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When Winston goes, Molly isn’t entirely surprised. She’s heard the stories of his first separation from Will, and she knows pets have been known to find their way home, however many states away they’ve moved.
But she’s not going back to Maine or to Wolf Trap. Not even for Winston King.
(He’s King on all his formal papers now. They all are. They probably ought to change their first names too, but it’s a hell of a thing to do to a little boy and a bunch of dogs. The move and the last name change are enough to keep the lazier reporters away, and if Will wants to find her, the name on her driver’s license won’t matter. Not that there’s been any hint that Will wants to find her. Some days that rankles, and others she thinks it’s one last gift he’s given her.)
She does what she can. She calls the FBI using the special number she keeps in her wallet, and she gets Crawford to agree to send someone by both the houses, just in case. He reports back a few days later: No Winston.
Walter takes it bravely, like he takes so many things these days.
Molly had done plenty of time in therapy long before Will entered her life, and she’s racking up some more therapist-couch hours since he left it. So she’s pretty good at figuring out what she’s really mad about. And what she’s really mad about, seriously-fucking-angry about, red-faced, would-shout-at-the-top-of-her-lungs-if-her-therapist’s-office-had-better-soundproofing about, is Walter. He should have had a few more years, at the very least, before he had to learn anything more about loss than he’d already learned from his biological father.
He’s doing great, and she’s doing okay or less okay depending on the day, and they’re both going to be fine sooner or later. But god damn if she’s going to let loss become simply the routine background noise of her son’s life, a steady expected drip of beloved things slipping away. That’s not what she wants for him.
So she’s angry when Winston slips away from them, but it’s a vague inchoate sort of fury without a satisfying target. She can’t be angry at a dog for wanting his home any more than she can be angry at the sun for shining even on her bad days.
The world keeps turning and you lose things. If you keep breathing through it long enough you eventually find new things. Molly knows that, if she knows anything at all.
She’s been thinking about seeing if she can lure the feral orange cat who’s been lurking around the edges of the property. If it’s brave enough to let itself be coaxed closer to the house where the dogs are, maybe she can be brave enough to try loving it.
There’s room in her life for something new, a ragged space where Winston used to be.
*
“MOM !”
Walter bursts out the front door, loud and fast enough to send the little orange cat running. She takes off into the hedges in an instant, fast enough that Molly expects to see a little cartoon dust cloud where she was, like an old cartoon.
“Wally,” she grumbles, but at least she can finally move now. She’s been holding her position for several minutes, careful and nonthreatening, stone-still on the porch steps. They’ve gotten that far, at least - she can put out food, and the cat will come and eat it. She’s allowed to sit nearby. Sometimes. If she holds still and doesn’t make too much noise or move too quickly.
Occasionally the cat stays after she’s done eating. She washes her face and paws delicately, and smacks her thin lips together. Molly wants to reach out and pet her, but she knows better. Sometimes the cat tilts her head at Molly before she leaves. When Molly tilts her head in return, she feels some sort of understanding flash between them.
This, apparently, is not to be one of those days.
The cat’s long gone, and Walter wants to have a discussion about having dinner at Tyler’s house, where he’s never been before. Which means Molly’s going to have to have The Talk with Tyler’s parents. The my ex isn’t allowed around Wally, don’t let anyone but me pick him up or drop him off, and if anyone tries, call me immediately talk.
She hates The Talk, and Walter hates that she insists on it. But in theory, according to her therapist and common sense and other such terrible things, she’s not allowed to lock her son in a tower until he’s thirty or until Molly personally rips Hannibal Lecter’s face off his head. Whichever of those two things happens first. She’s supposed to let him have a life. So. The Talk it is.
She leaves the dish out in case the cat wants to come back for it, ignores the pop in her knee as she pushes herself upright, and heads inside for awkward playdate negotiations.
*
When the orange cat finally comes into the house, it’s on her own terms. She saunters in one morning with the dogs, tail held straight and high, chin up, and dares Molly to make something of it.
Molly closes the door and goes to sit on the staircase, near the bottom. She slips her phone out of her pocket and texts Walter Come to the top of the stairs. QUIETLY.
He tiptoes from his room and leans over the railing up above, and they watch the cat together.
The cat makes a slow circuit of the living room: sniffing at an invisible spot here, rubbing her chin against the corner of a table there. She steers clear of the dog beds altogether. The only sign that she’s nervous is the constant twitch of her ears.
When Molly looks up she finds Walter grinning down at her, a big bright wonder of an expression that makes her ache because she can’t remember when she last saw it. She can’t even bring herself to fuss at him for leaning so far out into space to see.
They watch in silent delight as the cat makes her inspection, then stalks imperiously back to the door.
She stares at the door, and then at Molly, and then at the door again, with A Look on her tiny indignant face. When Molly opens the door, the cat brushes against her leg, almost-but-not-quite by accident, on her way out: a tiny benediction.
*
There are likely a few rounds of “Murder Husband” photos that Molly never sees, after Winston disappears. She pretty much ignores the news these days, and she definitely turns off the television or turns the page anytime that particular phrase comes up. She’s had some very clear discussions with the FBI about what she does and doesn’t want to be alerted to, and “random sightings of her ex-husband frolicking on South American beaches with his psychopath lover, interspersed with crime scenes that may or may not be theirs, and thinking about that too carefully makes her sick” falls squarely into “don’t tell me unless you’ve got some reason to think there’s a threat to Walter or myself” territory.
So her heart sinks fast when she gets the call several months later. In the five seconds of silence after “Molly, it’s Jack Crawford”, she runs through her emergency list. Go bags are packed. There’s cash in the pockets. She’ll pick Walter up from school and they’ll hit the road, call the pet-sitter from at least three counties away. She’s fairly sure her heart rate hasn’t even sped up; she’s thought about this so long and so hard that she knows exactly what to do. The panic will hit later, there’s no time for it now, she’ll just --
But then it’s not that, not at all. Jack’s not alarmed, precisely, he’s almost - sheepish?
She’d asked them to keep an eye out for Winston, he says. They think Winston’s turned up, but he’s not sure if that’s something she wants to know.
The panic bubbles up almost immediately, the way it does when the threat’s over. She breathes through it, five breaths in, five breaths out. Fuck Jack Crawford waiting on the other end of the line. He can wait until she’s pretty sure that she won’t start screaming at him.
Eventually he tells her what they think they know about Winston. She breathes five more times and then hangs up without another word. She glares at the phone for a while, daring it to ring again. She really wants it to ring again. She would like to have a redo on the not-screaming-at-Jack-Crawford thing.
He doesn’t call. Jack’s a lot of things but he’s not unintelligent or lacking a self-preservation instinct.
Molly gives herself a while to calm down before she turns on the computer. First she lets the dogs in, counting heads as they roll past her in a wave of fur and tails. Next she pours herself precisely one glass of wine, but she makes it a heavy pour. Then she looks at the clock to make sure she has plenty of time before the bus drops Walter off.
Finally, she takes her laptop upstairs to find Sylvia. She stretches out on the bed next to Syl, but not actually touching her, and she’s rewarded with the slow blink of feline approval. They’re still working out their boundaries, Molly and Walter and Syl and the dogs, and Syl patrols hers with teeth and claws. But she likes company if it respects her space.
Molly finds sharing space with a cat oddly calming. The dogs are always needing, always excitable, always in a tumult about something. Syl understands about quiet and space and on the rare occasions when she decides to let herself be petted, or to knead gently against Molly’s leg, it feels like Molly’s earned something precious.
She’s not sure it’s love for either of them yet, but it’s respect and cautious trust. Sometimes Sylvia puts a velvet-soft paw on Molly’s arm to hold her still and close, and in those moments Molly’s not sure it’s not love.
Syl’s probably not going to run off with a psychopathic murderer, so that’s something, anyway.
Which brings her to… ugh.
She powers up the laptop and flips quickly through the photos that have arrived in her email, as Jack promised. Much later that night she’ll probably have the rest of the wine and make terrible life choices and read the Tattle Crime article that goes with them, but for now she just needs to see it for herself.
She’s never seen Will tan. Even their brief honeymoon had ended up mostly rain. She doesn’t look too closely, except to let herself note that in addition to the tan and the shorter hair, he seems to be doing well physically. At least well enough to be running down a beach with a multicolored brown mutt galloping along at his heels, ears perky, tongue lolling from his mouth in a grin.
It could be any dog. There are so many fluffy brown mutts in the world. Will could have picked up a stray that reminded him of his old life, for nostalgia’s sake.
She knows he didn’t. She knows that look on Winston’s face. (They’d joked about that, sometimes - most of the dogs had readily accepted her as Will’s equal, but Winston never really had. He’d played favorites. When Will was in the room, Winston barely knew anyone else existed, and that’s just how he looks now.)
Winston’s looking at Will. Will’s looking at the camera, or maybe just past it, now that she lets herself look. There’s someone he’s heading toward, someone he’s happy to see. She remembers that expression.
It would be nice to imagine it’s anyone other than Hannibal Lecter, but Molly’s not an idiot any more than Jack Crawford is.
Ugh, again.
That’s not him, she reminds herself. Not anymore. Not really.
She closes the laptop and tries not to drop it too hard onto the bed so Sylvia won’t be jarred. The cat still opens one eye and twitches an irritated ear at her. Molly rolls onto her stomach and stretches out alongside Syl, getting down to her eye level for a little heart-to-heart.
“Did you see them, baby?”
Syl yawns, pink tongue and wicked teeth, and doesn’t say.
“Was it one or both of them? Did they actually come onto our property? Shit. We’re going to have to move again.”
Technically it might be overkill. If Will or Hannibal had come to their house long enough to take Winston and depart again, and then let months pass without making any other form of contact, there’s no reason to think they’ll come back. Especially since they’re apparently currently cavorting somewhere with a beach. Still. Molly doesn’t like the thought of either of them having been so nearby. It’s not a full-panic, get-Walter-from-school, get-the-emergency-bags-and-run situation, but they’re going to have to move.
Sylvia stretches out one paw toward Molly, extending her sharp, wicked claws until they catch on the bedspread.
Molly finds herself smiling, roiling emotions and all. “Please tell me you scratched Hannibal if he was here, baby girl. A really good one, right in the face.”
Sylvia keeps her secrets well. Mrow, she says, inscrutable.
Molly feels obscurely comforted.
*
On moving day, bright and early before Walter’s even up, Molly opens the front door and Sylvia waltzes in for breakfast.
Molly mixes the vet-provided sedative into Sylvia’s food carefully, hoping it doesn’t taste bad. They have a long drive ahead, and Sylvia awake and howling is not what any of them need. She sets the dish down and sits nearby with her morning coffee, watching and waiting.
She tries not to think about Will. They’d never discussed all the gory details - the leaked courtroom transcripts from his trial were all over the internet if she’d ever wanted those - but she knows there’d been drugging. Maybe Hannibal dosed Will’s food. For the first time, it seems strange that she doesn’t know.
Sylvia eats, and then she begins her usual patrol around the house, but she quickly gets wobbly. Molly picks her up, carefully - she’s allowed to do that now but it’s new - and Sylvia makes a little chirping sound. Molly sits down on the couch and strokes Sylvia’s fur, murmuring soothing nonsense, until she’s entirely asleep. Sylvia squirms a little but doesn’t fight the undertow, relaxing into Molly’s lap.
Sylvia feels heavier than she looks once she’s under, but somehow still seems fragile. Molly feels an overwhelming surge of tenderness and responsibility for the small life in her arms.
The collar tucked into Molly’s pocket clicks around Sylvia’s neck easily: blue, with a small engraved tag bearing their new address and phone number. The little bell jingles. Poor Sylvia, her days of sneaking up on birds are officially behind her and she doesn’t know it yet.
“You’ll like the new house, honey,” Molly murmurs even though there’s no one awake in the house to hear. “We’re gonna put in a cat door for you. The guy’s coming next week.”
Sylvia sleeps on, oblivious.
Molly lifts Sylvia and buries her face in the cat’s sleek, soft side, the way she’d never be allowed to if Syl were awake. Her fur is warm from the early morning sunshine. She smells clean and a little spicy, like cinnamon. Her flank rises and falls, soothing and steady.
(Molly does not let herself give into the temptation of wondering whether Hannibal would have taken any such liberties when Will was drugged. Her stomach churns at the thought, and it’s not a day when she can afford to give in to the undertow of thinking about Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter. There are too many things to do today.)
Sylvia fits easily into the new cat carrier, also blue, lined with soft fleece. She stirs only a little when Molly deposits her there, and immediately starts to snore: a small, reedy noise that makes Molly smile.
Molly straightens up and surveys the living room. Its contents are neatly boxed, waiting for the movers. If she wakes Wally now, gets him up and moving while she feeds the dogs, they can get on the road as soon as the movers arrive. Breakfast on the road, a few hours’ drive, and they’ll all get to sleep under their new roof tonight.
It feels good right now, here at the beginning of the next thing. Like a snake might feel, shedding an old, itchy skin. Better to think of it that way than the way she felt lying awake the night before: hounded, forced from place to place, as if Will and Hannibal are still deciding her life for her from wherever they are.
A new start, she thinks firmly. As if saying it enough times might make it so, a choice rather than a reaction.
Before she goes up to Walter, she reaches into the carrier to pet Sylvia one more time. The cat’s small heartbeat races underneath Molly’s hand, even in her sedated sleep. A couple of burrs are stuck in the fluffier fur of her hind legs.
Wild thing, Molly thinks, an echo of an old book she’d read to Wally when he was young enough to hold still for reading. Then, unable to stop her memory from carrying on: Please don’t go. I’ll eat you up, I love you so.
It had seemed such a charming book, at the time.
She pushes the thought aside, next to all the other things that she hopes to leave behind when she hands the keys to the movers and pulls out of the driveway.
She zips up the sides and top of Sylvia’s carrier, peeks in one last time, and then heads up the stairs to wake Walter for the busy day ahead.