“I’ve let her get close to me and believe I was going to be part of her life,” she went on, “when we both know that was never going to happen, not long-term. Wake up, Pete. I might look sparkly in a Glinda costume and put up one hell of a cheap-looking Christmas tree and be good in bed, but we both know you’re better rid of me now than later. I’d hurt you more if I hung around until the next explosion or the next one, because I can’t pretend every damn minute of the day that I’m not who I am. Only then you’ll feel like a shit because it’ll be you having to call things off because—”
“Because you’re too messed up for me and my child to handle? Because you’re unlovable, and we’re just too stupid to notice? Or should we toss you out because the only way you think you can feel safe is by helping everyone except yourself, and wouldn’t it be easier if Polly and I bowed out peacefully instead of bothering you with untidy things like turning your back on love and commitment and someone’s honest desire to help you?”
He was seething. Furious. Exploding. It had been forever, it seemed, since he’d accepted there was no hope, that he was powerless to help his wife. He’d had to suck down all that rage and get on with living—for Emma and Polly’s sake. But not this time. He wasn’t letting Mallory off the hook. Not this way.
“Okay,” he said when she didn’t respond. “Curl up in a corner and pretend you don’t need the rest of us. I’m not giving up. I’m not doing it this time. I won’t sit by and watch you piss all of this away and pretend it’s not going to destroy you as much as it will us. I don’t want to be alone. I don’t want to be unhappy my entire life and forget that there’s another way to live. You’ve taught me that, because you were the only one who knew how to show Polly how much more there was in the world for her. Now you can teach yourself, or you can let us do it for you. But I’m not going to help you give up, so you can just forget about tossing us aside the way you have your freaking tree. And if you want to throw Emma’s jewelry back at Polly along with your promise to keep her memories of her mother safe, then you break her heart on your own. I won’t be doing that for you, either.”
He was close to hyperventilating. He couldn’t see, even though there was plenty of light from the moon. A red haze had overcome his senses, dulling his vision and his hearing as he raged like he’d never let himself vent before. His loss. His despair. His fury and denial for what had happened to the happy life he’d thought he’d have forever. His life with Emma…
It was all still there, and now it was out, spewing between Mallory and him, when what she’d needed was for him to be there for her, listening to what she was feeling and fearing and accepting her for all that she was and wasn’t. She needed to know she could break apart and he’d still be there for her when she came back to herself—the way she’d taught him to help Polly push through what she had to.
Only that wasn’t what he’d just done at all.
This was Mallory, not Emma. He was falling in love with her, not recapturing what he’d lost with his wife. This was Mallory’s decision—whether or not she wanted him and Polly enough to get better. His mistake was clear when he could finally focus on Mallory’s expression and saw her devastation, her regret, her slipping even further away.
“I’m sorry,” she said, no longer distant, but still no longer his. She was crying now. “I can’t be the happy, hopeful, positive replacement you were wanting. I can’t help you host your New Year’s party or be there with Emma’s best friends. Not even for Polly, when I wanted to help her have the best holiday she could possibly have this year. I really did, Pete. I used to tell myself I didn’t get it, how you could all be so joyous about your lives. But now I know it’s because you can choose to be that way, no matter how many bad things happen or might happen down the road. You can choose to be happy, and then you find a way to make it work. But I can’t. I tried. I really did. But I’m not like Emma or Sam. I’m that woman I became at the shelter who could throw her mother away and feel nothing but anger. A part of me always will be, and that means none of me belongs in a place like Mimosa Lane. Because all I’ll do is hurt you and Polly and everyone else who thinks they can change me, or change what happened to me.”
“No one wants you to change.” But a part of him had, or at least a part of him had assumed that she magically would change once she’d glimpsed the kind of world they could have together. “All I want is for you to let me help you. Give us a chance.”
“I did.” She looked down at her tree and winced. “I shouldn’t have. Now it’s all ruined, and I could have spared everyone this if I’d just stayed where I belonged in the first place.”
“You don’t have to be alone anymore to be safe. That’s not the life you want, or you wouldn’t have moved here.”
“I hope you and Polly get your happiness back this Christmas,” she said. “But Mimosa Lane was never my life, Pete. I’ll always be wandering, just like my mama. I belong near people who can put up with that sort of craziness and not let it bring them down, too. I’ll be fine. I…” She gestured to the tree with a sense of inevitability. “I’ll just get this to the curb, call a real estate agent in the morning, pack up the few things I brought with me, and head on back to midtown where I belong. I’ll be fine.”
And she would be. She was a survivor. It was the one thing Mallory’s mother had taught her well—how to endure whatever she had to and get on with life the best way she could.
“But when will you be happy?” he asked, thinking only about Mallory now and kicking himself for not doing it sooner.
She shook her head, crossing her arms over her wacky Rudolph sweater from the party, looking miserably out of place in it now.
He wanted to press her for an answer, a sign that she was hearing him. He wanted to know that there was a spark between them still, no matter how small, to build on going forward. Instead, he tried to respect her need to disconnect from everything she was terrified of losing. But every muscle in his body still strained to snatch her close and never let her go.
He looked down at her tree, its glorious sparkle gone, its cheap, mass-produced ornaments bent, some of them broken. He tried to picture what it must have been like for her to drag such a beautiful, exuberant thing out of her house and dump it into the cold.
“I’ll take care of this for you,” he said, “if getting rid of it is what you really need.”
A moment of panic seemed to consume Mallory, flaming in her eyes. He held his breath, waiting for her to say she wanted more time, that maybe she’d made a mistake. Then her control returned, and she took an awkward step backward toward her darkened living room.
“Thank you.” Her eyes were filling with tears. “Meeting you and Polly…Thank you for taking me into your world and letting me help just a little. I hope she gets over what I said tonight, that it didn’t—”
“Polly will be fine. You’ve shown her exactly what she needs to do to make certain she’s going to be just fine.”
But when would Mallory herself stop hiding the way Polly had, so she could finally, truly, move on?
“Take care of yourself, Pete.” She turned. Halfway inside, she pivoted back when he didn’t respond.
He nodded, incapable of wishing her the same.
She needed time. She needed distance. He could give her both. But he’d be damned if he’d ever let her go.
Chapter Nineteen
Before the ice is in the pools,
Before the skaters go,
Or any cheek at nightfall
Is tarnished by the snow,
Before the fields have finished,
Before the Christmas tree,
Wonder upon wonder
Will arrive to me…
Mallory woke from a light doze, which seemed to be the only kind of sleep she managed anymore. It was early Christmas morning, so early the sun was hours away from rising. And it was her last day on Mimosa Lane.
In the week and a half since she’d lost her mother for good and run Pete and Polly Lombard away
, she’d grown to accept why she couldn’t stay in Chandlerville. Facing her neighbors every day and wanting to belong to something that she hadn’t been built for wasn’t going to end well for any of them. Her reboot here had been a mistake. From the start she’d been destined to leave. It was time to get back to the kind of life she could handle far better than Mimosa Lane.
She’d made the right decision, she’d kept reminding herself as her remaining time on the cul-de-sac passed in a blur of insomnia and cleaning and packing. A real estate agent had priced her house to move. Despite the economy and the slow holiday showing season, prospective buyers stopped by every day. She might have an offer as soon as the first of the year. In the meantime, she’d secured a midtown apartment to sublet.
She’d given notice at Chandler Elementary. Kristen had written her a generous recommendation and given her a lead on a clinic position at another school closer to the city. Mallory had put the word out in the assistance services community that she was available to fill in for any staffing needs that arose—part-time work that would tide her over financially and distract her from everything she was leaving behind tomorrow when she drove away from the magical world beyond her window.
Her packing was nearly complete. What little she owned was once more sorted, stowed, and labeled in cardboard. In the morning she’d load up her Beetle and a rented trailer and hit the road. She was all but gone already.
Which would make her a coward in the eyes of many, the way she was cutting ties so completely with people who’d never done anything but be kind to her. But she couldn’t face Pete and Polly Lombard every day and not want them forever. And she’d already gotten too close and caused too much pain to let herself keep dreaming that she wouldn’t hurt them even more in the future.
Look at how completely she’d fallen apart, how awful she’d been to them when they’d tried to help her deal with her mother at the shelter. The toxic confrontation that had followed—first with Polly and later with Pete—would be just the beginning if she stayed. They’d reached out to help her, and she’d slapped away their concern and support.
They’d been there for her when she’d needed someone the most, and she’d been the one to pull away in a frenzy of self-protection—the same as she had for years with her grams. She could over-attach to strangers who needed her. She could shape her whole world around the chance to help people like her mother, whom she’d never see again. But building her life with someone who genuinely wanted to be part of her forever…
The therapist Grams had taken her to for a while had said that accepting and trusting love would always be difficult. But there was difficult, and then there was impossible.
Mallory hadn’t wanted to believe she was capable of turning on Pete and his beautiful child, panicked and angry and blaming them for not understanding how much they terrified her. But her behavior the night of the Perrys’ party had permanently planted her in the impossible column for long-term relationships. The Lombards had enough problems of their own to work through. Mallory needed to make a clean break before she behaved even more appallingly and hurt even more people and still walked away in the end, because that’s what she always did.
She’d practically exiled herself to her house. Meanwhile, she couldn’t close her eyes without seeing Polly’s beautiful face, Sam Perry’s brave smile, or the love and hurt in Pete’s expression as she’d turned away from him that last time. Facing any of them again, in the driveway or in the cul-de-sac or looking across their yards, would make it even more impossible for Mallory to do what she knew she had to do.
She’d find a place where her work, not dreams of community and family and friends, could once more consume every waking minute of her day. She’d make her reboot work somewhere else, where she could help people but still sleep through the night. She’d return to a world that didn’t make her want the kind of happily-ever-after fairy tales she couldn’t hold on to.
A rustle from the direction of the living room had her jackknifing up until she was sitting, her bedding bunched around her, her heart pounding.
Polly?
No, she scolded herself. No one was there. She was only hearing things, projecting the sound of a sweet little girl coming back for one last hug and kiss. It had happened several times over the last week and a half, even though she kept the patio and the front doors locked now. She doubted she’d ever completely stop looking over her shoulder, hoping to find Pete and Polly there.
She’d pulled the drapes on all the windows, too, starting with those facing the backyard and the fence she shared with the Lombards. Pete had called and left messages on her machine, but she hadn’t trusted herself to answer. Sam had tried to reach her once. And Christmas cards had arrived in her mailbox from several of the neighborhood families she’d met at the holiday party. She hadn’t let herself reply to any of them, but she’d kept every single cheerful one. She’d replayed Pete’s messages over and over, cherishing the way he’d asked if she was okay.
She stepped away from her bed now, shivering in the early morning chill. She reached for the sheers she’d pulled across her bedroom window. Before anyone else was up, she wanted one last glimpse of this world she’d tried to make her home. Pulling back the curtains, she gasped.
Snow.
It was finally snowing. Illuminated by her patio light, her backyard resembled a real-life snow globe. The sky was raining thousands of tiny, wispy drops of frozen white perfection. Her grass was covered with it, resembling a layer of the vanilla frosting Polly had smeared all over her Christmas cookies. Mimosa Lane would have its white Christmas, and Mallory had stayed long enough to see it happen.
Even though there was no tree in her living room and no one to open presents with, seeing the world beyond her window so sparkling and beautiful was a perfect parting gift.
Her gaze tracked to her fence. Her smile froze, then dissolved completely. Tracks marred the blanket of snow between the fence and her house. There were two sets of footprints, one much tinier than the other. And something had created a wider path off to the side of the larger marks, as if it had been dragged behind them.
The rustling came again, for certain this time from her family room. A part of Mallory wanted to hide, not that anything could have stopped her from heading slowly, tentatively, down the hallway. She didn’t bother with her robe or slippers. She was shivering in only her flannel nightgown. Her heart was racing harder than it had the first night when she’d had no idea who she’d find lurking uninvited in her home. But she didn’t stop.
She’d promised herself she didn’t want this last chance—that keeping to herself was safer. But how could she not see the people she knew were waiting for her? How could they not be welcome wherever she was, no matter how far away she ran?
In that moment, she accepted the truth that her heart would never be free of them. Wherever she ended up, whatever her next “new” life turned out to be, it would never feel like a home. Not the way this empty place did even now—because the people she’d pushed away had barged back into her life, if only to say good-bye.
Lord, how was she going to say good-bye all over again?
In her family room she found a handsome hero of man and a beautiful child waiting for her in front of a Christmas tree. Their backs were turned to the hallway as they hung tiny decorations she couldn’t quite see on an honest-to-God real fir tree.
The refreshing scent of pine pulled her closer. As did the beauty of whatever they were hanging and how it made the tree sparkle as if it were covered in diamonds, gemstones, and priceless gold and silver. The realization of exactly what they were using as ornaments hit her suddenly, misting her vision.
“What…?” She couldn’t say another word.
She clung to the back of her couch rather than running into Pete’s arms as he turned from lifting Polly so the little girl could place an ornament high up near the top of the tree. He smiled, stunning Mallory with how much she’d missed him, and how much she still wished he could be th
ere like this every morning of her life.
“You caught us,” he said. “We were hoping to finish before you woke. Maybe make you some breakfast. We…”
“We didn’t want you to miss your Christmas again,” Polly said, holding on to Pete so easily now, hugging his neck.
It hurt a little.
A lot.
Mallory had grown used to Polly rushing to hug her, and the little girl wanting to be next to her every time they were together. Polly was eyeing Mallory now as if she weren’t sure of her welcome after Mallory had completely lost it the last time they were together. The child’s hesitation hit home harder than all of Mallory’s packing and planning for the move.
She wasn’t just leaving another place that hadn’t worked out or another job she never should have taken. She was leaving people who’d become the closest thing to having a family of her own she’d felt since losing her mother. Beautiful, hardworking, flawed, still-struggling people who’d needed her as much as she needed them.
“This…” She stared over Pete’s shoulder at the tree, blinking back her tears. And even then she couldn’t see the decorations clearly. They were so tiny, each one reflecting the white tree lights as if colored stars were bursting on every limb. “This won’t make me change my mind. I appreciate it, but I meant what I said. I’m…”
“You’re not ready.” Pete gave a tight nod. His smile dimmed, but it didn’t disappear. “I understand. We both do. Polly and I have talked about it a lot. About how friends don’t try to force each other to do and feel things before they’re ready. They accept difficult emotions for what they are without trying to make people change so that everyone else can feel better. You taught us that. That’s how we’re working through what we need to about Emma. You made quite an impact on Sam and Brian, too, spending time with Sam and listening to her while she hid from her own party. They both were sad to see your For Sale sign go up, but none of us would ask you to be less than honest about what you’re going through, right, Polly?” He hugged his daughter. “All any of us want to do is help you.”
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