by Cait London
One look at the wary preteens and teenagers who had turned up, and Rachel had seen why Mallory had felt good about her work; she understood why Saturday mornings were “teen time” at Nine Balls. The boys and girls were excited and dead serious about playing. Familiar with them, Trina had settled them into a game.
Several women, apparently friends, came in the early afternoon, wishing her well; they were eager to return to schedules. Terri and the others stopped by, and Tommy James had stopped to ask if he could help “tote and carry” anything, to “help out.” The only male in a covey of women and children, he seemed uneasy as he played a quick game of stripes and solids with his wife, and was soon gone.
Rachel had decided to keep Mallory’s basic schedule for now: designated week-day mornings for classes and women-only, Saturday mornings for youths, and then two in the afternoon until ten at night for regular customers. A grueling schedule for one person, Rachel’s family had already offered to help, once she was ready to open permanently.
“You can do that shot, Mom,” Rachel murmured. When she was younger, she’d seen her mother put on exhibitions many times for charity events. Then, as a retired pro nine years ago, Trina had helped Mallory’s Nine Balls off to a good start by helping with youth and women’s classes.
Trina took a deep breath, poised for the shot by putting the cue ball on top of the rail. Three balls were lined up in front of the side pocket closest to her.
“Go for it, Mom,” Jada said.
“I’m older now, you know, girls. Don’t expect too much,” Trina said as she placed a piece of chalk on the rail to keep the cue ball from rolling off. “You should be practicing this, not me.”
“It takes too much time to concentrate. I just like to shoot,” Jada said. “Big sis has the touch, that dead calm when you isolate everything from you. I don’t.”
“Hush,” Trina murmured and shot the cue ball with enough power to hit the middle and the last ball. The first ball, poised in front of the side pocket nearest Trina, dropped into it. The middle ball rolled down table into a side pocket. But the shot was named for the last ball’s path; it shot diagonally to a corner side rail, hit the opposite rail, then hit the rail just down from where it had started and rolled diagonally to the other corner, dropping into the side pocket.
Trina shook her head. “That was an accident. I’ve got to practice if I’m going to do much exhibition shooting for you, Rachel. I helped Mallory teach the basics after Nine Balls was going well, so I really haven’t tried any of this for a long time.”
“You’ve still got it, Mom. That was skill, not an accident. I never doubted you at all.” Jada racked the balls in a triangular shape, the eight ball in the center. “Let’s play until Bob calls to say he’s got supper ready. Gotta love a man who knows how to keep us fed during busy days. You lucked out on him, Mom. Maybe you’d better take him up on that marriage offer. Your kids are grown and almost out of the house. Make that a big white wedding, will you? You deserve it since dear old Dad wasn’t up to par…. I’m tired and going home. Someone else can break.”
“Your father is gone now. He died a few years ago. Let’s just forget about hard times now, shall we?” Trina replied.
“You were the one with hard times, Mom,” Rachel said. “And you crawled out. I remember.”
“I think I was down so low, financially and psychologically, that there wasn’t anywhere else to go, but up. I kept going for you kids, and having some skill at pool, getting recognized, did something for me inside, as a woman, apart from being a mother. My pride came back, something I’d lost gradually—it’s not worth talking about really.”
The three women were quiet for a moment, because there was another way a woman could go—and Mallory had taken it. Then Jada said, “It’s like she’s still here. I mean Mallory, before she—before she just seemed to give up. She was always good about business, though, keeping this place running well. She was great with kids. She should have had several. She might have had that little house with the picket fence she always wanted, with a flower garden to tend and a swing in the backyard.”
After Jada left, Rachel’s mind was on Mallory, and the children she had decided not to have. Who was the father of that girl in the picture? Kyle? Did he and Mallory have a child?
He’d denied that. But Mallory and he had been close for years. Could Rachel believe him?
The girl in the picture was maybe seven or eight years old, and Trina would have mentioned Mallory’s pregnancy. But whoever the girl was, she was special to Mallory, enough to be hidden between the cover and front paper of the scrapbook.
Rachel listened to the building, the tiny creaks that were unfamiliar. Jada was right: Mallory’s presence seemed almost palpable, not as she had become, but soft as she had been early in life.
Rachel chalked her cue, and moved into play the game with Trina. “It’s been a long time. I only played when I came home to visit.”
“Didn’t you play in New York?”
Rachel leaned toward the table, and hesitated as her mother adjusted her position, a touch here and there, moving her right leg back just that fraction, lifting her right arm higher. “A few private games at the brass’s houses. And at one time, friends and I had regular after-work games. It helped relieve a lot of negative stress.”
That had stopped after her attack three years ago.
“Easy on your stroke, honey,” Trina advised. “You’ve been gripping your cue really tight. How’s the apartment? If you decide you don’t like it, you can always move home.”
Trina stepped back and critically studied Rachel’s posture. “Okay. Just remember to keep that leg back and your elbow higher, ninety degrees to the stick. I’ve been watching you today. Lean down in, stretch out…. You’re punching the ball, honey. Smooth stroke—”
She paused to adjust the “rack,” placing the one ball directly on the “footspot.”
At Trina’s nod, Rachel made the break, but didn’t pocket a ball. In the game of nine ball, the first shooter to pocket a ball would then play the lowest numbered ball on the table, the nine ball as last. Trina shot next and sank four balls in succession, before Rachel took out the five and six, then missing her shot to the seven ball. Trina finished all the balls and shook her head as they collected the balls from the pockets and Rachel racked them. “I don’t feel much like playing, if that’s okay with you, Rachel,” Trina said tiredly.
“Fine. Thank you for helping today. I just needed the experience and I really got it today. It’s been a long first day, but a good one, I think.”
Trina’s eyes shimmered with tears. “Things should have been better for Mallory. I just couldn’t bring her out. She got worse and worse—”
Rachel held her mother tight. “Mom, it isn’t your fault.”
“But it is. Mallory always felt inferior, that she couldn’t do things right. I tried to reassure her, but somehow that darkness was always there—like she wasn’t up to par, and I knew it—I recognized it from what I’d gone through. Bob and I got her this really nice car—used, one of those little-old-lady-type things—well tended and easy on gas. I thought she’d take some pride in it, but she ran into a wall—a one-car accident on an open road. She’d been drinking and—I wonder now if she wanted to kill herself back then.”
Within Rachel’s arms, Trina’s body shivered. “Before that, I thought maybe when she got this place, something of her own to build from, to succeed, it would make her turn that corner. For a while, it seemed to be working, and then in the last few years, she did turn a corner, the wrong way—and I could only watch. I didn’t want to go to the apartment after she—left. I couldn’t bear to see what others were talking about.”
Rachel eased away and reached for a tissue, handing it to her mother, who suddenly looked so helpless. In some remote corner of Rachel’s mind, she’d hoped that Trina had come to Nine Balls for closure. “You didn’t come into the apartment in the month that I was gone? I left the key with you.”
Trina stepped back and shook her head. She separated her cue and placed the two pieces into the carrying case. “No. Why do you ask?”
“I thought maybe you’d come in at some time during the month—or maybe while I was out with the others, burning Mallory’s things.”
“But, honey, I would have told you.” Trina frowned slightly. “She’d planned for her death, they say…like the letter to you after her funeral.”
Her cell phone rang and Trina smiled. “Jada says Bob has dinner ready.”
“I think I want to stay here, Mom. I’m exhausted and have some things to do for a ‘Grand Opening.’ If I’m going to make a profit off this place, the money-people in this town need to feel comfortable. They’re edgy now, not wanting to be connected with gossip. Your exhibitions should help…they’d like to be able to make those shots. Did you notice how many teens came today?”
“Mallory really worked with them. ‘Focus on the balls and on your life and you can become anything you want,’ she’d say. In the end, she wasn’t focusing on the balls and she rarely played. But she really had worked with those kids…. I don’t like you staying in that apartment. If you don’t want to stay with us, then there are lots of nice houses for rent. I always felt that if Mallory would only have balanced her life more, taken some time away, maybe hired someone to help her, that she wouldn’t have been so driven.”
“You may be right.”
Trina smoothed Rachel’s hair back from her cheek. “Don’t let this place get to you, honey. Promise?”
“Promise.”
Eight
“ONCE UPON A TIME THERE WERE THREE SISTERS….” Rachel ran her hand along the smooth driftwood log. Unable to settle down after working so hard that day, she sat and looked at the ocean, the sunset touching gold on the crests of the waves. But in her mind, she saw three young girls, romping and splashing each other, building people of sand, covering each other and forming enormous breasts on their budding bodies. “Mallory, you’ve got to help me understand. I can’t leave you like this, not thinking about what I could have done, leave me owing you—”
Rachel picked up a smooth white pebble, one just like those she’d collected long ago on this same beach, amid girlish laughter and dreams. “Don’t you dare leave me without giving me a chance to pay you back. I miss you so much, Mallory.”
The seagulls cried, flying white against the graying sky; the waves crashed upon the rocks, the surf with the same endless sound, the same smells—
She frowned slightly, listening to the seagulls, and to a girl’s cries of terror. Rachel stood, following the cries, running toward that strip of sand above the driftwood line, near the trees.
In the shadowy light between sunset and night, two teenage boys were holding a girl on a blanket while a third stood above her, unzipping his jeans. His intent was clear as he bent to position himself upon the sobbing girl. “You will stop that now,” Rachel ordered fiercely as she stepped up on a log and then back down to walk up to the boys, the girl sobbing at her feet. “Let her go.”
The boy who had unzipped his pants, stood leering at her and a whiskey tang mixed with salty air. “You willing to take her place, pool hall lady?”
“I said, ‘let her go,’” Rachel ordered the boys still holding the girl.
“Hey, Jimmy. Maybe we’d better—” one of them cautioned as they released the girl whose two-piece bathing suit had been cast aside. She scurried to collect it, and Rachel briskly picked up the blanket, shook it and tossed it to the girl, whose heavy mascara lines streaked down her pale cheeks. She edged behind Rachel and her voice was hoarse and uneven. “They said it was a party…that other people would be here,” she said as she huddled beneath the blanket. “They…they…wanted me to drink and I didn’t want to and then—”
“I know about what happened then,” Rachel stated curtly as the other two boys started hunkering away. She recognized them from earlier in the day, when they’d come to check out Nine Balls. “What are your names, hot-shots? I’d like to remember the names of three boys it took to handle one girl.”
The leader stood his ground. “Don’t say anything. She’ll turn us in.”
“You’ve got that right. Underage and drinking, trying to rape a girl.” Furious with the boys, fearing for the girl, Rachel held her cold hand. She knew exactly how the girl was feeling. “I’m taking her with me.”
“Like hell. We’re not finished with Angie yet. You’re next.” Jimmy moved toward her and suddenly Rachel was beyond fear, burning with anger. She clenched her fists and stood her ground, though the youth was much bigger. “You should know that I detest bullies. One step more and you’re in for trouble.”
“Hey, Jimmy…maybe you’d better—”
“Shut up, chickens.” He watched the others run into the woods and then, his expression turned mean. He took that one step toward Rachel, and her punch in his midsection. He doubled, coughing and grabbing his stomach and when he straightened, he lunged at her, taking them both down into the sand. He was heavy and strong, but Rachel wasn’t letting anything happen to her a second time; she knew exactly where to thrust her knee.
With a guttural cry of pain, he fell upon her, taking the breath from her lungs. Suddenly his weight was lifted up and away easily, and Kyle was looking down at her. He held the youth upright by his shirt as easily as if he were a kitten. “Are you hurt?” he asked Rachel.
She was winded and couldn’t move. “Do I look like I’m hurt?” she asked glaring up at him. “I’m just catching my breath, Scanlon.”
His grin was brief and admiring. Jimmy, clearly terrified by Kyle, was holding his crotch and groaning. “Apologize to the lady,” Kyle ordered, giving the boy a shake.
The boy mumbled something and Kyle said, “Louder.”
He reached down to Rachel, his big hand open. Rachel took it, letting him pull her to her bare feet. Kyle glanced quickly up and down her body. “You’re lucky she didn’t beat you to a pulp. But I just may.”
“I’m underage, buddy,” the youth smirked. “You’d be picking on a minor.”
Kyle’s expression hardened. “Let’s just say that I know that while you’d feel a lot of pain, you wouldn’t be bruised at all. They’d think you were faking. Say it.”
“Sorry.”
“Say it to her, and mean it this time.” Kyle lifted Jimmy up until he stood on tiptoe.
“Sorry,” he grumbled.
“Well, then. I think we all better go home. Except you. You’re going to the police station and you’re going to tell them your buddies’ names. Can you take the girl home, honey?” Kyle gently asked Rachel.
“I don’t want anybody to know,” Angie cried out. “I’m not supposed to be here. If my parents found it—”
I don’t want anybody to know. Not my family, not anyone in Neptune’s Landing….
Rachel had told Mallory the same thing three years ago. She looked at the girl’s shaking body, her disheveled hair, her pale face, eyes huge and shadowed with the terror that still rocked her….
That image lasted after Rachel dropped the girl at her house, advising her to tell her parents and that other girls could pay a heavy price if she didn’t stop the boys….
Rachel had just pulled into her parking lot when Kyle’s rig pulled up beside hers. Because her legs were still unsteady from the anger she’d felt, from the flashback to another time, Rachel leaned back against her car. She wrapped her arms around herself and tried to stop shaking.
Her voice sounded far away, tight with a mix of fear and anger. “Her name was Angie…she’s a really sweet girl. I don’t know if she’s going to press charges or not. That’s her parents’ business. She was just doing what any girl would have done, going to a beach party with what she thought was the in-crowd, a date with the high school sports star. But he had another party planned for her.”
“Jimmy and I had a little chat before I turned him over to the police. He and his friends are going to have my special attention. His parents
are rich and he’ll likely get out of this, so I recommended that he might think about a school somewhere else. If he bothers you, I want to know. Got it?” Kyle stated darkly as he studied Rachel.
He reached to wrap his hand around Rachel’s nape, tugging her close to him and tucking her face against his throat. Rachel reacted instantly, locking her arms around him, holding on to his safety.
“It’s okay, honey. You’ve got a right to be reacting now. You were a little outmatched, you know, but you still went for it.”
Rachel noted the humor in his tone, but she wasn’t up to sparring with Kyle. He was big and strong and she needed him right then. She gave herself to the comforting hand stroking her back, to the deep rumble of his voice and his warmth. At the moment, she could have clawed herself into him, wrapped him around her, if she could. “What were you doing there?”
“That big Caddie is hard to miss along the beach road. I pulled in just in time to see you sprinting across that sand. I wasn’t feeling cheerful, not after I’d warned you not to go to the beach alone.” He smiled slowly, tilted his head and studied her. “I bet you have sand in your shoes right now and you’re so worked up you haven’t noticed.”
Still locked in her own attack, refreshed by the girl’s, Rachel forced herself to step back from him. She folded her arms around herself as she leaned back against her car and tried to draw her shields around her. Kyle smoothed her hair and shook his head as he said gently, “It’s not a crime to need someone to hold you, especially not after what you’ve just been through. You’re just reacting now….”
“I was so mad, I could have—”
Kyle’s look was perceptive. “Been there, done that. But there’s something else going on inside you, isn’t there? Want to tell me about it?”
She wasn’t telling any one and the one person who had seen her through the darkness was gone—“No. There’s nothing to tell.”