“Yes,” I said to her. “Molly.”
Then Della just wrote and wrote. For a long time. I was quite sure she was writing about me. About how odd it was that I hadn’t mentioned Molly sooner. To this day I have no idea what she actually wrote. But it was a bit of a psychological mystery that I’d left Molly out of the story for so long. I couldn’t imagine Della not wondering. I was wondering myself.
She looked up from her pad. But not at me. She looked over at Etta, who had her back turned to us. Playing with the doll and the bear. Making them look like they were hugging.
“Etta,” she said. “Will you please come here and talk with me for just a minute or two?”
Etta looked around at her. But she didn’t move. She seemed reluctant to put down the toys.
“Bring them with you if you like,” Della said.
Etta dutifully climbed to her feet. She walked to Della and stood a baby step or two away. She looked shy and a little bit cowed. The bear hung from one hand, looking limp and dejected. The doll from the other.
She was so beautiful I thought my chest was going to split open. Maybe to accommodate the swelling of my heart.
“I want to ask you about Molly,” Della said.
“Molly,” Etta said in return.
“Did you like Molly?”
Etta nodded.
“Did it help that Molly was there with you?”
Etta nodded again.
“Were you still scared, even though she was there?”
Etta stood perfectly quiet and still for a couple of beats. Then she shrugged.
“Okay,” I said, aimed at Della. “I feel like I’ve been holding out on you. Which is pointless if I want to get us both through this.”
I took out my phone. Opened the message app. Opened the attachment that Grace Beatty had sent me. Handed the phone over to our new therapist.
For a long time she just stared at the screen, scrolling with her finger. Three or four minutes, maybe. It was a long document. Etta got bored and wandered back into the corner. She dropped the doll and bear and got involved with some interlocking blocks.
“This is quite remarkable,” Della said after a time.
“In what way?”
“The various types of support she provided for your daughter. Singing to her and chanting comforting words. Keeping her busy with clapping games. It’s very maternal. She seems like a very maternal young woman.”
“Okay,” I said.
I wasn’t sure what this all added up to. And I wasn’t sure I wanted to ask.
“I think you can count yourself fortunate,” she said. Then, before I could open my mouth to object, she continued. “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that the way it sounded at all. You both had a terrible experience, and of course there’s nothing fortunate about that at all. I just mean . . . given that the experience took place, I think Etta was fortunate to have this kind of support until you could get her back. This girl was clearly trying to mother her, and of course it was no substitute for having her own mother, but it provides a sort of consistency that could prove quite crucial. So I just think it’s fortunate that this girl was there to care for Etta.”
“Except somebody else might have had a cell phone and gotten her home to me in twenty minutes or less.”
“True. Still, I think time is perhaps a less important factor than Etta’s fear. Not unimportant, but perhaps less important. If the person who found her had been scary and not very welcoming, well . . . it doesn’t take a lot of time to traumatize a child. It can happen in the blink of an eye.”
I felt myself getting a little bristly. I wasn’t entirely sure why. But I did know that I was tired of feeling it.
“So you’re saying that Molly is part of why she’s doing fairly well under the circumstances.”
“All I can say at this point is that it’s too soon to say. I’m hoping you’ll come back for at least several more sessions, until we really get a good sense of how she’s adjusting after this experience. If you’re worried about the cost, I can offer a diagnosis that should satisfy your insurance company.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“But I’m sorry to say that our time is up for today. Take your daughter home. Hold her close. Talk to her a lot. She seems intelligent and resilient. If I were you, I’d just keep breathing deeply and try to know that you’ll both be okay. Given time.”
Chapter Twelve
Molly: Denver Patterson
For about a minute and a half the foster home looked good enough, but then my new social worker left, and the whole thing changed out from under me. The cot that had been set up for me in the corner of this lady’s real daughter’s bedroom got pushed into the closet, so I said, “What, I get it out right before bed?”
She said no, that was my real bedroom—the closet—and my social worker was never supposed to know. She said her real daughter, who was pretty little, needed more privacy and protection, and she wasn’t going to force her to share a room with a stranger. Like I was some kind of serial killer or something.
It was a big closet, so that wasn’t the deal breaker all by itself, but it was a sign of how things were going to go around that place, if I’d been paying attention.
And it’s not that I wasn’t bothering to pay attention or anything like that. I mean, this was my life we were talking about. More that the scariness of the whole thing was distracting to me, and I kind of felt like I was floating around that place in a dream.
It was a big apartment in the San Fernando Valley with three bedrooms and walls that were painted this sort of weird lavender color, and it was so close to Ventura Boulevard
