This
path—writing—it’s not linear. Sometimes the way forward is shrouded in mist. Sometimes
a fork appears out of nowhere. And, sometimes, I follow the wrong trail.
It
would be nice if I realized the wrongness of the trail right away. I’m not that
lucky.
And
so, I recently tossed most of a book.
I
won’t go into the angst that went into that decision or the number of days I
spent looking for something to salvage. In the end, the wrong path is the wrong
path.
Today,
I thought I’d share with you what the wrong path (in all its unedited glory) looks
like…
Maybe
Grace liked the sunny yellow hats and coats. Maybe she liked the symmetry of
twelve little girls in two straight lines. Maybe she related to a distant,
doting father. For whatever reason, my daughter’s favorite book, since the time
she was old enough to turn the pages, was Madeline.
I liked Miss Clavel, the woman
tasked with the thankless job of keeping order.
I was definitely channeling Miss
Clavel when I opened my eyes in the darkness. An uneasy feeling had pulled me
from a sound sleep. Something was not
right!
My feet were on the carpet and I was
halfway across the bedroom before I remembered Grace was spending the night
with her friend, Peggy.
“Yarg.”
I’d awakened Max and he was
yawning.
“Should I call?”
“Yarg.”
“I think I should call.”
Max settled his head back onto his
paws. He had no opinion.
I glanced back at the clock radio on
my bedside table. The numbers glowed a soft yellow.
I dithered. It was too late—or too
early—to call. I was being ridiculous.
Something
was not right.
I picked up the receiver and
dialed.
“Hello.” Blythe was talking but she was at least half-asleep—at least her
voice was.
“Blythe, it’s Ellison Russell. I am
sorry to call at this hour, but I have the most horrible feeling something has
happened. Are the girls all right?”
“How would I know?” Blythe sounded
noticeably more awake.
“They’re at your house.”
“No.” She was fully awake now.
“They’re at yours.”
My stomach lurched. “They went to a
concert and Grace assured me they’d be back at your house by half past twelve.”
“They went to a movie and are
spending the night with you.”
My stomach tied itself in a
complicated, painful knot. “I’ll call you back.”
I dropped the phone in the cradle
and flew down the hall to Grace’s room—Grace’s empty room. With Max at my
heels, I descended the back stairs, raced to the family room, and flipped on
the lights.
Grace wasn’t there either. A choking
fear took hold of my throat, cutting off the supply of air to my lungs.
Brnng,
brnng.
I lunged for the phone. “Hello.”
“Mrs. Russell?” asked a stranger’s
voice.
“Yes,” I croaked. “This is she.”
“My name is Mary Jansen. I’m calling
from St. Mark’s.”
The hospital. My knees crumpled and
I slid to the floor. “What’s happened?”
“You need to come.”
“What’s happened? Is Grace all
right?”
I waited. I didn’t breathe. I didn’t
move. I prayed with every cell in my body. Please,
let her be all right.
“She’s fine but we had to give her
a sedative.”
“A sedative?”
“She was hysterical.”
Grace didn’t get hysterical. “Why?”
“Her friend—”
“Peggy?”
“No. Her friend, Debbie. She found
her—”
She found her? I’d found enough dead
bodies to know what came next. “I’m on my way.”
I hung up. I should have asked what
happened to Debbie. I should have called Blythe. I should have checked on Peggy.
But panic pushed those thoughts from my mind until I was in the car, speeding
down dark streets toward the hospital.
I parked in the Emergency Room lot
and exploded through the doors.
The waiting room was dotted with
people who were so sick they’d ventured out at two in the morning. I felt their
pained gazes settle on me as I ran to the check-in desk. “I’m here about my
daughter, Grace Russell. Where is she?”
A woman with tired eyes looked up
from some paperwork. “If you’ll have a seat, I’ll check with doctor.”
There was no way I could quietly
wait. Not for so much as a second. I had to see Grace, whole and unhurt, right
away. “I can’t wait.”
She
peered over the top of her glasses at the half-full waiting room. “It won’t be
long.”
I didn’t know the woman sitting
behind the desk. She didn’t know me. It was time for the big guns.
“My mother is Frances Walford, she’s
the chairman of the hospital’s board of trustees—”
The poor woman paled.
“I don’t want to call her—” that was
the understatement of the decade “—but I will. I need to see my daughter. This
instant.”
The woman stared at me as if she
couldn’t quite believe Frances Walford’s daughter would fly into the hospital
in the middle of the night, her hair an unholy mess, her limbs covered in paint-splattered
blue jeans and a wrinkled shirt. Mother was always perfectly turned out.
The woman stared an instant too
long.
I reached for the phone. “Nine for
an outside line?”
That got her moving. “This way, Mrs.
Russell.”
Ignoring the resentful gazes of those
still waiting, I followed her into the Emergency Room.
She led me past bustling nurses and
slow-moving doctors to a waxed curtain the color of old oatmeal. A uniformed
police officer pushed out of a chair positioned next to it.
A police officer? The blood raced
away from my head in a giant whoosh
and remaining upright was suddenly a challenge. “What happened?”
“You’re Mrs. Russell?” he asked.
“Yes. What happened to my
daughter?” I reached for the curtain.
He reached too. “If we could talk a
moment—”
“After I see Grace.” I yanked back
the curtain.
Grace lay on the hospital bed with
a blanket drawn up to her chin. Her eyes were closed and she snored softly. I
breathed my first real breath since I’d called Blythe. Grace was all right.
Unharmed. Alive. And I was going to kill her.
Now I turned to the police officer.
“What is going on?”
He shifted his weight and frowned.
“Your daughter and a few of her friends snuck into a bar.”
“A bar?” I was definitely going to
kill her.
“Have you heard of Dirty Sally’s?”
Did I look like the kind of woman
who frequented a place called Dirty Sally’s? I smoothed my messy hair. “No.”
“The girls say they went to listen
to a band.”
Grace was as good as dead. And
grounded. And she was never, ever spending the night at a friend’s house again.
She’d be putting her dead, grounded-for-life head on her own pillow every night
until she went to college. “How did they get from the bar to the hospital?”
“One of the girls your daughter was
with got herself into some trouble.”
“Debbie Clayton.” It figured. Of
all Grace’s friends, Debbie was the flightiest. “Is she all right?”
“Your daughter found her in the
alley behind the bar.” The expression on his face was as serious as the
punishments I planned for Grace.
Found her? I tightened my hands
into fists. “What happened to Debbie?”
“The doctors are with her now.”
At least she wasn’t dead. I sank
onto an empty chair. “What happened?”
A ruddy hue stained his cheeks. “Your
daughter says Miss Clayton was raped.”
Julie Mulhern is the USA Today bestselling author of The Country Club Murders and the Poppy Fields Adventures (book three, Fields’ Guide to Voodoo, releases February 28th).
She is a Kansas City native who grew up on a steady diet of Agatha Christie. She spends her spare time whipping up gourmet meals for her family, working out at the gym and finding new ways to keep her house spotlessly clean–and she’s got an active imagination. Truth is–she’s an expert at calling for take-out, she grumbles about walking the dog and the dust bunnies under the bed have grown into dust lions.
