Where We Left Off

by Megan Squires

  I cocked my head, perplexed by his insight, but appreciative all the same. “Deal.”

  “Deal,” they all agreed back.

  Deal.

  Mallory

  I snapped awake.

  Breathe, breathe.

  Sweat slithered down my back. My heart sprinted.

  The space where I lay was damp with perspiration, all clammy and uncomfortable like I’d used the sheets as a towel after a swim, my body’s outline wet and chilled.

  I looked to the monitor on my nightstand and the angelic scene of my baby deep in slumber met my eyes. It slowed my breath. Steady, steady.

  I let the relief slide out as I leaned against the headboard.

  A year and a half and yet it was like yesterday to me.

  It was actually every night, stuck in a dream.

  It was a dangerous job, we knew that. He’d been an officer for a year already when I’d first met him, so it wasn’t as though I’d had a say in his profession. Even if I had, though, I would’ve encouraged it all the same. Some people were meant for that line of work. Dylan certainly was.

  He was brave beyond belief.

  Now it was my turn to be brave.

  I grabbed my terrycloth robe from the closet and slipped into it, tightening the belt around my waist before making my way to the kitchen. The fluorescent lights flickered on, stuttering to illuminate.

  2:08 a.m.

  Coffee. That was in order for this sort of hour. I took the grounds from the freezer and put a pot on, waiting for it to brew. My stomach growled, encouraged by the smell, and I tried to remember if I had eaten any dinner. The plate in the sink reminded me of the chicken enchiladas Mrs. Scuttle from church brought over this afternoon. So I had eaten, tonight at least. That was good.

  Once the coffee was ready, I poured myself a steaming mugful and took it with me to the den, my fingers curling around the handle, my palm cozied against the warm ceramic. There was one of my favorite vanilla candles on the desk and I lit it with a match. The flame flickered against the dark as the aroma dispersed sweetly into the air.

  That tension from being thrust awake seeped slowly from my body, more importantly, my mind. I could do this. I could.

  Dad did it for years and we were good. When Mom was first diagnosed, I think he knew the inevitable outcome. The way he enjoyed her—enjoyed all our short time as a family—it was as though each moment would be a last.

  I wished I’d paid more attention to how he was able to do that. Treasure the lasts.

  I slid into the desk chair and tucked my feet up underneath me, the robe blanketing my cold legs with fabric. With the mouse in my hand, I stirred the computer to life. It hummed angrily, reminding me of another inevitable expense. The windows on the screen were still open and I clicked through the tabs. I’d done all the math and every way I calculated it, I came up short. I’d give anything to be with Nana and Tommy again, but the way the market was, there was no way I would ever get back what I owed on this house. I’d be stuck here until things eventually leveled off.

  Stuck.

  Even still, I busied my mind by searching cottages and townhouses back in Kentucky. Ones that shared the same zip code as my family. Ones where Corbin could walk to his great-grandmother’s house after school for fresh baked cookies or for help with his reading homework. Ones where I could send him over for a cup of sugar. Ones where we felt as one again, living life together, even if not within the same walls.

  But I had two families now.

  Tori was here, at least for another month before she left for college. And Sharon and Boone were just fifteen minutes away. I’d never had a sister, and it had been years since I had a mother and father in the mother and father sense that most people had, but I had them. I wasn’t willing to let that go, even though I’ve had to let Dylan go.

  So I’d stay up late at night and dreamed of an old life back in Kentucky. I’d decorate the rooms in my head. Practiced writing my name and address on an envelope, just to see how it looked. All my current return address labels still had Dylan’s name printed on them. I tried using a Sharpie to black it out once, but something looked off. A little morbid. But I’d ordered a roll of 500. It seemed like such a waste of a perfectly good label.

  My eyes blurred. The screen waved in my vision and I sniffed the tears back, using my sleeve as a tissue.

  “Pull yourself together, Mallory Quinn,” I instructed. It didn’t work.

  I let myself weep into my coffee mug until the tears were gone and there was nothing left besides a few sighs and the shudders that follow a hearty cry.

  “Okay. Now pull yourself together.” I let myself have second chances when it came to things like this.

  Two hours passed quickly, one click leading to another until I was looking at plantations in Georgia where I could own a “small piece of history and huge portion of southern charm.” I had no idea how my search led me to the opposite coast, but it was a distraction and I welcomed it. In this particular house I’d found, Corbin and I would breed and raise French bulldogs and compete in chili cookoffs with the award-winning recipe we’d discover behind a broken board in the pantry. We would call ourselves the Chili-Bulls because it was convenient to lump our two titles as one and because that was as creative as I got at four in the morning. Our prize pup, Sir McDoodle, would win the 2025 National Dog Show, allowing Corbin to go to Duke and major in neuroscience with the earnings.

  I giggled to myself.

  Was that the life I really wanted to lead? I’d never even made homemade chili.

  This was crazy. Maybe I was crazy. No maybe about it.

  But what was really crazy to me was that one move—one decision—could change so much.

  I’d told Nana to turn right that day.

  Dylan offered to cover his partner’s shift.

  So here I was, a twenty-eight-year-old widow and mother.

  And I was lonely. God, I was so lonely.

  I reached for my cell phone and unplugged it from the computer where it had been syncing.

  Three rings and she picked up. “Nana?”

  “Mal, sweetheart.” Her voice was thinner than it used to be, shakier. Despite the frailty to it, she spoke with a chipper tone and I could tell she’d been up for a while. I was thankful for the three-hour time difference between us on nights like this. “Can’t sleep?”

  “Not even a little bit.”

  She huffed into the mouthpiece. “Not even a little bit. Well, that certainly will not do.”

  “Do you own a large pot for cooking chili?”

  “No, I can’t say I do,” she answered, then paused. “Do you need a large chili pot for something?”

  “Not in the immediate future, but someday.”

  “Okay,” she said. I could hear her smile, even through the phone. “I’ll be sure to grab one on Black Friday this year. You know, just to have on hand.”

  I sighed.

  “Another bad dream?”

  I was a grown woman with a child of my own, but the only place I wished to be right now was snuggled under Nana’s patchwork quilt, her reassuring hand stroking through my hair, her soft words telling me everything would be okay.

  “Yeah, bad dream.”

  The computer dimmed, the screen saver turning on. It was a terrible idea to have the Pictures folder go into slideshow mode when the mouse sat quiet for too long. Dylan had set it up. He thought I would be grateful for the digital album that highlighted our good memories. But it was hard to look at his wide smile. Our smiles. Even the computer couldn’t sleep without his face flashing across it.

  I swallowed and shook the hell out of the mouse.

  “I’m thinking of moving back to Kentucky.”

  Through the earpiece, I could hear Nana’s hesitant breath release. “Oh, Mallory. You know that’s not the best idea.”

  “Why isn’t it?”

  I was looking for a list of pros and cons here. For the good to outweigh the bad.

  “Sweetheart, i
t’s nice for Corbin to be near his grandparents.”

  “What about you? And Tommy?”

  “Let’s face it, I’m no spring chicken.” She laughed. “And with Tommy’s declining health. He’s stopped painting and …” She trailed off. I didn’t have to ask her to elaborate. “Boone and Sharon would be devastated if you took their only grandbaby from them. Rightfully so. There’s no real reason for you to come back to Kentucky, sweetie. California is where your life is now.”

  She was right and I knew it. I just had to hear her speak those truths to me once again. To help convince my heart what my head already knew.

  Switching gears, she asked, “How’s the job hunt going?”

  “Nothing permanent yet, but I’ve got a position I’m starting on Monday at a flower shop about twenty minutes away. It’s their busy season with proms and weddings, apparently.”

  “That’s great, Mal!” she said, her voice hopeful and kind. Nana was so good at being those two things. “Maybe it will turn into something.”

  “Maybe,” I agreed, hoping—needing—something to keep my feet planted in California when my roots felt half a world away. “Maybe it will.”

  I swiveled the mouse on the desk and clicked out of the websites until they were all closed down, cleared from the search history.

  Then I shut the computer completely off, letting my irrational dreams fade black with it.

  Heath

  She was either military or an ex-convict or in the Witness Protection Program.

  Those were the options I was going with. Other than a marriage license, there was very little in the way of Internet presence when it came to Mallory Alcott.

  Mallory Quinn.

  It was a beautiful name, even though someone else gave it to her. She deserved a beautiful name, though. McBride just made me think of a wedding catered by McDonald’s or something. Maybe if I’d suggested that to Kayla things would’ve gone in a different direction. Instead, we had a five-course meal enjoyed with our 350 best friends on a beach one hundred miles from our house with a reverend neither one of us even knew. Many of these so-called friends Facebook blocked me the day Kayla walked out. How odd was that? That she left me, yet took our entire social circle with her.

  All I really had left were my family, my students, and my roommate, though I supposed that was all I needed.

  Maybe I didn’t even need the roommate.

  Actually, at this late hour, as I listened to whatever bedroom Olympics were taking place behind the wall shared with mine, I decide I really didn’t need a roommate. Not this one, at least.

  Paul was a good enough guy. He didn’t touch my food in the fridge and he bought toilet paper when we ran out. Those were definite marks in his favor. And he was a Pre-Cal teacher at Whitney High, so carpooling cut down on gas money. He had a great collection of vintage Grateful Dead LPs that were on constant rotation and he hadn’t mentioned Kayla’s name even once since moving in, so those were the obvious reasons I liked him.

  But the slumber parties, those had to stop.

  This guy was a sex athlete because just as I thought his date and my ears were about to get a little reprieve, he was back at it again, going for the gold.

  I needed to escape this. I slammed my laptop closed and grabbed my wallet and keys. Our apartment was on the second floor and though it neared ten o’clock, the air was still heavy and hot and I was sweating by the time I made it down the flights of stairs. I clicked my truck unlocked, the beep echoing off the carport roof. The cab was musty with the stench of decomposing fast food still left in crumpled brown bags. I’d take better care of the junker if I thought it would mean I could someday sell it for Blue Book pricing, but this thing didn’t even register on there. It was the equivalent of Fred Flintstone car, for sure. But it continued to run fine enough, so I kept it.

  I hit the gas as soon as I eased out of the complex’s parking lot. I didn’t bother with the radio anymore, it had been on the fritz since I purchased the vehicle, so I pulled out my phone from my back pocket and scrolled through the playlist, one eye on the road, the other on the phone.

  And then both of them on the rearview mirror and the flashing blue lights that sparkled like a house all lit up with a Christmas display.

  Groaning, I slid deeper into my seat as I angled the jalopy off to the shoulder of the road and readied my license and registration.

  “Good evening,” a clean-cut officer about my age greeted as he peered in my rolled down passenger window. I jutted my hand out with my documents and he took them from my grasp. “I gather you already know why I’m pulling you over.”

  “Yes, sir. For doing the very thing I caution my students not to do on a daily basis.”

  He nodded and smiled as his pen scrolled across his notepad. He had a high and tight hairstyle going on and a tan that looked more inherited than sun-given.

  “A teacher, huh? Locally?”

  “Whitney High School just down the street.”

  “Excellent football team.” He still didn’t look at me and I was eye level with his broad chest and shiny badge adorning it. Officer Douglas.

  “Back in the day, definitely.”

  The Matadors hadn’t had a winning season in nearly a decade, but for five solid years there we were nationally ranked champions. It was funny that those few good seasons earned us a positive reputation that we couldn’t shake. In a way it was good we were able to hold on to that claim to fame, but it was reliving the glory days at its finest, and at some point that became tired.

  The officer was still studying my information when he crouched down and rested his elbows on the window ledge of my car. “Heathcliff McBride?” he asked, a strain in his gaze. I thought through all the things I’d ever done wrong and wondered if maybe, just maybe, there was some outstanding warrant for my arrest that I was totally unaware of. Panic stabbed me in my stomach.

  “Yes, sir.”

  It seemed like maybe I was supposed to know him, the way he scanned me for recognition. “Heathcliff McBride, please don’t let me find you on your phone again while driving, okay? California is hands-free.”

  I tried not to let him see the huge breath I had to release. I hissed it slowly between my teeth. “Understood.” I reached down and grabbed my cell phone and chucked it over my shoulder into the back seat. That elicited a laugh from Officer Douglas and he slapped the inside of my door as he pushed up to stand. He tossed what I assumed to be a ticket onto the passenger seat, along with my registration and ID.

  “You seem like a good guy and a fine teacher. Thank you for all you do for our community.”

  “The same to you,” I said though it didn’t feel like enough.

  He flicked me a quick salute and headed back to his cruiser.

  I took a few minutes to clear my head and get the car in gear to continue to my original destination. Staying at home would’ve been the smartest decision—and likely the cheapest given I’d already got a ticket and I was only ten minutes in.

  But there was comfort in the neon yellow light that flickered above Pint and Pail, like a beacon for the downtrodden and discouraged. That was a touch melodramatic, but I honestly loved this place. They had the best beer on tap, no question, and the bucket of peanuts was pretty awesome. Who didn’t love throwing the shells on the ground, knowing you wouldn’t be the one to clean them up? After my years bussing, I took full advantage of being able to make a mess and have someone else deal with the aftermath.

  Reggie was behind the bar when the door swung in and he immediately nodded toward an empty stool near the end of the establishment. “Over here, Champ! Saved you the best seat in the house.”

  It was the only open stool. Reggie was a jokester like that. I admired the fresh ink twisting around his arm and nodded my appreciation as I made my way down the bar. “New?”

  “Yeah.” He rubbed at the colorful tattoo. “I had to come up with something to disguise Tatyana’s name. Why the hell did I have to be engaged to a chick with such a long
name? It was quite the feat to get it to even look this decent.”

  “I bet.” I settled onto the barstool and emptied my wallet and phone onto the counter. Reggie had a square napkin ready and slid it toward me. “It does look good, though, man. You can only see “ana” left on it, and that could be really convenient if you happen to meet a hot girl named Ana. Immediately score some points with that.”

  Reggie flicked his head to the person seated to my left. I hadn’t noticed her when I first came in, which seemed absolutely crazy now that I looked at her. She had blonde hair in perfect long waves and the fullest lips I’d ever seen. Not the kind that appeared pumped full of toxins, but just naturally pouty and kissable. I found myself biting my own as I studied her more.

  “Your name happen to be Ana?” Reggie asked with a deep, flirtatious grin plastered on. He was burly and mildly intimidating, but she didn’t appear the least bit phased by any of it.

  “Nope.” She smiled politely. “Sorry.”

  “Damn shame.” He hit his fist against the counter and shot her a wink. “Damn shame.”

  Nervously, she glanced my direction. I was surprised when she offered a shy smile, but grateful that Reggie’s failed flirting only made me look that much better.

  “Hi,” I mouthed.

  She took her straw between her teeth and murmured a soft, “Hi,” back.

  “What’ll it be, Cliffy?” Reggie shouted over his shoulder as he pulled down on a carved wooden handle to fill a pitcher with amber colored beer. “The usual?”

  “Nutty Brunette tonight,” I called back and then turned my attention back to the blonde next to me. “You?”

  “I’m fine.” She waved me off with a manicured hand. “For now.”

  It looked like she was drinking soda and I took the necessary moment to look her over and make sure she was of legal drinking age. She didn’t have wrinkles by any means, but she’d lost just a bit of that childlike softness to her face. She was still youthful, but definitely out of her teen years, which allowed me to breathe a sigh of relief. To anyone else, I was sure she’d appear quite young, but being around teenagers all day gave me a good gauge on judging someone’s age. Based on what I could see of her, I guessed her to be twenty-two, newly turned.