Walking the Labyrinth Read Free Page A

with leather straps and gold studs and a large ornate gold lock that had reminded Molly of an ancient idol.
    Were there other people in the family? It had been lonely growing up with just Fentrice and the housekeeper for company. Back then nearly everyone had had a mother and father and at least one brother or sister; Molly had felt strange, an outsider, unable to fit in no matter how hard she tried. And there had been more: whispered conversations in school that stopped when she walked up, phone calls that consisted of giggling and then a dial tone, a few mornings after Halloween when they woke to find their trees draped with toilet paper and the windows of their old car soaped.
    As she grew older Molly came to understand that any old, single woman who wore black and lived in a small town would be called a witch. That didn’t diminish her feeling of isolation, of difference, though. She developed a tough exterior, a reputation for saying what she thought no matter whom it would hurt, an armor of honesty that, most of the time, protected her from the jokes and insults of her classmates.
    Now she moved to the phone and dialed her childhood number. It rang once, twice. Molly could picture the old phone in the alcove off the hallway, black, with a large round dial and a straight cord connecting the phone to the receiver. “Hello,” Fentrice said.
    “Hi. It’s Molly.”
    “Molly? Is something wrong?”
    “No. Well, I don’t know. Someone was asking questions about you today.”
    “About me? What kind of questions?”
    “Something about an inheritance. He wanted to know about your family. About your brother, and a—a sister.”
    “A sister?” Fentrice sounded honestly puzzled; Molly felt relieved to hear it. So she didn’t have a secret life, a hidden past. “Who does he think we are—the Russian royal family?”
    Molly laughed.
    “Did he ask anything else?” Fentrice said.
    “He wanted to know if you kept a scrapbook from when you were younger. Did you? Maybe if I showed it to him he’d go away.”
    “Tell him I have a scrapbook, and tell him I’m using it to write my memoirs. If he wants to know anything about my life he can read the book.”
    “Are you really?”
    “I’m thinking about it. When are you coming to visit? You can help me work on it.”
    “I’d love to,” Molly said, suddenly overcome with a desire to leave this city with its unexpected meetings, its unanswered questions, to set all her problems in her aunt’s lap and forget about them. “I’ve got some vacation time coming—I’ll let you know when I can get away.”
    “Wonderful.”
    “Good-bye, Aunt Fentrice. I love you.”
    “I love you too, Molly. Don’t tell this person anything.”
    “I won’t.”
    “Good-bye.”
    Her phone rang at work the next day. Peter, she thought, and reached for the phone quickly. “Listen to this,” the voice at the other end said.
    It was John Stow. “I have to say I admire your persistence,” Molly said. “What is it?”
    “I found a review of the family’s performance in Los Angeles. That’s where they went after Oakland. Listen: ‘The Allalie Family, consisting of Callan and Fentrice and their numerous cousins …’” His voice trailed off.
    “So?”
    “So Thorne isn’t mentioned. Don’t you find that odd?”
    “No.”
    “But the Tribune said she was part of the family.”
    “Maybe she was sick that day.”
    “All right. But I can’t find her in any of the clippings after the Allalie Family plays Oakland. And in Los Angeles Fentrice disappears too.”
    “Fentrice told me she left. There’s nothing mysterious there—she just got tired of the show. And Thorne could have been sick for a long time. They didn’t have penicillin in those days. Or maybe she left the show too.”
    “My client thinks Thorne might have been killed.”
    “Killed! Why? Who the hell is this client, anyway?”
    “You know I can’t tell you that.”
    “Oh, right. So your client can make all