We Told Six Lies(20)
A hand over her mouth.
The yellow bag. He took her candy. He ate it.
What did he say to her? Something. Nothing. Everything.
He wore a baseball cap. She saw his face!
No. She saw the sun shining behind him.
Was he big? Small?
She couldn’t remember.
So what did she know?
A man took her from a gas station parking lot.
He wore a hat.
He spoke to her.
She was in a room with a bed. She was bound, but not so tightly that she couldn’t move around. There was a bathroom with a window.
What else, Molly?
WHAT ELSE?!
Her eyes shot across the room, and when she saw it, her gaze narrowed. She put one hand on the bed. Then the other. Pushed herself up and crawled across the squeaking mattress until the entire night table came into view.
There was a vase.
There were flowers.
Roses.
Molly grabbed the vase and threw it across the room. Jumped toward the pieces and gripped a shard in her hand. She started sawing at the ropes. Her eyes flicked, over and over again, to the window.
The ropes started to give way.
Thread by thread.
Fiber by fiber.
Her skin started to give way, too.
Was that a sound? Her head shot up.
No.
She sawed faster, her breath firing in and out of her lungs.
Molly froze.
She definitely heard a sound that time.
Someone was coming!
She started to cry and sawed faster.
Faster.
Faster.
The door opened.
Molly looked up in time to see him barreling toward her.
NOW
I haven’t slept in two days.
Not that I was sleeping much before, but ever since the reporter announced that Molly ran away, I can’t tear myself away from my phone. I scroll through pages and pages covering Molly’s disappearance and the letter, but the information is all the same, and the links are slow to load because my phone is crap. Briefly, I allow myself to think of all the things I could have bought if I’d kept my job at Steel. I had my eye on a new phone, for one, and on a necklace for Molly, and on a car because her mom’s wasn’t reliable.
I’d allowed my mind to wander on slow days at the gym. Maybe I didn’t want to own an art gallery after all. I mean, what the hell did I know about crap like that? This, however, I knew.
I knew persistence.
So why couldn’t I become a shift manager like Chad, who was a complete tool? Why couldn’t I be like Pam, who opened a second location of Steel and ran it like it was her own place?
I could have gotten an apartment with that kind of money.
I could have had a life of opportunity like my brother does.
Could have.
It had been more important to help Molly. But now she’s free as a sparrow, and she flew far away from me with newfound wings. I know she misses me. She must. So I will find her and make her explain.
Why, Molly?
My brother comes into the room, takes one look at me, and stops. “Shit, man. Have you slept at all?”
I shake my head.
He sits down on the couch. “Talk to me.”
I lower my phone. “I just can’t wrap my mind around why she left without saying goodbye. Her mom, I get. But we… I don’t know.”
Holt leans back. “You feel like something happened to her?”
I glance at him. “She mailed that note.”
“Her mom said she mailed a note.”
“You think something else is going on?”
Holt gives me a sad smile. “No, but I think you do.”
I hang my head. “It just doesn’t add up. Something is missing. I know it.”
“Well, the cops have stopped looking for other causes. You know they have.”
“It’s not like I want something bad to have happened,” I say.
“But maybe you do, just a little bit. Because then you can play the part of the hero, versus the fool.”
“Fuck you, man,” I say, but I’m not sure if he deserves that.
Holt holds his hands open but doesn’t apologize.
“Don’t you have class?” I snap.
“It’s our first week back. There’s not much going on. Besides, I thought you might need me here.”
“I don’t.”
Holt starts to get up, but I reach out and grab his arm. It feels strange to touch him, and I find myself dropping my hand. “Sorry. I’m just…”
“Look, I want Molly back in your life, too. You were better with her. I know everyone says you’ve got to be happy on your own, but you haven’t been good on your own in a long time. So, yeah, I think it’s cool that you found someone to lift you up. You needed it.”
“So what do I do?” I ask.
Holt shrugs. “Let’s find her.”
I nod too quickly. “Yeah, okay.”
“You have any ideas where she might be?”
I think of the notebook in my room. “Yeah, I’ve got some ideas.” I hesitate, then add, “There’s this Nixon guy.”
I think back to the number of times Nixon tried to join Molly and me on what should have been private dates. I recall the note from him I once found in her pocket, asking if she understood the homework, and could they work on it together if she did? I didn’t think much about it then.