Dreadful Sorry (8 page)

It was a massive shadow with stone steps leading up to a wide porch in front. Lights burned in several windows like lighthouse beacons through the night.

Molly's contentment vanished.

"We've got to buy a tractor mower to deal with all this grass," Paulette was saying. "Another thing to put on my list!"

Molly watched the blowing grass and pressed her hands to her mouth to contain her sudden cry of—of something. Fear? Not exactly. But as they stopped in front of the porch and Paulette cut the engine, Molly felt her body trembling slightly and thought:
I've been here before!

But that was impossible.

"Home sweet home," trilled Paulette. "Let's run in and see if my wonderful, sweet Billy has been knocked out by his painkillers yet. We can bring your stuff in later."

She jumped out of the van and ran lightly up the steps of the porch, then stopped and waited for Molly. Molly unlatched her seatbelt slowly and opened her door.
What's wrong with you?
she asked herself.

"What is it, Molly?" asked Paulette.

"Nothing." She stepped up onto the porch after Paulette, fighting down her growing unease. Paulette led the way into a big, paneled hallway with a staircase leading straight up ahead of them to a landing with windows. There was a narrow table against one wall, with a lamp on it sending out a welcoming glow. Several closed doors led off the hallway into other rooms. A drop cloth and buckets of paint sat on the floor next to the stairs. The house smelled old and musty, overlaid with the sharp freshness of new paint.

"I'll show you around after we say hi to your dad," said Paulette, flicking on the light at the foot of the stairs. "Watch out for the mess." She stepped over a wallpaper roll on the first step and headed up. "There are eight bedrooms, can you believe it? We'll use five or six for guests and keep the rest for ourselves."

Molly followed, her stomach tense. Somehow she knew it was coming, sensed it, but didn't know what to do to stop it. The fear, along with the exhaustion, had not been left behind in Battleboro Heights after all. Both had followed her here. At the top of the landing the stairs curved to the left, and she climbed them after Paulette's light step with heavy dread.

She clenched her teeth so hard that her gasp sounded only in her head. Straight ahead of her stretched the oak-paneled hallway. There were four doors along either side. Their brass doorknobs gleamed in the soft light from the overhead chandeliers. And at the end of the hall was a door standing open. Molly stopped.

She closed her eyes, then opened them, but the hallway looked the same. It
was
the same. She pressed her hands over her eyes to blot out the sight of the hallway before her.

"What, Molly?" Paulette put her hand on Molly's arm. "What's wrong?"

. "It's the hallway from my dream," Molly whispered, eyes closed.

"Oh,
wow!
" said Paulette worriedly. "
What
dream?"

Bill's voice boomed from the end of the hall. "Molly? Paulette? Is that you?"

"We're home, my love!" called Paulette. "Be right there!"

At the sound of Bill's familiar voice, Molly uncovered her eyes. She clenched her hands into fists at her sides—they were shaking as badly as the old man's on the plane. She took a heaving breath to calm herself.

"Hey, save the tour for later! Just get in here and let me kiss my daughter," bellowed Bill from the end of the hall. "Or I swear I'll drag myself out of this confounded bed and—"

"We're coming, Dad!" called Molly. She hurried ahead of Paulette down the hallway to the door at the end, steeling herself as she stepped into the room. She fully expected to see the same bed where the woman had lain covered in blood, where the man had turned to her, angry and accusing. But no, the bed was against the wall opposite the windows. And it was a different bed, of course, and the person lying in it wasn't a woman at all but her own father, his ankle encased in a white cast and lying raised on a pillow. There was no blood anywhere.

"Dad!" Molly ran to him with a glad cry.

"It's great to see you, honey," he said, hugging her. "I could just kick myself for falling off that damn ladder. What bad timing!"

"I'm just glad you're okay."

"Oh, I'm fine. But my paper-stripping days are over for a while. Six weeks, looks like." He pulled her down on the bed and reached out a hand to draw Paulette over. Paulette took his hand and stood at the side of the bed, smoothing his hair.

"My two ladies," he said, grinning. "Together at last. Well, Molly? Was I right? Isn't Paulette a wonder?"

"Yes," said Molly, surreptitiously peering all around the room. She was still trembling.

"And Molly is everything you said she was," said Paulette.

"Well, I'm glad to have us all together, that's all I can say." Bill lay back on his pillows. "How was the trip, Molly? Are you hungry?" He yawned through his smile. "I ate what Paulette fixed me before she went to get you, or I'd join you. All I want to do now, I'm afraid, is go to sleep."

"Me, too," Molly said sympathetically. "And don't worry about me. I ate on the flight to Boston."

Paulette stroked Bill's face. "Poor Lamb Chop, you look totally shattered. How about if I take Molly on a house tour and then get her settled for the night? You just go to sleep now, and we can all talk in the morning."

He closed his eyes. "It's just this pain medication they gave me. It knocks you out."

"Molly's going to be here a long time," Paulette said reassuringly. She headed for the door. "Coming, Molly? Let's get you something to drink, at least." She turned back to Bill. "Can I get you anything, my poor, battered beloved?"

Even through her daze, Molly had to wince at Paulette's goo-goo voice. Jen would be on the floor laughing.

Bill kept his eyes closed. "Nothing for me, Puppy. Just take good care of Molly."

"Good night, Did," Molly said softly, and followed Paulette back into the hallway. They didn't go back down the main stairs but instead headed down a steep, uncarpeted flight at the back of the house, ending up in a big, old kitchen with stained red linoleum on the floor.

Paulette closed the door to the back stairs firmly, then gestured to a chair at the round kitchen table. "Here, sit down and make yourself cozy. What do you want? How about lemonade? I'm afraid I don't have any Coke. That stuff isn't good for you."

"No, really, I'm fine."

"I'm having a cup of herbal tea. Join me?"

"Sure."

Paulette bustled around the big kitchen, chattering as she assembled her tea things and put the water on to boil. "Can you believe the size of this kitchen? Of course, there must have been servants once. It's a challenge to make a meal here, with the fridge over in one corner and this big old stove over here, and the sink over there by the windows! They sure didn't know about efficient meal-making then, did they? Then again, you had to keep the servants busy, I guess. After we finish papering the downstairs, we're going to start remodeling this kitchen. I like old things, if they're usable. But I don't really go for vintage just
because.
You know?"

Molly nodded, hardly listening. She was looking around the kitchen, shivering a little despite the warm night air breezing in through the screened window over the sink.

The children hung their coats on hooks by the back door.

This knowledge came to her, unbidden. But—what in the world?
What
children?

Paulette held up a china mug patterned with roses. "Like this? I found it in one of the cupboards. It was probably there for years. This house was empty for a long time before we moved in."

Molly sat still, feeling lumpish and numb while Paulette flitted on fairy feet around the big room. She tried to force some of the tension out of her muscles by taking slow breaths. She thought of Jen, at home now, probably watching a video. Maybe Ben was there, too. For an instant she longed to be with them.

She'd been desperate to get away from home, desperate to come to this safe haven. And yet, one glance down that hallway had told her this was no haven at all.

Finally the tea was brewed to Paulette's satisfaction. She carried the small teapot to the table. Then she opened a tin canister and arranged some cookies on a plate. She set it in front of Molly. "There. Mint tea from the mint growing right in our own garden. And homemade oatmeal raisin cookies—specially made with love for my only stepdaughter in the world!"

Paulette pulled out a chair and sat at the table across from Molly. She poured them cups of tea and watched intently until Molly took a cookie and bit into it. "It's good? You like it?" Her voice was eager, her green eyes sparkling.

Molly nodded.

"And do you like the house?" She frowned. "What did you mean about a dream you had?"

Molly hesitated. No sense letting this nice woman decide on the very first night that she had a neurotic stepdaughter. "I like the house," she said. "It's just that it was a shock, at first, because I've had dreams about a long hallway—sort of like the one upstairs." She reached for another cookie, half-convinced now that the hallway was only similar to the one in the dreams. Not identical. A lot of big houses have long hallways.

"Were they good dreams?" Paulette studied her. "Or bad?"

Molly finished her cookie. "How about that house tour now?"

Paulette hesitated, then stood and carried their cups to the sink without another word. Molly suspected it cost the chatty woman quite a lot to hold back the zillions of questions she probably wanted to fire at Molly, and Molly liked her all the more.

She followed Paulette out of the kitchen, pressing back the flash of—
something
—that assailed her as they moved into the front hallway and she saw the staircase again. Recognition? The stairs looked like the ones she had run down in the dream when she saw the other girl's face in the ornate mirror. Surreptitiously she glanced at the wall, then gasped when she saw the brighter square on the faded old wallpaper. Something had hung there once.

Probably only an old picture.

"Are you okay?" asked Paulette anxiously.

"Of course!"

They walked past the stairs into a large, high-ceilinged room with long-windowed French doors at both ends and a fireplace with a carved oak mantel in the center of the far wall. "The living room," announced Paulette. "Or should I say the parlor?"

Molly could imagine it had been a gracious room once, but now, uncarpeted and empty of furniture, it seemed to be waiting for someone to bring it back to life. Paulette bubbled with excitement as she told Molly her plans for the house.

"We want to furnish it with antiques from the period when the house was first built. Mid-nineteenth century. Billy and I have been combing the flea markets and auctions around here. Now that he's hurt his ankle, maybe you'll come with me?"

"Sure." If she threw herself into the renovations, she wouldn't think about hallways or patches of wallpaper where maybe a mirror had hung.

From the living room they moved to a large, formal dining room, also empty of furniture. A stepladder lay on its side on a plastic ground cloth speckled with wallpaper paste. An overturned bucket of paste had spilled onto the cloth and spattered on the floorboards as well. "The scene of the accident!" proclaimed Paulette. "This is where your daddy was working when he fell—my poor darling. I didn't even have a chance to clean up."

"I'll help you." Molly stepped carefully around the mess. "He's lucky he didn't break
both
ankles."

"We'll clean up tomorrow." Paulette sighed. "I'm afraid I blame myself. I was holding the ladder, but then the phone rang and I went to get it—and that's when he fell."

"It wasn't your fault," Molly said comfortingly.

Paulette led Molly into a glass-walled room with five sides. "This is what they called the conservatory," she said, flicking on the lights. "Can you imagine how
gorgeous
it will be once we get some big plants in it? I want it really lush. It will be a great place to serve our guests their breakfasts."

In the daytime, Molly supposed, there would be a panoramic view from this room over the entire headland. But now, in the dark, it was just an odd-shaped, empty room with dirty glass walls.

Paulette led her through the butler's pantry ("Too bad it didn't come equipped with a butler," Paulette giggled) and into a small, bare room with wide wooden floorboards and built-in corner cupboards. "This is the servants' dining room. Can you imagine having so many maids that they had their
own
dining room? We'll probably turn this into a playroom for the baby. The guests' kids could use it, too. We want to cater to families, you know. Make them feel right at home—or even better than at home."

"Did you say 'baby'?" asked Molly.

"
Ooh!
" Paulette clapped her hands over her mouth, her eyes twinkling. "I'm not supposed to say
anything!
Billy wants to tell you himself."

"You and Dad are having a baby?" A thrill of excitement banished the lingering fear.

"Yes! Isn't it super? But don't tell Billy I told you. He'll tell you tomorrow. You've
got
to act surprised! I shouldn't have let it slip, and I'm not going to tell you another thing until we're with Billy."

They circled back through the kitchen into the front hallway, Molly's thoughts on the new sister or brother she'd be having. How soon would it be born? She scrutinized her skinny stepmother and thought maybe there was the slightest swell to her belly under the T-shirt.
What great news!

Another door off the main hallway led to a dark-paneled room much like the parlor, with French doors leading out to a side porch. Built-in bookshelves lined all four walls, extending even around the fireplace. The shelves weren't completely empty—there were moving boxes pushed into the lower ones. Paint flaked off the high ceiling. Bits of it lay on the floorboards. "The library," announced Paulette. "Won't it be
beautiful
once we unpack our books? Not that we have enough to fill all these shelves, but we'll order some, or join a book club or something. Billy says there's a place in New York City near his old apartment where you can buy books by the
yard—
isn't that funny? They're used books, of course, and people buy them just to fill up space and look good, I guess. We'll let our guests use this as a sort of family room."