Chapter 11

Chapter 11:
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Her parents were already talking about the state of the Blackfield residence by the time Molly got down the stairs.  The kitchen smelled heavenly--there was pumpkin spice flavored coffee brewing in the coffeepot, pumpkin pancakes, hickory smoked bacon and scrambled eggs on the table.  Molly's mouth watered as she sat down and listened intently to her parents' conversation.  She hadn't told them of her tiny break-in to get her friend's stuff the day before; she didn't want them to have to worry about her, too.  She had never kept anything from her parents before and she knew she'd eventually come clean, just not today.
..."the front door was knocked in and the entire first floor was in shambles!" John exclaimed, reading from the Sunday paper.  It made headline news: "Big man on campus beats his only daughter, house gets looted."  Violet handed Molly a plate and shook her head at the news.  "Was anything stolen?"  Molly wasn't sure, but she thought she saw her mother look in her direction when she asked that question.
"It says here that nothing seemed out of place, except the party or parties responsible seemed to be lashing out of anger more than anything else.  And it also is questioning the priorities of the police, where were they when all of this happened?"  John put the paper down and rubbed his temples.  "Honey, you better eat something so we can go to the hospital," Violet told her husband in a soft but firm voice.  "Yes, dear," John responded and shoveled some cooled off scrambled eggs into his mouth.

Molly just stared at her parents.  They hadn't so much as said anything to her the whole time she had been at the table, and she wasn't sure why.  Normally they'd been bombarding her with questions but today they let her eat her breakfast in peace.  She stared at each of them, trying her best to read their faces.  Her instincts gave nothing away.  She decided to speak up. "Hey, mom?"  she asked in a small voice.  "yes, love?"  Violet answered back.  Molly stared at her mom for a minute and saw that she couldn't possibly know anything.  She was looking at her daughter with eyes of love and also of concern, but that was normal these days.  "Thank you for breakfast this morning."  "You're welcome, sweetie," Violet said and went back to her own breakfast.
She couldn't tell her daughter the awful truth.  The hospital called last night and said that Ashley's body was in worse condition than they first anticipated.  They had noticed that she had more fractures in places that they had originally seen, particularly in the ribcage area.  They were going to have to keep her a little while longer so she could heal all the way.  And there was a lot of damage done to her kidneys, like she was slowly being poisoned.  There was so much that she wished she could tell Molly, but she couldn't bring herself to.  Not yet. She glanced up and saw John staring at her, pleading with his eyes to not say anything yet.  Molly didn't have to know everything, not until they were already on their way to the hospital, or maybe not even until they got there.  She had already been through so much with finding out what her best friend's father was up to, she didn't need to know that in addition to breaking her bones and raping her, he had also been slowly poisoning her as well.
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The ride the to hospital proved to be very awkward.  Molly could just tell that her parents were keeping something from her and she couldn't understand why they weren't saying anything.  The suspense was killing her.  If they weren't going to say anything, she was going to have to. She took a deep breath to center herself and cleared her throat.
"Okay, what in the heck is going on?"  Molly's question lingered in the air, falling on deaf ears.  She had no idea if she was going to get an answer back until her dad, who was driving, turned the radio down.  "We have some news about Ashley and it's going to be a little hard to hear."
Molly, who was sitting in the backseat in back of her dad, watched her mom's face blanche a little bit.  She sucked in air and breathed it out again, annoyed.  "Just tell me, I can take it," she said firmly.  John turned the radio the rest of the way down.  Violet turned so that she was facing her daughter.  Her tone was gentle, but Molly could tell she was having trouble keeping her tone down.  "Ashley was found to have more broken bones than the doctors originally thought, and they suspect she's been poisoned as well."  The words hit Molly like a brick wall.  More broken bones? Poison?  She could feel the heat rising in her cheeks. Her wings felt as if they might do some damage to the car if she didn't keep them in check.  She could feel the tingling sensation in her wings, the needing to be up in the air, away from the ground, away from this car, away from those horrible words.  "Oh no! Is she okay?  Is she going to die?"  Molly could feel the tears tumbling down her cheeks before she could do anything about them.  She was sick of crying, sick of being sick over her friend.  She missed her terribly, but the hospital was a drive and she couldn't see her every day.  Her heart hurt from being away for so long.  Violet took her daughter's hand in her hand and looked her straight in the eyes.  "The doctors are fashioning a special cast for her that will allow her to still have use of her upper body but will also allow her to heal. She will have to wear a sort of brace for a while until all the fractures heal which means she could be in the hospital for a while.  And I guess last night she started vomitting uncontrollably so the doctors did some tests and figured out that she had some kidney damage from someone poisoning her.  The vomitting was the body trying to get rid of everything.  Had she been sick prior to this?"  Molly thought back to the last couple of days before all of this happened.  She saw Ashley in school but not for long, she complained of suddenly feeling very strange and almost fainted right in front of Molly.  If she didn't have her wings, she would have collapsed right there in the hallway.  But after that she had seemed fine.  But right after that had been that awful day at the park.  It seemed plausable that her father had been slowly poisoning her. He'd done everything else to her, she didn't see why he'd stop there.  She hoped he was having fun in jail, and by fun she meant she hoped someone was having fun with HIM.