1
June 1974
Ridgewood, New Jersey
TEN MINUTES BEFORE it happened, four-year-old Laurie Kenyon was sitting cross-legged on the floor of the den rearranging the furniture in her dollhouse. She was tired of playing alone and wanted to go in the pool. From the dining room she could hear the voices of Mommy and the ladies who used to go to school with her in New York. They were talking and laughing while they ate lunch.
Mommy had told her that because Sarah, her big sister, was at a birthday party for other twelve-year-olds, Beth, who sometimes minded her at night, would come over to swim with Laurie. But the minute Beth arrived she started making phone calls.
Laurie pushed back the long blond hair that felt warm on her face. She had gone upstairs a long time ago and changed into her new pink bathing suit. Maybe if she reminded Beth again...
Beth was curled up on the couch, the phone stuck between her shoulder and ear. Laurie tugged on her arm. "I'm all ready."
Beth looked mad. "In a minute, honey," she said. "I'm having a very important discussion." Laurie heard her sigh into the phone. "I hate baby-sitting."
Laurie went to the window. A long car was slowly passing the house. Behind it was an open car filled with flowers, then a lot more cars with their lights on. Whenever she saw cars like that Laurie always used to say that a parade was coming, but Mommy said no, that they were funerals on the way to the cemetery. Even so, they made Laurie think of a parade, and she loved to run down the driveway and wave to the people in the cars. Sometimes they waved back.
Beth clicked down the receiver. Laurie was just about to ask her if they could go out and watch the rest of the cars go by when Beth picked up the phone again.
Beth was mean, Laurie told herself. She tiptoed out to the foyer and peeked into the dining room. Mommy and her friends were still talking and laughing. Mommy was saying, "Can you believe we graduated from the Villa thirty-two years ago?"
The lady next to her said, "Well, Marie, at least you can lie about it. You've got a four-year-old daughter. I've got a four-year-old granddaughter!"
"We still look pretty darn good," somebody else said, and they all laughed again.
They didn't even bother to look at Laurie. They were mean too. The pretty music box Mommy's friend had brought her was on the table. Laurie picked it up. It was only a few steps to the screen door. She opened it noiselessly, hurried across the porch and ran down the driveway to the road. There were still cars passing the house. She waved.
She watched until they were out of sight, then sighed, hoping that the company would go home soon. She wound up the music box and heard the tinkling sound of a piano and voices singing, "'Eastside, westside... '"
"Little girl."
Laurie hadn't noticed the car pull over and stop. A woman was driving. The man sitting next to her got out, picked Laurie up, and before she knew what was happening she was squeezed between them in the front seat. Laurie was too surprised to say anything. The man was smiling at her, but it wasn't a nice smile. The woman's hair was hanging around her face, and she didn't wear lipstick. The man had a beard, and his arms had a lot of curly hair. Laurie was pressed against him so hard she could feel it.
The car began to move. Laurie clutched the music box. Now the voices were singing: "'All around the town... Boys and girls together... '"
"Where are we going?" she asked. She remembered that she wasn't supposed to go out to the road alone. Mommy would be mad at her. She could feel tears in her eyes.
The woman looked so angry. The man said, "All around the town, little girl. All around the town."
Copyright © 1992 by Mary Higgins Clark
)
When Laurie Kenyon, a twenty-one-year-old student, is accused of
murdering her English professor, Allan Grant, she has no memory of the
crime. But at the scene of the homicid, her fingerprints are everywhere
--on the door, on the curtain, and on the knife used to stab him to
death. Shocked and bewildered, Laurie is arraigned on a murder charge.
Kidnapped at the age of four and the victim of two subsequent years of
abuse and incarceration, Laurie has developed multiple personalities.
The host personality, Laurie, is unaware of the others... especially
"Leona" who has written crazed love letters to Allan Grant and has
secretly entered his home.
Laurie's sister, attorney Sarah Kenyon, takes up her defense and brings
in psychiatrist Justin Donnelly to help Laurie unlock the unbearable
memories of her lost years. But Laurie's abductor, now a celebrated
television evangelist, is still obsessed with her... and determined to
avoid exposure.
