into that disconcerting emptiness any longer. “I was thinking that we should fix the house up a little while I’m here.”

No reply.

But her mother does take a bite of her salad, putting it gingerly into her mouth and setting her fork down again while she chews. Her movements are slow, mechanical.

“We can take down that wallpaper,” Rory goes on, gesturing at the faded ivy pattern covering the kitchen walls, “and put up something new
.
Or maybe just paint everything white
.
Brighten it up a little. What do you think?”

No reply.

Rory points to the window above the scarred old porcelain sink. “We can get some pretty curtains to hang there,” she suggests, wondering what ever happened to the white priscillas with red rickrack trim that used to be there. “And the cabinets are so dark—maybe we can strip that stain, or paint them. The pantry cupboards, too.”

She glances at the narrow galley space adjoining the kitchen, its three walls lined with glass-fronted storage space above rows of drawers below. It would be nice, she thinks, if the cupboards were painted white and if, beyond the glass, you saw pretty china or sparkling glassware instead of the jumble of canned goods and cereal boxes stored there now.

This place has so much potential,
Rory thinks wistfully, noting the elaborate crown moldings and hardwood floors and high ceilings.

But no one has ever bothered to do anything with the sprawling Victorian. Not the previous owners, and certainly not Daddy and Mom. He was the
least
handy person on the planet, and Mom was the least creative
.
They had simply bought the place when Mom was pregnant with Rory, realizing they’d outgrown their one-bedroom apartment over Talucci’s Pizza Parlor, and they’d moved in.

And that was that.

Growing up here, Rory had never appreciated the house as anything more than a roof over her head, a place where she had her own room, a big yard to play in, and, at the back of the property, the vast bank of woods that eventually led down to the lake.

Only now does she realize that this must once have been a grand home, set far back on a sloping, shady, brick-paved street above the downtown district. These days, the more upscale citizens of Lake Charlotte live in the new network of cul-de-sacs west of town, a development called Green Haven Glen. But before the turn of the century, Hayes Street had been one of the most fashionable addresses in town.

The other houses on the block are similar to this one—gingerbread monstrosities displaying architectural quirks typical of the previous century: turrets and cupolas and wraparound verandas. Most of them, like this one, are surrounded by tall black iron fences and shaded by vast, spreading trees, their stone foundations and latticework obscured by old-fashioned blooming shrubs and perennials—lilacs, hydrangeas, peonies, lilies, irises.

And most of them,
unlike
this one, have been painstakingly restored in the years since Rory left home. Now that nearby Saratoga Springs has once again become a popular resort town, the once-depressed local economy has slowly bounced back, and it shows.