Mary Clark - We'll Meet Again

“I’d be lost if I didn’t come to the hospital three times a week. I’m a widow, and my kids are married and busy with their own lives. What would I do with myself, I ask you?”

Clearly it was a rhetorical question.

“I guess it must be pretty fulfilling,” Fran said. Trying to appear casual as she did it, she laid the community paper on the counter, placing it so that Susan Branagan could not miss seeing Molly’s picture and the headline above it: WIDOW OF DR. LASCH PROTESTS HER INNOCENCE.

Mrs. Branagan shook her head. “You may not realize, being that you’re from California, but Dr. Lasch used to be the head of this hospital. It was a terrible scandal when he died. Only thirty-six, and such a handsome man.”

“What happened?” Fran asked.

“Oh, he got involved with a young nurse here, and his wife-well, I guess the poor woman went into temporary insanity, or something. Claimed she didn’t remember killing him, although nobody really believes that, of course. What a tragedy and loss it was. And the sad thing is that the nurse, Annamarie, was the sweetest girl. Why, she was just about the last person in the world you’d think would carry on with a married man.”

“It happens all the time,” Fran commented.

“Isn’t that the truth? But still, it was something of a surprise, since there was this other young doctor-just the nicest man-who really liked her. We all thought that romance would blossom, but I guess she just got her head turned by Dr. Lasch. Anyway, poor Dr. Morrow was left out in the cold, may he rest in peace.”

Dr. Morrow. Rest in peace.

“You don’t mean Dr. Jack Morrow, do you?”

“Oh, did you know him?”

“I met him once, years ago, when I was here for a while.” Fran thought of the kind face of the young doctor who had tried to comfort her that terrible evening fourteen years ago, when she and her mother had followed her dying father to this hospital.

“He was shot in his office, only two weeks before Dr. Lasch was murdered. His medicine cabinet had been broken into.” Susan Branagan sighed, remembering that time. “Two young doctors, both dying so violently. I know the deaths were unrelated, but it seemed like such a terrible coincidence.”

Coincidence? Fran thought, and both of them involved with Annamarie Scalli. Was there any such thing as coincidence when it came to murder?

Three nights at home, Molly thought. Three mornings of waking up in my own bed, in my own room.

Today she’d awakened a few minutes before seven, gone down to the kitchen, made coffee, poured it into her favorite mug, and returned upstairs, the coffee fragrant and steaming. She’d propped up the pillows, gotten back into bed, and slowly sipped the coffee. She looked about the room, freshly aware of a space that for the five years of her marriage she had taken for granted.

During sleepless nights in prison she had thought about her bedroom, thought about her feet touching the plush ivory carpeting, thought about the feel of the satin quilt against her skin, thought about her head sinking into the deep, soft pillows, thought of leaving the shades up so that she could look out into the night sky, something she often had done with her husband sleeping quietly beside her.

As she sipped the coffee, Molly reflected on the months and then years of those long prison nights. As her mind had slowly started to clear, she’d begun to formulate the questions that now almost obsessed her. Questions such as, if Gary had been able to dupe her so completely about their intimate relationship, was it possible that he was dishonest as well in other areas of his life?

She was on her way to take a shower when she stopped to look out the window. It was so simple a thing to do, yet it was something that had been denied her for five and a half years, and the freedom of it still amazed her. It was another cloudy day, and she could see patches of ice in the driveway; even so, she impulsively decided to put on her sweats and go for a run.

Run free, she thought as she began to quickly don her jogging clothes. And I am free-to go out without asking permission and without waiting for doors to be unlocked. She felt a sudden exhilaration. Ten minutes later she was jogging along the old, familiar streets that suddenly seemed unfamiliar.

Please don’t let me meet anyone I know, she prayed. Don’t let me be recognized by someone driving by. She passed Kathryn Busch’s house, a lovely old colonial that sat at the corner of Lake Avenue. She remembered that Kathryn had been on the board of the Philharmonic Society and had been very much involved in trying to develop a local chamber group.

As had Bobbitt Williams, Molly thought, picturing the face of an old schoolmate who almost had faded from memory. Bobbitt was in class at Cranden with Jenna and Fran and me, but she and I never socialized that much, and then she moved to Darien.

As Molly ran, her head seemed to clear, and people and houses and streets were coming into focus. The Browns had added a wing. The Cateses had repainted. Suddenly she realized that this was the first time she had been outside, on her own like this, since the day just over five and a half years ago when she had been handcuffed and chained and locked in the van for the drive to Niantic Prison.

The wind this morning was chilling, but invigorating-fresh, clean air that swept through her hair and filled her lungs and body, making Molly feel as though, inch by inch, her senses were coming alive.

She was breathing heavily and already beginning to ache when, after a two-mile round-trip, she ran back up her driveway. She was headed toward the kitchen door when a sudden impulse caused her to cut across the frozen lawn and walk almost the length of the house until she was facing the window of the room that had been Gary ’s study. She stopped, went up to the window, pushed aside the shrubbery, and looked in.

For a brief instant she expected to see Gary ’s handsome Wells Fargo desk still there, walls covered with mahogany paneling, bookcases filled with medical texts, the sculptures and paintings that Gary had collected with so much enthusiasm. Instead, she saw a room that was just another room in a house far too big for one person. The impersonal chintz-covered furniture and bleached oak tables looked suddenly very unattractive.

I was standing in the doorway, looking out .

It was a random thought that suddenly entered her mind and just as quickly disappeared.

Suddenly self-conscious at the possibility of being observed peering into the window of her own home, Molly retraced her steps and let herself in through the kitchen door. As she pulled off her sneakers, she realized that she had time for another cup of coffee and an English muffin before Mrs. Barry arrived.

Mrs. Barry.

Wally .

Now why would I suddenly think about him? Molly wondered, as she headed back upstairs, this time finally to take her shower.

Fran called her in the late afternoon, from her office where she was getting ready for the evening news broadcast. “Molly, a quick question,” she said. “Did you know Dr. Jack Morrow?”

Molly’s mind was wrenched back over a span of forgotten years to that morning when a phone call interrupted their breakfast. She had known immediately that it was bad news. Gary ’s face had turned a sickly gray color as he listened silently. Then, after he hung up, he spoke, almost in a whisper: “Jack Morrow was found shot to death in his office. It happened sometime last evening.”

“I hardly knew him,” Molly told Fran. “He was on staff at the hospital, and I’d met him at a few Christmas parties, that kind of thing. He and Gary were killed within two weeks of each other.”