by Natalie Ann
“It was okay that you didn’t love me. I just wanted to be your wife. I wanted to be a part of your company and build it with you. Couldn’t you see that? Couldn’t you see everything I did for you?”
She was back in control again, her normal robotic speech she’d said so many times before. But this time there was something possessive in her tone. Something almost creepy or stalker-like.
“You did nothing to build my company. You organized my life, but that didn’t build my company. I did that through hard work and determination.”
“That’s right. Time you could have spent with me, but instead you spent too much time with your precious employees. I was an employee too.”
“Exactly. And you could never separate the two no matter how many times I asked you to. That I wanted you to and even encouraged you to. I even told you that you didn’t need to keep working, but you refused.”
“You should have pushed harder. It’s the only time I got to see you!” she yelled.
He was taken back by the tone of her voice. “You know, you’ve never raised your voice to me once. You’ve never gotten mad at me or let me know how you felt. Nothing. Maybe I was guilty of ignoring you in favor of my company, but you’re guilty of just riding along pretending like everything was just fine. Pretending like we had this wonderful relationship when I knew differently.”
“I didn’t have a problem accepting what we had.”
He shook his head. None of this made sense. “You’re contradicting yourself now.”
“You just don’t get it, Nick, do you?”
“Obviously not, so explain it to me.” He crossed his arms, his patience at its end.
“I was supposed to find all those missing files. I was supposed to prove to everyone that I was needed. That I helped run that company as well as anyone. That I was needed by you and everyone. I should get some credit for what I’ve done there.”
He laughed at her. “You deleted files, or tried to, and then were going to miraculously find them again. You have no technological background. You didn’t even know how many sets of backups there were and that the files were recovered before you knew they were reported missing. And why you thought you’d be told they were missing is beyond me.”
“I didn’t know about the backup system because you never told me anything,” she said, complaining.
“There’s a reason for it. You didn’t need to know that level of security. It had nothing to do with your job. So what, your plan failed, and you decided to steal files and sell them?”
“No,” she said, her anger lessoning and her lip trembling again, the tears welling up in her eyes. “When you came home I wanted to prove to you that I could be the person you loved before.”
He interrupted her. “I told you I never loved you the way I should. The way that a husband should love his wife. Why can’t you understand that?”
Why did he have to keep telling her this? He didn’t want to hurt her, but at the moment he was too furious over everything to sugarcoat things.
“But that was acceptable to me.”
He ran his hands through his hair and started to pace the small room they were in. “It wasn’t acceptable to me. It never was. I don’t know how many times I have to tell you that.”
“I didn’t expect you to fire me,” she said, rage bursting through her eyes. So much for feeling any sympathy for her. “And when you did I was ticked off. I had the file and decided I might as well get some revenge. It was stupid, I know. And I’m going to pay for it.”
She was crying hard now. The anger was gone; the fear was real. Her hands were shaking; she was a mess. The woman who organized everything to the letter was falling apart in front of him. He’d never seen her all over the place like this.
He thought he’d feel guilt, but instead he felt relief. Maybe he was a bastard, but he knew he gave her everything he could, it just wasn’t enough. Part of him felt like a failure, but the other part was relived he finally recognized it fully. He didn’t or couldn’t love her the way he should have, or the way he’d always loved Mallory.
He knew he did everything he could to let her down easy. Nothing should have been a surprise to Kendra at this point. They’d had discussions for months over their relationship, and yet here she was, shocked that it ended.
Sitting down in the chair across from her, he said, “Kendra. I didn’t fire you. We talked about how it was better for both of us to move on if you didn’t stay employed there. You even agreed with me…or are you choosing to forget that conversation?”
She stiffened her shoulders. “I was in shock. I shouldn’t be expected to remember what I said at that point.”
“You don’t remember giving me a hug and wishing me well? Then saying it was for the best if you left? You don’t remember me saying to let me know any job opportunities you were interested in, and that I would help you in any way I could? Or how about the big fat check that I know you deposited that day?”
He was completely flabbergasted he was having this conversation.
“It was an emotional day for me,” she argued again.
He shook his head, deciding that comment was almost too hysterical from the woman who didn’t blink an eye when he called off their wedding, then said she was okay with not being loved enough.
“Look, Kendra, I’m not going to press charges. I’m not going to say a word of this to anyone. But if I ever hear a whisper of you speaking badly about my company, or talking about it at all, I will come after you.”
It was the best he could do and he knew he would get flack for it. His father and Zach had already lectured him to press charges, but he couldn’t. He just couldn’t do it to her.
“You’re really going to just let me go?”
“I am. Not for you, but for me. Go find that person that can give you everything you want in life. Don’t settle, please. Promise me that.”
“I was going to get what I wanted. You took it away,” she said, stone cold.
“A loveless marriage? That’s what you wanted?” he asked, feeling drained and wondering why he was bothering at this point. Why he couldn’t just let it go.
“Love means nothing. It’s all about success, Nick. I was going to have that as your wife.”
“Love means everything, Kendra. I’m sorry you can’t understand that.”
“Really, Nick,” she said, her voice dripping with condemnation. “That’s always been your biggest flaw. All emotion with you, never logic. If you’d listened to me and focused your software on social media rather than always trying to help people or ‘better their lives’ then you’d have five times the wealth you’ve got now.”
Instead of her words eating at his wounds even more, they actually started to heal him. “If that’s my biggest flaw, then I’m a pretty lucky man.”
When he finished recounting the whole story to Mallory, she squeezed his hand. He brought his eyes back to hers, seeing every bit of understanding and emotion he’d never seen from Kendra.
“You didn’t want to go through the drama of it, did you? You just wanted it over with.”
“Yeah. I don’t have it in me to fight this battle. I’m sick of fighting things. I’m sick of being taken by surprise all the time. I just want a normal life. A peaceful one. One with you.”
My Own
Mallory looked at Nick’s face and saw the defeat in his eyes. She hated seeing it there. She hated to see him so upset over everything, knowing that she was to blame for part of what he was going through. For part of the drama in his life.
“I’m not sure I can give you a peaceful life, Nick. I probably have more drama and baggage than Kendra. I guess all I can say is you have bad taste in women.”
“That’s not funny. Not at all.”
“No,” she said sadly. “It’s not.”
“I don’t want to talk about me anymore. I just told you my rotten day. You said yours wasn’t bad, just emotional. Talk to me about it.”
“You want more baggage, I see.
Just a glutton for punishment, aren’t you?” she said, trying to lighten things. He wanted to take his mind off of what he went through, but to do that would put the focus on her, when she’d much rather hide.
That was the old her—hiding. The new her was going to talk it through. She knew she had to take this step.
“I can take it. I’m pretty tough,” he said, leaning over and kissing her on the lips.
“When you aren’t fainting you are.”
“I’m never going to live that down, am I?” he asked, wincing slightly.
“No. But if you think you’re up for it. I’ll tell you how my day went.”
“Make me smile,” he said.
“I doubt it will do that, but here goes. Your mother informed me that my father had set up trusts for my mother and me. His will had stipulations in it that no one knew about in the beginning. Not even my own mother.”
“How could your mother not know?”
“Attorney-client privilege. Even after my mother found out about his will, she wasn’t lucid enough to understand things, so your mother—or her firm—took control of things per my father’s request. Bills were paid and so on. The gist of it is, my father took care of us. He’d always been very frugal with money, with the exception of our house. He’d spent a lot of money on that, even I realized that as a child.”
“It’s a nice neighborhood, a great place to raise a family.”
“It was a good place to live for part of my life.” She shook her head of those memories, ones she didn’t want. “Anyway, there was a separate trust for me that is worth just over a million dollars now. It will become mine when I turn thirty-one. It could have been turned over to my mother had I signed off on it once I became an adult. But I didn’t know that…and it seems neither did my mother.”
“A million dollars. Wow, Mallory, that’s wonderful. See, you made me smile after all. How could your mother not have known? And why thirty-one?”
“Susan told me that it wasn’t meant to be touched at all. Only in cases of emergency, and since your mom’s firm handled all my father’s assets they knew what was left and they could determine what was considered an emergency. Otherwise the money would be released to me at age thirty-one.”
Her eyes shut briefly. “As for that number, well it was my father’s favorite number. I remember seeing a picture of him with a baseball jersey on in school. I guess he found humor in it. It would have become mine at that age even if he lived, but he would have wanted me to make my own mark in the world and work hard, not knowing I had the money coming.”
“And you did that. You proved him right.”
“I did. He also had generous life insurance policies for my mother, and another trust. She didn’t know about the other trust until she ran out of the cash. She lived off the life insurance and his other investments for a long time, but when she ran out and found out about the trust she wanted to tap into it. There were stipulations to it and she and Paul tried to bypass them, but they never were able to get much more than the annual draws that my father felt were sufficient for what he considered a normal lifestyle. Your mother explained there was an additional trust for me for college, but my mother blew through that without me knowing. He made a mistake by not putting stipulations on that. Maybe he thought my mother wouldn’t touch something that should have been mine.”
The anger Mallory felt hearing that had been almost more than she could bear. If she’d known about that money, if she’d known it was for her, she could have left for college like she wanted and never would have had to hide all these years. She would have left and never looked back, but she wouldn’t have had to change her identity.
“We all know how that money was spent.”
“No reason to talk about her addiction,” Mallory said, agreeing. “Or the lavish lifestyle that she and Paul led when they got married.”
“So this trust they weren’t able to get more than annual draws on, what happened to it when your mother died? Did it go to Paul then?”
“No, it wasn’t transferable to anyone but me, and continued to grow over the last few years. My father loved my mother from the moment he met her. She was the light of his life. Young, happy, beautiful. She used to model, did you know that? Anyway, she was well loved by everyone, but she could be frivolous, even silly at times. And though he spoiled her, he would have made sure he took care of her as well. Breaking the money up the way he did should have assured that. No one could have predicted what would have happened.”
“I remember that about your father, how much he loved you and your mother. And yes, she was beautiful, just like you, but I didn’t know she modeled.” He threaded their fingers together. “I’ll take care of you like your father did. It’s my promise.”
“I don’t need someone to take care of me, Nick. I don’t even need the money my father left for my mother, which will go to me now, nor do I need the other trust. I made it on my own, I know that.”
“You did. It might not have been conventional, but you found your way.”
“I’m still finding it. Besides all of the financial stuff I found about today, Trixie, your mother, and I went through the boxes that you and your father put in the garage.”
“What was in them?”
Nothing more than she thought, but it was enough.
“Just things from my bedroom. I have a feeling my mother boxed my bedroom up completely. My old journals, some odd posters and clothes, but nothing that held a lot of memories. Except there was one box labeled ‘Mallory’s room’ mixed in that wasn’t anything from my room. It had my father’s wedding band and several photo albums of us as a family.”
“Why were they boxed up like that?”
“My guess is she did it when she married Paul. I remember Paul not wanting any memories of my father in the house. I came home one day and all the pictures were gone of my father. It hurt so much, and when I asked what happened to them my mother said it was too painful to keep them around now. I never knew where they went. Must have been my mother’s way of hiding them and making sure I got them.”
“That was at least nice of her.”
“I guess. Bottom line is, after looking through those photos, I realized that part of me is my father’s daughter. He worked so hard to make something of himself, to be successful. I remember that about him, how he never gave up. And that’s me, I get that from him. My father never backed down from anything, and I’m not going to either. I need to go see Paul tomorrow. I need to move on and put it all behind me, and that’s the only way. To step foot in that house again. A house that actually belongs to me, your mother explained.”
“Really? How is that possible?”
“One of the things in my father’s will. My mother could have sold the house when she was alive, but that is it. Upon her death it came to me, only Paul must not have known that part of it. Without me in the picture, he just continued to live there. He couldn’t sell it.”
“Let’s get a good night’s sleep then. Tomorrow could be a big day.”
***
The next morning Mallory woke early, not able to sleep for what she was planning on doing today. She’d told Nick to go into work and they could go to Paul’s later in the night, but he encouraged her not to put it off.
After a lot of thought, she realized he was right. Just do it and get it over with. Walk back into the house of her demons and face it.
“Are you ready for this?” Nick asked her. “My parents said they’d go, too. I’m not sure why everyone feels they need to be there.”
She knew, but didn’t want to tell him. “I’m fine. It’s all good. You’re all I need. Let’s go do this.”
They drove in silence to her old childhood home, the dread filling her, the weight on her shoulders and the fear in the pit of her stomach nothing compared to what she felt when they were driving to Nick’s parents’ house two days ago.
Nick pulled into his parents’ driveway. “I told you that they didn’t need to go,” she said.
“I thought it might give you comfort to come back here after, rather than climb in the car and leave. We’ll be forced to cross the property like you did so much as a kid.”
If she didn’t love him before, she would have fallen in love with him at that moment. He knew just the right thing to say and do to try to make this better for her.
“You’re too good for me.”
“We’re good for each other.”
“Let’s get this show on the road before I lose my nerve.”
Together in silence they walked across Nick’s parents’ yard, slipped between the opening of the trees like she had so many times, and were now standing there looking at the yard she’d played in.
Long gone was the swing set she’d outgrown. The bench she’d sat on was still there under another tree. The bench she sat on, staring at Rene’s house willing her to come out and play. The bench that she and her mother sat on and cried over her father. The bench where Nick broke her heart.
She walked right by that dreaded bench of her dreams, right past the flowers that her mother used to take so much time to care for that were now a dried-out withered mess.
The grass was still mowed, but that seemed to be about it. She guessed Paul had hired someone to do the work and it was minimal at best at this point. Probably ran out of money, she realized.
In silence they walked to the back door and she opened it without knocking. She almost didn’t, but remembered she owned the house, so she could.
She was one step in, and surprisingly the floor didn’t open up and swallow her whole. The walls weren’t closing in on her and, though her heart was racing, her breathing was level. Other than that, she didn’t feel much more than numbness.
“Can I help you?” Mallory heard and turned her head to see what looked to be a home nurse. “Oh, hi, you’re the neighbor who came to pick up the boxes, right?” the woman asked Nick.
