by Natalie Ann
“She knew what he was doing,” Mallory said. “I confronted her too, but she made excuses for him. She was too far gone at that point. She said she needed him to support her.”
“Let’s get back on track,” Nick said. “Why didn’t you say something, Mallory? When you realized what Paul really wanted?”
“Because he threatened to harm my mother,” she said. “He said he controlled her pills and that my mother would be clueless if she took too many one night. No one would think anything of it. I’m guessing it was a bluff since you said if she died he got nothing. He knew that, didn’t he?”
“Yes,” Susan said. “He came in one day with papers signed for a new will for her. She’d already set up the stipulations that she had to sign any legal documents in person in my office. When I told him that, I thought security was going to have to remove him from the building. It’s the same with your trust, Mallory; you left the night of your eighteenth birthday. He must have known the stipulations to that money too. Your father probably mentioned it one day. You know how much Andrew loved to tell everyone how he would always take care of his girls.”
“What I don’t understand is if I could have transferred the money to my mother at eighteen, couldn’t I have taken it for my education and left too? It doesn’t make sense to me.”
“Sadly no. The money set aside for your education had no stipulations on it. I think your father never believed she would spend it on anything but its intended purpose. The money in that trust, it was only transferable in small amounts deemed by the board of our law firm for living expenses should your mother have gone into debt. Otherwise, it was solely yours, but not until age thirty-one.”
“This is just all unbelievable,” Nick said. “How we were all played by one person. How one person controlled us all and made us believe what he said. How he changed all our lives because of it.”
“He’s going to get what’s due to him,” Trixie said. She’d been sitting there silently until now. “Sure, I’d like to go over there and rip his IV out before I twisted the needle around a bit, make him feel every ounce of pain he has caused and then die a slow agonizing death, but that wouldn’t make me any better of a person than him.”
“He’s not getting his due,” Nick said. “He ruined all of our lives.”
“He didn’t ruin anyone’s life, Nick.” His grandmother turned to Mallory. “You’re a strong independent woman that made something of yourself. If you hadn’t left and been forced to stand on your own two feet, you might not be M.A. Cannon.”
“She shouldn’t have been forced to leave,” John said.
“We did what we thought was right at that time.” His mother moved closer to his father and picked his hand up and held it. “I was wrong. I shouldn’t have kept it from you, and I didn’t think I would have had to. Time just got away and everyone seemed to be doing so well at that point, it was best to leave things alone.”
“My mother never did well though,” Mallory said.
“She lost that battle long before you left, Mallory.”
“Do you think he killed her?” Mallory asked Susan. “Like he threatened to do. Maybe even out of anger.”
“No, Mallory, she killed herself. Paul was out of town when your mother overdosed. You don’t even know the date she died, do you? No one told you.”
“I don’t understand,” Mallory said.
“Your mother overdosed on your parents’ wedding anniversary. I’d talked to her the day before, when Paul had left. She’d told me all the regrets she’d had, how she lost her only true love, how her addiction forced her daughter to leave, and that she couldn’t live with herself any longer.”
“At least she took the blame for something,” Nick said, not that it made much of a difference at that point. Maybe if Mindy hadn’t been so selfish, she would have noticed what was going on in her daughter’s life. She would have stood up for herself and gotten the help everyone was trying to get her.
“It doesn’t matter at this point,” Mallory said. “I want to be angry, but I’ve spent way too much of my life being angry and feeling sorry for myself. Trixie is right. Paul didn’t ruin my life, because my life isn’t over. None of our lives are over. I’m not going to let him dictate the rest of my time on this earth.”
Mallory turned and looked at Nick, then wrapped her arms around his waist.
“Whatever happens with you and me, I don’t want Paul to have anything to do with it. From this day forward, it’s you and me. Paul doesn’t exist.”
“It’s not that easy,” Nick said.
“Of course it is. I’m going to make it that easy. I’ve got a choice and that’s my choice.” She turned and looked at his mother. “Put the house up for sale. Tell me what I need to do. I don’t care if it sells tomorrow for one dollar and he has to die on the street. As far as I’m concerned, he’s trespassing. Clean the house out, throw everything out. I don’t want to set foot in it ever again.”
“Do you think that will make a difference?” his grandmother asked.
“I’m not looking to make a difference. I’m looking to put the past behind me. This is how I’m doing it. Nick, I love you, and I want us to work out whatever we can, but right now, I need to go back to my lake.”
“So you’re running away again?” he asked, trying not to sound hurt.
“No. I’m done running. I’m going home, and I’m going to grieve for my mother, for my father, and for whatever decisions I’ve made that I didn’t think were the right ones. And then I’m going to move on. But I need to do it where I feel comfortable, and it’s not here where I can see that house.”
“I’ll take you home. I’ll take you wherever you need to be, as long as you let me stay with you.”
“I’m counting on it.”
Epilogue
“I can’t believe you want to cook Thanksgiving dinner,” Nick said as he watched Mallory unpack the groceries she’d bought.
“I haven’t had a family holiday in longer than I can remember. I want us all together. I’ve always thought of your family as mine growing up anyway. Why not?”
“Part of that moving forward thing you talked about months ago?”
He loved how she took a stand back then. How the world that she knew had crumbled once again, that all those years of nothing making sense finally did.
What should have led to regrets and anger on everyone’s part ended up bringing them closer together than ever.
Coincidentally, Paul had died the night that Mallory had confronted him. He’d already prepaid for his funeral, set up what he needed to. Not that it mattered; no one from Nick’s family attended.
The very next morning, when they’d found out Paul died in his sleep, Mallory shrugged and said, “Good riddance. Nick, take me home.”
In the last two months, he’d spent more time in Lake Placid than Richmond. He was slowly making the transition. It was time to open up a location in the Northeast and this area was better than any in his mind.
Besides, it gave him an excuse to move here, not that he needed one. His father was just fine running the day-to-day operations with Zach, and everything seemed to be going smoothly.
“Yep. I want to start traditions I never had before, but always wanted. Before your parents, Trixie, and Rene come over to help me start cooking tomorrow, there’s something I want you to do tonight.”
“What’s that?” he asked, reaching for the empty plastic grocery bag and putting it in the recyclable bin.
“I want you to read my book. I’m done with it.”
He frowned, confused. “I thought you finished it last month. I told you I loved it. I loved how Cynthia reminded me of your mother. The woman everyone admired and wanted to be, but who tragically died. How she took her own life like your mother did when she realized she was the reason her best friend had died.”
“Not that book. Another one I’ve been writing.”
“The sequel. You wrote the second one already?”
“No. Stop as
king questions. Let’s finish putting the food away and I’ll explain.”
He started to rush, to move faster, dying to know what she was talking about.
Once the last article of food was put away, she walked out of the kitchen, grabbed her laptop and pulled him into the addition that she’d built onto her house.
She’d used the money that had been left for her mother and added to her existing home, telling him, “It needs to be bigger for a family someday.” He hadn’t known what to say to that, and chose not to respond, not willing to push her too fast.
Seated in front of the fireplace, he turned his head and looked out through the wall of glass windows and out over the lake. His office was on the other side of the family room and had the same view.
“Get comfortable. It’s probably going to take you about six hours to read it.”
“I’m excited. I can’t wait. Are you going to feed me dinner out here, too?”
He was only joking, but she smiled and said, “I’ll bring you something to eat, don’t worry.”
Accepting her laptop, he asked, “Are you going to tell me what it’s about?”
“It’s about us.”
That just added to his confusion even more, but he opened her laptop and started to read.
Just about six hours later, like she’d said, he closed the lid. “I don’t know how you managed to make me feel like I just lived my life again, yet it’s not really our story, is it?”
“At the heart of it, it is. We had our second chance and it inspired me to write about one.”
He pulled her into his lap and held her tight. “I didn’t know you wanted to write about romance. I thought that was more Rene’s type of thing.”
Rene had always been a romantic at heart. She’d even been busting on Mallory to write a romance novel and Mallory never let on she was already doing it.
“She’s going to be so ticked off that I hid this book from her. I might even let her read it before it’s published, just to make her feel better.”
“She’d like that.”
“So you liked the book? Not too cheesy?”
“Love is never cheesy, Mallory.”
“It can be,” she said, giggling.
“It can be, but it’s not.” That reminded him of how he’d told Kendra that love was everything. He pushed her off his lap and stood up. “Stay here. Don’t move.”
“Where are you going?”
“I need to get something. I was going to wait, but now it just seems right.”
He walked into his office and opened the drawer, then returned to see her sitting where he’d left her. “I’ll try not to be cheesy.”
She looked up from her computer, only to have her jaw drop as he went down on one knee in front of her.
“I was going to wait and do it in front of everyone tomorrow, but it’s better this way. It’s better being just the two of us.”
“Oh my God.”
“This isn’t about God. It’s not about anyone but us. We’ve had our second chance and I’m not blowing it. I’m not losing you, and I’m making an honest woman out of you. I want you to marry me, take my name, and fill this house with our kids. I want to grow old with you, and I want to make our love stronger each day.”
She was still staring at him in shock and he was starting to wonder if maybe he was rushing things.
“Is this real or am I imagining it? I still wonder if the last several months really happened or if I’m going to wake up from a beautiful dream and realize it had all been a tease to me.”
“No tease. No dream. It’s all real, and I’m all yours.”
She learned forward and pressed her lips to his. “I’ve always been all yours.”
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Website http://www.natalieannbooks.com
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