“Honey…” Mallorie’s tone softens. “Why did you leave him? It’s clear he didn’t want you to. You could hardly speak through tears on the ride home and you didn’t mention him again formonths. I saw the chemistry you had—it was combustible. And him around you? I’ve never seen a man melt only to harden himself around the very shape of you.”
I chew my lip to stop the emotions from penetrating my eyeballs.
“Even with the horrible tension and the stabbings and the fact we had a dead man in the house, I could tell he made you happy, Erin. And you deserve to be happy. You don’t deserve to be closeted in the back of a library, your lady bits gathering as much dust asWar and Peace.”
I feel the pretense leaching out from my pores.
“Mallorie, don’t. It’s hard enough as it is. You’re right about all those things. Really, you are. You’ve always been too perceptive for my own good. But we’ve had this conversation so many times and you know exactly why I left and why I can’t go back. I did this for Paige. She’s everything.”
Mallorie looks back at me with a gentleness that hurts.
“I get it, Erin. But what you also need to remember is this: You are everything too.”
The house is warm when I get home.
The first sound I hear is my mother’s voice. She’s humming to herself in the kitchen, making Paige something to eat.
After the trauma we all experienced at the safe house in the woods, my mother has been somewhat gentler with me. I suspect she feels a little guilty about favoring my ex-husband over me all those years when he’d turned out to be a gangster of the worst possible kind. Though, she’d never admit it.
She’s showing me she’s sorry in other ways—being here for Paige when she gets home from school, making dinners when I work late, not mentioning Augusto even though I know her opinions don’t differ greatly to Mallorie’s.
“Mom?” Paige calls from the dining room.
I hang my bag in the closet then follow the sound of her voice. I find her surrounded by leaflets, forms, and what appears to be a glitter pen explosion.
“What’s all this?” I ask, stepping on a blob of glue.
She beams. “Junior prom planning!”
“Junior prom?” I echo, blinking. “Already?”
“Yeah, Mom. It’s happening in three weeks.”
I feel the blood run from my cheeks. How is it her junior prom already? How did she get to sixteen so fast?
“Okay…” I mentally rearrange all the plans I’d had in my head. “What do you need help with?”
She hesitates which, given her prior enthusiasm, sets off alarm bells.
“What is it?”
She chews her lip.
“I was thinking,” she begins cautiously, “about the guest list.”
“Okay. Who were you thinking?”
“Well, you, obviously…”
“Thanks.”
“Grams, Mallorie… And I thought maybe we could invite… someone else.”
I shake my head, puzzled.
“Your great aunt? Gerard’s aunt?”
That’s the only other living relative I can think of and she was a part of Paige’s life for a long time.
