Things We Didn't Say - By Kristina Riggle Page 0,56
among the detritus on her kitchen table. I tilt my head to look at the top one. It’s Mallory wearing a bikini on a fishing boat, a burly guy’s arm possessively around her shoulders. They’re both pink with sunburn.
“Jealous?” she says, coming from the back and noticing me looking at the pictures.
“Ha,” I say. “Good luck to him.”
She comes over to stand next to me. She’s squirted on some perfume. I don’t remember what it’s called, but she did used to wear it when we were married. She looks down to see which photo I’ve seen.
“Oh, him. He’s over, anyway.”
“Did the kids ever meet him?”
“No. Not that it’s any of your business.”
“Like hell it isn’t.”
“Like I have any say in who you date, or get engaged to, or bring into the house to live.”
“You knew all about her.”
“Not at first.”
“It was just a few dates, then.”
“You were kissing her. And I had to hear it from Angel.”
“I didn’t know she’d seen us. And . . . God, just stop.”
My voice rings overly loud in the small space. In the silence that follows we glare at each other, and the tinny sounds of the neighbor’s television float through the wall.
My cell phone rings. “Hi, Case. I’m on my way back.”
Her voice echoes weirdly on my phone, but I can make out “police” and “Cleveland.”
“Oh, God, is he okay?” I walk closer to the doorway, trying to get a better signal. Mallory follows like a shadow.
“Yes, he’s fine. They picked him and the girl up for shoplifting. He’s at the police station, and I’ve got the address . . .”
With Casey still talking in my ear, Mallory flings herself at me and wraps her arms around my waist, her face on my chest. I put one arm around her, reflexively.
“I’ll be right back. Map it for me, will you?”
“Where are you, anyway?” She sounds baffled, unhappy.
“I ran Mallory home to get a change of clothes. I’ll be right there.”
I hang up and Mallory holds tighter, murmuring, Thank God, thank God, thank God, into my chest, and I steal a moment to sink into relief with her, the other parent, who regardless of her faults is the only other person who can really understand how this feels.
Chapter 23
Dylan
When the cop hangs up the phone and tells me my dad will be coming, I’m mostly relieved. So relieved I want to cry, but I’m embarrassed enough by my stammer and actually doing this stupid-ass thing that I don’t want to add to it, so I look at the cop again, the one who’s pissed at us.
And Tiffany is pissed at me.
“Come on,” barks the cop who called the house. “You can come sit in here.” We follow him to a beige room with a table and a few chairs. He tosses some magazines down, crusty, wrinkled ones probably borrowed from the waiting area in the lobby or maybe the break room. I see a Glamour, Sports Illustrated, and Newsweek.
He gives us a hard look before he leaves. “You two try to go anywhere, you can wait in a jail cell. Don’t think I won’t do it. I’ve got better things to do than babysit a couple kids who run away because Mommy and Daddy are meanies.”
He slams the door, and Tiffany jumps in her seat. Then she starts to cry. Again.
“Why did you have to do that!” she yells at me through her tears. “You dumbass.”
“That” is get busted shoplifting.
Tiffany had dragged me back to the mall. After risking our lives to dash across the street and risking our lives further by eating these horrible wet hot dogs rolling in this machine for who knows how long . . . she talked me back into the mall.
We couldn’t think of anywhere to go after our brief failed attempt at hitching a ride. I was trying to talk myself into it, thinking we’d be in a warm car, there are two of us, so that was safer. But it’s so snowy I don’t think anyone could see us, or they didn’t want to stop for a couple of school skippers. Plus it was a really busy road—even if someone had decided they wanted to stop, someone who didn’t look like an ax murderer, someone willing to take us south, the roads were so bad they would have caused a pileup.
When Tiffany said she wanted to go into the mall again for a while, I was so relieved I almost fell down, and I gave up