August 6, 2009.
“They changed it,” Stephen called out, panicked.
A few hours before its scheduled time at 7 p.m. in Palo Alto, the ACCL meeting was moved to 835 Parkstone Way in Milpitas. Though the new location was only twenty miles southeast of the original, the street was an enormous distance from the safe immaculately manicured lawns and stately homes of Palo Alto. The home at 835 Parkstone Way was a tiny single-level grey house on a street with other equally small houses, and more broken cars than kept lawns.
Stephen had driven Molly to the house early, but not as early as Stephen would have liked. The dashboard clock said 6:43. They decided to wait together in the car until 7:00, to watch for anyone coming or going. Though neither knew what to expect, both had grown increasingly uneasy as the appointed time approached.
Left alone, Molly would have handled the stress in her usual way, compartmentalized it, dealt with it, and moved on. She would have defiantly overcome any trepidation by convincing herself this too was just part of her research—just another chapter to add to the thesis. It was Stephen’s anxiety that had worked both himself and Molly into their currently agitated state.
Stephen kept an eye on the clock as it slowly made its way to 7:00. It was only 6:52 and the two dots kept blinking mercilessly until a number finally changed, and began their synchronized march again. He figured he had another six or seven minutes with Molly before she walked into the house. So, when she opened the door before the clock even struck 6:54, he nearly jumped out of his seat. With just a quick peck on the cheek and a cool “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” she leapt out of the car and walked toward the door. He would have said something, had there been anything left to say.
The screen door to the house was closed, but the main door behind it was wide open—at least they weren’t trying to hide anything. Molly rang the doorbell before she finished her last step. A woman with dark hair peeking from under a headscarf came to the door, flashed a huge smile, and motioned for Molly to come in. As Molly passed through the entrance, she abruptly stopped before putting both feet inside. Then she turned around and waved, a very large and exaggerated wave, to Stephen. Then she was gone—disappearing inside.
The wave would be replayed in Stephen’s mind from the moment Molly left his sight. Was it a “come now, I need you” wave, a signal to the occupants of the house that someone was waiting for her who knew where she was, or her way of trying to reassure him that everything was okay? It was only 6:57, and the worry was mounting.
By the time 7:00 officially came and went, no one else had entered the house. Perhaps they had not been early enough. Perhaps someone from ACCL was going to talk with each person individually, and the next person would arrive only when Molly left. It was, after all, a very private subject.
At 7:13, the screen door slowly opened, and a dark skinned man smoking a cigarette emerged. He held the cigarette between his two middle fingers as he lifted his entire fist to his mouth to draw in a long drag of nicotine. He turned to look directly toward Stephen. Maybe the reflections on the windshield were working in his favor, blocking the man’s view of him, but there was no way to be sure. His gaze didn’t waver for an uncomfortable minute. The cigarette spent, the man rose to go back inside. He, too, stopped before walking through the doors and turned again to face Stephen.
At 7:35, Stephen decided to move the car. From its current position, he could only see the screen door, but nothing beyond it. He swung the car around in a wide U-turn at the end of the street and parked on the opposite side of the road, directly across from the still-open door. Nothing was visible inside. From his vantage point, the house appeared uninhabited.
I should be in there. I should have insisted. Stephen had repeatedly volunteered to accompany Molly into the meeting, but she wouldn’t budge in her determination to go alone. She had sense enough to know that Stephen would be unlikely to make things better. Molly wanted to listen with as objective a mind as possible, and Stephen was being anything but objective.
At 7:45, the wave had been replayed in his mind dozens of times in the last five minutes. It had been a “come save me” wave, he was sure. Yet, he stayed in his car waiting. He’d give Molly until 8:01. The next sixteen minutes wouldn’t pass quickly. There was too much to think about and even more to imagine.
With sixteen minutes to go, there was enough time to play back the wave, retrace the torturous path that had led him to be waiting in front of a stranger’s house, and revisit all that precipitated this sequence of events. Try as he might, though, he could not escape the same worries he had earlier. He was not to blame. His list did not put her on a real watch list. The only thing he had really done was get her invited to this meeting. The real threat was her name’s presence on a list that neither he, nor she, would ever see. But what if he was wrong? What if the ACCL was wrong? Then he had just managed to put her name on a list with people that nobody would want to be associated with.
It was 8:02. There was no movement in the house. “Fine, 8:10 then,” he thought to himself resolutely. “Absolutely no later.” He would go in then, no matter what happened. But he needed to prepare. He needed to carry something, something sharp, maybe something heavy. There was nothing in his car—he had his keys, but that was it. He wasn’t ready for this.