The last notes faded into the farthest corners of the auditorium and were slowly almost imperceptibly replaced with a soft murmur, it grew in volume and spread across the cavernous room, filling it with a sense of awe and an intangible feeling of longing. A single word, a name, for some almost a prayer... Molly, Molly, MOLLY! The crowd surged forward, hands reaching up to her, for her, a touch, a glance, some sign she knew they were there and adored her... MOLLYMOLLYMOLLY.... more insistent, demanding...
Too late the people who had organized the performance realized the singer was in danger of being dragged down into a mob that wanted nothing so much as a piece of her. No one ever thought they'd need security for a skinny fourteen-year-old redhead. A kid for chrissake!
The young singer realized her position, perched precariously on the edge of the stage between two pot lights. Trapped. A single tear rolled down her cheek, a wan smile teased at the corners of her mouth and faded as she looked into the eyes of those closest to her. She extended a pale hand toward them...almost as if to hold them back. Their intensity was frightening...
A hand clutched her arm tightly, fingernails sank in trying to hold on, she felt the sudden sharp sting as they cut through the skin, a thin trickle of red ran down her arm, staining the sleeve of her dress.
She pulled back and leapt to her feet from the edge of the stage, her nimbus of auburn curls suddenly a halo of flame as she ran through the shaft of light from the overhead spots, into the darkness beyond and bolted from the stage, across the wings, then, unnoticed, out the stage door and into the night. She didn't stop running until she reached the train and sobbed all the way home.
... the microphone landed with a dull metallic sound that reverberated all across and around the stadium, five thousand voices went silent....
What the hell?
"She just disappeared!"
"One minute she was sitting there, then wham, she was gone!"
***
"Molly? Honey, are you alright?" A long-loved voice, one she knew as well as she knew her own, cut through the fog of sleep and troubling dreams.
"Morning. Sure. I'm okay. Why?"
He reached out and brushed a tear from her cheek, held it up, watching as it rolled slowly down his finger and looked at her.
"You were crying in your sleep."
She sat up and yawned hugely, stretched, well, stretched as much as a life of nine decades would permit. She moved her legs aside so he could sit down. He'd brought coffee, two cups, they sipped quietly waiting for their no longer young or limber bodies to finish waking up. They joked about their Golden Years.
It was early autumn; they planned to drive up to the Arboretum. Years earlier Molly'd bought a membership and every fall since they'd walked through the fallen leaves taking pictures of their world as it began to slowly spin into winter.
Tim once mentioned how he was beginning to see himself in the old oaks. She knew what he meant. They'd grown well past the need for explanations, a word or two carried what had once needed paragraphs. It was the shorthand of people who'd spent most of their lives together.
They'd married young, too young many said, taking and making wagers at the wedding reception, that it wouldn't last till the first anniversary. Of course, they were all wrong.
She smiled and slid out of bed, her legs rebelling a bit as she tested how well they were going to work that day. His arm right was there if it was needed.
***
They walked through the leaf-strewn pathway, arm in arm, listening to the soft crackle of dry leaves underfoot. So many years they'd been together, so many hills climbed, valleys coasted through, deserts and oceans crossed. They'd taken to referring to the growing number of decades they'd shared as something akin to cross country travels. Days of joy and sunlight and nights of mind-numbing terror and the icy grip of a grief colder than any winter storm.
The joy of seeing their children grow, the unspeakable agony of burying their youngest before the tiny girl could say a first word, the memory of the fragile infant sleeping in her arms, a faint baby smile on her face, then she was gone ...no, there was still too much pain there. They clung to each other through all of it.
"Are you happy?" Tim asked, his voice oddly quiet.
" I am."
"No regrets?"
"None. Why?"
"You've woken up crying every morning this week. Do you ever wonder what..."
She stopped him, a finger placed gently over his lips.
"That wasn't the life I wanted. This" she lifted their clasped hands, "...this is."
" How did I luck out, you could have had any guy in the world."
"Oh stop!" She gave him a little nudge. "My mom always said you chased me until I caught you."
"And the singing...."
" I thought you understood, it was the singing I loved, not the life that went with it, not the performing. That was Millie, that's what she wanted. I just wanted to sing."
A warming shaft of sunlight broke through the leafy canopy overhead, turning their hair into halos of silver.
"Let's sit a while. "
They sank onto one of the many benches scattered through the nature preserve, leaned against each other and closed their eyes, enjoying the warmth of the sun on their faces.
"Did you know Millie's estate sent all my tapes here when she died?"
"I've often wondered why she didn't go public with them. You were the mystery of the decade. Everyone wanted to know what had happened to little Molly...."
She smiled, snuggled closer.
"Molly decided to live her own life."
They dozed, slowly it drifted into something deeper, something more permanent.
***
It wasn't until one of the park guards walked by, returning from the first lap of his route and noticed that the elderly couple hadn't moved....
***
BREAKING NEWS: In the news this hour; The entertainment reporter covered the story with all the breathless awe and giddy excitement of one covering the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
"She was called the vanishing waif, The decades-long mystery finally has been solved. The young singer with the voice of an angel has at long last been found. Molly, the only name anyone knew, vanished from the stage after completing her first concert. Speculation about her fate raged for years with theories that ran the gamut from underworld ties to alien abduction. One story said she had vanished with a bright flash of orange-red fire and pure white smoke.
"We now know the answer to this decades-long mystery. The simple truth was that the vanishing waif never vanished at all. She went home, finished school, married her high school sweetheart, settled down and raised a family. A day ago she and her husband of seventy years were found in a local nature preserve where they died, sitting arm-in-arm on a park bench"
The people who haunted the fringes of a life that Molly hadn't wanted suddenly became experts on the whys and wherefores of whatever happened to Molly. Old, amateur tape recordings of her first and only concert began appearing in the news. The record company that had signed her released copies from the master tapes and was paying royalties to the estate of a young woman who had only one live performance to her credit. The trust she had set up would make the lives of her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren more than comfortable for a very long time. Her grown children were stunned to find out that the mysterious "vanishing waif" had been the woman they called Mom.
***
