“Poor child,” the smoker cackles. “You have kids of your own, don’t you?”
“I do—”
“Yes, that little girl of yours. Genevieve, is that right?”
“Yes—”
“Well, keep little Genevieve as far away from people like the Bergmanns as you can.”
The younger woman sounds affronted. “You exaggerate. Maybe Tony is trouble, I give you that. But his father is chief of police. And his brother, a policeman, and so handsome too. Always so courteous.”
The older woman heaves another sigh. “Let me tell you, that whole family is rotten. Sophie was, and now Tony, but the other one’s no exception. It’s just that with Tony, it’s out there, visible with the naked eye. The other one—he’s insidious. Which only makes him even more dangerous, mark my words.”
There are other sounds now, the rustling of sheets, water pouring. Laura hops from one foot to the other. She can’t stay here any longer and wait for them to leave. Her resolve to murder Tony has melted, and the very idea seems preposterous to her now.
She has to get out of here. Out of this hospital, out of this town, as far away as she can.
She draws a deep breath and makes a dash for it. She runs past the half-open door to Tony’s room and doesn’t look over her shoulder to check whether anyone saw her, whether anyone is following her. All she wants is to get away.
So I guess I’m not going to break my promise after all, she thinks with a bitterness that strikes her as familiar, an emotion she has often heard in her mother’s voice without ever understanding what it meant. And what it means is that Laura can never win. Because she’s Laura, because she’s an O’Malley, because she lives in that little dilapidated house in this town, all these things together and each one of them individually. There’s nothing Laura can do right.
The best thing she can do is try to run away. And so that’s exactly what she’s going to do.
By the time the two nurses exit Tony’s room and notice with bafflement the trail of muddy footprints spotting the floor of the hospital hallway, Laura is far enough away so it no longer matters.
TWENTY-NINE
1979
Laura walks back into town as the afternoon winds down. She’s beyond exhausted and also starving—yet still no closer to figuring out what to do now. Tony is at the hospital, and as much as she’d like to believe he’ll never wake up, she’s far from certain. Her best bet is to go with the original plan: She must leave town. But how? She still has no means and no money.
A crazy idea crosses her mind. As crazy as it is brazen, and if she plays her cards right, she just might pull it off. She hasn’t seen her boyfriend since before the woods, a time that feels so far away it might as well have been in another life. But he could get her out of town. He has a car, and no one would ever know a thing. By the time class ends, she’s determined to do exactly that.
The only remaining question is monetary. Suppose she makes it to Quebec City, even to Montreal—what then? She doesn’t see herself living on the street. She might think she’s a tough cookie but she’s not delusional. She won’t make it. She could lie about her age and find a job, but she’d still need at least some money. A start.
She takes her time walking home. Not just because everything hurts or because she’s not exactly looking forward to facing her mother again, although that certainly factors into it. She feels like the day passed in a blur, all those hours over in what seemed to her like minutes. And if only she could find a way to slow everything down again, she could have time to think, to find clarity, to figure out the answers.
She pays little attention to her surroundings. That’s why she hardly notices the car as it turns onto this normally quiet street, usually empty at this time of day. And this car is hard not to notice. Other than Pierre Bergmann’s famed Impala, it’s the nicest car the town has ever seen. She knows what the model is called but can’t remember. She does know that Gaetan Fortier had it ordered from the States, and it had to have cost the kind of fortune Laura struggles to even imagine.
The car’s engine purrs as it slows down, and only then does Laura look up from the muddy toes of her shoes and notice it. The woman inside the car is almost as remarkable as the car itself. Marie Fortier always has her hair and nails done. She’s always dressed in beautiful clothes. She looks somehow diminutive behind the wheel of that enormous sedan, her hands tiny on the steering wheel.
Marie calls her name. Laura’s head snaps up. She had no idea Marie Fortier even knew she existed, let alone knew her by name. She meets Marie’s gaze and looks hastily away.
“Laura, is everything all right?”
Laura has no idea what to say. If she were to say yes, she’d obviously be lying, and she doesn’t know what might happen if she were caught lying to Madame Fortier.
So she does the only thing she can think of in the moment. She shrugs. It occurs to her this is probably the truest thing she’s done all day.
“Here’s what,” Marie says. Her voice is melodic and gentle. “Why don’t you get in the car. You can tell me all about it.”
Laura mulls it over. This is the thing you’re not supposed to do. The Fortiers might not be strangers in the proper sense of the word, everyone in town knows them, but at the same time, the way people talk about them always left a bad impression on Laura. They’re benefactors, but they’re not liked and not exactly trusted.
Then again…
She decides she has nothing left to lose anyhow.
She climbs into the passenger seat of the car. She instantly feels like a small child, dwarfed by the enormous leather seat. The inside of the car smells new, of leather with a hint of the smoke that wafts from the slim cigarette Marie is holding between her elegant fingers and, overwhelmingly, of Marie’s perfume.
The first thing Marie does is reach into the glove compartment and take out a pack of those slims. She holds it out to Laura. Laura shakes her head.
“Good,” Marie says with a soft laugh. “You’re too young for these things. I started when I was not much older than you, everyone did it then, and now they’re saying cigarettes are killing us all. How about that!”
Laura has heard that, and it never stopped her. She shrugs again.
“I know you must be surprised,” Marie says. “But you looked very down on your luck out there. I never could watch a child suffer with indifference.”
“I’m not a child,” Laura says, and to her consternation, it makes Marie laugh again.
“You’ll understand what I mean one day,” she says.
“What do you want?” Laura asks.
“What makes you think I want something?” Marie’s eyes are wide and earnest. For a moment, Laura feels bad. She wonders if she might be wrong about Marie—if everyone is wrong about Marie. Maybe she does have the best intentions.
“I’ve never seen you out on the town on a weekday,” Laura says. “You stay in your house because you don’t work.”
Marie looks hurt, and Laura kicks herself. Great. She went and pissed off her would-be benefactor. But maybe it’s just as well. Laura laid her cards on the table. Let her see Marie do the same.
