Miracle on 49th Street (8 page)

“Could have fooled me.”

“I actually came down looking for you, but you weren't on the street when I got out there, and Lindsay the parking guy said he hadn't seen you.”

“I went through the hotel. That's when I met Thomas.”

“He told me.”

“He's nice.”

“And I'm not?”

“Not to me,” she said.

“Maybe we can start over,” he said. “How would that be? You giving me a chance.”

“No,” Molly said. She slammed the basketball down hard. “You're the one who's got to give me a chance.”

“Hold on,” he said. “Put yourself in my shoes for a second.”

It made Molly smile, no chance of stopping it, as she looked down at his Converse sneakers.

“They're too stinking big.”

He said, “You smile like her, too.”

He asked for the ball. She bounced it to him. He told her to cut for the hoop. She did. He bounced a ball to her, but it bounced too high. Somehow Molly caught it over her head, brought it down, managed to shoot the ball in the same motion, underhanded, like a little scoop shot.

She didn't think about doing any of it. She just did it. The ball looked like it was off-line when it hit the backboard, but somehow had enough spin on it to go through the net.

When she collected the ball, she noticed him staring at her, a funny look on his face.

He extended his hands again, asking for the ball.

Again without thinking, not even looking at him, Molly casually flipped the ball to him behind her head.

It was just like girls' practice.

The ball just sort of ended up exactly where she wanted it to.

After what seemed like a long time, another long silence, still staring at her, he said, “You're pretty good.”

Molly stared back at him.

Neither one of them had noticed that Mattie had followed them to the little court.

“Where in the world do you suppose she gets it from?” Mattie said.

M
olly and Sam were sitting on a bench in the Tadpole Playground, the one with the statue of a frog sitting above the entrance. Molly liked it there, watching little kids go down the slides or across the monkey bars, jump down onto a rubbery surface made for soft landings, and mostly just be happy. But usually she had to drag Sam here, because of the frog statues everywhere you looked.

He'd tell Molly the dopey frogs reminded him too much of himself, like he was surrounded by all his cousins, and she'd tell him to shut up.

Which he would.

Until they both had enough of the silence and Sam decided it was time to tell a joke.

It was another part of their friendship that just was, another thing that made Molly feel as if she'd known Sam Bloom her whole life. He was her soft landing.

“I still don't get why he read the letter again after he threw it away,” Sam said now.

“Well, he left out one big part,” Molly said. “He did take it out of the wastebasket. That part's true. But Mattie found it on his desk in the morning and read it and started firing questions at him as soon as he got up.”

“She reads his mail?” Sam said.

“Like your mom reads your e-mails sometimes,” Molly said. “Which sort of figures, because she acts a lot more like his mom than his housekeeper.

“Anyway,” Molly said, “Mattie started asking where was I, and he told her what had happened the night before. Then I guess she yelled at him. She told me that she made him read the letter again, but told him to do it with his brain attached to him this time.”

This was no Indian summer day in Boston, despite the sun Molly felt on her face. They were lucky, she thought, if the temperature was much more than fifty degrees.

She thought to herself, It would be a beach day in London.

“I may use that,” Sam said. “Do something with your brain attached. She's funny.”

“So he read it again,” Molly said. “And when he did, when he really read it, he decided that nobody except my mom could have written it.”

“My butt's cold,” Sam said.

“Boy,” Molly said, “how did you know that was
exactly
the response I was looking for?”

“It's a gift,” he said.

She looked over the pond below them, which nearly stretched all the way to Boylston Street. Once the sun was gone from the sky, it would get dark fast, and they'd both have to go home. It always made Molly sad.

Even knowing she would see Sam the next day at school.

When it was just the two of them this way, before she'd started worrying about the time, when it was just the Frisbee-throwers in the field behind them and the people reading books on all the benches and the dog-walkers and the stroller-walkers all around them, Molly felt…normal.

Like a normal kid.

“So as I was saying?” Sam said. “My butt really is cold.”

“Is this one of those times when you want me to offer you my jacket to use like a blanket even though you haven't actually asked me to do that?”

“That would be wrong, wrong, wrong,” Sam said. “Unless you really are offering.”

She had her favorite turtleneck on, one her mom had bought her at Harrod's the previous winter, so she took off her blue down jacket and spread it out for Sam.

“You're telling me that he believes you now?”

Molly said, “Not exactly. He believes her. He told me before he left yesterday that nobody could know that much about the day they broke up, no matter how much they tried to fake it.”

“But wouldn't he want to know for sure? About you, I mean?”

“He talked about one of those tests,” Molly said. “But I told him I didn't want to do that.”

“But you stole his hat,” Sam said. “That was a Hardy boy deal if I ever heard one.”

“Except I'm a girl,” Molly said.

She turned so she was facing Commonwealth Ave. and Two Commonwealth. Looking at his view from this direction today. Wondering if Josh was up there thinking about her the way she was down here thinking about him.

“I want him to believe me
because
I'm me,” she said. “Does that make any sense to you?”

“Hardly any.”

“I thought I could use all that DNA stuff to make him come around, but I changed my mind,” she said. “I want him to do the thing my mom said he'd never do: Want me for himself.”

“You want him to pass the test without you having to give him the answer,” Sam said.

“Something like that,” Molly said.

“So where do we go from here?”

“He wants to talk to Barbara about this.”

Sam stood up, brushing the grass and dirt off her parka before handing it to her.

“You liked him yesterday, didn't you?”

Molly nodded. “Maybe.”

Maybe liking him was a start.

She never had any warning when she would miss her mom the most. It could happen when she was sitting in school, or walking across the park, or sitting at the dinner table with Bill and Barbara and Kimmy.

Or sitting alone in her room.

Like now.

Sitting alone and feeling as if she would never get over missing her for as long as she lived.

She did what she always did when she felt like this, and took out her mom's letters.

Read them even though she knew them by heart. Read them and heard her mom's voice inside her head. Saw her face. Heard her laugh. Saw her smile.

Even back when Molly still believed her mom's story about the dad she'd never known, Molly had never felt cheated in the parent department. Not when her mom was still around. If Jen Parker was your mom, you couldn't ever feel cheated about anything. Or feel like you needed anything.

You had her.

“She was always a force of nature,” Barbara Evans told Molly once, when she came in and saw Molly reading the letters. “From the first day I knew her.”

Once a year at the American School in London, it would be “BringDadtoSchoolDay.” Mollywouldalwaysbringhermom. Anditwasall right, withherandherfriendsandherteachers. Justbecause everybody loved her mom, always wanted to have her around.

Now her mom was gone, and Molly had no idea where
she
was going, with Josh Cameron especially. After having told herself her whole life that she didn't need a dad, now she wanted one in the worst way. And there he was, right over there on the other side of the park.

The problem was getting over there, for good.

She spread the letters out on the bed, keeping them in order, the way she always did, thinking there might be some great big piece of advice about life she might have missed, something she could use now.

Noticed again how the letters got shorter near the end.

“No matter what,” her mom wrote in one of the very last ones, “you know I'll always be with you.”

“Let Barb take care of you,” another one said. “The way she always wanted to take care of me, except I wouldn't let her.”

The last one had the line Molly would use on Barbara the next day when they were walking back across the Public Garden from Two Commonwealth, the one about not being afraid to get hurt.

“I don't want you to be afraid of anything,” her mom wrote.

Molly put the letters back into the box when she was done. She read them to make herself feel better, but sometimes they only made her feel worse.

Her homework was finished. There was nothing on TV she wanted to watch. Molly went over to the window and looked out on Joyless Street.

It was a rare evening when Bill Evans came home early from work. And for once he hadn't gone straight to his study after dinner to do more work on his computer or make more business calls. Lately it seemed as if he was on the phone all the time. Molly just assumed it had something to do with another big bank deal.

Tonight was different. Tonight he had even volunteered to take Kimmy and Molly down the hill to Scoop, on Charles Street, for banana splits. Molly loved Scoop's banana splits, but as soon as Bill made the offer, Molly had seen something as clear as day on Kimmy's face: She wanted to have her dad to herself.

“Oh, man, I'd love to,” Molly said. “But I've got way too much homework to do. You go, Kimmy. If you think you can make it back up the hill fast enough, bring me one to go. I don't even care if the ice cream has melted a little bit.”

Both Bill and Kimmy said that would be fine, they'd walk fast coming home. Kimmy was grinning as though Josh Cameron had just called and asked her to the movies.

Now Molly looked over toward Mount Vernon and saw the two of them walking up the hill toward the brownstone. Bill Evans in his Patriots Windbreaker and jeans and his ancient Reebok shoes. Kimmy next to him in her gray Prescott hoody.

Bill was carrying what had to be Molly's banana split.

Suddenly Kimmy started to laugh. Then she started to run, on those long legs she'd gotten from her father. She ran under a streetlight and Molly could see her face all lit up, like someone had put a spotlight on her. Molly could never remember seeing Kimmy Evans as happy as she looked right now. Maybe because she hardly ever got dad time like this.

Bill was laughing, too, yelling out something that Molly couldn't hear, looking pretty happy himself.

Now he started to jog after his daughter, not running very hard, even though he was trying to act like he wanted to catch her.

Kimmy turned her head and ran faster.

That was when she tripped.

Molly knew what those sidewalks were like. Kimmy'd probably hit one of those raised-up places in the cobblestone that were like a step you weren't expecting.

She went down, hard.

Molly knew Bill Evans's best sport had been football, that he'd been a star halfback at Princeton. Now he ran like one to his daughter, dropping the ice cream bag, sprinting for Kimmy, getting to her in a flash, scooping her up into his arms like he was scooping up a loose ball in a game.

Molly could see Kimmy's chest go up and down as she cried. Saw Bill push the hood back from her face and brush her hair away from her eyes. Saw him use the end of his sleeve to pat away tears.

Then he gently put her down and pulled up one of the legs of the sweatpants Kimmy was wearing, staring at her knee, getting down on his own hands and knees and staring at the knee like he was staring at something through a microscope.

Molly felt like she was spying on them but couldn't make herself turn away.

Then Kimmy was laughing again, as Bill's nose pressed almost to that knee.

They were both laughing.

He scooped her up again, as easily as he would a sack filled with clothes, and walked back to where he'd dropped the ice cream. Kimmy was still laughing, draped over his shoulder.

The only person crying now was Molly.

Even watching from inside the house, watching a real dad with his real daughter, she felt like more of an outsider than ever.