Can't Look Away(7)

“No.” Molly shook her head. “He got it from a friend who knows Cash, who got it from Nina. Do you think that’s strange?”

Liz shrugged. “Nah. It’s proactive, which I like. Is he good looking?”

“Very. And he just had this … presence. Onstage, I mean. A certain je ne sais quoi. Though I’m not sure he’s my type.”

“What does that even mean?” Liz rolled her eyes again. “Clearly you’re attracted to him.”

Molly raised an eyebrow.

“Not everything is doomed,” Liz said, reading her. “Not everyone is going to turn out to be a disappointment.”

“You sound just like Nina.”

Liz swallowed a bite of curry. “Maybe I’m turning into an optimist.”

“You?” Now it was Molly’s turn to roll her eyes. “Never.”

“Just suck it up and go on a date with the sexy musician. Get out of this rut you’re in.”

“It’s not a rut.” Molly sighed, flashing Liz a reluctant grin. “We’re having dinner on Thursday.”

“Good girl. Now, go and write, with that brilliant brain of yours.” She handed Molly her bowl of curry, whispers of steam rising from the top.

“Hey, Liz?”

“Yeah?”

“For this date, I’m going to need you to find me something to wear.”





Chapter Five

Molly




May 2022

Molly drops Stella at Becky’s before her early appointment with Dr. Ricci. As far as mothers-in-law go, Molly knows she lucked out with Becky O’Neil. When she pulls her car—a black Audi SUV—into the driveway, she sees Becky crouched in the garden, tending to her roses.

“My girls!” Becky hops up when she hears the car, wiping dirt on her sun-bleached jeans. She wears a wide-brim straw hat and the same Wayfarers she’s owned since Molly met her. Stella leaps out of the car and wraps her arms around Becky’s waist, her little blond ponytail swinging.

“Grammie!”

“Bye, Stell!” Molly calls, blowing her a kiss. “I’ll pick you up from school.”

But Stella is already halfway across the front lawn skipping toward Bodie, Becky’s Australian shepherd.

Becky walks toward the car, and Molly rolls the window all the way down.

“Today’s the test?” She removes her sunglasses and hooks them in the crevasse of her green-and-white-striped oxford. Her straight, snow-white hair—which she stopped dying when Hunter was in college—falls just above her shoulders.

“Yeah.” Molly nods. “Cross your fingers.”

“They’re always crossed, Moll. You know that. Is Hunter meeting you there?”

“No. He’s at a conference in the city.”

“You’re going alone?” Becky’s face falls. “Goddamn it, Hunter. Wouldn’t hurt him to miss one lousy conference.” She says this, but they both know it’s not true. Hunter is a VP in marketing at Octagon, the sports and entertainment agency headquartered in Stamford, just twenty minutes south of Flynn Cove. His work-life balance isn’t terrible—nothing compared to the finance guys’—but still, Hunter’s job is big, important. It requires a lot of him.

“It’s been on his schedule for months,” Molly emphasizes. “Some huge thing with Mastercard. It’s okay, Beck, it’s just another blood test. It’s not realistic for Hunt to come to every single one.”

Becky nods slowly, pressing her lips together. “I’ll be thinking of you.” Her almond-brown eyes rest on Molly’s, deliberate and kind, just like Hunter’s. Crow’s-feet crack the skin around their edges.

“Thanks, Beck.” Molly puts the car in reverse. “And thanks for getting Stella to school.”

The O’Neils’ white-shingled colonial fades in the rearview mirror as Molly hooks a right out of the driveway, making her way toward Dr. Ricci’s on the west side of town. Dr. Ricci is one of the best fertility specialists in the country; miraculously, her group has an office right in the small town of Flynn Cove.

Molly’s nerves are jangled as she drives, and she fiddles with the radio. She thinks about Hunter. This is their third round of IVF—their fifth embryo transfer—and she needs it to work. She still doesn’t understand why it was so easy with Stella the first time and why it’s so impossible now. After their first transfer, several years ago now, Molly did get pregnant, but she lost the baby almost right away. A “silent miscarriage,” as Dr. Ricci referred to it. The blood test showed adequate HCG levels, but then there was no heartbeat at the ultrasound. And Molly hasn’t been able to get pregnant since. She doesn’t think she can bear the news of another negative test or miscarriage, or the look on Hunter’s face when she informs him of yet another failed attempt.

Molly lands on SiriusXM’s Coffee House station playing a George Ezra song; she can’t remember its name, but it’s one she’s used often in her yoga playlists, and the beat steadies her. She inhales through the nose and exhales out the mouth, the way she teaches her students. The song ends too quickly, and another begins. In an instant she knows it, the catchy, too-familiar rhythm of the intro—she would know it in her sleep, in her death, probably. But it’s different from the original—raw, unaltered by synthesizers. An acoustic version, from the sounds of it, one she hasn’t heard before. And there it is, flashing across the media screen above the center console: “Molly’s Song (Acoustic).”