So because Jennifer and Brandi had been so nice to her the last two Sundays, she'd gone with them. She'd secretly hoped that Grams was right and they were outgrowing their meanness.
The August day had been a scorcher. The blacktop squished beneath her white dress shoes. The sun beat on her head. Sweat poured down her back, and she wished she'd left her sweater in the car.
They cut through Mr. Stewart's pasture and climbed under the barbed-wire fence that surrounded the junkyard.
Before Molly could point out the NO TRESPASSING signs, or ask about the pit bulls that patrolled the area, Brandi and Jennifer had taken off. And unlike her, they were fast runners.
She'd run up and down every row, looking for her cousins, and had fallen down twice. When she saw the blood welling on her scraped-up hands and knees, she'd panicked, positive the mean junkyard dogs would smell blood and attack her.
She'd stayed very quiet until Brandi jumped out from behind a car. That'd scared her so much she'd screamed and wet her panties a little.
Embarrassed, hot, out of breath, and bleeding, she knew this had been another trick. She turned to hide her tears and to start walking back to the church.
But Jennifer had come up behind her. Pinching the back of the arm to direct her where she wanted, steering Molly to her surprise.
They stopped in front of a twisted heap of metal.
"What is that?"
"That's the car your mom died in."
She'd been too horrified to speak. The car had been mangled so badly it didn't resemble a car.
"We thought it was time you saw it," Jennifer said. "Can you imagine how much it must've hurt to die in that? With a train ripping your body to shreds?"
By that time Molly had been all-out weeping.
"Oh, shut your fat face," Jennifer sneered.
"Yeah. We're not done with the story," Brandi added.
"What story?"
"The truth Grams was too ashamed to tell you. About the night your mom died."
She remembered wanting to ask . . . and not wanting to know. Not that Brandi and Jennifer had given her a choice.
Jennifer had pinched her arm harder and leaned in to whisper in her ear. But she never whispered. She thought it was funnier to yell in Molly's ear at close range.
"Listen," Brandi hissed.
"The night your mom died? She wasn't alone. You were in the car with her."
"I don't remember."
"Of course you don't, stupid. You were, like, two. Anyway, your mom drove to the railroad tracks late at night and left the car there." That's when Jennifer's eyes glittered. "And she left you sleeping in the car. See, she realized after coming back here that she didn't want a fat, ugly kid like you. She knew you'd never fit in and no one would like you. So she was gonna make it look like an accident that you died when the train hit the car."
"But you climbed out of the car window," Brandi inserted. "Your mom tried to catch you, but you hid in the ditch. That's when she knew her plan wouldn't work, so she got back in the car to move it."
"That's when the train hit her and killed her dead. So it's your fault she died."
Molly fell on the ground, spewing out her morning milk and Raisin Bran. Her stomach muscles spasmed even when she had nothing left in her belly.
Brandi dropped onto all fours beside her, making the same retching noises and laughing.
Jennifer crouched on the other side. "They found you wandering along the railroad tracks the next morning. Grams knows your mother didn't want you. She didn't want you either, but she felt so guilty that your own mother tried to kill you, so she took you in."
The images went black, and she struggled not to let that darkness suck her in. As a child she didn't have that ability. It'd taken her months to crawl out of that pit of despair.
"Babe." A pause. "Molly." Another pause. "Darlin', look at me please."
Deacon's insistent voice broke through the sensation of her being underwater. She looked at him, but his face was a blur.
He wiped her tears. "How old were you when that happened?"
"Eight. It sounds far-fetched now, but when I was a lonely eight-year-old girl, it was all too easy to believe. They knew I was too mortified by the possibility it could be true to ever ask Grams. And even if I had found the guts to ask and there were questions about where I'd heard the story, Jennifer and Brandi would both claim they'd never said anything like that and I was lying, making up stories to get attention. A couple months later, my logical brain had picked the story apart completely. There wasn't any way that anyone knew what'd happened that night. And living in a small town that size? If I'd been found wandering on the railroad tracks after the accident, I would've heard about it."