Chapter 10
MALLORY
The city doesn't end all at once. It thins.
First the glass towers fall behind me in the rearview mirror, sharp and silver against a morning sky too bright for the night I just survived.
Then the expensive storefronts become strip malls.
The strip malls become gas stations with hand-lettered signs taped inside the windows.
Traffic loosens around me until I'm no longer being carried by lanes of polished cars and black SUVs, but simply driving.
My suitcase shifts in the back seat when I take a curve too fast. Everything I packed fits in one bag: jeans, sweaters, toiletries, my reading glasses, and the old market apron folded around a small white box I can't let myself think about just yet.
My stomach rolls hard enough that I pull into the parking lot of a closed antique store and sit with both hands locked around the steering wheel until the nausea passes. My phone buzzes in the cup holder.
Rourke.
I know without looking. It's as if my body has its own compass that knows when he's near, even by text.
The old instinct rises, stupid and loyal.
Answer. Hear him. Let him say the right thing.
Let him sound wrecked enough, sorry enough, loving enough, and maybe the road behind me will become a mistake instead of a boundary.
The call goes to voicemail. I press my forehead to the steering wheel and breathe through my mouth until the sour taste fades.
I don't listen to the message. If I hear his voice, I'll remember the way he says my name when he's half asleep.
I'll remember his hand on my hip in the dark, his mouth at my shoulder, the tired warmth of him behind me when he was only mine.
I'll remember that I love him, as if that was enough to stop the hurt.
I put the car back in drive.
The road narrows after another hour. Cell service slips in and out, one bar appearing, vanishing, returning like it can't decide whether to keep me attached to anything. Manicured hotel hedges and median flowers give way to fields, weathered fences, and ditches crowded with wild Queen Anne’s lace.
By the time I see the sign for Juniper Bend, the city feels like something I watched on a screen.
The town is small, but not empty. A diner with a red awning. A hardware store. A library in a squat brick building with flower baskets under the windows. A bulletin board outside the grocery store catches my eye when I park for a ginger ale pit stop.
FURNISHED FARMHOUSE FOR RENT.
The notice is written in blue marker, the phone number torn into little strips along the bottom.
I stand there too long, holding a basket with ginger ale and a single bruised peach.
The farmhouse in the photograph has faded white paint, uneven porch steps, and a seriously neglected yard.
The kitchen window is wide. The porch looks out toward open land instead of another building. No concierge. No lobby.
I tear off the number.
The woman who shows me the house doesn't ask many questions. Her name is Paula Landers. She has gray hair, bright lipstick, and keys on a ring heavy enough to make her lean slightly when she carries them.
“Owner lives with her daughter in Arizona now,” she says, shouldering open the front door when the old lock sticks. “House has been sitting some, but it’s clean. Mostly.”
“I don’t need much.”
Paula looks me over. Not my shoes. Not the label on my coat. My face. “Looking for some place quiet for a while?” she asks.
“Yes.”
She nods once, as if that's a complete explanation. “Quiet we’ve got.”
I sign papers on the kitchen table with a pen that skips on the first stroke. I use Mallory Hale because my hand writes the name before I can stop it. My old name. Mine before Carmichael became the word people heard first. Paula doesn't blink at it.
When she leaves, the key rests cool and plain in my palm.
The house settles around me. I walk through it slowly, one hand trailing over doorframes, windowsills, and the chipped edge of a counter painted so many times the layers show at the corners.
The floorboards creak beneath my feet. Dust and old wood sit in the air with the damp green smell of grass pressing in from outside.
In the kitchen, sunlight falls across a square table with one uneven leg. When I open the window, the curtains lift against the screen.
The bedroom is small. No sitting area. No glass wall. No long stretch of carpet between me and the door. Just a bed, a dresser, one closet, and a window facing the field. It can't swallow me.
The bathroom has a tub with worn enamel and a faucet that complains before the water runs. No polished stone. No heated floor. No resort fixture chosen by a designer who believes comfort should photograph well.
I sit on the closed toilet lid and try for once not to narrate my life from inside my head. I fail miserably.
My phone buzzes from the kitchen, then again. I don't move.
After a while, I make toast from the bread Paula left in the freezer and eat half a slice standing at the counter. My hand drifts to my middle, fingers spread low over nothing anyone else can see.
“We have time,” I whisper.
The phone buzzes again. This time I pick it up.
Missed calls. Voicemails. Texts.
Where are you?
Mallory, please answer.
I can explain this better.
Come home. We’ll talk. I’ll fix it.
The last one came four minutes ago.
Please, Mal. Just tell me you’re safe.
My thumb hovers over the screen. I don't answer, but I don't block him either. I turn the phone facedown on the table and leave it there, still close enough that I can hear it if he tries again.
The next morning, someone knocks on the front door while I'm trying to figure out whether the oven works.
A woman stands on the porch holding a pie wrapped in a clean dish towel.
She's around my age, maybe a few years older, with sun-browned arms, dark hair twisted up with a pencil, and mud on one knee of her jeans.
“You must be the new tenant,” she says. “I’m Coralee Banacek. Me and my husband Dale are next door, which around here means that way about a quarter mile.” She tips her chin toward the field.
I take the pie, thankful my stomach doesn't complain at the heavenly smell. "Thank you. This may possibly be one of the best housewarming gifts I've received in a very long time."
“Glad to hear it.” Coralee steps inside only when I move back. “You allergic to peaches?”
“No.”
“Good, because there's plenty more where those came from.” She sets the pie on the counter and glances at the stove. “Does that thing still run hot on the left side?”
“I haven’t gotten that far.”
“We’ll test it before it ruins your dinner.”
Something in my chest gives a small, unwilling tug. “I’m Mallory,” I say.
“Nice to meet you, Mallory.” No pause. No calculation. No flicker at my ring, which is still on my hand because I have no idea what the next day holds. “You need help finding the grocery store, feed store, clinic, or the place that sells coffee strong enough to keep you upright?”
“I found the grocery store.”
“Then you’re halfway settled.”
A child’s voice calls from outside before I can answer. “Mama, Noah put a worm in my pocket.”
Coralee closes her eyes for half a second. “Did you ask him to?”
“No!”
She looks at me and sighs.
“Have to gather the witness testimony first. I should go before there’s a trial.”
I follow her onto the porch because curiosity gets the better of me.
Across the yard, a man in dusty work pants, Dale no doubt, lifts a little girl onto his hip while a boy about eight argues his case with both hands.
The man kisses Coralee when she reaches him, quick and ordinary, his free hand settling at the small of her back as if it belongs there.
She takes the little girl from him and wipes dirt off her cheek with her thumb.
The boy, Noah presumably, sticks out his tongue and laughs at the little girl. The little girl complains that the worm was “a mean surprise.” Coralee listens with grave attention, then tells Noah to apologize to his sister and return the worm to whichever jurisdiction it came from.
No one checks a phone. No one glances past anyone toward a more important room.
I watch as they walk together, clumsily, but together. The children fall over each other. Dale laughs at something the little boy says. Coralee looks mockingly stern at Dale at one point.
I grip the porch rail until the wood presses into my palm.
I want it. I want it so badly that my chest begins to feel tight.
And what's worse: I want it with the one man who would likely never even consider such a life. I knew that when I fell in love with him. That's what I tell myself.
It doesn't make me want it any less, though.
Coralee looks back once. Her expression changes, but she doesn't soften into pity. “You knock if you need anything,” she calls.
“I’ll remember that.”
She smiles, then walks home with her family clustered around her, noisy, uneven, and held together by a thousand tiny acts of attention. I watch until the field takes them.
By late afternoon, I'm in the flower beds in clothes I should have changed out of.
The beds run along the side porch, though it takes me several minutes to see their shape beneath the weeds.
Dead stems from last season stand brittle and gray.
The soil is hard, packed flat by rain and time.
Bindweed twists through everything like it's been winning for months.
Then I see a small purple bloom half-buried under the mess.
I kneel. I don't have gloves. I don't have tools.
My palms are soft in the places they used to be callused, another small betrayal I didn't notice happening.
The first weed resists. I pull harder, and the root comes free with a dry snap that sends me backward onto my heels. Dirt scatters over my cuffs.
I pull another, then another.
Soon both hands are in the bed, fingers working beneath roots, loosening the hard crust around the surviving plant. Dirt pushes under my nails. A thorny stem scratches the heel of my hand. The smell rises, and my shoulders lower before I tell them to.
My phone buzzes on the porch. I freeze with one hand wrapped around a clump of weeds. It buzzes again.
Rourke, probably. Rourke standing in some room made of glass and polished chrome. Likely wondering how he can fix all of this.
And some horrible tiny thought at the back of my mind thinks, "What happens when he finally gives up on you?"
My hand tightens. The roots give. I set the weed aside and press my palm flat to the opened soil.
The phone stops. A minute later, footsteps sound in the grass.
Coralee stands at the edge of the porch with a basket of peaches tucked against her side. Her gaze moves from my dirty hands to the phone facedown on the porch, then back to me. She doesn't ask who's calling. Instead, she says, “You running toward something, Mallory, or away from something?”
I look down at the small purple flower with space around it now. “Both.”
Coralee nods like that was just the answer she was expecting.
The phone begins ringing again.
I stand and, for one second, let myself pretend this is really my life.