Orphan Train (2 page)

The copy she slipped under the waistband of her jeans was old and dog-eared, the pages yellowed, with passages underlined in pencil. The cheap binding, with its dry glue, was beginning to detach from the pages. If they’d put it in the annual library sale, it would have gone for ten cents at most. Nobody, Molly figured, would miss it. Two other, newer copies were available. But the library had recently installed magnetic antitheft strips, and several months earlier four volunteers, ladies of a certain age who devoted themselves passionately to all things Spruce Harbor Library, had spent several weeks installing them on the inside covers of all eleven thousand books. So when Molly left the building that day through what she hadn’t even realized was a theft-detection gate, a loud, insistent beeping brought the head librarian, Susan LeBlanc, swooping over like a homing pigeon.

Molly confessed immediately—or rather tried to say that she’d meant to sign it out. But Susan LeBlanc was having none of it. “For goodness’ sake, don’t insult me with a lie,” she said. “I’ve been watching you. I
thought
you were up to something.” And what a shame that her assumptions had proven correct! She’d have liked to be surprised in a good way, just this once.

“Aw, shit. Really?” Jack sighs.

Looking in the mirror, Molly runs her finger across the charms on the chain around her neck. She doesn’t wear it much anymore, but every time something happens and she knows she’ll be on the move again, she puts it on. She bought the chain at a discount store, Marden’s, in Ellsworth, and strung it with these three charms—a blue-and-green cloisonné fish, a pewter raven, and a tiny brown bear—that her father gave her on her eighth birthday. He was killed in a one-car rollover several weeks later, speeding down I-95 on an icy night, after which her mother, all of twenty-three, started a downward spiral she never recovered from. By Molly’s next birthday she was living with a new family, and her mother was in jail. The charms are all she has left of what used to be her life.

Jack is a nice guy. But she’s been waiting for this. Eventually, like everyone else—social workers, teachers, foster parents—he’ll get fed up, feel betrayed, realize Molly’s more trouble than she’s worth. Much as she wants to care for him, and as good as she is at letting him believe that she does, she has never really let herself. It isn’t that she’s faking it, exactly, but part of her is always holding back. She has learned that she can control her emotions by thinking of her chest cavity as an enormous box with a chain lock. She opens the box and stuffs in any stray unmanageable feelings, any wayward sadness or regret, and clamps it shut.

Ralph, too, has tried to see the goodness in her. He is predisposed to it; he sees it when it isn’t even there. And though part of Molly is grateful for his faith in her, she doesn’t fully trust it. It’s almost better with Dina, who doesn’t try to hide her suspicions. It’s easier to assume that people have it out for you than to be disappointed when they don’t come through.

“
Jane Eyre
?” Jack says.

“What does it matter?”

“I would’ve bought it for you.”

“Yeah, well.” Even after getting into trouble like this and probably getting sent away, she knows she’d never have asked Jack to buy the book. If there is one thing she hates most about being in the foster care system, it’s this dependence on people you barely know, your vulnerability to their whims. She has learned not to expect anything from anybody. Her birthdays are often forgotten; she is an afterthought at holidays. She has to make do with what she gets, and what she gets is rarely what she asked for.

“You’re so fucking stubborn!” Jack says, as if divining her thoughts. “Look at the trouble you get yourself into.”

There’s a hard knock on Molly’s door. She holds the phone to her chest and watches the doorknob turn. That’s another thing—no lock, no privacy.

Dina pokes her head into the room, her pink-lipsticked mouth a thin line. “We need to have a conversation.”

“All right. Let me get off the phone.”

“Who are you talking to?”

Molly hesitates. Does she have to answer? Oh, what the hell. “Jack.”

Dina scowls. “Hurry up. We don’t have all night.”

“I’ll be right there.” Molly waits, staring blankly at Dina until her head disappears around the door frame, and puts the phone back to her ear. “Time for the firing squad.”

“No, no, listen,” Jack says. “I have an idea. It’s a little . . . crazy.”

“What,” she says sullenly. “I have to go.”

“I talked to my mother—”

“Jack, are you serious? You told her? She already hates me.”

“Whoa, hear me out. First of all, she doesn’t hate you. And second, she spoke to the lady she works for, and it looks like maybe you can do your hours there.”

“What?”

“Yeah.”

“But—how?”

“Well, you know my mom is the world’s worst housekeeper.”

Molly loves the way he says this—matter-of-factly, without judgment, as if he were reporting that his mother is left-handed.

“So the lady wants to clean out her attic—old papers and boxes and all this shit, my mom’s worst nightmare. And I came up with the idea to have you do it. I bet you could kill the fifty hours there, easy.”

“Wait a minute—you want me to clean an old lady’s attic?”

“Yeah. Right up your alley, don’t you think? Come on, I know how anal you are. Don’t try to deny it. All your stuff lined up on the shelf. All your papers in files. And aren’t your books alphabetical?”

“You noticed that?”

“I know you better than you think.”

Molly does have to admit, as peculiar as it is, she likes putting things in order. She’s actually kind of a neat freak. Moving around as much as she has, she learned to take care of her few possessions. But she’s not sure about this idea. Stuck alone in a musty attic day after day, going through some lady’s trash?

Still—given the alternative . . .

“She wants to meet you,” Jack says.

“Who?”

“Vivian Daly. The old lady. She wants you to come for—”

“An interview. I have to interview with her, you’re saying.”

“It’s just part of the deal,” he says. “Are you up for that?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“Sure. You can go to jail.”

“Molly!” Dina barks, rapping on the door. “Out here right now!”

“All right!” she calls, and then, to Jack, “All right.”

“All right what?”

“I’ll do it. I’ll go and meet her.
Interview
with her.”

“Great,” he says. “Oh, and—you might want to wear a skirt or something, just—y’know. And maybe take out a few earrings.”

“What about the nose ring?”

“I love the nose ring,” he says. “But . . .”

“I get it.”

“Just for this first meeting.”

“It’s all right. Listen—thanks.”

“Don’t thank me for being selfish,” he says. “I just want you around a little longer.”

When Molly opens the bedroom door to Dina’s and Ralph’s tense and apprehensive faces, she smiles. “You don’t have to worry. I’ve got a way to do my hours.” Dina shoots a look at Ralph, an expression Molly recognizes from reading years of host parents’ cues. “But I understand if you want me to leave. I’ll find something else.”

“We don’t want you to leave,” Ralph says, at the same time that Dina says, “We need to talk about it.” They stare at each other.

“Whatever,” Molly says. “If it doesn’t work out, it’s okay.”

And in that moment, with bravado borrowed from Jack, it is okay. If it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t work out. Molly learned long ago that a lot of the heartbreak and betrayal that other people fear their entire lives, she has already faced. Father dead. Mother off the deep end. Shuttled around and rejected time and time again. And still she breathes and sleeps and grows taller. She wakes up every morning and puts on clothes. So when she says it’s okay, what she means is that she knows she can survive just about anything. And now, for the first time since she can remember, she has someone looking out for her. (What’s his problem, anyway?)

Spruce Harbor, Maine, 2011

Molly takes a deep breath. The house is bigger than she imagined—a white
Victorian monolith with curlicues and black shutters. Peering out the windshield, she can see that it’s in meticulous shape—no evidence of peeling or rot, which means it must have been recently painted. No doubt the old lady employs people who work on it constantly, a queen’s army of worker bees.

It’s a warm April morning. The ground is spongy with melted snow and rain, but today is one of those rare, almost balmy days that hint at the glorious summer ahead. The sky is luminously blue, with large woolly clouds. Clumps of crocuses seem to have sprouted everywhere.

“Okay,” Jack’s saying, “here’s the deal. She’s a nice lady, but kind of uptight. You know—not exactly a barrel of laughs.” He puts his car in park and squeezes Molly’s shoulder. “Just nod and smile and you’ll be fine.”

“How old is she again?” Molly mumbles. She’s annoyed with herself for feeling nervous. Who cares? It’s just some ancient pack rat who needs help getting rid of her shit. She hopes it isn’t disgusting and smelly, like the houses of those hoarders on TV.

“I don’t know—old. By the way, you look nice,” Jack adds.

Molly scowls. She’s wearing a pink Lands’ End blouse that Dina loaned her for the occasion. “I barely recognize you,” Dina said drily when Molly emerged from her bedroom in it. “You look so . . . ladylike.”

At Jack’s request Molly has taken out the nose ring and left only two studs in each ear. She spent more time than usual on her makeup, too—blending the foundation to a shade more pale than ghostly, going lighter on the kohl. She even bought a pink lipstick at the drugstore—Maybelline Wet Shine Lip Color in “Mauvelous,” a name that cracks her up. She stripped off her many thrift-store rings and is wearing the charm necklace from her dad instead of the usual chunky array of crucifixes and silver skulls. Her hair’s still black, with the white stripe on either side of her face, and her fingernails are black, too—but it’s clear she’s made an effort to look, as Dina remarked, “closer to a normal human being.”

After Jack’s Hail Mary pass—or “Hail Molly,” as he called it—Dina grudgingly agreed to give her another chance. “Cleaning an old lady’s attic?” she snorted. “Yeah, right. I give it a week.”

Molly hardly expected a big vote of confidence from Dina, but she has some doubts herself. Is she really going to devote fifty hours of her life to a crotchety dowager in a drafty attic, going through boxes filled with moths and dust mites and who knows what else? In juvie she’d be spending the same time in group therapy (always interesting) and watching
The View
(interesting enough). There’d be other girls to hang with. As it is she’ll have Dina at home and this old lady here watching her every move.

Molly looks at her watch. They’re five minutes early, thanks to Jack, who hustled her out the door.

“Remember: eye contact,” he says. “And be sure to smile.”

“You are such a
mom
.”

“You know what your problem is?”

“That my boyfriend is acting like a mom?”

“No. Your problem is you don’t seem to realize your ass is on the line here.”

“What line? Where?” She looks around, wiggling her butt in the seat.

“Listen.” He rubs his chin. “My ma didn’t tell Vivian about juvie and all that. As far as she knows, you’re doing a community service project for school.”

“So she doesn’t know about my criminal past? Sucker.”

“
Ay diablo,
” he says, opening the door and getting out.

“Are you coming in with me?”

He slams the door, then walks around the back of the car to the passenger side and opens the door. “No, I am escorting you to the front step.”

“My, what a gentleman.” She slides out. “Or is it that you don’t trust me not to bolt?”

“Truthfully, both,” he says.

S
TANDING BEFORE THE LARGE WALNUT DOOR
,
WITH ITS OVERSIZED
brass knocker, Molly hesitates. She turns to look at Jack, who is already back in his car, headphones in his ears, flipping through what she knows is a dog-eared collection of Junot Díaz stories he keeps in the glove compartment. She stands straight, shoulders back, tucks her hair behind her ears, fiddles with the collar of her blouse (When’s the last time she wore a collar? A dog collar, maybe), and raps the knocker. No answer. She raps again, a little louder. Then she notices a buzzer to the left of the door and pushes it. Chimes gong loudly in the house, and within seconds she can see Jack’s mom, Terry, barreling toward her with a worried expression. It’s always startling to see Jack’s big brown eyes in his mother’s wide, soft-featured face.

Though Jack has assured Molly that his mother is on board—“That damn attic project has been hanging over her head for so long, you have no idea”—Molly knows the reality is more complicated. Terry adores her only son, and would do just about anything to make him happy. However much Jack wants to believe that Terry’s fine and dandy with this plan, Molly knows that he steamrollered her into it.

When Terry opens the door, she gives Molly a once-over. “Well, you clean up nice.”

“Thanks. I guess,” Molly mutters. She can’t tell if Terry’s outfit is a uniform or if it’s just so boring that it looks like one: black pants, clunky black shoes with rubber soles, a matronly peach-colored T-shirt.

Molly follows her down a long hallway lined with oil paintings and etchings in gold frames, the Oriental runner beneath their feet muting their footsteps. At the end of the hall is a closed door.

Terry leans with her ear against it for a moment and knocks softly. “Vivian?” She opens the door a crack. “The girl is here. Molly Ayer. Yep, okay.”

She opens the door wide onto a large, sunny living room with views of the water, filled with floor-to-ceiling bookcases and antique furniture. An old lady, wearing a black cashmere crewneck sweater, is sitting beside the bay window in a faded red wingback chair, her veiny hands folded in her lap, a wool tartan blanket draped over her knees.

When they are standing in front of her, Terry says, “Molly, this is Mrs. Daly.”