Chapter 3
The next morning, Mallory slept through Taylor and Erica’s arrival.
They were also fast asleep when she woke up to run errands later on.
Mallory didn’t see them until lunchtime when they emerged from Ariel’s old bedroom with tired eyes and warm smiles.
They greeted her in the living room where she sat half-heartedly reading a bland nonfiction book she’d found on her dad’s shelf.
Slamming it shut, she jumped up from the couch and opened her arms to give Taylor a big hug.
“Mal!” Taylor beamed and embraced her, not missing the chance to also dig his knuckles into her skull for a quick noogie. She pushed him away despite laughing. Erica gave her a much gentler greeting, in the form of a kiss on the cheek and a compliment.
“Your hair’s grown a lot since we last saw you,” she said, running her fingers through Mallory’s locks. “It’s beautiful.”
“Thank you.” Mallory blushed. Her hair, which she’d bleached and dyed so many times over the years, was something she rarely felt confident about. “I’ve been trying not to mess with it too much. I want it to get back to being more natural. And healthy. Although I miss my icy blond streaks.”
“Those were fun,” Erica agreed. “But this looks more… mature.”
Taylor sniffled and pretended to wipe tears from his eyes. “Our little girl is all grown up.”
“Shut up,” Mallory groaned, heading into the kitchen where Ariel and Sasha were swapping tips and tricks for diaper rashes.
“Just teasing you.” He winked. “It’s the job of an older brother,” he said with a smirk.
In the kitchen, Sasha stiffened when she spotted Taylor and Erica. Mallory wondered if they’d already met, but she didn’t have to wonder for long. Taylor stuck his hand out for a shake, smiling like a used car salesman. “You must be Sasha?”
“Yeah,” Sasha said shyly. “It’s nice to meet you. Taylor, right?”
He nodded. “Yes, and this is my wife, Erica.”
“Nice to meet you too.” Erica smiled but she didn’t go in for a hug like she usually would. Perhaps she was also picking up on the tension in Sasha’s voice and mannerisms. “We’ve heard nothing but wonderful things about you and your darling little girl.”
Sasha smiled and muttered a quiet thanks.
“Where are mom and dad?” Taylor asked Ariel. “And the kids?”
“Mom and dad took the kids to the park,” Mallory said. “And I think Dot’s sleeping?”
“Yeah, she’s taking a nap,” Sasha confirmed. “I’m just waiting for your mom to get back before I go to work.”
“I can watch Dot until mom comes back,” Ariel said. “If you’d be comfortable with that…”
Sasha didn’t answer right away.
“Or, if you’d rather wait for my mom,” Ariel quickly added. “That’s fine too. I won’t take it personally. I know how hard it is to trust someone new with your baby.”
Sasha smiled. “It’s not that I don’t trust you—”
“I get it,” Ariel reaffirmed. “Really. I was just offering, but I swear I don’t take it personally. I was just about to call my dad anyway and see when they were coming home. I know my kids are probably getting hungry.”
“Sounds good. I’m going to run and get changed then.
” Sasha grabbed her to-go coffee cup off the counter and hurried out of the kitchen without saying another word.
Taylor leaned back so he could peer through the doorway and around the corner, watching Sasha leave.
Once she was gone, he looked back at his siblings with raised brows.
“She seems pretty normal. If not, a little jumpy. Guess I was expecting her to be a lot weirder.”
“She seems normal because she is normal,” Ariel said in a hushed voice. “Which is why I’m still not sure what you guys are so worried about!” She glared at Mallory. “Why are you still so suspicious?”
“You all just got here,” Mallory reminded them. “You haven’t seen and heard everything I have! Besides, Taylor, you can’t possibly be okay with how all of this came to be. What did mom say when she told you about Sasha and the baby?”
He shrugged. “Not a lot, to be honest. It’s all a bit strange... It was just surprising to meet her and have her not be even remotely… what’s the word?”
“Off-putting?” Erica suggested.
“Something like that,” Taylor responded.
“I don’t know how to put it. I thought it was going to be obvious from the moment I met her that she was a scammer.
I could somehow tell she was lying about something.
That probably makes me sound like a jerk—or like I was going to profile her—but I don’t mean it like that. ”
“No, I know what you mean,” Ariel said. “From the way Mallory described her. I was also expecting someone more aggressive or something.”
“Hey, that’s not fair!” Mallory interrupted.
“I never said anything mean about her. If you made up some version of her in your head before coming here, that’s on you.
The thing I’ve been most wary about isn’t her personally, but the lack of information mom and dad have about her.
They can’t even remember the charity’s name that they’ve been working with!
I never said she acted like a criminal or anything! ”
“You called her cagey,” Ariel said.
“Well, she is! A little.” Mallory sighed.
“Ugh! You guys are making me sound like the bad guy, but you only just got here. There’s a lot you don’t know.
Like how she kept her twenty-first birthday a secret last week, or how she was snooping around in mom and dad’s bedroom.
Not to mention, the one and only time I really tried to press her for more information, she turned the whole conversation around and accused mom and dad of being liars!
If all of that doesn’t lead you to think she’s at least being a little cagey, then perhaps we have two different definitions of the word. ” Mallory crossed her arms and huffed.
Erica and Taylor shared a concerned look.
“How do you know she was snooping around mom and dad’s room?” Ariel asked. “Did you catch her?”
“No, mom caught her. That was the incident I mentioned yesterday when you first arrived. And it’s why I mentioned buying Sasha some body wash or whatever.
I wanted to see if she was going to have the same explanation for why she was in their bathroom as mom did.
The look on Sasha’s face when I brought up the soap was all the proof I needed to know that mom had made the whole thing up. ”
“But why would she do that?”
“Who knows? But she’s been acting strange ever since I got home.”
“Yeah, mom was pretty defensive with me on the phone when we talked about all of this,” Taylor added.
“I think she might’ve been either lying about a few things or at least avoided telling me the full truth.
She promised she’d explain everything once we were in town though, so I’m trying to avoid making snap judgments before we chat. ”
“How sensible of you,” Mallory said with a scoff and gestured to herself. “I, on the other hand, am going to keep digging for info on this woman. I started to do some research last week but ended up hitting a bit of a snag.”
“What kind of snag?” Her brother asked.
“The technological kind.” She made a face. “I might’ve accidentally poured some coffee on dad’s laptop and it’s dead. We managed to save all his files though, so it wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been, but now I don’t have access to a computer. Doing this kind of research on my phone isn’t easy.”
“I see. So that’s why dad needs a new laptop.” Taylor smirked. “Mom left that little detail out too.”
“Who is we?” Erica asked.
Mallory frowned. “What?”
“You said that ‘we’ managed to save all your dad’s files. I was just curious what you meant by that. I didn’t realize you were tech savvy.”
“She isn’t,” Taylor said, and his sister stuck her tongue out at him. “Well, it’s true!”
“I’m savvy enough,” she complained. “But you’re right in assuming I wouldn’t be able to save a computer from its death bed.” She shoved her hands in the pocket of her sweatshirt. “I had some help from this guy who works at a computer repair shop in town.”
“Ooh, a guy!” Ariel’s face lit up. “Is he cute?”
“He’s… fine looking.”
“That means he’s cute,” Ariel announced and smirked at Erica. “I’ve had decades to learn what Mallory’s really saying when she’s trying to dodge the truth, and if he wasn’t cute, she would’ve just said that.” She clapped her hands together. “Exciting! Is he single?”
Mallory shook her head, exacerbated. She knew the answer to this question—she’d found out by asking around town—but she didn’t necessarily want her sister to know all the details yet.
Still, she knew her mother was going to spill the beans at some point, so she decided to rip the band aid off herself.
“It’s James Harris,” she said. “We went to high school together. Taylor, you wouldn’t have overlapped with him, but Ariel, you might’ve known him.”
“James Harris…” Ariel repeated, her face scrunching up as she tried to recall the name. “Hmm… Did he have any older siblings?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Wait a second.” Taylor laughed. “Was that the valedictorian of your year? The one who spoke at your graduation?”
Mallory sighed. “Yeah. Him.”
Ariel’s eyes widened. “Oh, I remember him now! That whiz kid from my calculus class! He was the only freshman who could take such a high level of math his first year of high school, and he made the rest of us look like idiots. In fact, I’m pretty sure I asked him to help me study on more than one occasion.
” She smiled. “I probably wouldn’t have passed that class if it weren’t for him. He was a sweet kid.”
“Is he still sweet?” Erica smiled wickedly at Mallory.
“Is he still a huge nerd?” her brother joked.
“Yes, he’s sweet,” Mallory said. “And no, he’s not a huge nerd.
Or—well—I don’t know! He could be. I only spent like an hour with him while he was trying to get all the coffee out of the keyboard.
Clearly, he’s still very smart, since he works with computers, but I hardly know anything else about him. ”