On Boylston, she leaned against a wrought iron fence and dug out her journal. She flipped through the pages to one that had a photo booth square of her and Leo taped in it. Black and white and timeless, her head thrown back in laughter, Leo in profile, holding an ice cream cone in his hand. It was the last one in the strip, but she knew the moment, Leo playfully threatening to shove it into her mouth. She put the journal back in her bag and joined the line that formed at the ice cream truck. Two women in front of her chatted, their arms resting on fancy European strollers, Bermuda shorts pressed, hair smooth as hide. Little pink hands poked out of the seats, reaching for each other, babbles coming from under the elaborate canopies. Molly’s mind raced along a familiar path. She would buy Nola Wren an ice cream. She would hold her daughter’s hand. She would be walking. And talking. She would not recognize her own mother.Me,Molly thought.She won’t recognize me.
She ordered a twist cone and took it back through the gate, her head tilted, tongue mopping the edges to keep it from dripping. When she looked up, he was there, black hair slicked into place, his suit blue as that mountain lake, blue as the Perseid sky. His eyebrows crinkled, his mouth fell slack. “Molly?”
She wanted to throw herself into him, to touch that spot behind his ear. God, she wanted to smell him again. But she stood there in a sundress and sandals, like a girl on vacation, holding an ice cream cone in one hand, balancing her shoulder bag with the other. She couldn’t hug him. She couldn’t move. “Leo!” She bobbled the ice cream, and it splatted against her wrist, then fell on the ground. “Shit.”
He took the cone from her hand and lobbed it into a garbage can. “Let me get you another one. I was headed that way myself. Thought I had time before ... well. Hi.”
“No, no, it’s okay.” What did it matter? She wiped her hand on her dress seam. She was already a mess. “Hi. It’s so good to see you. You look great. Love the suit.”
They hugged awkwardly, neither sure how close to get, whether to linger. Molly breathed him in, tried to create a memory for when he was gone.
“Should we sit?” Leo asked.
Guitar music from a busker on the bridge glided along the water with the swan boats. They took an open bench, sat in silence for a long moment. “Your hair’s shorter.”
Molly touched it awkwardly, like she was straightening a wig. “Yeah.” She steepled her hands, held them to her lips, then pressed them along with her sundress between her thighs. “Leo, listen. I have to spit this out before I lose my nerve.”
“Okay.”
She pivoted so she could face him. “So, like I told you on the phone, Camille told me you and Henry were living in Boston. She gave me your address. I walked by your apartment yesterday. And your work.” She squeezed her eyes closed, embarrassed. “Yesterday. Andthe day before. And the day before that.” She opened them to see his expression.
“Seriously?” He shrugged, shook his head. “You should have called right away.”
Molly nodded. Her knees and feet jiggled with energy. “I hoped I could, you know, bump into you. I thought it would be easier.”
He bent to her hanging head. “What’s going on? I mean, I haven’t heard from you in, what? Almost three years? You made it pretty clear that we were done. And suddenly you have to find me and it’s here, in Boston.”
Those bright blue eyes. Maybe if Nola Wren had looked like Molly, she would have felt like Molly’s too. Instead, she had been a constant reminder of Molly’s failures. She put a hand on Leo’s arm, sat up straight. “I’m so sorry for the way I left. It was unfair to you and selfish of me. I let you think I was, you know, a fun-loving party girl, but I’m actually a pretty scared person. I didn’t want you to know that. I’ve been scared for a really long time. I’m still scared.”
“Were you afraid of me?” He looked genuinely hurt.
“No! Not ever. Not for one minute.” She could tell him, she could, about Conor O’Kane, about her hands and the way his body disappeared but left a mark on the rug, how he haunted her. She could tell him about Glenda, the way she’d seen through Molly straight to the brokenness in her, how she’d marked her. She could tell him how she was a soiled home-wrecker and thief. She could tell him all those things about her that were awful, that made her into the person she was when she met him, the person who kept his child from him, who then went and abandoned her anyway.
“Then what?”
You are more than your flaws. She thought of her grandfather sitting in the big chair by the stone fireplace at the cove house, weaving his stories. She wished she had his gift.
“Do you remember that first night at The Wren, and I told you about my magic carpet, when I was a kid? How I would pretend I was somewhere else, someone, some when? I wish I had a magic carpet rightnow, and I could go back and get this right. I did not know, I swear, when you left for law school. I thought I was doing you a favor. I didn’t think ... I guess I didn’t think I was good enough for you, and I didn’t want you to figure it out on your own.”
“Molly. That’s ridiculous.”
“Hold on. There’s more.” Her teeth ached, and her ears rang. “Leo, I was pregnant. When you left, I was pregnant, and I didn’t know it yet.”
He threaded his fingers on top of his head, blew out breath after breath. “You could have told me. I would have—” He shook his head. “I don’t know what I would have done, honestly. I’m sorry you had to go through that alone.”
“I had the baby, Leo. A little girl.”
It was like they were locked in a soundproof booth, all the noise, the laughter, dogs barking, horns honking, cabbies shouting, sirens, whistles, motors racing. All the sounds of the city were sucked up, suspended in some motionless, airless space.
Leo stiffened as he turned to her. The look he gave her was the worst she could imagine. He was horrified. “What? Where is she?” He looked around like he suspected a nanny lurked nearby, holding the hand of a black-haired child in a blue dress.
Molly, crying now, was unable to answer that question, not fully. Because the truth was that Molly didn’t know their child either. “I left her with my family. In Maine. She’s in Maine.”
Leo covered his face, bent at the waist. Sobbing broke through.
Molly clenched as months of unwept tears fell and fell. She dropped her shoulders. Let them fall. What had she done? She placed a hand on Leo’s bent back, apologized over and over.
He sat up, his face red, eyes swollen. “What’s her name?” He asked like he needed to know so he could search for her, his daughter gone missing.
