He climbed out of bed and went out onto the balcony to watch her get into her car. She didn’t look up, didn’t look back. She just drove away.
In a few weeks, when he was the one who had to leave, he wasn’t quite sure he’d be able to do the same.
Mallory looked at her living room, imagining it from David’s perspective.
Shabby sofa. Shabby recliner. Worn and stained wall-to-wall carpeting. A small room, only one window—and it was covered outside by a rusting white-and-turquoise awning, succeeding in making the room even darker and uglier than it had to be.
Cheap-shit artwork hung on the walls, from the time Angela had that job at the chain motel off Route 128 in Beverly. The place went out of business and Angela—in a brilliant move—had accepted six awful oil paintings in lieu of her final check.
David gazed at the still life on the wall behind the couch, his face carefully blank. Mal knew he saw amazingly crappily executed art in a garish gold-painted baroque-style wooden frame. But she saw more. She saw a reminder of her mother’s folly.
Why the hell had she brought him here? What was wrong with her, anyway?
They’d been sitting in David’s apartment, looking at the photographs he’d taken of her and Brandon. Most of them were extremely good. And as weird as it was to look at herself in a bikini, she looked good, too. She’d made herself look the way she imagined this Nightshade character was supposed to look—strong and brave and invincible.
But the lighting was bad in some of the pictures. The kisses were overexposed. Didn’t it figure? They were going to have to shoot the kisses over again. Just her luck.
The sandwich David had made her was delicious and while she ate it, she’d asked him about drawing graphic novels. Did all comic book artists do it this way—by taking photos?
David told her everyone had their own method. There was no wrong or right way—although there were some people who thought taking photos like this was cheating. But it wasn’t as if David actually sketched over them. He just used them to remind himself how the human body moved.
He’d shown her which of the photos he thought he’d use the most, which he’d pin up right over his drawing table. And she’d told him they were so much better than anything she’d ever taken.
David being David had picked up on that right away. And one thing led to another until here they were. In her crappy house in the low-rent part of Baldwin’s Bridge. In her crappy living room. Where she was about to show him some of the crappy photos she’d taken with her crappy Instamatic over the past few years.
Angela had left a pack of cigarettes on the coffee table. It was all Mallory could do not to light one up.
David kept glancing back at the still life from hell, as if he were afraid it was contagious.
“My grandfather painted that,” Mallory told him. “Pretty good, huh?”
David looked at Mallory, looked at the painting. “Amazing,” he murmured. He leaned closer to look at the brush strokes. “That is really awful. A true artistic nightmare. Your grandfather—” He pointed to the signature. “—Mary Lou Brackett, is clearly a genius.”
Busted. Mallory grinned at him. “Grandfather Mary Lou was something of an eccentric. Extremely brilliant, but tortured. Understandably.”
“His disturbed presence certainly radiates from his work,” David said, smiling back at her.
Behind his ugly glasses, beneath his terrible haircut, his eyes were warm and intelligent. He liked her. She could see that just by looking at him. He didn’t have that slightly glazed look in his eyes most guys got when they spoke to her. He wasn’t here, in her house, because he wanted to score. He liked being with her. He was here because he wanted to hear what she had to say, because he really did want to see her photographs.
David didn’t care what her house looked like—so what if it was the smallest, shittiest house in all of Baldwin’s Bridge. It didn’t matter to him one bit.
“Do you mind if we look at your pictures in the kitchen, Nightshade?” he asked. “Grandpa Mary Lou’s fruit bowl is a bit overwhelming.”
“There’s another one in there,” she warned him. “It’s even worse.”
“Worse.”
“There are six . . . heirlooms altogether,” she said. “Naturally we hung the very best in the living room.”
David went into the kitchen. “Oh, God,” she heard him say as he started to laugh. “Grandpa Mary Lou signed this one Elizabeth Keedler. Either he had a multiple personality disorder, or he was attempting to break into art forgery.”
“By copying the style of the as-yet-still-unknown master of motel oil painting, Elizabeth Keedler?” Mallory raised her voice so he could hear her. “He was extremely shrewd.”
David came out of the kitchen. “And you have six of these, you say?”
“That’s right. Come on, it’s safe—at least relatively safe—in my room.”
She led the way down the hall. Her room was tiny, but it was all hers. She kept her photo albums in her bookcase. She pulled the latest one from the shelf.
David stood in the doorway, suddenly and obviously uncomfortable. “You know, I was just kidding. I don’t mind sitting in the living room.”
She watched as he looked around the room, at her narrow bed, the dresser, her little built-in desk, the slant to the ceiling. This had been an add-on to the back of the house, a former toolshed or pantry. One of Angela’s boyfriends had put a window in about ten years ago. He hadn’t quite finished it before they’d broken up, so Mallory had painted the sill herself. Gleaming black. It was still the best part of the entire room.
David looked at the movie posters and pictures that covered every inch of her walls, at the books that overflowed her bookcase and sat in precariously tall piles on the floor.
And then he looked at her, sitting there cross-legged on her bed.
“I don’t mind if you come in,” she told him. “I know you’re not going to, like, attack me or anything.”
He nodded, suddenly as serious as if she’d just given him a medal for saving the Rebel Forces from the Death Star. “Okay. Good. I’m . . . glad you know that.”
He left her door wide open, pulled her chair from her desk. He slipped his neon backpack from his shoulder, but instead of putting it on the floor, he sat with it on his lap. And he unzipped it. “You know, I was thinking, you could borrow my camera if you want.”
“What?”
He took it out of his pack by the neck strap, the enormous lens reattached. “My camera. There’s a new roll of film in it. Color prints, thirty-six exposures. You’ve got this evening and tomorrow morning off—you could shoot this entire roll if you want.”
Mallory stared at him. “You want to lend me your camera.” That thing had to cost at least four paychecks.
“Sure.” He held it out to her, and when she didn’t take it, he set it down next to her on the bed. “It’s easy to use. Pretty much point and shoot. You may want to play around with the settings when the sun starts going down, but you probably remember all that from media club.”
He trusted her with his camera.
David put his backpack on the floor, then held out his hands for the photo album she was clutching. “So let me see your pictures.”
She held it even closer to her chest, afraid she wasn’t good enough, afraid he’d take one look and laugh. “I took these with an Instamatic. They suck, so don’t pretend they don’t, okay?”
He smiled. “Okay.”
Mallory’s stomach did a slow flip as she handed him the album. He had the best smile. And the deepest brown eyes.
He opened the album, screamed, and slammed it shut. “Oh, my God! These suck!”
Mallory laughed and kicked him with her bare foot. “Don’t be a jerk.”
“Whoa,” he said, “let me see if I’ve got this straight. I say they suck, and I’m a jerk. You say they suck and . . .” He looked at her expectantly.
Mallory rolled her eyes. “And I’m a jerk. All right, they don�
��t suck, okay?”
“Aha. The truth comes out.”
“Just don’t . . . expect too much and don’t lie, okay?”
“Okay.” He pushed the camera back so he could open the photo album on the bed. And just like that, he was instantly involved and connected, leaning over the pictures.
“Some of these are really good, Mal. Look at this one.” He pointed right away to a photo she’d taken when she was baby-sitting the O’Keefe twins, a photo she’d always thought was one of her best. “Look at the composition here. It’s really great the way you use the swing set to frame the photo. And you caught these kids in motion—it’s really dynamic, and you did it with an Instamatic.”
Mallory watched him as he talked. He was so enthusiastic, he spoke with his hands, with his eyes, with his entire body. He was so completely different from too-cool-to-be-anything-but-bored Brandon.
He was wearing kind of fashionable shorts that came down past his knees. The dork factor kicked in, though, because he was wearing really dweeby dark socks with his ratty sneakers. His shirt was a desperately ugly button-down short-sleeved plaid, but it didn’t matter. His crappy haircut didn’t matter, nor did his ugly glasses.
It was all superficial. An hour at the mall, a few fashion dos and don’ts, and David would transform nicely from nerd to kind of average-looking guy. But nothing anyone could do would change him into a superstud like Brandon.
Of course, it would take far more than a trip to the mall ever to change Brandon into someone as smart and funny and nice and genuinely sweet as David.
Mallory had to laugh.
David just smiled at her and kept on talking—he didn’t think it was weird she should just suddenly feel the need to laugh out loud.
It was ridiculous, though. Unbelievable. And incredibly cool.
She, Mallory Paoletti, was completely falling for David Sullivan.
“I thought I heard you come home.” Charles turned on the overhead lights. “What are you doing sitting in the living room in the dark?”
Kelly didn’t turn to look at him. “I’m exhausted and I’m hiding. What are you doing up? Joe left a note saying that you’d kicked him and Tom out at around eleven because you wanted to go to sleep.”
“A white lie,” he said. “I wanted to be alone. These days it seems as if the only time I’m alone is when I’m in bed—which is the exact opposite of the way it should be.”
Kelly could hear him using the walker to shuffle farther into the room. “Better not come in,” she said. “It’s not going to take much to start me crying.” And God knows Charles hated crying.
He stopped. “Oh.”
Betsy wasn’t going to make it. Kelly had realized that tonight. The chemo was most likely going to kill the little girl. But without it, the cancer would definitely kill her. “Most likely” came with pain and suffering, but “definitely” was definite. That was one hell of a choice for her parents to make.
Kelly had sat with the McKennas and Vince Martin for hours discussing different medications that might ease or even eliminate the side effects of the chemotherapy. But trial was involved, and with trial came error. And pain.
The McKennas had looked to her for answers, and she couldn’t help them. She had no answers, not even today with Tom’s scent still on her, with the glorious perfection of their physical joining still warming her skin.
The knowledge that he was everything she’d ever dreamed of in a lover—and more—didn’t help her as Brenda McKenna’s dark brown eyes begged her to tell them what to do. Let their child die, or try to save her and watch her suffer. After which she’d most likely die anyway.
Kelly had all but promised Tom they’d finish what they’d started when she got home tonight. But right now, sex was the dead last thing she wanted. She couldn’t bear the thought of celebrating life that way, not while knowing that the McKennas were facing death and struggling with such sorrow.
She knew Tom was probably upstairs, in her room, waiting for her.
She drew in a deep breath as she sat up, turning toward her father.
“Do you need something?” she asked Charles. “Can I make you a power shake?”
“No.” He cleared his throat. “Thank you, but . . .”
“Time for a pill?”
“Took one an hour ago.”
“Are you . . . okay?” she asked. “Is it time for me to call the doctor for a stronger—”
He took one hand off his walker to wave away her suggestion impatiently. “No, I’m fine. Relatively speaking.”
Had she done something to disrupt his carefully ordered world? Kelly couldn’t think of a single thing except for . . . oops. Seducing Tom up in her bedroom in the middle of the afternoon. Had Charles somehow found out about that?
He seemed exasperated and annoyed, but more at himself than at her.
“Do you need me to change your sheets?” she tried.
Maybe he’d soiled them during a nap. He hadn’t had that problem before, but she was well aware loss of control could happen at any time to someone with his deteriorating physical condition. She’d bought some Depends, and, like the walker, she’d simply put the box in her father’s room. They were there if he needed them—he wouldn’t have to ask.
But changing the sheets on his bed—that was something he wouldn’t be able to do by himself. And she could understand his not wanting to ask Joe for help.
“No,” he told her crossly. “I just wanted—”
She waited.
“I wanted to sit and talk for a minute. But if you’re feeling . . . Well, later will be fine.” He turned away, started back down the hall.
Her father wanted to talk to her.
Kelly couldn’t move, couldn’t think. Why did her father want to talk to her? And then she couldn’t do anything but think of reasons. Maybe to tell her he’d come to terms with dying, with the fact that he was running out of time, the fact that everything he’d left unsaid had better be said, and soon. Maybe he wanted to tell her more about that French woman he’d mentioned just last night. Had that really been only last night? It seemed like a million years ago.
Or maybe he had found out about her and Tom.
“Wait! Dad!” She hurried after her father. “Dad.”
As he stopped and turned toward her, she saw that just that little movement required a great deal of effort and her heart sank. He was looking more and more fragile every day.
“Talk to me.” She pulled him back into the living room, practically pushed him down into a chair. She pulled up a footstool right next to him. “I’m here. What do you want to tell me? I’m dying to listen.”
“It’s not that important. I just . . .” He couldn’t meet her eyes.
“Just say it,” she whispered. “It’s amazing how easy it is once you open your mouth and start talking. It’s amazing the things that come out.”
He finally looked at her. He even briefly reached out to touch her hair. “You always were a pretty child. I used to be afraid of Tom Paoletti, when he was living with Joe down at the end of the driveway. I saw the way he looked at you.”
Oh, my God. This was about Tom.
“You know, Dad, I’m a big girl now. I’m pretty good at taking care of myself.”
“You’ve always been good at taking care of yourself. It’s . . . um, it’s occurred to me that because of that, you might miss out on an opportunity to let someone else take care of you, if you know what I mean.”
Kelly didn’t. She shook her head.
“Tom,” Charles said with a spark of impatience. “We’re talking about Tom here.”
“Ah,” she said. “We are?”
“He’s a good man, Kelly.”
Oh, my God. Did her father think . . . ? “He is,” she agreed.
“I just wanted to make sure you knew I thought that,” he said awkwardly. “I’ve never come out and said that before.”
“Dad, it’s obvious you think very highly of him.”
“I’ve been thin
king about it a lot lately,” Charles said. “Since you told me, well . . . You know, you could do far worse.”
Oh, God. Her father thought she and Tom . . . “I’m not going to marry him. We’re not . . . He’s not . . .” She shook her head. “I’m sorry to disappoint you.” Again.
“Oh,” he said. “I thought . . . I’d hoped . . .” He searched her face, then sighed. “It was too perfect. I just thought that if Tom could take care of you, then the two of you together could look out for Joe.”
This was about Joe. Her father was worried about what would happen to his dear friend Joe when he was gone.
Heart in her throat, Kelly took his hand. “I’ll make sure Joe’s okay,” she told him huskily. “I’ll take care of him for you, Daddy. I promise.”
He touched her hair again and his eyes were sad. “But who’ll take care of you?”
Tom sat at Kelly’s computer, suddenly completely uncertain.
He’d heard Kelly’s car pull into the driveway nearly an hour ago. It was hard to believe she hadn’t noticed that the light was on in her room, that the French doors were wide open.
She’d come into the house, but she hadn’t come upstairs.
She hadn’t called him from Boston, hadn’t called from her car, either.
It was probably no big deal. She’d probably just misplaced his cell phone number. And maybe she’d grabbed something to eat, gone in to check on her father. Those things took time.
He’d showered and shaved before coming back over here tonight, brushed his teeth, run his fingers through his hair.
He’d even practiced bringing up that goddamned unpleasant subject a few times. “Hey, Kel, you know in three and a half weeks when I go back to California? What do you say we do that crazy-assed long-distance thing? We could give it a try. You know, email, phone calls, I could visit every few months or so? . . .”
Of course, there was the variation on the theme that went something like “Hey, Kel, you know in three and a half weeks when I go back to California? Maybe you could go with me. . . .”
Or, best yet, “Hey, Kel, you know in three and a half weeks when I fail my psych evals and I’m kicked out of the Navy, when I’m homeless and jobless and certifiably insane, when I’m at my most pathetically, depressingly lowest—and oh, did you happen to notice it’s definite that I’m going bald?—what do you say we get married?”
The Unsung Hero Page 29
