Come As You Are (12 page)

“Molly!” The shout was followed by heavy pounding on the front door.

What was Ian doing here? We’d already gone through the goodbye. I couldn’t handle seeing him again. Just couldn’t do it.

“Molly!” More pounding, followed by the cupping of his face as he peered in the front window. I dropped to the floor behind the couch, which sat at an angle in the middle of the living room.
Just leave.

The doorknob rattled, and then the door flew open and I heard him fall inside and mutter to himself, “Unlocked. Wasn’t expecting that.” Then he turned up the volume and shouted my name again.

Go. Just go.

But he didn’t.

The house wasn’t big. One bedroom, living room, kitchen, tiny bathroom. Most of my stuff—the bed, the dresser, my lamps and stereo—were stored in the garage.

I heard Ian’s feet pounding across the floor, and in my mind I tracked the sound as he searched. On his way to the kitchen he spotted me behind the couch and screeched to a halt. “Oh, hey.”

I took a deep breath and hugged my knees tighter against my chest, staring at the scuffed toes of my boots. I really should polish them. “Hey,” I said without looking up. “I meant to lock that door.”

“Yeah, well, I’m glad you didn’t. I need to talk to you.”

Those words again.

He was probably here to see if I’d gone to a shrink. He was probably here to tell me the closing stuff was all done and he was leaving town. “I already told you goodbye. Please leave.”

“I have to show you something I found in the house. Upstairs in the crawl space.”

“I don’t care.”

“Molly, you need to see this.”

Something in the tone of his voice hit me as weird. A kind of breathlessness laced with worry and bewilderment. How had he conveyed so much in so few words? Or did I just know him that well? And now I could feel his energy that at first I’d mistaken for your average adrenalin. But, no. Something strange was in the air. And it had come in with Ian. I lifted my chin from my knees.

He was covered in dust. The nasty kind of dust that lived in the secret corners of basements and attics. I could smell it on him. That old house smell, old wood smell, like worm-eaten furniture from an antique store. In his hand he held a plain gray box. I stared at the box, wondering what it could possibly hold that had brought him here in this state, out of breath and afraid. Yes, afraid.

“I have to show you something,” he repeated, his voice calmer but just as intense. His tone was a warning. He was afraid I’d lose it. Something in that box made him
afraid for me
.

“Maybe I shouldn’t see it,” I said. If it was that bad.

“I think you have to. Come on. Let’s sit on the couch.”

I got up. I circled the couch and dropped down in one corner. It was old, and the springs were shot. He sat beside me, the mysterious metal box braced on his knees.

I smoothed my floral skirt over my tights and I stared at the object in his hands. He passed it to me and whispered, “Open it.”

With very little pause I lifted the hinged lid, frowning at the tiny baby bracelet, examining it, seeing the strange name. “I don’t get it.”

“The band belongs to a baby who was kidnapped twenty-three years ago.”

My heart slammed in my chest as I dug deeper, opening the newspaper articles, recognizing the name of the town, a place my dad had lived with his second wife. They’d lived there when they adopted me. And the baby’s birth date? My birth date.

You’d think he would have changed that. You’d think he would have changed my birth date so it wasn’t the same.

“I wasn’t adopted.” A statement of slow realization.

“I don’t think so. I think you were kidnapped.”

I tried to pull it all together in my head. My birth. My kidnapping.

According to the article I’d been taken from the hospital, stolen right out of the maternity ward. Had my father done it? Or rather, the monster? Or his wife, a woman I couldn’t even remember? Had they both done it?

I imagined them dressing like a doctor and nurse. He could have carried it off so easily. People would have done what he said without question. Nobody would have wondered about such a dignified man.

My father always told me his wife couldn’t have children so they adopted me. That was his sanitized version of the story. He should have said, “She couldn’t have children so we stole you.” And then he abused me.

I think I said, “This isn’t real.”

I felt Ian’s hand grasping mine, squeezing mine. I don’t know how long we sat there, just sat there. Ian had expected me to freak out, but as the minutes ticked by I felt myself growing calmer.

My father was a monster. He really
was
a monster. Sometimes I’d worried that what happened had been my fault. Something I’d done. Something I’d said. How I dressed. How I walked. Something. Because everybody adored him. Everybody loved him. How could the whole world be wrong? So the wrong must have been in me. I was the one who was wrong. I must have invited it. And maybe something about me had turned him into a monster when he was with me.

No. He was bad.

He’d
always
been bad.

Always.

“My parents? My real parents?”

“I searched a little online. It looks like your mom was single when she had you.”

Online. “Be back in a minute.”

My body felt weird. All jerky and floaty. I went to the kitchen and returned with my laptop. I didn’t remember picking it up off the table. It was like it just appeared in my hands. Back on the couch I opened it and typed in the name of the woman. The name of my mother. A lot of links showed up.

“Let’s narrow the search by time.” Ian reached over and clicked some keys. “Last three years.” He hit
return
and the screen refreshed with new information.

I scanned the page, my eyes stopping on the line with
obituary
in the title. We both sat there until Ian clicked the link.

And there she was.

She looked like me. Or I looked like her. Dark hair, full lips, big eyes, pale skin. “She’s beautiful,” I said in the kind of hushed tone you’d use in a funeral parlor, my finger stroking the face on the screen. She’d been dead almost three years.

The guestbook was still active so I opened it. She’d had a lot of friends. They wrote words like
kind
and
generous
.

Ian leaned closer. “Oh, my God.”

We both saw it at the same time. My father had signed the guestbook. Evil man. Evil, evil man.

“Let’s see if she has any living relatives.” Ian clicked keys, going back to the main page with the obituary. “Looks like a sister in Montana and a brother in Chicago.”

I didn’t want to look, but I couldn’t help myself. The obituary went on to say my mother had never married, and she’d spent a large part of her life working for a missing children’s organization. I’d probably seen her on the news. What a strange thing to think about. And him. The monster. Maybe we’d seen her together, at the same time.

Ian took the laptop from my hands and began a fresh search. “The brother and sister are still alive as far as I can tell.”

I couldn’t look anymore. Not now. I reached over and closed the computer and put it aside. “Hold me.”

Ian pulled me onto his lap where I curled up against his chest, wrapping my arms around him, my head under his chin.

“Your bandage needs to be changed,” I said fifteen minutes later. “It’s so dirty.”

“It’s okay.” Distracted, thinking. “I wish he was still alive so he could be prosecuted.”

“I don’t know.” I thought about going through the trial. I thought about all of the media attention. “Who do I even tell? How do you report someone for a crime when he’s dead?”

“I guess a good place to start would be the local police.”

“Or the press. But I don’t want to be interviewed. I don’t want to be on TV.”

“You can wait a week, or a month, or a year,” he said.

I didn’t know if he knew it, but he was stroking my hair.

“You don’t ever have to tell anybody.”

He was right. I felt like I needed to run and report it. Why? To become a freak show? The monster was dead.

“I’m writing a book.” I was surprised to find myself sharing a new secret. I hadn’t planned to tell anybody, at least until it was done. “About everything.”

He rubbed my arm and kissed the side of my head. “That’s good.”

“I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to do.”

“No, you don’t.”

“There’s the brother and sister. I should tell them. Before I tell anybody else.”

“Good idea. You wouldn’t want them to hear it on the news.”

“Maybe tell them face-to-face.”

“When you’re ready.”

“When I’m ready.”

I didn’t want to move. I wanted to stay like this forever, but he had to be getting tired of me sitting on his lap like a baby. And I was so sleepy all of a sudden. “Here I find out I’ve been kidnapped and I feel this weird avalanche of peace. How does that make any sense?”

Ian’s phone rang. A minute after it stopped it rang again. He shifted and pulled the phone from his pocket. “The movers are at the house.”

For a few minutes I’d forgotten he was moving, forgotten he was leaving. I jumped off his lap. I tugged at my skirt.

“I gotta go,” he said.

I took a deep breath and squared my shoulders.
Okay. Maintain.

“Thanks.” I wanted to ask him if I’d see him again, but I at the same time I didn’t want to know. Better not to know.

“Answer your phone next time.”

“I might.” I shrugged. “I might not.”

He laughed. “That’s what I figured.” Then he left.

I didn’t watch him go. Instead, I turned and stared at the gray metal box on the couch. Now I knew that sometimes the monster under the bed really was a monster under the bed.

I opened the box and I intentionally didn’t think about the contents as I took photos so I’d have a digital record. Later I’d upload the images to cloud storage. I checked the time. Two o’clock. I closed the metal box and slipped it into my backpack, then I biked to the bank where I put the evidence of my father’s evil deed in a safe deposit box.

“I just want to be able to pay this year’s taxes and five years of storage for the household stuff,” Ian said.

Richard Stinson, Attorney at Law, looked across the desk in the office where Ian had first gotten the news of his inheritance. “Are you sure about that?” Mr. Stinson said.

It wasn’t the first time the lawyer had tried to get Ian to reconsider. Over the past few weeks he’d made several attempts, and Ian supposed the man felt a certain obligation to the dead molester. And of course Stinson didn’t know that part of the story. “I’m sure,” Ian said. “Money from the house and most of the two million. All to Molly.”

“That’s more than nice of you, but you might regret it in a year or two.” Stinson’s face became borderline persuasive as he made one final attempt at changing Ian’s mind. “You could always split it with her. Right down the middle. That would be good for both of you.”

“I want her to have it all. It’s her money. Not mine.” He’d thought about it long and hard. There was a chance she’d just turn around and give it all away, donate it to some farm for cats or something. Not that cats weren’t worthy of donations, but Ian wanted to make sure Molly was taken care of. “A trust fund. Isn’t that what you recommended?”

“That would be best.”

“Don’t call her about it until I’ve left town.”

They signed the papers, then Ian got to his feet and held out his hand. The men shook, and Ian left the office.

At first Rose just stared at me, her mouth hanging open. That was followed by, “You’ve got to be shitting me.” That was followed by, “I always knew there was something creepy about that guy. I felt it the first time I met him.”

We were sitting in front of a fire in Rose’s backyard drinking New Glarus beer, and I’d just told her about my dad. Not the part about the kidnapping—I wasn’t ready to share that with anybody yet, but the part about the molestation.

It had been hard to get up the nerve, and my armpits were soaked with sweat. I took a long guzzle of beer, waiting for the world to change. It didn’t. And Rose was still here. And best of all, she was pissed off for me. I liked that. You want your friends to get pissed off for you. Even if it’s something that isn’t as huge as a pervert dad. Even if it’s something little. You want them to say it sucks. For some reason it makes you feel better.
Hell yeah. High five. Life sucks. Now I feel better.

We talked and talked, and we hugged, and we went back into the house for more beer. Later the conversation drifted to Rose’s situation.

“I’ll bet you and Isaac get married.” I liked Issac, and I realized I’d been a little jealous of him. Ever since I’d known Rose she’d had a string of boyfriends. They came and went and never threatened the relationship she and I had. But then Isaac came along…

But I actually think he was good for her. She was mellower, happier. Because being sad, even if you don’t know you’re sad, can turn you into someone you don’t want to be. And I think Rose had been running too. Not like me. Not bail-out-of-the house and actually run. She just never sat still. She never stopped, because if she stopped she’d have to think, she’d have to face herself. So she just kept moving. Truth was, she’d actually become a better friend since meeting Isaac. And she’d stopped running.

I braced my beer bottle between my knees and reached for the bag of marshmallows. “I’ll bet you and Isaac have a kid in another year or two.”

She smiled a Mona Lisa smile while she removed the wrapper from a chocolate bar. I loaded a stick with marshmallows and stuck it over the fire. And wondered if Ian was still in town.

http://mobilism.org

Wheels rolling over the highway, radio on, sun shining. Thirty minutes earlier Ian had checked out of a Minneapolis hotel. Everything was wrapped up and his van was packed with the few things he planned to take back to California. He had his sleeping bag and pillow. He’d camp out just like he’d done on the way to Minnesota.

As he headed out of town on I-94, he glanced at his phone one final time hoping for a message from Molly. Nothing. He hadn’t heard from her since he’d given her the box. He’d been tempted to try to contact her, but had restrained himself. If she wanted to talk to him she’d call. She’d text.

But as he drove, as he put more distance between himself and Molly, a weird and irrational feeling came over him. Anxiety. Worry. And this bleakness, this hollow sensation deep in his chest that was like nothing he’d ever experienced.

Coming to a quick decision he took the next exit, made a left on the overpass and got back on I-94, this time heading east.

He drove straight to Molly’s house.

No sign of life, but he knocked on the door anyway. After a couple of minutes he headed for the café, letting out his breath when he saw spotted her blue bike chained to the rack out front. His heart settled down. That was weird. He didn’t even know where to put what just happened. Panic attack?

He parked the van, pulled out his phone, and called the lawyer. “Have you contacted Molly yet?” Ian asked when Mr. Stinson answered. He didn’t want to drop in to see how she was if she’d heard about the money. He wanted to be out of town when she got the news.

“Plan to in a couple of days once I get everything straightened out.”

“That’s cool. Just checking.”