Chapter 2
Mallory sipped her coffee sullenly as her mom went to finish getting ready for the day.
She’d heard the sound of muffled voices coming from upstairs, but neither of them were deep enough to be her father’s.
He was likely still in his meeting, but she hoped he would be done soon.
She needed to ask him more questions about this mystery guest. Even if he didn’t have all the answers she was looking for, she was fairly certain he would share some of her concerns.
She got up to pour herself a second cup when her mother and Sasha came into the kitchen, both looking very nervous for some reason. Mallory frowned at them as she poured the coffee. “Is… everything alright?”
“Uh—well—”
“I stole your room,” Sasha blurted out like a kid admitting to staying up past her bedtime.
Her dirty blond hair covered her face as she looked away, embarrassed.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were going to be coming home to stay, otherwise I would’ve insisted that I sleep somewhere else.
It was never my intention to take someone else’s room. ”
“It was the most comfortable option,” Callie explained.
“And it was big enough for her and Dot to stay in without being too cramped. We didn’t know you were going to be returning home before Thanksgiving, so we had her move in there for at least the first month, and then we were going to figure something else out when everyone arrived for the holiday. ”
“Oh.” Mallory put the pot of coffee back in its place and swallowed a burning sip just to give herself a moment to think.
She made a face as the hot liquid crawled down her throat, bringing tears to her eyes.
“That’s okay,” she choked out a second later.
“I understand. That makes the most sense, and it’s not like I told anyone I was coming, so…
yeah. It’s fine. It’s really not fair of me to claim it as ‘my room’ anyway. ”
“See,” Callie said assuredly to the young woman. “I told you she would be cool with it.”
“She’s just being nice.” Sasha looked at Mallory. “You’re just being nice, I know you are. If it were my room, I would be totally upset!”
Yes, Mallory thought. But you're twenty and I’m nearly forty. These were the sorts of things young, immature people were supposed to be upset about. Mallory, however, wouldn’t dare pitch a fit about handing her childhood bedroom over to Sasha and her baby. Even if she was a bit perturbed.
“I’m sure your mom told you who I was,” Sasha went on.
“And so you’re probably thinking that the right thing to do is to give me your room, but I’m telling you, you can have it back.
I hate the idea of taking the space away from you, and Dot and I have slept in rooms the size of a tin-can before.
We are going to be happy with any bedroom in this gorgeous house. ”
If this was Sasha’s attempt at making Mallory feel okay with taking her room back, it failed. The more the young woman insisted, the harder it was going to be for Mallory to force her into a smaller space.
“No, really, it’s okay,” Mallory insisted. “I don’t care where I sleep. I came home to be with my parents and to spend a little time in Ferndale, but I’m not emotionally attached to my room necessarily.”
This was a lie. A bald-faced lie.
Mallory loved her room. It had been her safe haven when she was a rowdy kid who got in trouble with her parents for tracking mud through the entire house. It was her solace when she was a teenager facing expulsion. It was the place she returned to whenever she felt like she had nowhere else to go.
But now it was providing a similar comfort to a woman who needed it a lot more than she did.
Mallory had to be okay with that, otherwise, what kind of person would that make her?
“Are you sure?” Sasha asked once more, wringing her hands anxiously.
Mallory smiled. “Positive. There’s absolutely no need for you to switch rooms. You and your baby should stay where you are comfortable.”
Sasha sighed with relief and Callie beamed at her youngest child.
“Thank you so much,” said Sasha. “It means a lot to me. More than you might realize. For some reason, Dot seems to really like your room. She sleeps great in there, which means I sleep great. I just—” The woman sniffled and covered her mouth with her hand. “Thank you.”
“There’s no need to thank me.” Mallory shook her head. “It’s a great room, and I’m glad you and Dot have been enjoying it. Just don’t go looking in the back of the closet.”
Callie frowned. “What are you talking about? There’s nothing back there! I cleaned that room top to bottom.”
Mallory smirked and acted like she was whispering a secret to Sasha.
“There’s a loose floorboard. Underneath is where my sister and I hid a bunch of love letters to boys and stuff when we were in middle school.
There also might be a few dollars hidden in there too.
If you must go snooping, you can keep the money as long as you also promise to never tell Ryan Waterhouse that I never really got over him. ”
Sasha grinned like a gossiping schoolgirl. “Deal.”
“Great.” Mallory clapped her hands together. “Now that that’s settled, I’m going to take this cup of coffee with me into one of the other rooms, drink it, and then probably crash for about eight hours.”
“Seems like the opposite order of operations,” said Callie. “Why not leave the coffee for later, when you’re done sleeping?”
“The coffee is what’s going to get me from point A to point B,” Mallory joked. “It’s not going to keep me awake, though. I’m not sure there’s any amount of caffeine that could keep me up right now.” She looked at her mom. “Which room do you want me in?”
“I figured you would want to sleep in your dad’s office.
He hardly ever takes meetings in there these days.
This morning is a bit of an anomaly. He likes to go into the building for work usually, soak up as much in-person experience as he can before he retires.
Plus, it’s on the main floor, so you won’t be woken up by the baby in the middle of the night. ”
Mallory nodded. She had to admit, she’d been hoping to get the bedroom down there. No offense to Sasha or her baby, but Mallory liked having her own space. If she was getting kicked out of her bedroom, then having the main floor to herself at night was the next best thing.
“Works for me,” Mallory said. “But does that mean I’m not going to be able to get settled right away?”
“I’m afraid so,” Callie said. “You can take a nap in the master bedroom upstairs if you want though. Or on the couch. I’ll just be doing some grading on the porch and Sasha was about to take Dot for a walk, so it’ll be quiet. Your dad will be done soon, I think.”
Mallory shrugged and dragged herself towards the living room. “Couch it is. I would say don’t wake me unless there’s a fire, but even then, I don’t think you’ll be able to rouse me anytime soon.”
*
Although Mallory’s comment had been made in jest, it seemed everyone in the household took her seriously, because she wasn’t woken up until much later in the day.
Her mother had come inside from the back deck, and the sound of the sliding door closing brought Mallory out of her a dream in which she was winning some kind of award.
She couldn’t have said what the award was for; all she remembered was the cheering crowd and the feeling of accomplishment blossoming in her chest.
“Oh, sorry,” her mom said upon entering the house. “I was trying to be quiet.”
“That’s okay,” Mallory said. “It’s about time I get up anyway. I’m starving.” And as if to underline her point, her stomach growled just as she was sitting up. She ran her fingers through her snarly hair a few times and stood. “I’m assuming dad’s done with his meeting?”
“Yeah, he went to the store to pick up some stuff to make dinner,” Callie announced. “And Sasha and the baby are taking a nap.”
“Alright then. I think I’ll just go unpack a few things.”
“Sounds good. I already put your bags in the bedroom. Oh, but just so you know, if you need to hang anything up, most of your dad’s clothes are in that closet now. He was also using the dresser for some stuff, but I moved all of that out of the way.”
Mallory frowned. “Why was dad’s stuff in his office?”
“Not everything,” Callie clarified. “Just a few things. Our own dresser and closet were getting so overly stuffed. I don’t know how the two of us have managed to accrue so much clothing, it’s just ridiculous, but oh well.”
Mallory found this explanation a bit odd, considering her parents were never known to be big shoppers, but she didn’t feel like getting into yet another spat on her first day back in Ferndale.
She went first to the bathroom in the hallway to freshen up.
Then, in her dad’s office, she opened up her three bags and stared down at the contents of her entire life.
Aside from the used, half-broken items of furniture she’d left behind in her apartment, everything in these bags represented all of Mallory’s worldly possessions.
Back in the day, she liked the fact that she could pack everything up at a moment’s notice and move, but now, it made her kind of sad.
She had a duffle bag full of clothes, a duffle bag full of odds and ends, and then a computer bag that didn’t even have a computer in it.
She’d been using a company laptop at her last job but hadn’t owned her own computer in years.
There were a few tattered paperbacks in that bag, a journal she hadn’t opened in months, and a pair of wireless earbuds that no longer worked after she’d accidentally run them through the wash.
Could this really be it? The sum of her life?