All the Way Home (13 page)

“And besides that, I don’t want to stand around alone like some dork while you chase after Ryan.”

“I won’t leave you alone. I swear.”

“Oh, yeah? What if Ryan asks you to . . . I don’t know, go on some moonlit walk on the beach, just the two of you?”

Molly’s face lights up. “Do you think he will?”

“No,” Rebecca says flatly, hating herself for feeling a prickle of satisfaction when Molly’s hopeful expression instantly evaporates. She holds tight to Sebastian, who’s started squirming in her arms, and goes on, “But that’s not the point. The point is, you only want me to go because you want to use me. You don’t want to be with me.”

“Well, why
would
I?” Molly asks, her blue eyes flashing with sudden anger. “You’re about as much fun to be with as Sister Theodosia lately.”

Rebecca scowls at the comparison to the sour-tempered nun who occasionally visits Molly’s mother.

“You don’t know how to have fun anymore, Rebecca,” Molly goes on. “All you want to do is go to the library and play with your stupid cats.”

As if on cue, Sebastian writhes his way out of Rebecca’s grasp and leaps to the floor, landing gracefully on his feet. He meows loudly, looking meaningfully at the door.

“No, you can’t go out,” Rebecca tells him absently, and tries to think of something to say to Molly.

This is awful. They’ve had maybe three fights in the whole history of their friendship, and none were as serious as this. This time, Rebecca’s feeling as though they’re about to turn an important corner.

She knows that if she gives in and goes to the party with Molly, their friendship will be saved.

If she doesn’t, it might not be.

“My cats aren’t stupid,” she says lamely, still smarting from Molly’s comment.

“Yes, they are. And they smell, too.”

“They do not! Cats are the cleanest animals around.”

“No they aren’t. Pee-eeuuh.” Molly looks down at Sebastian and wrinkles her nose.

That does it.

“Get out of here,” Rebecca says, hands on her hips. “Just go to your stupid party and stop bugging me.”

“Gladly. It wouldn’t be any fun with you around whining, anyway.”

Molly tosses her dark curls, shoves open the door and stomps out onto the porch.

Naturally, Sebastian seizes the opportunity to dart out of the house.

“No . . . come back here!” Rebecca calls in frustration.

Molly pauses and turns around
.

Rebecca sees a glimmer of hope in her eyes—along with a smug expression that says,
I knew you’d change your mind
.

Rebecca’s temper ignites once again
.

“Not
you,
” she says coldly to Molly
.
“I was talking to the cat.”

She watches Molly march down the steps and along the walk, turning along the street toward home without a backward glance.

Sebastian, meanwhile, has disappeared into the bushes.

“Sebastian!” Rebecca calls, irritated. “Get back here, kitty. Come on, it’s almost dark out.”

Of course, the kitten doesn’t heed her warning
.
Why should Sebastian care if it’s almost dark?

Rebecca’s the one who minds that
.
She’s the one who doesn’t want to be alone in the house at night. Somehow, things seem a little less scary with the kitten scampering around.

After a few moments of waiting on the porch, she gives up on Sebastian and returns to the living room just as the mantel clock finishes striking the hour. The television set is on. When Molly showed up at the door, Rebecca had been watching the tail end of that
Parent Trap
remake on cable. Now it’s over, and the opening credits for some other movie are on the screen.

She watches for a minute, before she realizes it’s a sequel to that horror movie,
Scream
. She quickly moves toward the set to turn it off. Molly made her watch
Scream
last year when she was sleeping over one night, and Rebecca had had nightmares about a stalking serial killer for months afterward
.

Now, she stands in the suddenly silent living room, aware of the long shadows cast by the twilight falling outside
.
The only sound is the clock’s steady ticking on the mantel and the faint breathing of Ralphi, who is asleep on one end of the sofa.

Relax,
Rebecca tells herself.
Dad and Casey will be home any minute
.

But she knows that isn’t necessarily true. Her brother had had a seven-thirty Little League game that won’t be over yet, and, afterward, her father, who coaches the team, often takes everyone out to Talucci’s for pizza.

Maybe I should have gone with Molly,
Rebecca tells herself, walking across the living room and stopping in front of the lace-curtained bay window that overlooks the side yard and the Randalls’ house.

No, she shouldn’t have gone to the party. She can’t let Molly talk her into doing something she isn’t comfortable doing.

But now Molly’s mad at you,
Rebecca thinks.
You might have lost your best friend
.

She stares morosely into the shadowy yard, noticing that light spills reassuringly from most of the windows of the house next door.

The Randalls are obviously home. If Rebecca needs anything, she can just run over to get Michelle.

That scenario is so ridiculous that she frowns
.
What would possibly send her running
toward
the creepy house next door? If it weren’t for that place looming ominously nearby her whole life, she probably wouldn’t be such a nervous wreck all the time.

Has it always been this bad? Or is it just lately that she seems to have gotten more apprehensive?

Hard to tell.

With a sigh, Rebecca turns away from the window, grabs her library book about Laura Ingalls Wilder from the end table, and sits down next to the slumbering Ralphi.

“L
ou? Is that you?” Michelle calls, looking up from her copy of
Child
magazine, her heart lurching into a race as a footstep creaks in the hall outside the living room.

“Who else would it be?”

Michelle sighs with relief as her husband appears in the doorway. She’s been so jumpy all day for some reason. Now, when she should be relaxing, with Ozzie safely tucked into bed and the house silent and empty, she has found herself poised, listening, as though waiting for something to happen. For something to strike.

“What are you reading?” Lou asks, glancing at the magazine.

“An article about toilet training,” Michelle replies.

“What does it say?”

Actually, she has no idea. She’s read the opening paragraph over and over again ever since she sat down almost a half hour ago.

“Nothing I didn’t already know,” she tells Lou briefly. “How was your day?”

“Long. Exhausting.” His suit coat is slung over one arm, his navy-and-red striped tie loosened at the neck of his rumpled dress shirt. He looks weary, but handsome as always.

There are times when Michelle takes his looks for granted, other times when she glances up at her husband and finds herself captured not by his gorgeous face, but by the fact that he chose
her
.

Not that she’s so horrible-looking, when she isn’t bloated with nearly nine months worth of baby. Back when she and Lou were dating, or newly married, she had always been casual about her looks. She was naturally slender, with long, naturally wavy brown hair and pretty features that didn’t demand much makeup.

But once she’d had Ozzie, she’d been conscious of the fact that her figure was padded in places that had always been effortlessly lean, and there were circles under her eyes that didn’t seem to fade, even on the few nights when she got a full eight hours’ sleep.

And now, pregnant again, and more exhausted than ever, and feeling frumpy in her maternity wardrobe, she’s acutely aware that she and her husband appear woefully mismatched. Lou might be tired and rumpled, but there’s still something sharp and professional and put-together about him. There always has been.

Meanwhile, she’s sitting here with her painfully swollen ankles propped on a footstool, wearing this huge pink nightshirt with a dumb floppy bow at the neck in that cutesy maternity style.

“Is Ozzie asleep?” Lou asks, tossing his jacket over the back of a chair and jerking at the knot on his tie, pulling it off.

“Maybe not asleep—he wasn’t the last time I checked—but he’s in bed.” She glances at the baby monitor on the table beside her. “And if he’s not sleeping, at least he’s been quiet. Thank God.”

“Was he a handful again today?”

“Of course. Knocked over a huge display of cereal at Wegman’s, and he must have reached out of his seat and tossed all kinds of things into the cart when I wasn’t looking. I didn’t realize it until I got to the checkout, and then it was too late to put everything back. So I ended up buying stuff we’ll never eat.”

“Like what?”

“Those fake bacon bits. Not one, but
three
cans of cream of potato soup. And corn nuts.”

“Corn nuts? I happen to like corn nuts.”

“You do?”

“Sure. My mother used to buy them for me when we took long car trips.”

“
Iris
bought you corn nuts?”

Lou smiles. “My mother wasn’t always a prudish snob, Michelle.”

“Iris and corn nuts, huh? Why do I find that hard to believe?”

“She was once as human as you and me. Husband number three corrupted her.”

“Good old Murray, huh?” Michelle barely knew him. He had died of a sudden heart attack shortly after she and Lou began dating, the summer she graduated from high school. She remembered wondering, at the time, why Lou seemed so detached from his stepfather’s death. Only when she knew him better did she realize Lou had never let himself get attached to Murray. He’d made that mistake with his mother’s second husband, Frank, who had been the only father figure Lou had ever known, since his own dad walked out on Iris before he was born. He had been devastated, at ten, when his mother and Frank abruptly divorced.

And when Murray came along, Lou didn’t bother to bond with him. It was his way of shrewdly protecting himself from getting hurt again.

As it turned out, he’d been wise to do so, given Murray’s untimely death. The man had been wealthier than anyone realized—and not just from his thriving dental practice. He turned out to have been a successful high roller—which explained all those weekends in Atlantic City and vacations in Vegas—and, ultimately, the widowed Iris had wound up living the high life.

You’d think she would have offered to help us out through the years,
Michelle thinks bitterly, not for the first time. But her mother-in-law seems oblivious to the fact that her son and daughter-in-law are perpetually in a financial struggle. Lou has never asked her for help, and Michelle has never felt comfortable suggesting that he do so. He’s not particularly close to her; never has been.

Not the way Michelle was close to her mother. Joy Panati had been forced to make ends meet on Social Security and her meager secretary’s pension
.
Still, she had always been generous with Michelle and Lou. That was just her way. She was so big-hearted.

Michelle swallows hard over the lump that always readily forms in her throat when she thinks about her mother.

I miss you so much, Mommy . . .

“Anyway,” Lou is asking, “where are those corn nuts? I’m starving. I haven’t eaten since breakfast.”

“There’s some leftover tuna salad in the fridge.”

Lou makes a face. “No, thanks. I feel like something crunchy. I need junk.”

‘‘They’re in the cupboard. Next to the can of peanuts. Also crunchy, and a more healthy kind of junk.”

“I’ll be right back. You want anything?”

“I’d love a cherry Popsicle.”

“Do we have any?”

“I bought some today. I was craving them. Ate almost the whole box, but there should be one or two left.”

Lou heads into the kitchen and Michelle turns back to her magazine, feeling at ease now that her husband is home.

She manages to get through the first few paragraphs of the article before Lou calls to her from the kitchen. His words are muffled.

“What?” she asks, sticking her finger in the magazine page and sitting up straighter. He does this all the time—goes into another room, then talks to her so that she can’t hear what he’s saying. She always ends up frustrated, getting up and going to him. And right now, with her swollen feet, she doesn’t want to move.