Walking the Labyrinth Read Online Free Page A

Thorne and Callan? What happened to them?”
    “Callan died. I never heard of Thorne until yesterday.”
    “Well. So they dumped their sister and she went off to live on her own. Raised a kid. Not the ending I would have guessed.”
    “What I want to know, Mr. Dodd—are you sure Thorne was their sister? Couldn’t they have called themselves a family for the publicity?”
    “They could have, I guess. But they all looked a hell of a lot alike. I wonder why she never told you about them.”
    “So do I. Did a guy named John Stow call you?”
    “No. Why?”
    “He’s interested in my family for some reason. He’s the one who showed me the clipping in the Tribune. If he does call, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell him anything.”
    “Like I said, I don’t know anything to tell. Hey, maybe I can help you look into things. I haven’t done any reporting in a long time.”
    “Maybe,” Molly said.
    “Listen to her, so polite. And all the while she’s thinking, How do I get rid of this old man? The last thing I need is him tagging along.”
    “I wasn’t—”
    The door opened and a woman in a blue dress suit came in. Her hair was ivory-white, forming a soft cloud around her face, and she wore glasses which hung from a chain around her neck. She went over to Dodd and kissed him on the cheek.
    “My wife, Bess,” Dodd said proudly. He smiled, deep lines scoring his face. “Married her the same year I did that interview, as a matter of fact.”
    “Hello,” Bess Dodd said. She turned to her husband. “Carolyn and the kids dropped me off—she’s looking for a parking space.”
    Kids? Molly thought. She had thought Dodd alone and friendless, an anonymous old man who spent his days watching television or sitting on a bus bench. “I should be going,” she said.
    “All right,” Dodd said. “Let me know what happens.”
    Molly took the elevator to the lobby. As she left the building she held the door open for a middle-aged woman, a younger woman, and two noisy children about five and nine. Grandkids and great-grandkids, she thought. Thinking of large families, she walked to her car and drove home.

TWO
    The Drowned Cities of Atlantis
    “D o you want to go out for a drink?” Robin Ann asked Molly after work the next day.
    “I shouldn’t,” Molly said. “What if—”
    “Peter calls? I know. What if he does? That’s why God made answering machines.”
    Molly and Robin Ann had come from the same temp agency. Molly liked Robin Ann, even though she usually ended up doing most of the other woman’s work. Instead of filing and typing Robin Ann spent hours gossiping, asking Molly questions, telling her about her boyfriends, her poetry—she had been published in several prestigious small magazines—her plans for the future. Twice in the year they had worked together Robin Ann had disappeared for several days. When she came back to work all she would say was that she had had one of her nervous breakdowns, casually, as though it were a recurrence of the flu.
    “It’s just that I wasn’t home yesterday evening,” Molly said.
    “Yeah?” Robin Ann waggled her eyebrows like Groucho Marx. “How come?”
    “It’s not very interesting. Well, it is, but not in the way you think.”
    “I think we’d better have a drink. I think you’re going to have to tell me all about it.”
    “But if I’m not there he’ll probably call someone else.”
    “When are you going to dump this loser?” Robin Ann asked.
    Molly shook her head. She had tried, several times, to tell Robin Ann how she felt about Peter. How her heart pounded against her ribs like a monkey swinging against the bars of its cage whenever she heard his voice on the phone. How she would think, not once or twice but dozens of times a day, Oh, I have to remember to tell Peter that, sure that only Peter, of all the men in the world, would understand. How he even smelled different from everyone else, of airplanes and of shirts that had been professionally