by Natalie Ann
“You do that. Take some time and daydream. I don’t think you’ve daydreamed enough in your life. It’s time to put yourself first, Nick.”
“I think there are plenty of people out there right now who would argue I’ve always put myself first and that is how I got into this mess.”
“Then they don’t know the real you, do they?”
“Probably right. But still, for now, I’ll take you up on your suggestion and go sit in the sun and stare at the water. Just let me know when you’re ready to go to dinner.”
“Don’t worry about me. Worry about yourself.”
Nick nodded and walked out the back door and over to a chair, where he sat down and looked at the mountains in the distance. He wondered if he’d ever be able to daydream again.
Backbone
Nick shut the top on his laptop. He’d been working all morning and wasn’t getting much accomplished. He was distracted and knew it. At first he couldn’t put his finger on why, then realized what the date was and knew.
Twelve years ago today, Mallory Denning turned eighteen years old and was never heard from nor seen again.
He stood up and stretched his arms over his head, arched his back a little, and decided to get some air. There was no comfortable place to sit and work here. His six-foot-three-inch frame was too big for his grandmother’s dainty chairs.
His grandmother had left about an hour ago to run errands, and Nick knew he couldn’t sit in the house by himself any longer. The silence was like a boa constrictor tightening around his neck. He needed to get out and move—escape even.
The day was beautiful; the sun was shining bright, not a cloud in the sky, nor a breeze in the air. The picture perfect time to get on the lake and paddle around, to lose himself to the beauty of nature.
Maybe daydream like his grandmother suggested, regardless of how frivolous it would be.
He had a company to run, software to create, a program to write. He couldn’t do those things if he was daydreaming.
But a short stint in the kayak might help.
He went up to his room, grabbed his Ray-Bans and slipped them on, then reached for the baseball hat he’d bought last week after he’d taken his grandmother out to dinner.
Picking his phone up, he held it in his hand for a moment, then put it back down. There was no reason to take it out on the water. Nothing would be urgent enough that it couldn’t wait until he returned.
Good step toward daydreaming, he told himself. Don’t be glued to your phone.
Making his way down to the dock, he pulled one of his grandmother’s kayaks out of the boathouse and inspected it. It looked like it hadn’t been used in a good year. Probably since the last time he visited, or Rene did. He knew his grandmother didn’t go out on the water by herself. The kayaks had always been there for visitors.
Laying the kayak on the grass, he walked over to the hose and turned the water on, then sprayed the dust and cobwebs off of it. Last minute, he washed the inside down too. It wouldn’t be the first time a spider had made a home inside the kayak, so he figured he’d flush anything out.
Once he was satisfied everything was clean and there were no leaks in the kayak either, he shut the hose off, slipped on a life vest, and pulled the kayak to the dock.
He was ready to put it in the water when he realized he’d forgotten the paddle. Talk about distractions and a rookie move. See, that was why he didn’t daydream.
Back in the boathouse once again, he pulled the paddle off the wall, adjusted the length to accommodate the span of his arms and then went back to the water.
He steadied the kayak against the dock, then eased himself in, stretched his long legs out in front of him and pushed off with the paddle away from the dock. There, that wasn’t bad. Just like riding a bike.
Better safe than sorry though. He stayed close to the shoreline and headed toward the right.
He’d been on the water for close to thirty minutes when he finally felt himself start to relax. The air was cool and crisp in his lungs, even though it was almost ninety degrees out. Cleaner, that’s what the air was. Cleaner then Richmond for sure, making it seem cool and crisp.
The lake was relatively quiet. Boats were driving around, water skiers having fun, children playing in yards, vacationers fishing off the docks. A little bit of everything, and yet still quieter and more peaceful than home.
Home, he thought to himself. It hadn’t ever really felt like home in Richmond. Just a place to lay his head each night, then get up and go to work the next day.
He missed this, though. He always had when he left and wondered why he didn’t visit more often.
Too busy, he reminded himself. Too much work to be done, too much he needed to prove to people and prove to himself.
And too many memories to push aside. The harder he worked, the easier it was to forget about the past.
He put one end of the paddle in the water and started to turn around and head back to his grandmother’s house, feeling better than he had in longer than he could remember. He shouldn’t have waited so long to get on the water.
In a nice rhythm of paddling and gliding now, he decided to bypass his grandmother’s house and move down a little further. He’d probably regret that decision tomorrow when his shoulders ached, but at the moment, he was enjoying himself too much to stop.
He’d lost count of how many people he’d waved to. Strangers, every single one of them.
Another thing about small towns—everyone was friendly. No one walked by with their head down and pretended not to see you. No one was in too much of a hurry to give a friendly nod.
There was a lawn mower running up ahead, a dog barking and running in another yard, and a young woman gardening a little further down…long blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail, sitting on her knees in a flowerbed.
To be at peace like that in the middle of the week. To just walk out your back door and know this was the view you had all the time.
The man mowing his lawn tossed his hand in the air and Nick returned the greeting. Down further, the dog ran to another dock, stopped at the end, and started to bark and prance around. He glided closer to the woman gardening. She turned and lifted her hand up; he did the same. And then froze.
He stopped breathing—that last bit of air lodged in his throat. He wasn’t sure if it was the memory of today and thoughts of Mallory mixed in with the woman’s long blonde hair, but he started to shake and have flashbacks.
Maybe it was the brightness of the sun slightly blinding him…he didn’t know. But before he knew it, the paddle slipped from his fingers. “Crap,” he said, reaching for it and losing his balance, feeling the kayak start to tip and knowing there was no way to stop its roll.
Next thing he knew, he was gulping in water and pushing his hair off his forehead. He grabbed at the overturned kayak, held on, and turned to see the woman standing there staring at him.
“I’m fine,” he yelled, but she turned and quickly made her way toward her house.
He looked around and saw the paddle floating a bit further away and kicked near it while holding onto the kayak. He’d thought maybe the woman was going to get help for him, but she didn’t. She just stopped at the top by her back door and continued to look at him.
Without hesitating, he kicked closer to her dock. There was no way he could get back in the kayak without leveraging it against something and lowering himself in.
But it wasn’t only that. It was the hair that stood up on the back of his neck. Something wasn’t right. Something was telling him to go after her. He didn’t know why. It couldn’t be Mallory—there was no way—only he wasn’t thinking clearly.
Call it the cool bath he just took, the tingling in his arms, or the racing of his heart, but he had to know. He had to get a better glimpse of the woman that just caused him to make a foolish mistake and overturn himself in a kayak that he’d been using since he was kid.
So he pulled himself up on her dock, lifted the kayak halfway up, and
set it there to make sure it wouldn’t drift away. Then he started toward her house.
It never occurred to him that he might frighten her, approaching this way. He’d been on this lake for years; he knew a lot of the houses and had met many of the owners at one point or another, though he never remembered seeing her.
At this point she was long gone. He didn’t care that he was soaking wet. He’d apologize later if he startled her, but he had to see her. He had to see her face. Just for his peace of mind.
Could it be Mallory?
Maybe it was the sun and a trick of the light. A hallucination possibly.
He didn’t know. But if he didn’t search her out and get a closer look at her face, he’d never be able to relax and he would continue to wonder.
He just reached the back door and was going to knock when he heard a car door slam out front and an engine start. He turned in that direction, moving quickly now.
Maybe he’d scared her? Now he felt horrible.
Stopping on the grassy edge of her driveway, he saw her throw her SUV in reverse and start to back out fast, only to slam on the brakes as his grandmother’s car blocked her from leaving.
He stood there dripping wet, water running down his face, his hat and sunglasses long gone at this point—he’d just realized that—and watched as his grandmother climbed out of her car and walked toward the woman trying to escape him in the SUV.
“Come out now, stop hiding. It’s too late,” he heard his grandmother say.
What the heck was she talking about? Then his grandmother reached forward and pulled the door open to help the woman out of her vehicle.
Everything started to move in slow motion. The woman stood up, rubbed her hands across her face, dropped her chin down, then lifted it higher, stronger, and turned to look at him.
It was her—it was Mallory. And everything went dark.
***
Mallory looked at Nick lying on the grass where he’d passed out. She wished she could just vanish right now.
She was cursing herself for being outside. She knew better, but she wanted to feel the sun on her back and smell the lake air.
“Help me get him up,” Trixie said.
She couldn’t move. Her legs were locked in place and she was still gripping the car door. “I can’t.”
“Snap out of it, Mallory. It’s over with now. He knows it’s you. Why else would he have passed out?”
“Heat stroke. Let me leave, please. He’ll be fine. Make up an excuse or a lie about who I am.”
“No,” Trixie said firmly. It was the first time Mallory had ever seen Trixie lose her temper.
Deep breath again, and another one. Pull it together, and snap out of it like Trixie said.
She was an adult; she was strong and she was fine. The scared kid was gone, and it was time to face the music.
Nick was fine, she could see. He was already starting to stir. Mallory took one more look at her vehicle. No way could she leave that way, even if she wanted to.
She could go hide in the house, but that wouldn’t accomplish anything. Besides, she couldn’t leave him lying there, having Trixie care for him. What kind of person would that make her? A coward, that’s what. Run away again, that was all she could think of, even though her mind was waging a tug of war telling her to grow a backbone.
The backbone won. She couldn’t let Trixie down. She’d never go against Trixie, regardless of her primitive urge to just flee.
Getting her legs to move, Mallory walked closer to Nick and knelt down next to him, ran her hand over his face, and fought back the tears. Still so handsome, even as pale as he was looking right now.
His dark hair wet and slightly curly, a rough growth of a beard on his face, thinner than she thought he’d be.
The last picture she’d seen of him, he had more weight on. Then again, Trixie had said Nick was in a bad place, so he’d probably lost weight not taking care of himself. She tried to fight back the sympathy she felt at that moment.
“Come on, Nick. Open your eyes,” she whispered.
There was nowhere to run now. She had to face this. She had to face Nick. It seemed like it was all full circle again, today of all days.
He blinked once, then twice, and slowly pushed himself to his elbows. “Mallory?”
“Yes, it’s me. Can you stand up, or are you going to make your little old granny and me lift you?”
Trixie snorted behind her. “Little old, my butt.”
Nick sat up slowly, looked back and forth between his grandmother and her, his mouth open, his dark brown eyes glossy, penetrating her. “I’m dreaming. Tell me I’m dreaming.”
“I wish you were, but you’re not.”
See, Mallory thought, Trixie probably could have made something up and Nick wouldn’t have known it was her.
“Stand up, Nick,” Trixie said. “Let’s get you in a chair. Mallory go get him a towel and a glass of water.”
“Make it a stiff drink. I think I need it,” he said. That sounded like a better option, she thought.
“Make it three,” Trixie said.
“What the hell is going on?” Mallory heard Nick ask his grandmother when she was walking in the house.
Trixie would take care of Nick. He looked no worse for wear right now, but she needed a minute to compose herself.
Twelve years, and it’s over now. Or was it really?
She could only hope that Trixie could get Nick to understand without telling him everything.
Walking into the hall, she grabbed a towel from the linen closet, then made her way to her bar and grabbed the first bottle of liquor she could. Vodka; it would have to do.
Mallory threw the towel over her shoulder, stuck her fingers in three glasses, and carried the bottle out. With her hip, she pushed the screen door open, but Nick was nowhere to be seen. Then she heard his voice toward the back of her house and made her way around.
He was sitting on her deck next to his grandmother while Trixie ran her hands over his shoulders, trying to soothe him. A familiar move that Trixie had done to her plenty over the years.
Walking up the few deck stairs, she moved toward the table and set the glasses down. She tossed the towel toward Nick and then proceeded to pour three shots of vodka.
No one was saying a word. What do you say when you see someone for the first time in twelve years, and the sight of you makes them pass out?
She picked up the glasses and brought them to Trixie and Nick, inhaled, blew out a breath and tossed the drink back, her eyes still locked on Nick’s as he watched her.
Then suddenly his lips twitched, and a smile formed, his perfectly straight teeth showing. What he found so funny, she had no clue. She didn’t think anything about this situation was humorous.
Holding his glass up, he started to laugh uncontrollably. Mallory turned toward Trixie. “Is he okay? Maybe he hit his head.”
“There’s nothing wrong with my head,” Nick said, then downed his vodka. “Happy birthday, Mallory.”
It’s Time Now
Nick had no idea why those were the first words out of his mouth. Shock maybe?
Part of him still felt like he was dreaming. The other part of him felt relief. Mallory was alive and well. She was standing in front of him.
And she was stunning. A woman now. Not the teenager he’d turned away so many years ago.
Still, some of the confusion set in, mixing in with a bit of anger. “Someone want to tell me what the hell is going on?”
Mallory looked at him, then back to his grandmother. “Maybe it’s best if you talk, Trixie.”
Nick turned his head and glared at his grandmother. “You knew all along. She’s been here the whole time and you’ve never said a word?” he asked incredulously.
How could his grandmother have kept a secret like that? Why would she have?
“Yes, Nick, I’ve known all along.”
“The police were investigating. People thought she was kidnapped…and you knew she was here. You ne
ver said a word!”
He didn’t add that his grandmother knew how heartbroken he’d been, and she’d never once tried to reassure him things were fine. He didn’t know what to think of his grandmother right now. She couldn’t be the person he’d loved his whole life. It seemed to him he didn’t know her at all.
“She wasn’t kidnapped, Nick. They ruled that out. The investigation concluded that she ran away. You know that.”
“Wait, back up. You were still at our house when this all happened. I remember that day. I’ll never forget it.”
How could he? It would forever be branded in his brain.
Mindy and Paul Rosewood, Mallory’s mother and stepfather, knocking on his parents’ door early, asking if Mallory was there. Why they thought she would be was beyond him, but they’d said she was missing. That she wasn’t in her room when they went to wake her. They were hoping maybe she was with Rene and had stayed at his parents’ house, even though Mallory had never been allowed to spend the night before.
No, she wasn’t in his parents’ home. No one had seen her since the day before. He hadn’t seen her in two days, not since he’d sat her down and told her he never meant to kiss her or lead her on. That he’d only done it as a bet.
Then he’d watched as she cried, big fat tears rolling down her cheeks, his heart cracking over the lie he had to tell her.
“Yes. I was visiting your parents when it happened and I was there for more than a week after Mallory went missing.”
“Can we stop saying I went missing?” Mallory said. “I left on my own.”
Nick watched the look pass between his grandmother and Mallory and didn’t believe a word of it. Something wasn’t right. Things weren’t adding up. “No way. You had no money and no transportation. How did you leave?”
Mindy had kept a tight rein on Mallory. Which was a joke, to be honest. Half the time Mindy was high or zoned out on the prescription drugs she used to sell as a pharmaceutical rep—until she was fired for stealing them. Though that was the worst kept secret going around town.