Dreadful Sorry (10 page)

"You didn't hire him," said Molly, fearing the worst.

"Well, no," Paulette assured her. "I said we couldn't afford to hire anyone, and we were doing fine ourselves. And then just as we were hanging up, I heard this awful crash. I ran back to the dining room to find Billy had fallen off the ladder—my poor lamb! Then we had to rush to the hospital, and everything else has been happening since." She looked at Molly anxiously over the rim of her teacup. "I would have told you about your friend's call sooner, but it completely slipped my mind."

"Don't call him my friend, whatever you do," said Molly. "I came here to get away from him!" She closed her eyes, then added in a softer voice; "And to see you and Dad, of course." She didn't want to offend Paulette on top of everything else.
But, my God! My life is becoming something right out of the Twilight Zone.

She fought for calm, invoked her mother's reasonable nature, and opened her eyes. "Jared is the boy who threw me into the pool."

"I didn't know that, Molly." Paulette set her cup down on the tray with a clatter. "Bill, why didn't you tell me?"

"I thought I had," answered Bill. He put his hand on Molly's arm. "Look, honey, don't worry about it. There's no way I'd let that guy near the place now, knowing how he upsets you." His voice was reassuring. "I don't doubt he's sorry about what happened, but the way to atone is to leave you in peace, not to pester you."

"Thinking about him makes me feel sick." She drained her juice and set the glass on her tray table.

Bill shifted his ankle and grimaced. "Well, then, let's move on to a happier subject. Paulette tells me she has already spilled the beans about our big news."

Molly mustered a grin. "I think it's great about the baby, Dad."

Paulette snuggled next to Bill and rested her head on his shoulder. Bill reached up one hand and stroked her face. "I always wanted lots of kids," Bill beamed. "But your mom didn't think it was practical to have more than one. Just think—now you'll be a big sister. Won't you love helping to take care of a new little Teague?"

"I can't wait!"

Paulette nuzzled Bill's neck. "You sure made a beautiful baby the first time, Billy Boy. Do you think our own little Christmas angel will look like Molly?"

"I hope so," said Bill, smiling at both of them. "What's on the agenda today? I'd intended to show you around Hibben, Molly, but it looks like I'm stuck here for a while."

"Don't worry, I'll do the honors," said Paulette. "We'll go this morning."

***

After washing up the breakfast dishes, Molly and Paulette left the house for the breezy headland. Molly went straight over to the van, but Paulette shook her head. "We can walk," she said. "It isn't far. Just back down the drive and turn left. It's maybe a mile."

They walked side by side, though Paulette had to skip occasionally to keep up with Molly's long stride. Molly tried politely to adjust to her stepmother's speed but inadvertently took the lead again as the road dipped downhill, and Paulette had to scurry to catch up.

She caught Molly's hand and swung it. "Isn't it a gorgeous day?" she cried, then sang it to the tune of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star":

"
Isn't it a gorgeous day, isn't it a gorgeous day?

Now that Molly's here to stay

And we're walking on our way—

Isn't it a gorgeous day, now that Molly's come to play!"

Molly laughed. Paulette was acting like a little kid. Molly could imagine Jen's smirk if she could see Bill's pregnant wife singing and dancing along the road. Molly was glad Jen
wasn't
there to see. She liked Paulette and knew she wouldn't be making fun of her with Jen anymore.

The road from the headland wound through the trees and ended at a narrow, paved road. Paulette led them to the left, down a hill to the town. Paulette broke off her song to point to the sign that read: Hibben, Maine, pop. 812. "Soon to be 813," Paulette giggled, patting her belly.

Massive chunks of gray granite lined the road on one side. The first building they came to was a picturesque white clapboard church with a graceful steeple. It was surrounded by a low wall built of the gray stone. Behind the church was a cemetery, the old headstones dotting the grass.

"A lot of houses in the town are built of this rock," said Paulette. "See there? Unusual along the coast, where most houses are made of wood. That's the old schoolhouse—it's an antique shop now. We'll have a look around on our way home. And that's the post office—it used to be the general store. Isn't it quaint?"

Molly stood on the narrow sidewalk and looked down the street. A street sign informed her this was Main Street. It led down a hill lined with buildings of gray stone and white clapboard and ended, it seemed, right in the sea. Molly could just make out the masts of dozens of small fishing vessels and pleasure boats where the street stopped and the water began. That must be the wharf. There were only a few streets leading off Main Street. Molly paused at the bottom of one marked Cotton Lane. It led up the cliff sharply to the right and was unpaved. Dust blew across the rutted dirt lane. She blinked the dust out of her eyes—and saw she'd been mistaken. Cotton Lane
was
paved, after all.

Then she felt it—the curious sense of recognition. She stood for a long moment, wrapped in thought, trying to remember.
Where have I seen this before?

"Look there," Paulette was saying. She pointed to a group of camera-laden men and women carrying shopping bags, who trudged past them up the hill. "Hibben is changing from a little old fishing village, and there's nothing the old-timers can do about it. But that's good news for us. Tourists need a place to stay, and what better place than a romantic old Victorian on a cliff? I bet they'll flock to us once the inn is open. Hibben's history is full of the stuff tourists love to hear about: ships wrecked in the cove in the fog, huge storms the villagers call 'northeasters' whipping in from the ocean in winter, ancient Indian sacred grounds just over the hills..."Then she paused. "Molly? What's wrong?"

"This little street," began Molly. "Where does it go?"

"Cotton Lane? It just goes up the hill. Ends at the cliff. There are a few old cottages left, and some new condos. And the public library, such as it is."

Molly started up the steep lane without a word.

"Hey, wait up!" cried Paulette, scrambling along behind.

As Molly climbed on, she clenched her fingers into fists. She climbed steadily, all the way to the end of the row of whitewashed cottages, and stopped abruptly at the last cottage. It, unlike the others, was of gray stone, and it had a bright blue gate set into the fence in front of it and a painted blue door to match the wooden addition built onto the side of the house. The sign on the gate announced: Hibben Free Library, est. 1941.

She put her hand on the gate and flung it open, then hurried along the path up to the blue door. The humming began in her head, insistent.

She gripped her hatbox and basket tightly.

Box? Basket? What's going on?

She approached the plump, fair-haired woman sweeping the stoop. "Mrs. Wilkins?" she asked, untying her shawl
(shawl?)
and settling it loosely over her shoulders. She put up a hand to check that her braids were still neatly pinned across her head.

"Yes, dear?" The woman stopped sweeping and leaned on her broom. "Oh, you're one of the Holloway girls! How are you this morning?"

"Clementine Horn," she corrected. "And I'm fine, thank you."

 

"Molly!
Molly!
" Paulette cried, her small hand gripping Molly's arm like pincers. "What are you doing? The library's
closed.
Nobody's here at all!"

Molly collapsed on the stone step of the house and stared up at Paulette, dazed. Then she glanced down at herself—she
wasn't
wearing a shawl, wasn't carrying a wicker basket or a round hatbox.
But she had been.
She put her hands to her head. Her hair was in a single braid hanging over her shoulder—not in two braids wrapped around her head like a coronet.
But it had been.

"Oh, Paulette," she whispered. Tears welled in her eyes. "What in the world is happening to me?"

Without a word, Paulette pulled her to her feet and back along the path, away from the library and down Cotton Lane. She glanced left and right as Molly stumbled along beside her, and no longer looked like a schoolgirl at play. Her eyes were serious and her mouth was set in a firm line. She hurried Molly back onto Main Street and down the hill to the pier, not meeting the curious eyes of the tourists and townspeople who watched their progress. She stopped at last in front of a small café by the wharf. Vendors near the ferry dock sold hot dogs and soft drinks and little whittled sailing ships. The smell of fish was everywhere.

They went inside and Paulette asked for a table in the far corner. She pushed Molly gently into a chair. "Get something to drink. How about some juice?"

How about a shot of vodka? That might bring me to my senses.
"A Coke," she mumbled.

"A Coke," Paulette told the waiter, her voice firm. "And some orange juice, please." When the waiter left, she leaned across the table. "All right," she said. "Will you please tell me what that was all about?"

Molly stared at the tabletop and twisted a paper napkin between her fingers. "I thought I saw a woman in front of that cottage—the library, I mean. I knew her. I had come because..." She hesitated, trying to recall just how she'd felt on Cotton Lane. There were strands of memory, but nothing she could weave into anything meaningful. "I had a
plan,
I think. I wanted to talk to somebody inside that house." She shook her head. "Nothing is making any sense."

Paulette ruffled her hair into spikes, then gestured at the restaurant around them. "Have you ever heard of
déjà vu?
It's French for 'already seen.' It's the feeling when you think you've seen something already."

"I know what it means," said Molly.

The waiter brought the drinks, and Molly seized her Coke gratefully. When he moved away, Paulette leaned forward. "I heard you say a name. Clementine Horn. Who is that?"

"I don't know. I never heard that name before in my life." She hesitated. "Only—here's something else weird, Paulette—that Clementine song has been in my head for weeks now. I hear it in my dreams, too."

"The Clementine song?" asked Paulette, puzzled. "Oh, you mean the one about the miner?" And then, as uninhibited as she'd been walking down the road, Paulette burst into song right there in the café: "
Oh my darlin', Oh my darlin'—
"

Molly froze. "Stop it!" she cried. "It's horrible."

Paulette broke off, aghast. They sat in silence a long, tense moment. Paulette's next question seemed to come out of the blue. "Have you read Shakespeare, Molly? Do you know
Hamlet?
"

Molly blinked. "I took an honors course in Shakespeare just this last year. We read everything."

"Well then you certainly must know the part when Hamlet says to Horatio: 'There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.'"

Molly shrugged. "Yeah."

"And do you-agree, Molly? Do you believe that Hamlet was right, that our philosophies are limited? That people don't really understand all there is to understand in the world?"

"Of course. Scientists are always discovering new things."

"But was Hamlet talking about science?" Paulette shifted in her plastic chair. "Or was he talking about something more than science?"

"Who knows, Paulette? What are
you
talking about?" Paulette had the tenacity of a moth buzzing at a light. Molly wanted only to go back to the house and fall asleep. She stood up.

"Let's go home, Paulette."

Paulette stood as well, picking up the bill the waiter had left on the edge of their table. "It's not irrelevant, you know," she said. "The weird things that are happening to you have to be one of two things, don't you see? Either it's just as bad as you think, and you are having some sort of breakdown—or else it's something else, something we can barely conceive of, something that might even make a sort of sense, if we only had the right philosophy. Get it?" She paid the bill, and they walked outside onto Main Street.

Hibben was sleepy in the warm sunshine. A few tourists were on the pier snapping the colorful fishing boats out in the cove with their zoom lenses, but otherwise the streets were all but empty. Molly's head was aching fiercely now, and that same lethargy that had plagued her back in Battleboro Heights weakened her limbs now. She trailed behind Paulette up the hill to the house.

 

After lunch Molly threw herself into stripping wallpaper in the dining room. The work was tiring her out, but that was good. If she were tired enough, she would be able to forget. The thought of what had happened that morning in town made her break out in a sweat of panic. Better not to think. Work and sleep, that was the way to handle things.

They ate dinner together in the master bedroom upstairs—Paulette's lentil soup and homemade croutons and a salad. When they finished, Bill and Paulette exchanged a look. Molly braced herself.

Bill wasted no time getting to the point. "Molly, honey, Paulette told me about what happened this morning in town. I admit I'm worried."

"Maybe a doctor—a psychologist—could help," suggested Paulette. "After all, your unconscious may be trying to tell you something through all these dreams and now these ... well,
visions
in town."

"I don't need a shrink," said Molly. "I'm just tired. What I need is sleep, that's all." She left them looking after her as she hurried down the hall to her bedroom and shut the door.

 

The next morning she and Paulette helped Bill hobble down the back stairs to the kitchen. At breakfast Bill and Paulette were careful not to mention anything out of the ordinary, and Molly was grateful. After breakfast two carpenters and a plumber arrived on the headland to consult with Bill and Paulette about renovating the existing bathroom and adding several more for the guest rooms. Molly went back to work in the dining room. She found it peaceful there, standing on the stepladder pulling strips of faded, flowered paper off the wall. The old glue was yellow and brittle. It tore away easily, sending a fine dust onto the scuffed wooden floor.