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“How can anyone know about genetics, really?” the man had asked. “What if one of the girls harbors some impulse that might cause her to violently explode with rage? As her father did?”
“That’s highly unlikely,” the nun had assured him.
“Unlikely perhaps. But you can’t guarantee it’s not a possibility.”
“There are no guarantees in life, Mr. Howard,” the nun had tried again. “Even if the Lord were to bless you with your own children—”
“That’s just it. They’d be our own. And believe me, Sister, there are no murderous alcoholics in either my wife’s or my family. No.” Molly, who was standing with her ear against the door, had heard a deep sigh. “I’m afraid it’s just not worth the risk.”
Over the years the faces in that office had changed. But the argument had remained the same. Molly and Lena McBride were damaged goods.
“Benny has a lot of strikes working against him when it comes to adoption,” Molly murmured, thinking back on those lonely, frustrating days when she and Lena had been forced to watch other children leave the orphanage with their new families.
“That’s sure true. But you know Dr. Moore?”
“In pediatrics?”
“That’s him. He and his wife have been trying to have kids for ages with no luck. I overheard him talking to the social worker about getting the paperwork started.”
“Oh, that is good news.” Sometimes God did answer prayers. “Is Benny still downstairs?”
Yolanda’s sharp look revealed that she knew Molly all too well. “Yes, but you’re not—”
“I promise not to do any work. I just want to keep a little boy company for a while.”
“Reece will kill me.”
“Reece is too much of a sweetheart to kill anyone. Especially these days.”
“You noticed that the doc’s been floating up somewhere on cloud nine, too?”
Molly returned Yolanda’s grin with one of her own. “You’d have to be blind not to notice.”
“He’s got the look of a man who’s getting laid regular. And your sister’s looking like a kitten who discovered a saucer of cream. I swear, if I hadn’t sworn off marriage after my third divorce, I’d almost be willing to give it a try again.”
Molly laughed. She didn’t know what had happened between Lena and Reece. But whatever it was, she was definitely more than a little relieved at the change.
“If you could just get me some scrubs,” Molly coaxed, returning to their previous subject.
Yolanda folded her arms across her ample breasts. “If you tell anyone where you got them…”
“I won’t say a word. Cross my heart.”
Muttering to herself, Yolanda left the room, but returned a few minutes later with a pair of green surgical scrubs. “I didn’t see a thing,” she said. Then left again.
Molly found Benny in one of the waiting rooms, seated at a small table. Someone had given him a box of crayons and a coloring book, but he hadn’t touched them, and sat staring out into space. Molly didn’t want to know what the child was seeing. What he’d already seen. She also hoped that Dr. Moore and his wife had an immense store of patience.
“Hi, Benny,” she said cheerily.
He looked up, his expression flat until he saw her bruises. “Somebody hit you, too, Sister?”
“I’m afraid so, Benny.”
He thought about that for a minute. “People aren’t supposed to hit nuns.”
“People aren’t supposed to hit children, either. But sometimes people do.”
“Yeah.” He looked down at the backs of his small hands, which had circular scars that could only have been made from cigarette burns.
“Have you had lunch yet?”
“Yeah. One of the nurses brought me a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich from the cafeteria. And some chocolate milk.”
“That was nice.”
“I like chocolate milk.” Despite his words, his eyes had gone flat again.
“How about popcorn?”
He shrugged. “It’s okay, I guess. I only ever had it once. When the lady at one of the places I was staying took a bunch of us to see An American Tail.”
“That was a cool movie.”
Another shrug.
“I was sitting upstairs feeling a little sorry for myself when I decided popcorn might cheer me up.” Molly decided a white lie in this case was definitely one of the more venial sins she’d committed. “But I hate snacking alone and can’t eat the entire bag anyway. So, I was kind of hoping you’d help me out.”
She watched the flicker of interest in the depths of his dark eyes.
“I guess that’d be okay. Since I have to hang around here, anyway, until the social worker shows up.”
“Thanks, Benny. I really appreciate your helping me out.”
She took him into the nurses’ lounge, retrieved a bag of popcorn from her secret hiding place and put it in the microwave.
Five minutes later, they were working their way through the plump white kernels.
“I heard the nurses talking,” Benny volunteered. “One of them said that Dr. Moore wants to be my dad.”
“How do you feel about that?” Molly asked, popping the top on a soft drink can and handing it to him.
“I guess that’d be okay. I never had a dad.”
“I lost mine when I was little, too,” Molly volunteered.
He gave her a long look, but didn’t ask any questions. Molly knew all too well how children from violent homes learned the importance of keeping secrets.
“Johnny Brown has a dad. He hits him. A lot.”
“Dr. Moore would never hit you, Benny.”
“You don’t think so?”
“I know so.”
He fell silent, mulling that over.
“I guess it’d be okay, then.”
“I think it would be even better than okay,” Molly agreed mildly.
That little worrisome matter settled, neither Molly nor Benny said anything else. There was no need to. For both of them, the quiet companionship was enough.
* * *
Molly was packing away the last of her toiletries. She was finally being allowed to return home to her own apartment. At least that’s where she had thought she’d be going. Until Lena had shown up, determined that she come and stay with her.
“You and Reece have been acting like you’re newlyweds. The last thing you need is me hanging around your house.” Molly returned to the adjoining bathroom for the shampoo. “What if you want to make love hanging from the dining room chandelier while I’m in the room eating my microwave dinner?”
“Molly!” Lena appeared shocked that her sister would even think of such a thing. “You’re a nun!” Then color flooded into her cheeks as she thought of the fantasy game she and Reece had played last night. The one where he’d been a ruthless Norman plundering the Saxon countryside. And dear Lord, how wonderfully he’d plundered!
“All this is beside the point,” she insisted, shaking off the sensual memory. “Because we’re not going to be alone anyway.” Her shoulders slumped beneath her pale blue angora sweater. “Reece’s aunt called last night. She’s arriving in town this evening.”
“Theo’s coming here?” Molly had met Theodora Longworth at Reece and Lena’s wedding. A successful writer, she was a bold, larger-than-life character who could have stepped from one of the pages of her romance novels.
“She’s gotten an offer to be head writer for some soap opera,” Lena said glumly.
“Wouldn’t that mean she’d have to settle down?”
“I don’t know. I suppose so. I do know that if the woman is going to be living under my roof, I need someone in my corner.”
“Why? She seemed genuinely fond of you at the wedding.”
“She’s filthy rich, Molly.”
“So’s Reece. And that’s never seemed to bother you.”
“Because he’s never acted rich. Theo is just so…” Lena’s voice trailed off.
“Like Rosalind Russell’s portrayal of Auntie Mame?”
“With a lot of Bette Midler thrown in.” Lena sighed. “I’ll really feel better if you’re staying at the house, too. Heaven knows we’ve plenty of room.” Rooms she’d planned to fill with children.
Molly suspected that the invitation was more than a little due to Reece and Lena’s concern about her returning home alone to her apartment, which was in a neighborhood not much better than the area surrounding the hospital. However, whether or not they’d done it intentionally, they’d managed to come up with a situation she couldn’t refuse.
“Just for the next week or so,” Molly insisted. “But as soon as I come back to work, I’m returning to my own place.”
“Oh, thank you!” Lena rushed forward to hug Molly, remembering the cracked ribs just in time. “I promise, Molly, I’ll make this up to you.”
“There’s certainly nothing to make up to me. Lounging around your house is not exactly on par with doing missionary work in Zaire.”
“Wait until you spend a few days with Theo.” Lena’s expression of impending doom echoed her glum tone. “I hate this time of year, anyway.” She sighed and began picking at her fingernail polish. “Do you ever think about that night?”
“Of course.” Molly knew Lena was not referring to the recent Christmas attack, but the earlier one.
“I used to think about it all the time. It’s gotten better, but it never goes away. Like a scab I can’t resist picking.”
“May’s almost as bad,” Molly murmured.
“When you walk in the drugstore to buy some aspirin or tampons and get attacked by all those aisles of flowery Mother’s Day cards,” Lena agreed. “I didn’t think it bothered you. That once you became a nun—”
“God automatically took away the pain on my Profession Day?”
“Something like that.”
It was Molly’s turn to sigh. “Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way.”
“I guess not.” Lena walked over to the window and stared down at the parking lot, but Molly suspected it was not the cars she was seeing, but that long-ago scene that had been imprinted indelibly on both their minds. “Do you ever hear Mama’s voice?”
“No. I stopped being able to hear her about the third year after Daddy…after it happened.”
“I do.” Lena glanced back over her shoulder. “Every once in a while, I imagine I hear her singing. Remember how she used to love to sing?”
The memory was bittersweet. “Just like Patsy Cline.”
“Yeah. I remember her once telling me how tragic it was that Patsy had died so young in that plane crash. And then she died too young, as well....
“I think that’s why I turned wild for a while, until I met Reece,” Lena admitted. “Because I have this terrible fear I’m going to die young, too.” She dragged her hand through her thick auburn hair. “I look just like her, don’t I?”
Molly didn’t like where this conversation was going. “I suppose there’s some resemblance,” she hedged.
“I stole a picture the day the social worker took us away,” Lena revealed. “It was a snapshot of Mama in a bathing suit at the beach. I’ve kept it all these years. I look at that picture and it’s like looking in a mirror....
“Then I look in the mirror and it’s as if Mama’s ghost is looking back at me. As if she’s reminding me that I could die anytime, just like she did. Like Patsy did…
“Did you know that I’d planned my funeral when I was twelve?”
“You never said anything.”
“I wrote it all down. So you’d find it after I died. I still update it every year, but I’m always a little surprised when I don’t make all that many changes. I’ve planned your funeral, too. And Reece’s.”
“I didn’t know that, either.” Molly reminded herself that she’d only been a child herself, that she’d done the best she could for her sister under the circumstances. Nevertheless she felt a familiar stab of guilt that she hadn’t managed to provide Lena with the security she’d needed growing up.
“Of course you didn’t. Because I never told you. But it seems as if I’ve spent my entire life waiting to die. Waiting for people I love to die. Which was why I was so terrified of loving Reece.
“If he was ten minutes late coming home, I knew he’d had an accident on the freeway. If I called here and he didn’t answer his page, I was certain some crazed homicidal junkie had taken him hostage and was going to kill him. I was so fixated on all those morbid thoughts that I was too afraid to enjoy life.”
“And now?” Molly asked carefully.
