Molly 3: Molly Series, #3

By Bellamy Grayfield

★★Reminder: Book 1 of the Molly series is available so make sure to read it if you haven't already!★★

Warning: This description contains spoilers for Molly 1 and 2. Do not read until you have read the first 2 books!

Sarah Hartley was a single, working-class mother, raising her son, Tommy, happily, working in a bakery, and saving change to take her son south on vacation. That was eight years ago, before she met a deranged serial killer and kidnapper.

After Sarah came to discover that the woman she thought was her friend, who was living under her roof, caring for her son, was not who she said she was, Sarah fought for her life and saved her son and young Leif from being taken by Tamara Klein, a deranged, mentally-ill kidnapper and serial killer who was posing as a suburban single-mom, Molly Johnson.

Five years later, Molly has taken Tommy and Leif from Sarah, the man Sarah thought that she loved was actually Molly’s husband, and Sarah’s world falls apart. Sarah has been hospitalized for the past three years. Despite the best efforts of Officer Alex Bradley and the Port Orchard, Washington police, Molly, Noah, Tommy, and Leif have seemingly disappeared without a trace.

Sarah is in a state of near catatonia and complete dissociation, completely broken by having everything she ever loved violently ripped out from underneath her. One day, she receives a letter that completely snaps her out of her catatonic state. Molly is now using the name Marcia, and is raising Tommy and Leif somewhere in suburbia under the name of Marcia. With nothing to lose, Sarah convinces her doctors that she has finally recovered.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bellamy Grayfield
• Release date: Mar 30, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386652915

Book preview

Prologue

TWENTY-ONE PILOTS HUMMED through the speakers as Sarah clicked her left turn signal on, stopping at the four-way intersection as the single traffic light blinked red. She had almost reached her destination. I do love this area, she thought to herself, switching the windshield wipers to the interval setting. She saw no other vehicles approaching from any direction and made the turn. Her red Toyota Camry accelerated smoothly over the rain-slick pavement until she glimpsed the parked, unmarked police cruiser through the trees. It was parked in front of a modest, cozy looking brick two-story. Even from a distance, she thought that she could see Alex through the bay window in the front room as she slowly approached, presumably uncorking a bottle of Cabernet Franc and putting the finishing touches on dinner. He’s mentioned something about Greek food earlier, and her stomach gave a small rumble in response. She smiled ruefully, and started to think, a man who cooks, has good taste in wine, an honorable career... What more could a girl ask for?

She shook her head. No, she told herself. Don’t get too attached. He is a nice guy, and a nice-looking guy, but... No. The old Sarah would get attached. The spineless, frail woman who went into the hospital three years ago would be falling into his arms, completely dependent on him to protect her from all that is bad in the world. That girl is gone, she reminded herself. I need his help to find her. I need his access to those case files. I will find her, and he will help me. With renewed resolve, she steeled herself and continued up the driveway, coming to a stop between the cruiser and the garage door entrance to Detective Alex Bradley’s home.

Just thinking about that evil woman made Sarah’s blood boil. Somewhere in this country, the woman who had twice tried to kill Sarah, kidnapped her sons, and left her to rot in a mental health facility, was living in some little suburban fantasy. She was raising Sarah’s sons somewhere under a false name, trying to act like a normal soccer mom.

What seemed like another lifetime ago, Sarah had first met Tamara Klein. Under the false name Molly Johnson, which belonged to a dead woman, whose infant son she was raising, another mom at Sarah’s son’s daycare had spun a deceptive tale of an abusive husband, who would kill her and her son, Leif, if he ever found her. Sarah had taken the bait, hook, line, and sinker. Soon after, Molly lost her job, and Sarah had invited her new friend to live with her and her son, Tommy. Soon after this life-changing mistake, Sarah discovered some disturbing truths about her friend, locked away in an ornate, carved wooden box in her roommate’s bedroom. These disturbing discoveries probably saved Sarah’s life, and completely turned Sarah’s world upside down.

Chapter 1: Feeling Better

Four months ago, after signing the thirty-some forms required for my release from the voluntary, three-year stay at Serenity Gardens Psychiatric Hospital, I had taken some time to rent an apartment. It was simple, but nice. I got myself some nice clothing and a fashionable haircut, and joined a local gym. Of course, I’d also bought myself a laptop, on which I spent every free moment I had combing the internet for any mention of Hawkins Middle School, Marcia, Franklin, or Jim. Molly’s taunting letter, which arrived about four months ago, had used these names in her assertions of just how much better off the boys are without me.

That letter changed everything.

It violently tugged me out of the dissociative bubble I had formed in my mind to protect me from memories too painful to consider. In the weeks following the letter’s arrival, I carefully made calculated improvements until Dr. Blake suggested I might no longer need to remain at Serenity Gardens. Once he suggested that I would be able to more effectively treat the Post-Traumatic Stress outside of the institution, I feigned hesitance before agreeing this was for the best. This had been my plan all along. With Molly’s ability to charm people into believing her bullshit, and my history of questionably paranoid behavior the year before I was admitted, I really needed the doctor to be the one to suggest that I was not mentally ill or unstable. Molly was a crafty, manipulative bitch, and in case I had to call the law with some insane sounding story (which was as likely as not where Molly was concerned), I needed them to believe me without hesitation or question. Tommy’s and Leif’s lives might very well depend on it.

Dr. Blake had initially insisted that I report to his office twice a week for therapy, and so I went, dutifully arriving ten minutes before the scheduled appointments every Tuesday and Friday for several weeks. I was very careful not to seem too ‘put-together,’ nor did I want to appear to be too unstable or too frail. As far as Dr. Blake knew, I was taking the prescribed pill-cocktail of mind-numbing ‘mood stabilizers’ (which we all know is a pretty way of saying ‘anti-psychotics’) exactly as he directed, and the medication and therapy were enabling me to make considerable, but not unreasonable, improvement. In my doctor’s eyes, I was a kind, simple woman whose life had shattered to pieces when I lost my family to a deranged kidnapper, and now I was developing some coping skills, dealing with my grief, and focused on moving on with my life.

He couldn’t have been more wrong. Every improvement I made, every word I said, and every single appropriately-timed tear I shed in Dr. Blake’s office during therapy was calculated. The moment I had finished reading Molly’s letter, the world came into focus for the first time, in a degree of jaded clarity I’d never before experienced. My life had become a high-stakes game of chess, played on a dangerous board checked with love and hate. My life consisted of arranging my pawns, so that one day, when the time came, I could make my move, save my boys, and annihilate anyone and anything stupid enough to stand in my way.

I filled my prescriptions at the local pharmacy, asking the smiling pharmacist about various side effects I’d read about on WebMD. When I got home, I flushed my daily dose of idiot pills down the toilet. I wasn’t stupid about it, though. I always made sure I had the correct amount in the bottles at all times. Well, all except for the clonazepam. I kept those close at hand and took them (no more than prescribed, of course, and usually less than Dr. Blake would have had me taking them) at times when I was alone, times when the anger threatened to overcome my stoic, unaffected front, and the panic attacks would turn my world black. The sedatives definitely helped me to prevent that.

When I had read Molly’s letter, something inside me snapped, very similar to the day that Molly broke my mind. Even her signature pissed me off. The loopy scrawl at the bottom of the letter had read, ‘With Love, Marcia’, with the ‘L’ in ‘love’ deliberately oversized, and the swirling embellishments in her rounded hand expressed some kind of forced, grandiose gesture of girlish innocence. I burst into flames. Like a phoenix, from the ashes I rose. However, the Sarah that had entered Serenity Gardens, broken and hopeless, was another woman. The Sarah who emerged from the ashes after her life had burned to the ground was me. I was a woman who knew no fear, had no doubts, and had one singular goal: to rescue my sons, and kill Molly. I was no longer sad. I was no longer afraid. I was no longer unsure. I was angry, I was determined, and nothing would stop me from doing what needed to be done.

In the following months between therapy and the charade of my life (shopping, a book club, lots of time at the gym), my searches for any information concerning Marcia, Franklin and Jim (James?) and Hawkins Middle School continually hit dead ends. It was frustrating, with all the information that I had always heard was so openly and readily available on the internet these days. Unfortunately, as a professional baker, I had never developed the computer savvy for much past basic searches. I scoured social media pages, school websites, and local newspapers until my eyes crossed in exhaustion. I listened to Kim Kommando and other radio and podcast-type shows, hoping to gain some deeper understanding of the internet.

At times, it felt like I was so close – I had the name of the Middle School the boys attended, which