20. Mallory
Chapter 20
Mallory
Jolene: Sending you the fiercest hug. Tell me if you can't find strawberry cake. I will buy some and drive it to you.
Mallory: I appreciate you. XO.
Mallory: Hi, Mom. Thinking of you today. Love you.
Mom: Thank you, Mallory.
Maggie's birthday is the hardest day of the year for me, second only to the anniversary of the day she was killed. Every year I bake her favorite strawberry cake, placing twelve candles in the thick layer of vanilla icing. I'm usually in tears, and then I double down and increase the pain by lighting the candles and singing happy birthday. It's dramatic, but it's what I need. After being forced to live in a world without Maggie, sometimes I want to spend just one day drowning in the pain of losing her. Then, and I'm not proud of this, I get drunk and pass out, knowing I will wake up with a pounding headache and self-inflicted illness. In an unhealthy way, this is punishment for how I abandoned my sister on that day.
Without my own kitchen to bake in, I set off for Sweet Nothings. I know from being here yesterday with Hugo that they don't have a strawberry cake on the menu, but I noticed they have rotating flavors. How perfect would it be if today's flavor were strawberry?
Yesterday's bickering couple is here again today. Sal and Adela.
"I told you we ran out of powdered sugar." Adela scowls at her husband.
"Bah," he says, waving her away.
I stand back from the register, surveying the treats inside the glass cases. The only thing strawberry flavored are the pop tarts Hugo purchased yesterday, and if I try and put twelve candles in one of those, I think I'll end up with an inferno.
"Hello, young lady," Sal greets me. He's wearing the cutest apron, made of forest green thick material and lined in green and white gingham. I bet it's homemade. "You were in here yesterday with Hugo, weren't you?"
"I sure was," I confirm with a nod.
"I've known him since he was a tiny thing."
"I'm sure he was cute."
"Sure was. Damn shame what happened to his dad. Blows my mind that they never caught the guy. Small town like this? How does somebody get away with it?"
Sal's loose lips take me aback, but it may not be out of character for him. It doesn't seem like he has much of a filter. Something about his rhetorical questions digs in. The wording, the way he insinuated a person shouldn't be able to get away with murder in a small town.
"You think it was a local? Or it's not possible because of the town's size back then?"
Sal places his age-spotted forearms on the top of the case. "I don't know what I think," he says. "It's hard for me to imagine anybody wanting to kill a man as nice as Simon. Forget having enemies, the man didn't have anybody who wasn't a friend."
A friend of Simon… Is that where I should be looking? Simon's friends?
Sal pats his fluffy white head of hair. "Anyway, what can I do for you, hon? You got a sweet tooth today? Sugar craving?" His gaze drops briefly to my stomach.
I've always heard word travels fast in a small town, but I assumed that was small town lore. Looks like I'm officially being disabused of the notion.
"I came in here hoping to find a strawberry cake. Or slice of cake. Or cupcake. A morsel, really. I'm not picky."
Sal frowns. "I hate to deliver bad news, but we don't have strawberry cake." He turns back, cups a hand around his mouth. "Adela, we gotta put strawberry cake on the menu."
Her head of long, silvery gray hair pops up in the stainless steel window separating the store from the kitchen. "I'll put strawberry cake on the menu when I feel like putting strawberry cake on the menu." She glares, waiting for his return barb.
"There's a pregnant lady who needs strawberry cake," Sal argues, thumbing at me.
Adela's gaze shifts my way. "You're the woman who passed out." The nonchalant way she says it makes it seem like she could be commenting on an odd-shaped cloud in the sky.
"Guilty."
"You're pregnant?"
Sal's lips vibrate in a dramatic sigh. "I told you this already. Woman, I swear"—his hair shimmies with the shake of his head—"you should be sent to the nuthouse."
Surely Adela heard him, but she shows no sign of it. "You want strawberry cake?" she asks me.
I nod. "Please. With vanilla icing."
"Alright," she says, gathering her hair and twisting an elastic band around the base. "I'll bake you a strawberry cake with vanilla icing."
Tears fill my eyes. At least these feel more valid than recent bouts. "Just like that? You'll make one for me?"
"Haven't seen Hugo so alive in a long time." She winks at me. "I think that deserves strawberry cake." She disappears from the space, and me?
Tears, of course. Damn them. All I want to do is smile and thank her, but tears clog my voice.
Sal's mouth opens in horror, looking left and right like he's determining how likely he is to successfully escape the crying pregnant lady.
"We've got her, Sal," a voice says, stepping up beside me and draping an arm over my shoulders.
It's Daisy, on my right. Vivi, on my left.
Daisy's hand gently squeezes my shoulder. "Will you sit with us, Mallory?"
I sniff, dragging the back of my hand under my nose. Vivi snags a paper napkin from a nearby dispenser and hands it to me. I offer a thankful, shaky smile, and say, "I don't want to intrude."
Daisy shakes her head. "Not an intrusion. I'd be grateful." She tips her chin at Vivi. "I can't stand Vivi. The only reason I accepted her invitation to come here was because I feel bad that she doesn't have any other friends."
A straight-faced Vivi nods in the affirmative. "I've been guilting this broad into friendship since the mid-2000s."
Through the well of emotion at someone making a special cake just for me, without even asking me why, comes laughter.
"I won't take no for an answer," Daisy says, and without waiting for a response, she steers me to an empty table in the corner. "This is our table. Every week at this time, we meet. If Sal sees someone sit down anywhere close to the time when we're supposed to arrive, he shoos them away with one of those old-fashioned brooms."
More laughter. These women are kind. Vivi is still a bit of an enigma, but I think underneath that tough exterior, she's nice.
"I'll join you," I relent. "But only if you promise I'm not interrupting. You could be doing very important work, like solving world hunger."
"Nah." Vivi waves her hand. She threads her purse straps over the back of a chair and plunks down. "We judge people and talk shit."
Daisy takes her seat, and I fill the third. "We're like the early version of those old ladies you see sitting on a park bench gossiping about the town as it lives life around them."
"Tell us why you're crying," Vivi says. "You're pregnant, so it could be for anything. I once cried because I got peach ice cream and the carton said it would have real pieces of peach, but there weren't any."
"That actually makes me feel better. I know the tears are due to hormones, but they seem so...so irrational . I was never a crier before this."
"I wasn't a lot of things before I became a mother," Vivi states. "Welcome to becoming a person you never knew you could be. For better or worse."
"Ok, Mallory ." Daisy sends a hard look at Vivi. I get the feeling her role in their friendship is to wrangle Vivi, be the calm to her chaos. Daisy seems to be a genuinely sweet person. "Tell us why we walked in here and found a pregnant lady in tears."
For an event that changed the trajectory of my life, I don't talk about it with new people very often. But if Hugo can be brave and have a conversation with David Boylan, I can be brave and explain to these two friendly faces why they found me in tears.
"Today would've been my little sister Maggie's twenty-sixth birthday. She died when she was twelve, and every year I bake her favorite cake and sing happy birthday to her. I'm not at home, obviously, so Adela offered to make it for me, even though they don't have the flavor on the menu."
The look on Daisy's face is one of pure sorrow, and though Vivi shares the expression, there's something else there, too. Empathy.
"My mom told me," Vivi says quietly. "I'm sorry. For your loss, and for my behavior at the festival."
"You really were quite bitchy." The words sound wrong with Daisy's sugared tone.
"I'll make up for it," Vivi promises. "With food. I can cook the pants off you."
"That's sort of how I ended up in this predicament," I joke, rubbing my belly.
Vivi howls. "I like you, Mallory."
"You have to like me. We're members of a club we didn't ask to be in."
Vivi crosses her arms, a defiant look moving over her face. "Fuck that club."
Daisy's eyebrows raise. "Not to interrupt the sisterhood vibes you two have going right now, but I don't know what you're talking about. What club?"
"The murdered loved ones club," Vivi answers, voice dull. Somebody else might flinch at Vivi's harsh language, but I know she doesn't mean it badly. It's how she guards herself against the tremendous pain. Survival. The only way to deal with the pain is to learn how to interact with it.
Daisy gasps, gaze snapping back to me. "What is Vivi talking about?"
Quickly, I fill her in. No details, just the skeleton of what happened. No muscles or sinew, no organs or skin. No heart. If I rarely disclose what happened to Maggie, then I almost never talk about the details of the day. I still can't stomach them.
"And that's why I'm here," I finish.
Daisy drums her nails on the table. "This all makes a lot more sense now. Penn told me you'd sent an email?—"
"Many emails," I interject.
"And last he heard Hugo wasn't responding."
I wince. "I miiight have ambushed him."
Vivi shrugs. "Nobody ever moved forward by standing still."
Daisy side-eyes Vivi. "You're full of wisdom today."
Vivi winks at her in an overdone and leering way. "You tell Mama what you need, I'll make it happen."
Daisy shakes her head as she palms her forehead. "Prepare yourself for what's coming next," she mutters to me.
"Wha— "
"You gotta problem? Yo, I'll solve it." Vivi sings, deepening her voice and jutting out her chin.
Daisy eyes me. "She must like you if she's doing her Vanilla Ice routine in front of you."
Vivi looks at me, sending me the same wink. "Might as well get comfortable in front of Mallory now."
My brows pinch in suspicion. "Why is that?"
"Because Hugo's in lo-ove."
My cheeks flush with heat, my hand waving back-and-forth over the table, as if I'm declining something. "He feels bad for a pregnant lady. That's why he's being nice."
Vivi snorts. "Keep telling yourself that. I know my brother, and I've never seen him so..."
Her lips twitch as she searches for the best word. "Invested."
I laugh off Vivi's words, even as my stomach flutters. "He's indulging me."
"I don't think so," Daisy says. "It's time, if that makes sense. All of it. He's retired from a successful fencing career. He's stepped into the operation of Summerhill, a role his dad always wanted for him. It's time for Hugo to wade through all the feelings he's been running from for years." Daisy glances at Vivi. It seems Hugo isn't the only person Daisy thinks this of.
Sal arrives at the table holding a tray. "Here's your usual, ladies." With a shaky hand he sets down two large saucers and cups, holding what looks to be a latte with a heart formed in the foam.
"Mallory, I hope you don't mind, I took the liberty of making one for you also. Decaf," he adds, sliding the dish in front of me. He's not blushing, but he seems bashful. It's probably one of the cutest things I've ever seen.
"Thank you, Sal," I say, picking up the coffee. I love the warmth of the cup, the curl of the steam. "You're so thoughtful."
"It's vanilla," he says, his voice taking on a grumble. "If you don't like vanilla, well, I don't know what to tell ya." He turns away as quickly as possible for his age, retreating with the empty tray dangling by his side.
Daisy cups a hand over her mouth to muffle her laughter. "What in the world was that?"
Vivi's laughing, too. "That's how he acts around pregnant women," she whisper-hisses. "It's the emotional equivalent of being all thumbs. He wants to treat you like you're made of glass, but he's not happy about his inclination to treat you like you're made of glass."
I'm laughing too, but my heart is doing this stretch in my chest, almost as if it's making room for the sweetness of Sal's gesture.
Vivi and Daisy settle into mundane conversation. I sip my decaf vanilla latte, listening, picking up on details. Daisy and Penn are remodeling his childhood home on the adorably named Lickety-Split Lane. Vivi is worried because recently she noticed a group of employees huddled together, and when she walked past, they stopped talking.
"They weren't looking at me with guilt, like they were talking shit about me," she says. "They were looking at me as if they felt bad for me. Kind of like they thought I was pathetic."
"You're the boss," Daisy reminds her gently. "It probably had nothing to do with you."
"Sure," Vivi says, sipping her coffee. "They were probably discussing how drunk they got last weekend, and who slept with who." Vivi looks at me. "In case you don't know, restaurants are lawless places."
"I was a server to put myself through college. The debauchery was disturbing."
Vivi nibbles her lower lip. "I'm still perturbed by the way they shut down when they saw me. I know I'm their boss, but this was different."
"Viv," Daisy says kindly, gently squeezing her best friend's forearm. "Honestly, it sounds like you are projecting."
"Do you have a magnifying glass for an eyeball?" Vivi gripes. "Stop looking at me so closely."
Vivi turns to me in a very on purpose way, signaling she's done being under Daisy's microscope. "How is your time in Olive Township going? Have you found anything?"
I know what I say next is going to add fuel to their suspicions that Hugo cares for me. Here goes.
"Yesterday, Hugo and I drove north to Sugar Creek. We visited David Boylan."
Two jaws drop. Two sets of eyes bulge.
"You should have led with that," Vivi grumbles.
Daisy tucks a lock of blonde hair behind her ear. "He left Olive Township only to move to another small town in Arizona?" She's shaking her head like she can hardly believe it. "I would have assumed he'd gone halfway around the world."
"How was Hugo when he saw the guy?" Vivi asks, concern for her brother creeping into her tone.
"I think it helped Hugo to see him." It occurs to me Vivi might be hurt she wasn't invited. She hasn't seemed interested (or even slightly approving) of my scrutiny of her dad's case, but maybe she wants to be asked, even if all she plans to do is decline. "I'm sorry we didn't ask you to go with us."
"I'll be really honest with you, I wouldn't have said yes. I'm not in the same place as Hugo. Dealing with my grief isn't where I am right now in life. I can't put my energy there quite yet." She finishes her coffee, adding, "I have babies to raise, and exes to hate. I'm swamped."
"Young lady?" Sal again. He holds a small white box. "Adela said to give this to you. No charge. We're adding it to the menu." He slides the box in front of me. "She called it the perfect spring flavor. I thought lemon and carrot cake were just fine, but what do I know?"
"Thank you, thank you," I gush. I want to wrap this sweet and salty old man into a hug, but I don't know if he's ok with it, and it might embarrass him. Adela calls out to him, something about helping her, and he shuffles away.
My fingers press into the sides of the cake box, turning it this way and that. This is the first time that I was not the person to bake this cake. It feels odd, as if there is a degree of separation to it. These ingredients did not pass through my hands. But of course, Maggie is the reason I'm in Olive Township.
"Hey," Vivi says, voice warm. "If you don't want to be alone tonight, you can come hang out with me and my kids. They sing a mean happy birthday."
"That's very kind of you, but I think I'll pass. Nobody needs to see me ugly cry." Vivi and Daisy nod. Every woman knows what it's like to need a good cry once in a while. "Typically I eat cake and get drunk." A gentle swoop over my belly with my hand. "But not this year."
"Next year," Daisy says, excitement bright in her eyes. "King's Ransom. They make a blood orange margarita that's unbelievable."
"I'm more of a tequila with soda water and a splash of grapefruit juice kind of girl."
Daisy snaps her fingers. "They can do that, too."
Vivi thumbs at Daisy. "This girl only drinks champagne."
My gaze runs over Daisy's halo of blonde hair, her pretty face and cute little sundress. "That tracks."
Vivi barks a laugh. "I told you you look like a person who drinks champagne. Or rosé, in second place."
The three of us deposit our empty cups and saucers in a dirty dish bin at the end of the counter.
"Thank you," we call on our way out, but Sal and Adela are in the kitchen, and from the looks of it, they are griping about something.
"If they weren't bitching at each other, I'd be worried," Vivi says.
Daisy pulls me in for a warm hug. Vivi hangs back when Daisy lets me go, saying, "I usually only hug people I know well, but in a weird way I feel like I know you on an elevated level."
"Agreed. But you don't have to hug me if you don't want to. Your mom gives the greatest hugs, so I know you had a good teacher."
"Ahh fuck it," Vivi says, pulling me in. She's stiff, but her heart is in the right place.
We part ways, and I stop into a store for new pajamas because I brought only one set with me, and then pop into a drugstore for candles. My stomach rumbles, reminding me I need to eat. I snag a BLT and fries to-go from Good Thyme Café, and insist the hostess let me pay for it. It was unbelievably sweet of Hugo to instruct them not to charge me, but I need to be able to pay for my own food.
Arms full when I walk into my hotel room, my foot catches on the lip of the carpet. Thankfully, I don't go sprawling, but I drop my to-go container and it opens, the sandwich falling apart and half of the fries spilling out onto the floor.
I pat my belly, looking at the fallen fries. "Are you already making me clumsy?"
Sinking to my knees, I donkey-kick the door closed behind me and clean up my mess, reassembling the sandwich as best I can. When my dinner is finished, I decorate the cake with twelve candles and light it, softly singing to Maggie.
Forever young.
Forever twelve .
In the center of my chest, it hits me. An unbearable pain, a tremendous guilt. It's my fault. I left her alone at the water park. A cute boy wanted to hang out with me, and I left Maggie behind.
I blow out the candles, shoulders quaking, sobs wracking my body. Though I don't want it, and can hardly stomach it, I force myself to eat a thin slice of cake. Maggie loved her birthday cake, and she's not alive to eat it, so I'll do it for her.
Eventually, I change into pajamas and lie down on the bed. I cry and I cry, until there's nothing left, and sleep overtakes me.
It's the middle of the night when I wake. Three a.m. I have a pressing urge to look at old photos of Maggie.
Slipping my phone from the nightstand, I blink against the brightness and open my photos app.
My blood runs cold. A thick gasp sticks in my throat, nausea rolling over me as I stare at the images.
My camera roll has new photos of... me ?
Sleeping.
Photos of me sleeping.
Wearing the new pajamas I bought earlier this evening.
The same pajamas I have on right now.