Orphan Train Read Free

selfish,” he says. “I just want you around a little longer.”
    When Molly opens the bedroom door to Dina’s and Ralph’s tense and apprehensive faces,
     she smiles. “You don’t have to worry. I’ve got a way to do my hours.” Dina shoots
     a look at Ralph, an expression Molly recognizes from reading years of host parents’
     cues. “But I understand if you want me to leave. I’ll find something else.”
    “We don’t want you to leave,” Ralph says, at the same time that Dina says, “We need
     to talk about it.” They stare at each other.
    “Whatever,” Molly says. “If it doesn’t work out, it’s okay.”
    And in that moment, with bravado borrowed from Jack, it is okay. If it doesn’t work
     out, it doesn’t work out. Molly learned long ago that a lot of the heartbreak and
     betrayal that other people fear their entire lives, she has already faced. Father
     dead. Mother off the deep end. Shuttled around and rejected time and time again. And
     still she breathes and sleeps and grows taller. She wakes up every morning and puts
     on clothes. So when she says it’s okay, what she means is that she knows she can survive
     just about anything. And now, for the first time since she can remember, she has someone
     looking out for her. (What’s his problem, anyway?)

Spruce Harbor, Maine, 2011
    Molly takes a deep breath. The house is bigger than she imagined—a white Victorian monolith with curlicues and black shutters. Peering out the windshield,
     she can see that it’s in meticulous shape—no evidence of peeling or rot, which means
     it must have been recently painted. No doubt the old lady employs people who work
     on it constantly, a queen’s army of worker bees.
    It’s a warm April morning. The ground is spongy with melted snow and rain, but today
     is one of those rare, almost balmy days that hint at the glorious summer ahead. The
     sky is luminously blue, with large woolly clouds. Clumps of crocuses seem to have
     sprouted everywhere.
    “Okay,” Jack’s saying, “here’s the deal. She’s a nice lady, but kind of uptight. You
     know—not exactly a barrel of laughs.” He puts his car in park and squeezes Molly’s
     shoulder. “Just nod and smile and you’ll be fine.”
    “How old is she again?” Molly mumbles. She’s annoyed with herself for feeling nervous.
     Who cares? It’s just some ancient pack rat who needs help getting rid of her shit.
     She hopes it isn’t disgusting and smelly, like the houses of those hoarders on TV.
    “I don’t know—old. By the way, you look nice,” Jack adds.
    Molly scowls. She’s wearing a pink Lands’ End blouse that Dina loaned her for the
     occasion. “I barely recognize you,” Dina said drily when Molly emerged from her bedroom
     in it. “You look so . . . ladylike.”
    At Jack’s request Molly has taken out the nose ring and left only two studs in each
     ear. She spent more time than usual on her makeup, too—blending the foundation to
     a shade more pale than ghostly, going lighter on the kohl. She even bought a pink
     lipstick at the drugstore—Maybelline Wet Shine Lip Color in “Mauvelous,” a name that
     cracks her up. She stripped off her many thrift-store rings and is wearing the charm
     necklace from her dad instead of the usual chunky array of crucifixes and silver skulls.
     Her hair’s still black, with the white stripe on either side of her face, and her
     fingernails are black, too—but it’s clear she’s made an effort to look, as Dina remarked,
     “closer to a normal human being.”
    After Jack’s Hail Mary pass—or “Hail Molly,” as he called it—Dina grudgingly agreed
     to give her another chance. “Cleaning an old lady’s attic?” she snorted. “Yeah, right.
     I give it a week.”
    Molly hardly expected a big vote of confidence from Dina, but she has some doubts
     herself. Is she really going to devote fifty hours of her life to a crotchety dowager
     in a drafty attic, going through boxes filled