Things We Didn't Say - By Kristina Riggle Page 0,28

in on Saturday nights because I didn’t want to end up sloppy drunk and knocking up a girl in high school like Mitch Donnelly.

And all I got for it was a nod and a twitch of mustache.

Now Mom, on the other hand, lavished me with praise. That should have helped, and I did—I do—feel glad she’s proud of me, but I always knew the reason her praise was so voluminous, so effusive, was because Dad’s was so lacking.

There’s a soft knock at the door. Casey must have some news.

“Yeah, come in.”

Mallory slides in through the door, her head down, peeking up at me through her white-blond hair. She’s got a beer in her hand, and my stomach drops. Great. She’s going to start drinking, here, now, of all times. I didn’t even know we had beer in the house. I sit up on the edge of the bed.

“Thought you might need this.” She holds it out to me. I accept it warily, and look back at her.

She reads my expression and smiles, but there’s no light in her eyes. Rueful. A look I seldom see from her. “Yes, you’re wondering where my drink is, no doubt. Nope, I’m not drinking these days. I don’t suppose you knew that.”

I didn’t. She could have told me she’d sawed off one of her own legs and I’d have sooner believed it. Yet she’s standing before me in arm’s reach of a beer and hasn’t taken a sip. “I didn’t know we had any.”

She shrugged. “I found one way in the back when I was looking for a Diet Coke.”

I take a sip, and it’s cold, but otherwise tastes like nothing to me. I set it down carefully on the nightstand.

I put my elbows on my knees and hold my head in my hands. “Jesus, Mal. Why would he do this? And where is he sleeping tonight?”

I’m not looking at her, but I can hear a thread of a crack in her voice. “I know. I thought I’d always know where he was sleeping. That’s silly, I guess, eventually I knew he’d grow up, but . . . And actually for me it’s been over two years since I tucked him in every night. I never would have guessed that at twelve years old he’d be living somewhere else.”

“Not now.”

“No, I know. I made that bed, didn’t I?”

My second shock in the past few minutes. I look up to see if it’s still really Mallory standing there. She’s holding her own arms like she’s cold. She might be; she’s only wearing a thin cotton shirt, and this place is drafty, especially upstairs.

“You look like you’re freezing. Let me grab you a sweater.” I stand up and go to my closet, selecting a navy blue wool sweater my dad bought me for Christmas that I rarely wear. I hand it to Mallory and she slips it over her head, stretching up as she does so, arching her back so that her breasts push against her shirt before pulling down the sweater. I wonder if that was for me, or if it’s just part of her general habit of pulling attention her way, like a planet pulls its moon.

She looks out the window at the dark evening. She bites her lip. She walks over to me and stands close, meeting my eyes. “Why won’t he call?”

Tears well up in her lashes, and I pull her to me. She turns her head to the side and rests her face on my shirt, her nose against my neck. We fit like puzzle pieces this way.

The door is still open, and when I hear a noise I look up to see Casey, holding on to a notebook. Her face is pale except for two dots of pink on her cheeks. She, too, looks cold, because her hands seem to be shaking.

“I found something,” she says.

Chapter 10

Casey

It took time to sort through all the e-mail this house generates: between my job and Michael’s, the older kids, it’s quite a soup.

Until I found a name I didn’t recognize, responding to Dylan. A girl we’ve never heard of.

I’d shut myself down, as soon as Michael shouted at me. I was leaving anyway, as of just this morning. For all I know Dylan ran away because he hates me now.

And I thought it had worked. I thought I’d turned my feelings off like a spigot, and I was something like proud because this was an effect I used to only achieve with the