All the Way Home by Wendy Corsi Staub

Author:Wendy Corsi Staub
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2013-04-30T21:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWELVE

St. Malachy’s Home turns out to be a sprawling stone mansion located on a steep bluff rising high above the Hudson River.

Rory guides Kevin’s little red car through the open gates and up the winding drive to the home, noticing that the place has an air of neglect about it. The too-tall lawn is dotted with dandelions and the shrubs are overgrown, and the white paint on the sign at the front entrance is peeling.

How depressing, she thinks, looking up at the gloomy three-story building before walking up the wide, cracked concrete steps to the door. Poor David Anghardt, locked away here for all these years, without even his own father coming to visit him.

Then again, that was just Barrett Maitland’s take on the situation. For all Rory knows, he’s completely wrong. Or he could be making the whole thing up for some reason. Emily might never have had a twin brother.

Still, she’d been vaguely surprised when she called Information last night and discovered there really was a St. Malachy’s in Poughkeepsie.

But that doesn’t mean David Anghardt also exists.

You should have called here and asked about him before you drove all this way, she tells herself belatedly. What if you made the trip for nothing?

Who cares? At least it’s a day away from Mom, and Molly, and Sister Theodosia, and Lake Charlotte. In fact, that’s precisely why she didn’t bother to call and check. She desperately needs an escape, if only for a few hours.

When she left, she didn’t bother to tell any of them where she was going. She doubts Mom and Sister Theodosia will even miss her. And if Molly does, well, it’ll be a taste of her own medicine. Let her see how it feels to wonder where someone is.

Molly didn’t get home until well after midnight last night.

Rory, lying awake in her third-floor bedroom, heard her come in, not even trying to be quiet. It’s as though she no longer cares what anyone thinks.

Just the way Carleen eventually acted.

Rory sighs and opens the door, stepping into what must once have been a grand foyer when this was a private home, as it must have been.

Now it is a shabby reception area, with a tall counter tucked against the wall beside a sweeping, curved staircase. There’s a middle-aged blond woman seated behind it, reading a hardcover Nora Roberts novel in a library’s shiny plastic sleeve. She looks up at Rory, as though annoyed she has to interrupt her reading.

“Yes? Can I help you?”

“Yes. I’m here to visit a patient . . . David Anghardt?”

The woman’s overly tweezed eyebrows disappear beneath her curled bangs. “David Anghardt?”

Rory nods, clenching her purse strap, not wanting to betray her overwhelming sense of anticipation.

“Are you a relative?” the woman asks at last, sounding incredulous.

So he does exist. And he is here.

“No,” Rory tells the receptionist, “I’m just a friend.”

“Your name?”

“Rory Connolly. But he won’t know it,” she adds quickly.

The woman’s mouth purses. “Obviously not.”

And Rory realizes from her expression that David Anghardt must be so severely handicapped that he can’t be expected to recognize a name.

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