Things We Didn't Say_ A Novel - Kristina Riggle [57]
Then he’d give it to me, so I’ve been driving my mother’s hand-me-down Hondas for years.
I hate this goddamn car and everything it means. But I don’t want to have to choose between paying for band camp or making a car payment.
“You’ll have your own car one day,” Mallory says, patting my knee as I crank up the cold engine.
This is a rare peek for me inside Mallory’s apartment. Usually I’m in the car, and the kids go in or out the front door guided by Mallory, when she’s home, when she’s not “ill.” No reason I don’t go up to the door, I just don’t, and everyone seems to like it that way. Never the twain shall meet.
The inside of Mallory’s apartment looks like Mallory’s dorm room circa 1993.
Cast-off clothing covers every surface. She’s peppered the walls with cheap posters depicting landscapes and sunsets. The ceiling of the living room is covered with greenish plastic stars, the kind that glow in the dark when you shut the lights off. There’s a bead curtain between her living room and hallway. It rattles as she pushes through it toward the back.
Strewn on the floor are some toys I’ve never seen, which must be Jewel’s. This rankles, to know that she has a life I’m not part of, even if it’s only some of the weekends.
“Sit down!” Mallory calls from within the apartment, presumably her bedroom, where she’s packing a bag. “Make yourself comfortable!”
I wander into the dining area, just a nook off the living room, really.
She’s got framed photos of the kids on the wall, their eight-by-ten school photos, and I notice that these are the photos from the year she moved out. I know she has the new ones, I always make sure she gets some at my own expense. Is it laziness that prevents her from putting the fresh pictures in the frame? Or is it nostalgia for a time when we were all together?
There are snapshots half spilling out of a photo-place envelope among the detritus on her kitchen table. I tilt my head to look at the top one. It’s Mallory wearing a bikini on a fishing boat, a burly guy’s arm possessively around her shoulders. They’re both pink with sunburn.
“Jealous?” she says, coming from the back and noticing me looking at the pictures.
“Ha,” I say. “Good luck to him.”
She comes over to stand next to me. She’s squirted on some perfume. I don’t remember what it’s called, but she did used to wear it when we were married. She looks down to see which photo I’ve seen.
“Oh, him. He’s over, anyway.”
“Did the kids ever meet him?”
“No. Not that it’s any of your business.”
“Like hell it isn’t.”
“Like I have any say in who you date, or get engaged to, or bring into the house to live.”
“You knew all about her.”
“Not at first.”
“It was just a few dates, then.”
“You were kissing her. And I had to hear it from Angel.”
“I didn’t know she’d seen us. And . . . God, just stop.”
My voice rings overly loud in the small space. In the silence that follows we glare at each other, and the tinny sounds of the neighbor’s television float through the wall.
My cell phone rings. “Hi, Case. I’m on my way back.”
Her voice echoes weirdly on my phone, but I can make out “police” and “Cleveland.”
“Oh, God, is he okay?” I walk closer to the doorway, trying to get a better signal. Mallory follows like a shadow.
“Yes, he’s fine. They picked him and the girl up for shoplifting. He’s at the police station, and I’ve got the address . . .”
With Casey still talking in my ear, Mallory flings herself at me and wraps her arms around my waist, her face on my chest. I put one arm around her, reflexively.
“I’ll be right back. Map it for me, will you?”
“Where are you, anyway?” She sounds baffled, unhappy.
“I ran Mallory home to get a change of clothes. I’ll be right there.”
I hang up and Mallory holds tighter, murmuring, Thank God, thank God, thank God, into my chest, and I steal a moment to sink into relief with her, the other parent, who regardless of her faults is the only other person who can really understand how this feels.
Chapter 23
Dylan
When the cop hangs up the phone and tells me my