“Stop having fun and being with Mallory? Stop taking her Mommy’s things?”
She nodded.
“Me neither.” He smiled when Polly’s head came back up. “I don’t think she meant that she’d stop wanting you to come by when you stopped needing to bring her Mommy’s pins. Or that you couldn’t come help here or wherever else she works on the weekend, or that you’d have to stop visiting her clinic at school once you feel better. I don’t think that’s what she meant at all. About either of us still being in her life.”
At least, he hoped Mallory didn’t really feel that way.
Polly’s head tilted to the side as she weighed what he’d said against whatever she’d been thinking.
“Maybe,” he said, “what she meant was that you can remember Mommy and have all the other things you want now, too. Friends and fun and being with people who make you feel as good as Mallory does. Maybe she can help you not have to stop any of it—remembering or moving on from feeling so bad.”
Polly hesitated, clearly still troubled, then she nodded again.
“Sweet pea, I don’t want you to forget Mommy. Neither does Mallory. No one does. But sometimes we have to let go a little and trust someone else to help us, so remembering doesn’t hurt so much. I think that’s what Mallory is doing—for both of us.”
It was exactly what she was doing for Pete—giving him a glimpse of the future Emma had said she’d wanted for him and their daughter, where they could live free of the pain of losing her.
“I think about her stories a lot.” Polly reached into her pocket and produced a tiny bit of gold metal and glass, a tarnished, delicately crafted fawn that Emma had tied to one of Polly’s Christmas presents only a year ago. The little deer’s body was a crystal oval. Its legs and neck and head and tail were made from a sparkly metal. Even in its neglected condition, it was a beautiful reminder. “Every time I look at Mommy’s animals and flowers and bees and things, I remember the stories she told me, and it feels like she’s…”
“Here,” he finished.
I’ll be here…
Polly was staring down at the fawn she’d clearly meant to give to Mallory that morning. She’d forgotten or she hadn’t had time. Pete had no idea. All he knew was that it was the first one of Emma’s pins she’d shared with him. She wasn’t giving it to him or telling him whatever story her mommy had told her. But she was letting him see exactly what the tiny trinket was making her feel.
A single tear trickled down her cheek, and she sighed, looking up at Pete while he brushed at her cheek with his thumb.
“Is Mallory keeping Mommy safe for you, too?” she asked.
He felt his own eyes grow wet. He heard his sigh, and then Polly’s hand was wiping at his cheek.
“I think maybe she is, darlin’.”
Chapter Twelve
If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain…
Mallory stood outside the Lombards’ front door for the first and likely the last time.
She wished she could see through its dark-stained wood into the lives that were being lived inside. The darkness of an early winter evening pressed close behind her. The darkest places in her mind that she normally kept closed off, like she did the empty bedrooms in her house that made her lonely each time she peeked into them, were inching even closer.
She wasn’t good company tonight, not even for herself. But she’d promised to come by. Polly might be expecting her right along with her daddy. After what the little girl had seen happening between Pete and Mallory at the shelter, Mallory at least owed her an explanation. That didn’t mean she was obliged to ring the bell, though. Maybe Pete was upstairs with Polly and wouldn’t hear her tentative rap. So she knocked, prepared to slink away when—
The door swung open almost immediately.
Pete wore loose jeans and the same yummy UGA sweatshirt he’d had on when they’d first met. His feet were bare. His long, powerful body called to her like a warm, restful dream she wanted to lose herself in. He looked clean and welcoming and worried and relieved, making her feel grimy and grumpy and flat-out confused, and more aware than ever of the chasm of fundamental differences separating them.
He also looked half-asleep already, even though it was only a little past eight.
“How’s Polly doing?” she asked. “Is she still upset?”
He silently stepped back for Mallory to come inside. She’d been determined as she’d gotten out of her car at her house and walked along the street to his driveway, to go no farther than his front porch. The Lombards had the kind of perfect porch you saw on cable TV shows about perfect families. There were three rockers and a swing, hanging baskets for spring flowers, and even a mat in front of the door that read, Welcome.
She felt an invisible cord tighten and pull her over Pete’s threshold into a cozy foyer with walls painted in a buttery yellow. There was a standing coat rack and an entry table with an arrangement of seasonless silk flowers on top of it. A low bench with an upholstered seat invited visitors to sit and rest, the space beneath doubling as storage—several pairs of Polly’s shoes were lined up there.
The Lombard world, at least the entrance to it, smelled like a flower shop, or flower sachets, or maybe it smelled like Emma, because her touch was everywhere from the beautifully decorated dining room to their right to the casual comfort of the soft, inviting, slightly oversize couch and love seat in the living room down the hall. Pete stepped closer as Mallory turned from looking around, effectively blocking her from seeing anything but him.
Every drool-worthy, solid, even-more-inviting-than-ever inch of him.
She let her gaze look its fill, too tired and wired from her afternoon to care how obvious she was being at relishing the body of a man she’d practically been crawling all over at the shelter. Her attention finally locked onto his face to find him doing the same kind of careful sizing up, as if he, too, were falling back into those stolen moments when everything had stopped mattering except for being in each other’s arms.
Then he cocked an eyebrow and shot her a devilish So…grin, and she almost smiled back. Instead, she snapped back to her decision to bring her relationship with him and his daughter to a healthy, if abrupt, end. She jammed both hands on her hips.
“Polly?” she asked, cutting to the chase.
“She seems better about me giving you mommy kisses,” he said, his word choice opening Malloy up and laying claim to the heart she’d sworn had nothing to do with why she’d shown up here tonight. “But she’s also exhausted. She’s sound asleep already, in her room tonight of all places. I guess we’re going to have to wait until tomorrow to see if there’s any fallout on your end.”
Mallory swallowed. Tomorrows, she’d schooled herself on the ride back from the city, weren’t in the cards for her and this family.
“Did you find your mother?” he asked, cutting to the crux of things himself.
She cleared her throat and shoved at her hair, the sleeves of her own oversize sweatshirt bunching at her elbows. She wiped the top of one of her Converse sneakers against the back of her jeans, sweeping away nonexistent dirt. She felt even grubbier than before and out of her league and longing for the trappings of her Glinda getup to at least give her a part to play here, someone other than herself.
“She’s gone,” she said, “whoever she was. No one got a very good look at her.”
“So you’re not sure?”
She was sure.
The shopping bags had still been outside the Kid Zone, and the ziplock bag of news clippings had been where she’d last seen it in the lobby. Touching them, opening them, hiding them away in first the clinic and then her car so no one else would see them, had been like being sucked into a time warp. Or a black hole.
She’d wanted to tear up the bags and everything inside them, inside her, and toss it all away before it became too real. Instead she’d sat outside the shelter and then in her driveway, poring over every bit of it, remembering and w
anting to forget and feeling more lost by the second.
“Come sit down,” Pete said, his voice tight and his touch gentle as he attempted to steer her toward the living room. “I know you—”
“No, you don’t.” She eased out of his grip. “You really don’t. You have to realize by now just how little about of my life you do know.”
He just had to.
Because she wanted to sit with him and tell him everything she’d never told another soul. And she really, really had to go before she started to blubber all over him like the twelve-year-old who’d cried all over her grams—who also hadn’t known her, not anymore—the day she’d arrived to take Mallory and her mama home.
“I know you.” Pete looked a little angry now, and more than a little determined. Like he’d grab her if she bolted for the door the way she longed to. “I know enough. I know you’ll never ask me for help with your own problems, but that you need it more than anyone I’ve ever met. Maybe even more than Polly and I do.”
“I’ve been helping myself for a long time, damn it!” The rage coursing through her, the fiercely defiant anger, was familiar and misplaced. But it was her, more than her smiling clothes and pretend costumes and cheery clinic and sparkly Christmas tree. “It might not look like much to you, but my life is a hell of a lot more than most anyone would have thought I’d have once upon a time, including me. So find someone else to feel sorry for, someone who hasn’t dug in and fought for every damn thing she has. Someone like…”
“Like your mother?”
Mallory trained her gaze on a patch of lemon-yellow wall just beyond his right shoulder. She bit the inside corner of her bottom lip, an old habit that hurt just a little but kept her focused. He wasn’t going to stop pushing, and she’d promised herself she’d keep her cool with this special man for the short time it should take to disengage herself from his life. Feeling her control unraveling the same as it had the first night they’d talked at her place, she turned toward the door.
His arms slipped around her from behind, faster than she’d counted on. No hesitation. No second thoughts.
Pete curled her body into his, her back fitting perfectly against his middle, her head beneath his chin. Warmth and solid strength and belonging welcomed her as if she fit and mattered and would never be released, no matter how much she tensed up at his touch and struggled to be free.
“Don’t go,” he whispered into her hair. He brushed a kiss across her temple. “Don’t walk out of here thinking you’re done with us.”
It was exactly what she’d been thinking the entire drive back from the city. Because saying she was done with them was so much easier than thinking of them eventually turning her away because she wasn’t going to handle this well, the way she’d never handled losing her mother well. Which meant she’d no longer be the smiling, helpful neighbor they’d gotten to know and maybe even admire. She’d once more become the messed-up product of a difficult childhood—a woman who’d as recently as last spring lived a life eclipsed by the shadow of someone she hadn’t seen for over fifteen years before today.
“It’s getting too hard.” Her hands came up to hold on when she should be pushing away. Her heartbeat roared in her ears, not in anger, but at the panicked thought of him letting go. “It’s going to get harder, and you two don’t need that.”
“We don’t need you spending time with us?”
“Us…” she said out loud, because they’d been so close to making that fantasy a reality. She’d felt it in his kiss. But it had never been right, her wanting this moment. She’d felt that, too.
The dreams she’d been having, the morning’s creepy déjà vu, the ease she’d felt with Pete as they’d watched Polly blossom into a happy, playing child, their kiss, the very real possibility that her mother might actually be in Atlanta somewhere that Mallory could track her down…Each new thing she’d experienced today had been contradicted by the last. It was like being on the streets all over again. After everything she’d done to build a solid, unshakable base for her life, she understood now more than ever just how much she was still wandering.
It was a maddening place to find herself, but it was familiar. She could handle this. She could handle anything as long as she stopped feeling so damned weak and confused because she wanted something she didn’t understand how to make hers.
“Talk to me,” Pete said. “Tell me what’s happening. You’re the one who told me that talking is the way to heal the things inside you that no one else sees. I’ve been trying all week to get there with Polly. Today, in the parking lot before heading home, I think we succeeded a little. She let me try, at least. And that was all because of you. She knows that, too. I think she’s ready to talk with you about Emma—probably more than she ever will to me.”
Polly.
Polly was getting better, and she wanted to talk with Mallory about her mommy. How did Mallory walk away from that, even when her instincts were screaming for her not to care any more deeply for the child or her father?
“She can come over and talk with me anytime she needs to.”
“And you?” Pete turned Mallory in his arms. His strong hands and long fingers framed her face as he gazed down at her. “Who are you going to talk to about what’s happening?”
No one, her mother’s long-ago voice reminded her. Don’t talk to no one. Don’t tell no one. We’re on our own, or they’ll take you away from me.
The memories rushed at Mallory, along with the helplessness of that last Christmas when she’d done the unthinkable and told—because her mother had been so sick with the flu Mallory had been sure she was dying.
“No one,” she said out loud, her voice too soft and sounding too young. “I don’t talk to anyone about it. It would only make things worse.”
“Then what are you doing now”—he tipped her chin up with a single finger, his other arm dropping to his side—“if you aren’t trusting me enough to talk about it just a little.”
She was holding on to him still. Her arms had wound themselves around Pete’s hips. Their lower bodies were merging, solidly connected, the contact comforting and thrilling. And she was doing it all herself.
“This is a very bad idea,” she said. “I can’t give you and Polly enough of what you need.” Love, she wanted to add but didn’t dare. They needed so much of it, and she hadn’t a clue how to love them the way they deserved. “I’m no good at making relationships with people work.”
“Then stop working so hard at it.” He kissed the top of her head. No pressure. No pushing for more. He brushed his cheek against the same spot. “Rest your magic wand-of-all-knowing, Glinda, and let me listen for a while. Just talk to me. It’ll feel good. You’ll see.”
You’ll see…
She wanted to believe him so badly.
They were rocking back and forth, swaying, their unhurried rhythm a perfect slow dance. It was hypnotic, the security of his easy acceptance. It was a magnet for the words and memories bubbling up inside her, the identity she’d never buried deeply enough to make it disappear forever. Not even in a perfect place like Chandlerville.
It was all there now. It was all coming back, coming for her, on the tip of her tongue and spilling out of her into the beauty of Emma Lombard’s fancy foyer, and into the reality of a man she’d promised to help who was now making promises of his own. Mallory couldn’t refuse him or herself. She couldn’t stop the words from becoming reality as she shared them.
And so they danced, her cheek against his chest as he listened and she remembered her last two dreams out loud, bringing more of what she’d left behind into his world. She told him about that first Christmas, and then the one six years later when she’d tried to make herself believe she could save her mama. She skipped the worst parts and how it had all ended, but she let herself remember what she thought he could hear—and what she thought she could bear him knowing.
She’d been right, she realized. Admitting the truth didn’t make anything better. But being held while she f
aced it did. And Pete had been right, too. She was exhausted. She was practically asleep as they stood there, barely moving, and she talked until midnight with Pete catching each memory she released, never once letting her go until she begged him to.
Mallory wasn’t asleep this time when the sliding sound of her patio door reached her. And she wasn’t at all surprised by the late-night interruption.
She was wrung out from emotionally dumping all over Pete, taking in his comfort and letting his understanding wash through her. Then with only the briefest of kisses he let her go with a promise that he’d be over to check on her in the morning—sounding for all the world as if he couldn’t wait.
Thank God she’d had the presence of mind to park her car at her place when she’d returned from the shelter. Or her very conspicuous Beetle would still be in the Lombards’ drive for the entire neighborhood to speculate about once the sun was up. She’d been too brain-dead by the time she’d left to even navigate the thing next door. But for yet another night, she hadn’t been able to sleep.
Sitting on her bed, facing her beautiful window overlooking her moonlit backyard, she’d seen the almost ghostly figure sneak through her fence’s door. She’d called Pete immediately, waking him and telling him that Polly would be staying over but that he should keep away until morning, for Mallory’s sake as well as his daughter’s.
Because even more than she and Polly needed to cover some tough ground that the kid clearly couldn’t wait to deal with, Mallory needed a few more hours to sort things out without Pete being so close, so open, and so available.
She’d told him everything she’d dared, but there was so much more she didn’t know if she could share. He’d promised to help her any way he could if she wanted to keep looking for the barely there woman who’d slipped away from them at the shelter, but she wasn’t sure she could handle that either. She’d looked so many times, and searching for her mother, thinking it would fix anything if she found her, was a mistake Mallory had promised herself she’d stopped making for good. Then just before she’d left his house, Pete had invited her to come to the Mimosa Lane Christmas party with him and Polly.
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