by Margaret Way
Mallory glanced meaningfully at the child. “Please don’t pursue this, Jessica,” she warned.
Jessica made some effort to compose herself. “Blaine Forrester used his influence to get the business under way. He’s the Big Man. He’s got connections all over the state.” She broke off abruptly, as though she had said more than enough. “Come here to me, Ivy.” She thrust out her rigid free arm, preparing to frog march the child off. “The lady has things to do.”
“I’m Mallory, Ivy.” Mallory introduced herself, putting out her hand. “I’m Mr. Robert’s niece, like you are Aunt Jessica’s niece.”
“The doctor?” Ivy took hold of Mallory’s extended hand, looking up at her in awe. They exchanged a grown-up handshake that made the little girl giggle.
“Not a medical doctor, Ivy. I’m what’s called a psychologist, a big word for a little girl. My patients are children.”
“Can I be one of your payshens?” Ivy asked hopefully. It was obvious she was regarding Mallory as her new friend and protector.
“Ivy, come here to me.” Jessica’s tolerance level had hit zero.
Ivy raised her thin little arms like someone anticipating attack.
Bruises.
Not good.
Not good at all.
“You don’t want me to tell your father you’ve been a naughty girl?”
It was a threat that made the child shrink. She cringed against Mallory, who put a protective arm around her. A woman of Jessica’s temperament had to be the worst possible caregiver for the child. “You seem stressed, Jessica. Why don’t you let me look after Ivy for a while? She can come into the house with me.”
“I’m not allowed in the house, Mal-Mal—”
“Mally will do,” Mallory said.
“I’m only allowed into the kitchen, Mally,” Ivy said, looking like she was about to cry. “I’m not allowed in the front door, but I’ve run in plenty of times. It’s a bewdiful house.”
“Filled with valuable things a little girl could break,” Jessica said.
“I never broke anything,” Mallory said. “I’m sure Ivy won’t break anything.”
“I’ll be very, very careful,” said Ivy, bright blue eyes solemn.
“You could do something for me if you would, Jessica,” Mallory said. “Have someone bring my luggage into the house.” There had always been a full-time gardener with at least one off-sider.
“Can’t carry it yourself?” Jessica asked.
“Jessica, I don’t need to,” Mallory stated, mildly. “If you’ve something else to do, I’ll ask the housekeeper to attend to it.”
“Don’t bother, Your Highness. I am, as always, your humble servant.” Jessica executed a mocking bow.
“Aunty Jessy don’t like you neither,” Ivy observed shrewdly. At six years of age, she was already on top of the situation.
“Who asked you?” Jessica rounded on the child as if she were a woman.
“Jessica, I’m here for my uncle,” Mallory intervened. “I’ll be here for some weeks.”
“Weeks?” Jessica gave such a shriek it caused panic among a dozen or so rainbow lorikeets feeding on some bottlebrushes nearby. They took off with a battery of emerald, cobalt, ruby, and golden wings.
“Something worrying about that?” Jessica’s over-the-top reaction hadn’t been lost on her.
“That’s one big fuckin’ yes.”
Shocked for a second, Mallory didn’t show it. Was there any word in the English language that hadn’t lost its shock value, she wondered. But never in front of a child. Probably a few other groups. “Jessica, please don’t use that word in front of Ivy,” she said, pressing the child’s head against her just in case Jessica started up with the F-word again.
Only Ivy had heard. “Ooh, Aunty Jessy swore,” Ivy crowed, clearly delighted at catching her aunt out. “Daddy was real mad at her when she called me a fuckin’ dumbo kid.” Ivy, a natural mimic, got her aunt’s voice off pat.
“I think it’s time you shut your mouth, young lady,” Jessica warned.
Mallory ramped up her disapproval. “You can’t be forgetting Ivy is only six.”
“Six going on sixty,” Jessica snorted.
Jessica hadn’t much love for her niece, and that wasn’t going to change any time soon. Mallory had to wonder how the two women, Jessica and Kathy, had related to each other over the past few years. It couldn’t have been easy. The bully and the victim.
“You’re a lovely lady, Mally,” Ivy was whispering, having swiftly identified Mallory as an ally.
“Come along now, Ivy,” she said with gentle but firm persuasion. “Everything’s fine.” She spoke over the child’s head to Jessica. “It’s okay, Jessica, Ivy can come with me.”
“I’ll get someone to bring in your luggage.” Jessica spoke so tartly, it was like having a door slammed in one’s face.
Chapter Two
It had to be Mrs. Rawlings who was hurrying down the short flight of stone steps and onto the drive. Ivy must have felt comfortable with the approaching woman because her little face lit up. “Mrs. R. makes me fairy cakes,” she told Mallory with a big grin about due to become gap-toothed.
“How kind of her. She might make some for me.”
“Oh, she will. She’s real nice. Mummy likes her too.”
“Dr. James.” Dorothy Rawlings was a five-foot-nothing, kindly looking woman, early sixties, blue eyes, a cloudburst of soft grey curls, and a fairly serious weight management problem. She wore comfortable lace-up shoes and a blue button-down dress with a white collar, much like a uniform. She was panting and red faced by the time she arrived. “I was in the kitchen. I didn’t realize you were here,” she gasped out.
Mallory smiled, wanting to put her uncle’s housekeeper at ease. Her aura was a delightful blue. “No problem, Mrs. Rawlings. I was sorry to hear Mr. Rawlings passed away. My sincere condolences.”
“Thank you.”
“What’s passed away?” Ivy turned her eyes on Mallory with interest.
“Gone to heaven, love,” said Mrs. Rawlings, a bit distractedly as though she had other things on her mind.
“I don’t go to church,” Ivy confided. “Grandma Burch says, ‘That kid of yours, Kathy, will never get through the pearly gates.’ I don’t do nothing wrong either.” Ivy showed anger at her grandmother on her face. “Well, not always.”
“One doesn’t have to go to church to go to heaven, Ivy.”
“That’s what Mummy says.” Ivy was pleased with the backup. “She says Grandma is always pushin’ her buttons.”
Mrs. Rawlings held up a hand as Ivy, childlike, got set to launch into more family revelations. “That will do, Ivy, lovey. How is Mr. Robert?” She addressed Mallory. “I rang early.”
“We’ll be bringing him home tomorrow.”
“Oh, that’s great news.” The housekeeper bestowed on the child a worried glance. “What are you doing here, Ivy?”
The gentle tone couldn’t have been more different to Jessica’s hectoring.
Ivy was bursting to tell. “I was running away from Aunty Jessy.” She gave them a big grin of triumph. “She don’t love me. I haven’t had a bath for two days.”
Mallory started to get glimmers of the big picture. “Aunt Jessica bathes you?”
Ivy giggled. “Mummy doesn’t let her in case she drowns me. Mummy is going to give me a bath tonight. She’s had a really bad headache. That’s why Jessy was running after me. She likes to give me a wallop. She don’t love me.”
“That can’t be so, Ivy!”
Mallory well knew pretence didn’t work with kids.
Mrs. Rawlings flashed Mallory an embarrassed glance. “Of course she does, lovey. It’s just she’s so busy all the time.”
“You know she don’t, Mrs. R.,” Ivy said, wedging herself up against Mallory’s legs. “I can tell the way she looks at me. She never kisses me and I’m glad. She don’t like Mummy either. She says Mummy’s trash. No kiddin’, I heard her say it. She’s always tel
ling Mummy she’s a stupid cow. Mummy isn’t a cow, she’s a lady. Aunty Jessy is the stupid one.”
With prior knowledge of Jessica Cartwright’s less-than-sunny nature, none of this came as any great surprise to Mallory. “Well, we won’t talk about that now, Ivy.” Mallory thought it best to leave things there for the time being. “I’ll be minding Ivy for a while, Mrs. Rawlings. If you take Ivy into the house, I’ll shift the car.” The Mercedes was still standing in the drive with the driver’s door open. “Ivy startled me running around the side of the house.”
“Gettin’ away from Aunty Jessy.” For a moment Ivy looked as though she was about to cry. “Mally saved me.”
Mallory patted the child’s shoulder. “Go with Mrs. Rawlings now, Ivy.”
“Got some cake for me, Mrs. R?” Ivy tilted her curly blonde head.
“Never mind that now, little lady. We’ll get you cleaned up first.”
As they walked away Mallory exhaled a breath of relief. Mercifully Mrs. Rawlings was on Ivy’s side. She was beginning to feel considerable sympathy for Kathy, the young woman she had once thought of as a traitor.
* * *
It was an hour or so later. Ivy was in her element chattering away, telling Mallory all sorts of things—some of which made Mallory glance up sharply—when they heard heavy footsteps coming down the hallway.
Clearly a man’s footsteps. The reunion. Mallory felt her throat tighten. The tightening continued down her body. She experienced for a moment the old roaring river of rage, the way her blood had pumped wildly in her veins, the hazy red mist in front of her eyes.
“I don’t know how to tell you, Mal. It’s like a bad dream. You know I love you. I worship you. It kills me to dump it on you, but Kathy Burch is pregnant. By me. Can you believe it? I’ve never looked twice at her. God knows what happened. I can’t remember much about it. I was drunk. Off my head.”
The really odd thing was, the Jason she had known back then was no heavy drinker. The whole town would have known. At the time, in the red rawness of her frenzy, she had never followed up his remark. Jason drunk? She had never stopped to consider. Now she thrust those humiliating images from her mind. Jason had made Kathy Burch pregnant, yet he had spoken as if a stroke of colossal bad luck had engulfed him. His self-pity had been so nauseating she had answered with a burst of unprecedented fury. What bond they’d had totally disintegrated on the spot. All trust was gone.
It was Blaine, needless to say, who had broken things up, racing down from the house and getting a good hold on her while her uncle stood transfixed by the sight of sunny-natured Mallory shouting so alarmingly and struggling in Blaine’s strong arms. Afterwards shouting at Blaine to let her down, Mallory had cried out to her distressed uncle, “I can’t live here anymore!”
Jason’s behaviour had turned life squalid.
Jason hadn’t broken her heart, but he had abandoned her. Abandonment was a crime in her book. She had to wonder if she could handle this encounter with equanimity. Her hands were trembling. She knew the signs. She had seen Jason’s abandonment as a continuing pattern in her life. Her father had abandoned her when she had been desperate for a father’s loving comfort. Her grandparents had abandoned her. Not a backbone between the lot of them. She had spent years before she had arrived at a stage where she felt in control. In the eyes of the world, she was a high achiever. On the outside. She kept the inside out of sight.
Behind her, Ivy had flopped down onto the day bed, hiding her curly head half under a pillow. “That will be Daddy,” she said, her piping voice muffled and low in her narrow chest.
The child’s reaction surprised and dismayed Mallory. Surely Jason hadn’t turned into a strict disciplinarian? In the old days he’d had such an easy-going temperament. It was Jason’s mildness that had drawn her to him in the first place. Marriage might stand a chance of lasting a lifetime with an easy-going, tolerant person. At least that was what she had convinced herself of back then. A fraught moment more and Jason loomed in the doorway.
An instant dark yellow aura that nearly made her whole body sag engulfed him. Like his twin, Jason’s appearance had undergone serious change. From handsome, comfortable in his skin, he appeared enraged, grief stricken, both? Was there even something hunted in his attitude? He was lean to the point of thinness, his clothing flecked with dust and fruit stains. His electric blue eyes were fixed on her with an intensity she didn’t welcome. The truth was she had never wanted to see Jason again. One powerful reason why she had kept away. The sense of utter failure was still present.
Instead of searching out his little runaway daughter, Jason’s sole focus was on her. A red flush was moving from his tanned throat to his forehead.
She had to wait until his aura faded. She had to break up the dramatics. If Jason still thought he was in love with her, the issue had to be dealt with.
Jason stood motionless. “All these years later, and you’ve finally come home.”
“You’re not going to leave it at that surely?” she said. “How are you, Jason?”
“What do you think? Look at me, Mallory.”
She wasn’t about to be caught up in any drama. “What are you hoping I’ll see? I was hoping you’re getting on with life, Jason. As I am.” She wanted to hurdle these moments. Get them out of the way. Clear the decks. All the scenarios, the rehearsed confrontations, nothing approaching any of them happened. There was no sick racing heart. No upsurge of remembered emotion. No feeling of regret for the what-might-have-beens. Only clear confirmation she, at least, had moved on. “Before today, I had no idea you and Kathy were living on Moonglade,” she said, moving back so as to reveal more of Ivy. “As you can see, Ivy and I are getting acquainted.”
“Come here to me, Ivy.” It was an order.
Mallory looked back at Jason with dismay. The harshness with his child, a little girl moreover, was unexpected. It might have been Jessica who had barked the order.
“I’m sorry if she’s bothering you,” he said, his tone short, unapologetic. “She got away from Jess. She does it all the time.”
“Ever wonder why?” Her words shot out like a thrown plate. Clearly Jason was not the man she had known. Where was all the old gentleness? Today he was a man under a lot of stress, perhaps even mentally exhausted by it.
“I’ve no idea what you mean.” He held out his hand to Ivy, who was noticeably reluctant to get up. In fact she dug further in.
“I want to stay with Mally.” Ivy shook her head. It was obvious she was readying herself for a burst of histrionics. Mallory knew she would make a good, loud job of it.
“She’s quite all right with me, Jason.” She quickly intervened. “You or Kathy can pick her up late afternoon.” She was happy to give the Jolly Psycho Aunt Jessica a miss.
“She can come now.” There was a smouldering anger in his blue eyes. “It would make things very difficult for us, Mallory, if you undermined my sister.”
Ah, the unbreakable bonds of twin-ship! Mallory had perfected calm with just about everyone outside Blaine. “You’re talking nonsense, Jason. I feel nothing but a desire to help out and get to know your little daughter. Has Jessica suggested otherwise?” She left that one up in the air. Mallory turned towards the child with a gentle smile. “Daddy wants you to go with him now, Ivy. I promise you we’ll spend more time together.”
Ivy unwound herself, standing on her feet, but the look of mutiny was still on her small face. “I want to stay here with Mally.” She was exhibiting a stubbornness that Mallory thought could be a developing part of her nature. Time would tell.
“God give me patience!” Jason looked at the end of his tether.
Everything in his life appeared to be just awful. Mallory found herself taking pity on him. “I told you, Jason. It’s fine with me for Ivy to stay here.”
“You’re the expert on children, aren’t you?” he said with startling bitterness.
Mallory swallowed a curt rejoinder. If Jason was hoping for emotion from her, he would hope
in vain. “Working with children is my vocation, Jason. Ivy has been helping me put my things away.”
“Jess tells me you’re staying for weeks?” He speared a hand through his hair. He’d been doing that at regular intervals since he arrived.
“Is that a problem?”
“You can’t see it?” His blue eyes were devouring her.
No similar response could ever have been foreseen. She refused to be dragged back into the unhappy past. “If there’s a problem, tell me what it is.” She already knew the answer. He still fancied himself in love with her. Men always did want what they couldn’t get.
“You’re the problem, Mallory.”
It sounded like a mantra he said every morning.
“I’ll take Ivy now. Her mother can look after her. Come here to me, sweetheart. Daddy isn’t cross with you. I was worried, that’s all.”
Mallory nodded reassuringly to the child. “Go with Daddy.”
“I can come back again, Mally?”
“Of course you can.” Mallory glanced across at Jason. His fevered blue eyes were still fastened on her, an agony of regret in their depths. She may have escaped Jason for a new life, but she had left unfinished business behind her. “Surely Uncle Robert allows Ivy into the house? He loves children. I can’t accept he would bar Ivy from visiting.”
“Robert has been more than kind to all of us,” Jason responded. The statement held a jarring note, as though deep down Jason resented Robert James’s many kindnesses. “Jess’s concern is Ivy will break something. She does knock into things.”
“Do not!” Ivy whipped out. Not so much a protest, as a heroic defence. “Aunty Jessy is the clumsy one.” Ivy turned to Mallory, her new-found friend and confidante. “See that bruise on my arm? She done that.” Ivy rolled up her short sleeve, turning her arm so Mallory could examine a large multicoloured bruise. “I dint break the pottery elephant neither. She done that as well.” An expression of real anger flitted across her face.
“Ivy!” She was instantly reprimanded by her father, who had sucked in his lean cheeks, resembling the painter Munch’s Scream. “That’s not true. And it’s did, not done.”