Chapter 3 Jesse #4
Immediately I go to Molly’s side and squeeze her hand. She pulls away from me, advancing on Evie.
“Molly,” Evie says, stricken, “I wanted to tell you. I tried to tell you—-but you were so angry about what you already knew—-”
Molly holds up a hand. “My mother never tried to drown me?”
Tears spring to Evie’s eyes. “I’m your mother.”
“No,” Molly says. “You’re not.”
Evie turns to Adam, pleading. “Tell her. You wouldn’t help Eloise. What else could I do?” She swallows. “I lost her, too, you know. She was my best friend.”
“She was the love of my life,” Adam murmurs.
I see the words prick into Evie, deflate her. “But you are the love of mine.”
Adam is pale, diminished, wounded. “I have to . . . I . . .” He wraps Molly in a tight embrace. “I’m sorry,” he mutters. “Jesus, I’m so fucking sorry.” Then, still dazed, he walks out of the condo.
Evie, who had come into this dinner bubbly and glowing, is now an utter wreck. She sobs into her hands as Molly approaches. When Molly is a foot away, Evie lifts her face, now streaked with mascara. “I did it because I loved you,” she says.
I see something break inside Molly. “I loved you, too,” she whispers.
I put my hand on Evie’s shoulder. “I think you should go now.” I steer her toward the front door, open it.
In the space of a breath, Molly’s in my arms. It takes a few minutes for her to let out all the tears, and then she asks, “How long have you known?”
“I didn’t know, not for sure. I suspected. It was the bathroom shower that got me thinking.”
“The stupid shower,” she says, her cheek pressed against my heart. And then: “My mother didn’t try to kill me.”
I lift her chin so that she is looking at me. “I don’t think so, no. But she was really sick, Mol. She was hearing voices telling her to hurt you.”
There is, as Evie said, no guarantee that Eloise would not have tried to harm Molly.
From everything she’s told me about PPP, the key is having the people close to you intervene.
Adam refused to acknowledge Eloise’s deterioration, even though it was happening before his eyes.
But Evie—-she had seen it. And she had tried to help.
It had just terribly, magnificently, backfired.
“How am I supposed to feel?” Molly asks. “Grateful that Evie was looking out for me? Or angry because it led to . . . everything else?”
“Maybe both,” I admit. Although I don’t think Evie was malicious in her intent when she lied about Eloise drowning Molly, she had still benefited from the fallout.
She’d been able to step into the roles that her best friend had been destined to fill—-wife, mother.
And while she probably would have come clean if Eloise had been treated and gotten better, Eloise never came home, so it became moot. Until now.
“If my mother didn’t think she’d tried to drown me, maybe she wouldn’t have run away.
Maybe she would have gotten help instead of being afraid to hurt me again.
Maybe she would have been the parent I grew up with.
” Molly shakes her head. “Sure, Evie raised me like she was my real parent. But all those years are built on a lie.”
“When liars tell a story,” I explain, “the new version becomes clearer and more real in their minds, until they actually believe it’s true.” As I say this out loud, I realize that I could be talking about Evie . . . or I could be talking about Georgia.
Molly bites her lip. “Do you think it’s because Evie grew up in foster care? She had a really hard childhood.”
That’s my girl, always trying to find something worth saving. “Molly,” I say, softening, “so did you.”
From where I am standing at the threshold of the darkened bedroom, I can see Molly and Georgia sitting on the couch, heads bent together.
In profile they are so alike it’s hard to believe I didn’t see the similarities months ago when we went to Dr. Mantillard’s office for that first prenatal checkup: the wings of their eyebrows, the shape of their chins, the slope of their noses.
Molly had texted Georgia, asking if she could come over, even though it was late.
The conversation she wanted to have couldn’t wait till morning and had to be face--to--face.
Seeing Georgia walk nervously into the condo, as if she expected Molly to say she’d changed her mind and didn’t want her as a nanny, as a grandmother, as part of her life—-well, it was heartbreaking.
I wonder how long it will take Georgia to stop waiting for that other shoe to drop.
I sat with Molly while we told her what Evie had admitted. When we were finished, I left them alone to talk. Adie started fussing for a bit, and I gave her a pacifier and got her back to sleep. The women were still deep in conversation.
“I remember taking out the tub,” Georgia says. “Then I don’t remember anything, until she was standing there, with you naked in her arms. She looked horrified. She asked me what I was doing.”
“Were you wet?” Molly asks. “Was I?”
Georgia frowns, pressing on her temples. “I don’t know. I don’t know.”
“You didn’t try to kill me. She just wanted you to believe you did.”
“I didn’t try to kill you,” Georgia repeats, as if learning these syllables for the first time. “But.” She lifts her gaze. “I still thought about it. I truly believed it was the way to save you.”
“I know,” Molly says.
Georgia looks away. “Maybe what she did was better, in the long run. For you.”
I wonder what Molly would have been like if her formative years had been a patchwork of watching her mom going in and out of psychiatric institutions.
I’m not sure how long, back then, it would have taken for her mother to get a diagnosis, and treatment.
I wonder who Molly would have become if she hadn’t had Evie’s steady guidance.
“No matter what,” Molly says, “I lost twenty--five years with you. I think that’s the part I can’t forgive.”
Georgia squeezes her hand. “We’ll have to make do with the next twenty--five.”
I watch Molly lean her head on Eloise’s shoulder. She looks like a child herself.
I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen Molly yield. She is always the strong one, the safe one, the unflappable hero.
But even a hero needs a soft place to land.