Mary Clark - We'll Meet Again

“Doctor,” she said, trying to sound calmer than she felt, “we’ve got to get out of here. Immediately. We’ve both been set up. Calvin Whitehall would never let you go public with all this, especially on television. You must realize that!”

“I don’t understand…” the doctor responded, an almost childlike confusion crossing his face.

“Trust me. Please!”

Dr. Lowe was standing next to her by the laboratory’s center island, his hands on the Formica surface. “Miss Simmons, you’re not making sense. Mr. Whitehall-”

Fran grabbed his hand. “Doctor, it isn’t safe here. We have to get out.”

She heard a faint noise and felt a sharp draft. At the far end of the room the window was being raised. “Look!” she screamed pointing to the shadowy figure, barely visible against the night.

She saw the flicker of a tiny flame, watched as an arm lifted it, then seemed to pull back. Suddenly she realized what was happening. Whoever was outside that window was going to throw a firebomb into the room. He was going to blow up the laboratory-and both of them with it.

Doctor Lowe pulled his hand from her tight grasp. Fran knew it was useless to run, but she also knew she had to try. “Doctor, please.”

But in a lightning movement he reached below the counter of the island, pulled out a shotgun, racked back the slide with a loud, ominous click, then aimed and fired. The noise deafened her. She saw the arm holding the flame disappear, then heard the thud of a body. An instant later flames shot up from the porch.

Dr. Lowe pulled a fire extinguisher off the wall and thrust it at her. Then he ran to a wall safe, opened it quickly, and frantically began to search through it.

Fran leaned out the window. Flames were licking at the shoes of their would-be assailant, who lay on the porch. He was groaning and clutching at his shoulder, trying to stem the gushing flow of blood. Fran pressed down with her finger, and a stream of foam sprouted from the extinguisher, putting out the flames directly around him.

But the fire had spread already to the railing of the porch and was seconds away from reaching the steps. Some of the flaming liquid from the firebomb had also flowed between the floorboards of the porch, and she could see flames already licking underneath. It was clear to Fran that no extinguisher could save this house. She knew also that if she opened the door to the porch, the flames would sweep through the laboratory and engulf the oxygen tank.

“Doctor, get out,” she shrieked. He nodded, and with his arms full of files, he ran out of the laboratory and down the hall. She could hear the clatter of his feet on the stairs as he descended.

She looked back out onto the porch. There was only one way to try to save the life of the injured man, which she was determined to try to do. She could not leave him to be blown up when the laboratory went. Holding the extinguisher, Fran squeezed herself out of the narrow window and onto the small porch. The flames had returned, inching closer to the wounded man and threatening soon to climb the house’s outside wall. Spraying foam from the fire extinguisher in the space between the window and the stairs, she created a temporary path. The would-be killer was lying almost at the top of the steps. Fran set the extinguisher down, put her hands under the man’s right shoulder, and with all her strength, she lifted and rolled him. For an instant he teetered at the top step, then in an end-over-end motion that brought agonized cries from his lips, he tumbled down the stairs.

Fran tried to straighten up but lost her balance in the slippery foam and fell, her feet going out from under her. Her head struck the top step, her shoulder banged against the sharp edge of the next one, her ankle twisted as she finally dropped to the ground.

Dazed, she managed to scramble to her feet just as Dr. Lowe came around the side of the house. “Grab him,” she shouted. “Help me to get him clear before the whole place explodes.”

Their assailant had fainted during his tumble, and was now a deadweight. With superhuman strength, Fran assumed most of the burden but still managed, with Dr. Lowe’s help, to pull Lou Knox nearly twenty feet before the explosion Calvin Whitehall had planned so carefully took place.

They headed for safety as flames leaped skyward and debris rained around them.

After Fran left, Molly went upstairs and into the bathroom, where she stood in front of the mirror, studying her face. It looked unfamiliar, as if she were looking at a stranger-one she didn’t particularly care to meet. “You used to be Molly Carpenter, didn’t you?” she asked her mirror image. “Molly Carpenter was a very lucky person, privileged even. Well, guess what? She’s not here anymore, and you can’t go back to pretending to be her. You can only go back to being a number who lives in a cell block. Doesn’t sound like a lot of fun, does it? And maybe it’s not such a great idea.”

She turned on the taps to fill the Jacuzzi, tossed in scented bath salts, and walked into the bedroom.

Jenna had said she was going to stop at a cocktail party before coming over. Her housekeeper would deliver dinner. Jenna will look gorgeous, Molly thought. Then she made a decision. I’ll surprise her-tonight I’m going to have my one last fling at being Molly Carpenter.

An hour later, her hair washed and shining, makeup camouflaging the circles under her eyes, dressed in pale green silk slacks and a matching cowl-neck shirt, Molly waited for Jenna to arrive.

She got there at 7:30, looking every bit as beautiful as Molly had expected. “I’m late,” she wailed. “I was at the Hodges’. They’re clients of the firm. All the big guns came from New York, so I just couldn’t get away any faster.”

“I wasn’t going anywhere,” Molly said quietly.

Jenna stood back and looked at her. “Molly, you look terrific . Molly, you’re wonderful!”

Molly shrugged. “I don’t know about that. Hey, does your husband expect us to get blotto? When dinner arrived, it was accompanied by three bottles of that great wine he brought the other night.”

Jenna laughed. “That’s Cal. If one bottle would be a pleasant remembrance, three bottles will remind you what an important guy he is. Not the worst trait, I’d say.”

“Not at all,” Molly agreed.

“Let’s test it,” Jenna suggested. “Let’s get a buzz on. Let’s pretend that we’re still the girls who set the tone for this town.”

“We did, didn’t we?” Molly thought. I’m glad I got dressed up. It may be my last hurrah, but it will be fun, I know what I have to do tonight. No more will I be the prisoner in the dock. Fran had a nerve to come in here and make me feel guilty. What does she know about it? She remembered Fran’s words: “ I am angry at my father… I’m furious… Believe in Philip. It may not even be important to you, but that guy loves you…”

They stood at the bar built into an alcove in the hallway that ran between the kitchen and family room. Jenna rummaged in the drawer, found the corkscrew, and opened a bottle of the wine. She scanned the shelves and selected two delicate crystal glasses. “My grandmother had these glasses as well,” she said. “Remember how our grandmother’s wills read? You got this house and God knows what else. I got six glasses. That’s about what Gran was down to when she departed this earth.”

Jenna poured the wine, handed one glass to Molly and said, “Bottoms up.”

As they clinked glasses, Molly had the disturbing sensation that she was seeing something in Jenna’s eyes that she didn’t quite understand, something new and entirely unexpected.

She couldn’t imagine what it meant.