ChapterEleven
Mallory was accustomed to early mornings. She blinked through the haze of first light, stretching her legs out so that her toes crept out from beneath the comforter. Unfamiliar smells and unfamiliar cologne met her nostrils. Scratchy sheets were beneath her, not the one-thousand thread count that her mother had gotten her. Privileged. She knew how privileged she was.
Beside her, a six-foot-one man slept. His eyelashes were long over his cheeks; stubble grew across his chin and his jagged jawline. Brodie Thomkins. Her heart swelled with that butterfly feeling that was so far before love yet still resembled it. She only half-remembered “infatuation” from her teenage years and could hardly believe that that feeling existed even so far into adulthood after so much of the magic of life diminished.
What had happened last night?They’d wandered through the streets of Edgartown, holding hands and talking about everything— about Brodie’s dreams of digging his family out of poverty, about where he thought his father might have gone, and about how his mother was currently in shock. They’d finally ended up at the apartment building on the outer edge of Edgartown, which Mallory had heard was the cheapest on the island— even cheaper than the apartment building where she and Lucas had lived for a couple of years together, both before and after Zach’s birth. That place had that reeked worse than any nightmare.
Brodie’s apartment was clean, tidy, and simple, with a single couch in the living room and a two-person table in the kitchen. His cabinets were stocked with easy food, like spaghetti and pasta sauce and cereal. He had several photographs of his siblings on the fridge, which Mallory had eyed proudly, grateful to have discovered a man who adored his family as much as she adored hers.
Sometime after midnight, they’d fallen into a million kisses and then, finally, his bed, where she was now. She craned her neck to lift her eyes over Brodie’s head. On the nightstand, an alarm clock read: six thirty-two.
If she left now, she could get back for Zach’s breakfast and relieve her mother from the stress of “all that.” She would simply write Brodie a note, explaining she had to get back. He would understand.
Mallory slipped out from between the sheets and stood in an oversized t-shirt next to his bed. The t-shirt readEDGARTOWN HIGH SCHOOL CLASS OF 2012. To her, that seemed like a lifetime ago.
Mallory dressed as quietly as she could, terrified that he would wake up and she would say the wrong thing and spoil the magic between them. A pen sat on his bedside table, as did a little notepad. She tore a piece of paper from the back and scribed a note that read:
Hey. Thanks for the lovely night. I had to run home, but I hope to see you soon? Mallory
Mallory splayed the note on the bedside table, locking it down with the pen. She then moved it slightly to the left, as she felt it was too “front and center,” too obvious.Was she insane?It was just a note.
Toward the corner of the table, something caught her eye. It glinted emerald green and was far more ornate than anything else in the drab bedroom. As Mallory focused her attention on it, all the blood drained from her head and into her feet so quickly that she nearly toppled to the ground.
There on Brodie’s bedside table, impossibly, was Neal Remington’s ring.
Mallory’s heartbeat thudded in her ears. She lifted the ring and inspected it, just to make sure it was the same one. On one side was a large, ornate R, while on the other side was the Remington family crest. A large emerald stone glinted in the center. The ring had been passed down generation after generation, yet Neal hadn’t managed to pass it along to either Elsa or Carmella prior to his death.
Mallory had seen her grandfather wear this ring nearly every day of her life. It had been a constant presence during her youth, something she begged him to hold because she’d loved to inspect the ornate details and the glittering stone.
Then, the thought exploded through her like a bomb going off:
The ring was on the list of items that had been stolen.
Mallory stared at Brodie, her heart surging with fear. Delicately, she took several steps back toward the bedroom door, still holding the ring. His beautiful words echoed through her head.I’ve never met anyone like you. I could fall for you.
It had all been a lie.
But what was his endgame?
If he’d stolen from her family, why did he want to “date” her? Was it the same reasons that murderers liked to go to the funerals of the people they’d killed? Did people just like to gloat in the face of the wrongs they’d created?
When Mallory reached the front door of Brodie’s apartment, she reconsidered for a moment. What would a strong and passionate individual (like Alyssa or Alexie) do in the face of this? Wouldn’t they yank the blanket off the guy and demand why he had their grandfather’s ring on his bedside table? Her stomach contorted, and she thought she might vomit across the gross carpeting.
But no. Why would she wake him up like that and threaten him? He was so much bigger than she was. And maybe he had something even more devious up his sleeves.What did she know?Nothing. She was blindsided, so hungry for love that she hadn’t realized she’d stumbled into a bear’s cave.
Mallory leaped out of Brodie’s apartment, closed the door as gently as she could and then began to rush down the road, headed back for the docks. When she spotted her car, her knees gave out beneath her and nearly tossed her into the pavement.This can’t be happening. It can’t be.
Once she sat up front in the driver’s seat of her car, she allowed herself to cry. There she sat, in the second-hand vehicle she and her mother had picked out several years ago— before her father had died, before her grandfather had died— overwhelmed with the realization that she, much like so many young women across the United States and the rest of the world, had chosen the “wrong guy.”
How could she explain this to her mother?
Mallory had never driven home so slowly. She paused extra-long at stop signs, her hands gripping the steering wheel with a threatening strength. Her legs shivered beneath her. When she pulled into the driveway of the Remington House, she felt like a woman walking the plank of a pirate ship. Whatever happened next, she would face her doom.
The first sound Mallory heard when she opened the front door was her son’s gleeful, “Mama!” Her heart cracked open.
“Is that your mama? Coming home from who-knows-where?” Elsa cooed at Zachery.
Mallory swallowed so hard that her tongue nearly went along with it. She dropped her purse and her jacket in the front closet and then forced herself into the kitchen, where Elsa was finishing out the last touches of Zachery’s breakfast of blueberries and little chopped-up waffles. Zachery took a fistful of waffles and shoved them into his mouth, becoming a big wad of syrup.