Things We Didn't Say - By Kristina Riggle Page 0,80

glass. The sharp tang of the smell takes me right back to that velvety, unwound feeling after a drink or two. I feel Billy next to me, raising his own drink as always, nodding his encouragement. Live a little, Sprite.

Chapter 35

Mallory

She’s staring at that drink like she’s going to fuck it.

If she weren’t trying to replace me, I’d feel sorry for her. She’s not such a bad girl, but she doesn’t belong with Michael and she’s not going to mother my kids. She should go back to her hick Pete and go have ten fat hick babies. Everyone would be happy.

I go to the counter and refill my glass with Coke, pantomiming adding some Jack Daniel’s. My back is to her, and she’s not looking, anyway. She’s still staring at her own glass.

I’ll get her talking some more about Pete, anything to keep her going so she doesn’t stop to think. So I ask her how she met him, her hick Pete. So she blabs and I put on my “listening” face.

It all came into focus when Angel came to talk to me about that diary, and the awful things she wrote about my girl. I pressed Angel for more detail, and that’s when she told me about the drinking this Casey girl used to do, and how she loved Jack Daniel’s, and must have some boyfriend named Tony on the side, and how Angel was pretty sure her dad didn’t know any of it.

But he will. And I won’t have to be the bad guy, for once.

Then I can put the rest of my plan in motion.

It seemed like a good idea at the time, letting Michael have the kids. Angel was making me crazy. We’d have epic screaming fights, and Dylan would hardly talk to me, and Jewel was all over me every minute. I couldn’t breathe. And worse, I couldn’t keep track of all the stuff. Girl Scouts and school reports and she needed money for this or that and Dylan needed reeds for his sax and every time something got missed I could just feel them all hating me, the bad mother.

Only, Michael never helped, did he? Oh no, he flounced off to work every day, leaving me to deal with it, and in all his criticism over the forgotten permission slip and my napping and how tired I was, which he always said with a sneer, did he ever offer to help me? Did he inquire as to why I needed to have a glass of wine or five just to get through the day without jumping out of the second-story window?

No, the smug righteous bastard would come home and just be full of complaints.

So one day I was having a really bad brain day. It was like my mind was full of static turned up loud and I wanted to scream and run through the neighborhood tearing my clothes off, so instead I poured a drink, just to settle me. No one was supposed to be home for hours. I was going to calm myself down, sleep for a while, and then wake up feeling better so I could be Mom for them.

It wasn’t my fault Jewel got sick. Probably his fault that she has stomachaches all the time, as much as he demands from those kids, always frowning when they get anything less than a B. And I felt fine. To this day I think the cop fudged the paperwork on my breath test out of revenge, because I yelled at him. But then, my little girl had just been in an accident and they were trying to haul me off to jail right in front of her. I was supposed to be a good little obedient girl and go quietly?

That will be the fucking day.

Then Michael kicked me when I was down by presenting me with papers. He should have stood by me and sued the police department for false arrest, he should have had his dad hire a hotshot lawyer to get the breath test results thrown out, but no. He divorces me and takes my kids.

And this was the guy who once was so chivalrous and kind that he carried me up my apartment stairs when I felt dizzy during my first trimester with Angel.

My first instinct when he told me about the divorce was to break a wine bottle and slash his face. So I’m actually proud that all I did was cuss him. I went all mother-bear and