I can’t help these poor people. Apparently none of us can.
Two nights later Molly found that she couldn’t sleep. She rose, put on her robe, and used her key to get into the Institute. She walked down to her mother’s room with the thought of just watching the woman sleeping peacefully for a bit.
But when she got there she found the door open and her mother gone.
Molly looked wildly around for someone to alert, but found no one about. She ran back to the cottage and rousted Oliver and Charlie from their sleep. They quickly dressed and rushed outside.
“I thought they locked her door,” said Oliver.
“I did too,” replied Molly. “But it was open.”
“She must still be inside the Institute,” he said. “She was surely too weak to make it outside. I’m surprised she made it out of her room unassisted.”
“What’s that noise?” exclaimed Charlie.
They listened and heard what sounded like a door closing.
They ran to the rear of the building.
When they got there the first thing they saw was an empty wheelchair next to a small gray two-door sedan.
Her mother was sitting in the passenger seat looking placidly out the windscreen.
And someone else was with her.
“Father!” screamed Molly.
Herbert Wakefield turned to look at her.
He looked old, far older than she remembered. He was thin, she observed, unhealthily so. He was dressed in a three-piece suit. His hair was nearly all white and punished by the stiff wind.
He looked at her in bewilderment.
She took a tentative step forward. “Father, it’s me, Molly.”
“My God,” he said. “Molly?”
She took another step toward him.
“I came to visit Mum.” She glanced at her mother. “Where are you going with her?”
He looked over his shoulder at his wife. “I... she needs to leave this place. We both do. It’s... um... government business. All hush-hush. I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you. Official secrets and all that.”
“Father, you can’t do this. You mustn’t do this.”
“I tell you, it’s official business. I’m taking your mother to a... a safe place.”
“I know, Father. I know everything.”
“Do you now?” he replied sharply, his features hardening.
“Yes. You killed British soldiers.”
“You know what they’ve told you, I imagine.” He gestured angrily to Oliver. “But not my side of things.”
“Now you can have your say.”
“And would it make any difference to you, child?”
“You’re my father,” she said simply. “And I deserve an explanation.” He seemed taken aback by this and Molly decided to push ahead. “Why did you never bring me home?”
“Home to what? A barmy mum and a murderous father?”
“But I came home anyway. The money wasn’t being paid and even though the Coopers would have kept me on, I wanted to come back to you and Mother.”
“The bastards froze all of my accounts,” raged Wakefield. “The same bastards who could not bring themselves to even look for the disgusting filth who attacked your mother. But no, they had the time to take my money, to watch my house, to open my letters. Do you wonder why I never wrote to you?”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I couldn’t have them think you were somehow aiding me, looking for secret codes in my letters. No, I wouldn’t do that to you, Molly.”
“Mrs. Pride told me what happened to Mother at the shelter.”
“She didn’t know everything. I couldn’t bring myself to tell her.”
“What do you mean?”
“The men who attacked her? They were our soldiers. Your mother finally calmed enough to tell me what had happened. She was looking for me after we became separated in the crowd. They offered to help. The next thing, they were in a small dark room beating her, robbing her, doing... doing God knows what else to her.” He stopped and let out a sob. “The bobby on the beat couldn’t have cared less,” he added more calmly. “Not to be bothered. Had far too much to do to spend time helping a woman who had been savaged.”
Molly now could understand why her mother flew into a rage at the sight of the uniformed Mr. John, or the postman or milkman.
“I’m so sorry, Father, so very sorry.”
“But I worked for the government. I risked my life for my country. So I knew I could get justice for her. I knew that we were a good people! I went all the way to Scotland Yard, with all the facts, and even one of the men’s names because your mother had seen it on his uniform. They could have rounded them all up easily. And you know what they told me?”
“What?” said Molly tensely.
“That war was hard on the boys. He implied that they were just lads being lads. Surely Mrs. Wakefield could understand that. And if they were arrested for their crimes that would be three fewer men fighting Hitler. And if the press got wind of it? Well, that would be bad for morale, wouldn’t it? We couldn’t have that, could we?” He paused and rubbed at his face, smearing the tears there. “The assistant commissioner told me to get her some chocolates, and some flowers, and things would be as right as rain. Why hurt the lads fighting for their country? And after all it was her word against theirs.” He looked to the dark sky. “Chocolates and flowers,” he said numbly. “And then apparently she would be right as rain.”
He turned and pointed to his wife and screamed, “What about her hurt? She hasn’t had one minute’s peace since then. Not one!” He stopped talking and slumped against the car, completely spent, it seemed. After a few moments he said, “Your mother dug down and somehow found the courage to tell me what had happened to her that night. And as soon as she was done, do you know what I saw?”
Molly couldn’t form words for a reply. She could only shake her head, her expression fearful of what was to come.
“I saw the light of your mother’s life go right out of her. I saw the woman that I loved more than anything vanish right in front of me. Any trust, any faith that she might have had in others, was... gone. Forever.” He turned to look at his wife, who was still staring placidly out the windscreen. “And this... is all that is left of a good and kind person.”
Molly, Charlie, and Oliver could only stare helplessly at the stricken man.
“So if the police wouldn’t look for those men, then I would, and did. For years I did. I used all the skills and contacts I had acquired while working for my country. I talked to people at the shelter that night. I followed up leads. I even found the room where they dragged her, and took fingerprints and had a friend check them against records of the enlisted. I ran down every clue I could. It took a long time, but I finally found them, one by one.”
“And then?” asked Molly in a tremulous voice.
Her father’s features hardened to flint. “I assumed the role of judge and jury. I recounted to them all the evidence I had gathered. I asked them how they pled. They sniveled and cowered and begged for their lives. But not a single one apologized, not even when I showed them pictures of your mum, of what she had become. Not a single damn one. They were only interested in saving their own miserable skins. They cared nothing for her. If any of them had admitted guilt, had shown the least bit of remorse—” he let out a long, tired breath “—I would have spared them. But they didn’t, and so I didn’t. I killed them, and I would do so again, without hesitation.”
Molly teared up with this admission. “Surely, there had to be another way, Father.”