Flashback Read online

  He snorted at that. “Honey, Mallory chose what she chose, and it’s no good now to look down on her, or to feel guilty.”

  “I do not feel guilty.”

  “Sure. Tell another one. Every time you lectured her, Mallory felt worse about her life. You never thought about that, did you? About Miss Perfect telling everyone else how to live their lives?”

  “I…do…did not do that. I only thought I could help her.”

  “Sure. Every time you came home, Mallory tried to pick herself up. But she just couldn’t meet your standards and she sunk a little lower. My God, no wonder you never got married. It would cost a man his spine to live with you. Why didn’t you ever marry, by the way?”

  “I had college and starting a career and—It’s none of your business. I don’t need to explain my life to someone like you.” And her ex-fiancé, Mark, couldn’t take it when things got rough; he didn’t stay long enough to work things out….

  “You do when you jump into my life. Until now, you weren’t bothering me. But Mallory’s suicide is another issue. You take off the gloves and so will I. A full week of sex would probably do you a whole lot of good.”

  “Why, you—” she began and then caught the crinkle beside Kyle’s eyes, that slight turn of his mouth. He waited, watching intently as she shoved her temper down, controlling it before speaking again. “Stop baiting me. That’s what you do, isn’t it?”

  “Can’t you take it? If you can’t, then get out, because I’m not putting up with you tonight.”

  As if bored with her, Kyle started to walk toward his apartment door in the rear of the office. He stopped, turned, and patted his thigh; Pup stopped staring at Rachel as if she were threatening his master, then trotted to Kyle. “There’s the phone. Call someone to pick you up, and don’t hang around or people will think you’re hot for me. Just make sure the door on the outside fence is closed when you leave. I’ll lock it electronically after you.”

  After the door closed behind him and the dog, Rachel considered opening it and getting in that one solid punch. Just one, and she wasn’t a physical person, nor one who lost her temper easily.

  Rachel looked at the clean clothes and nudged the stack of underwear; it tumbled onto the floor. The neatly folded jeans followed. She stood on them, slid her muddy shoes around for a few seconds, and then considered her choices of next moves. She could A. go after him and battle Pup, who obviously adored him, or B. use her cell phone to call someone to collect her—which could be embarrassing

  She hadn’t come off well in leveling Kyle Scanlon, but she wasn’t leaving until she’d said her bottom line. Rachel picked up a tire iron standing beside the apartment’s door and banged on it.

  The door jerked open, the tire iron caught in Kyle’s fist and he jerked it away from her. Pup angled protectively in front of Kyle, the man scowling down at Rachel. In an odd way, they looked like a comfortable family to Rachel…but then the night had been filled with oddities.

  Kyle tossed the tire iron to the school bus seat. “What?”

  Rachel straightened to her full height. “Just one more thing, Scanlon. Mallory wrote she loved you on her bathroom mirror—”

  “I know. The police told me. So?”

  “I think you had something more to do with her death—than just ruining her life, and I’m going to prove it. She actually wrote ‘Thanks’ with that message. That just shows how mixed up she was.”

  He stared blankly at her, then gave a disbelieving snort and closed the door.

  Rachel stared at that battered door and wished she had taken that punch. “I am so above this,” she muttered finally.

  Leveling Kyle into a pile of groveling rubble hadn’t been exactly a success, Rachel decided, as she slammed out of the office door in the front of the building. She’d had a glimpse of Kyle that she didn’t expect and he wouldn’t be that easy to take down.

  “There’s always another time, Scanlon.”

  She muttered to herself as she walked to the exit Kyle had indicated. “For your information, not that it’s any of your business, but I was engaged five years ago, Scanlon. I lived with Mark Bradburn for two years and then three years ago, something very unpleasant happened to me. Very unpleasant. Two men in ski masks held me down while a third tried to rape me. There were a few slaps in there somewhere, that left my head spinning, my face and body bruised, my clothes torn completely off me. After being attacked, my whole relationship crumbled. I was afraid to leave my apartment. For a time, I couldn’t bear for a man to touch me and Mark didn’t want to wait and moved on. I had a really bad time of it, but Mallory saw me through the worst part.”

  In the cold rain outside the board fence, Rachel hitched her jacket up over her head, but kept her arms in the sleeves. She had only walked a few yards when the tinkling song sounded and seconds later, the headlights of the ice cream wagon cut into the sheets of rain.

  “I don’t know how to turn off the sound,” Jada explained as Rachel climbed inside to the passenger seat. In the rear of the Broadway Ice Cream truck, Jada’s housecleaning supplies rattled softly as she made a U-turn to return to Neptune’s Landing. “You look like the Headless Horseman walking with your jacket up over your head like that. I’ve been trying to call you on your cell phone. You’d turned it off for some reason, so I left a message for you. Then I tried the garage—because the way you were staring at Kyle today and I know that you think he destroyed Mallory, I thought you just might come here. So I called here and when no one answered, I just started looking, and then you called me…. You’re all muddy and your jacket and blouse—What have you been doing, Rache?” Jada demanded.

  After a battle with Kyle, Rachel didn’t feel like explaining herself. “I’m not in the mood for this, Jay. You sound like Mom.”

  “She and Bob are worried about you. Bob still hasn’t gotten over finding Mallory like that when Mom sent him over to check on her. You should have called. And you went to Mallory’s place, didn’t you?” Jada studied Rachel’s face, then said grimly, “I knew you would. You always have to have answers, to make the pieces fit. You’re really chewing on this one, aren’t you? Well, maybe the pieces won’t fit, no matter what you do.”

  “Scanlon was Mallory’s lover. He owed her. He was probably getting money from her. Those first years when Mallory opened Nine Balls were pretty successful. She was so proud of how much she was making and the improvements she’d made, the better equipment she was able to buy. When her money went down, he probably wasn’t happy.”

  “Boy, your opinion of him just sank lower, if that’s possible. We already went through this a long time ago. He won’t admit it, but Bob had to have given Mallory the down-money. He was always doing things like that. I guess he always liked taking care of us girls because he never had kids, and as a widower, he’s lonely. If she was paying anyone back, it would be him. But she’d let her business slide so much in the last years that she probably couldn’t pay anyone.”

  “She had an income, and you know it. It’s just not the kind nice people talk about, is it?”

  “Hey, don’t get all huffy with me. I’m her sister, too.”

  Rachel studied Jada as the windshield wipers clacked rhythmically and the cleaning supplies rattled. Jada smiled warily, flashing her dental braces.

  “Did you know that Mallory wrote she loved Kyle on the mirror of her bathroom?” Rachel asked.

  “You’re changing the subject, but yes, I knew. She did love him, like a brother.”

  “Scanlon isn’t someone you love like a brother.”

  Jada grinned and in the light of the dashboard, her braces gleamed. “I do. But I’d jump him if he were interested. Sounds kinky, doesn’t it? But he’s got it. If my ex-husband, Wussie-boy, only had a quarter of what Kyle has, I might have lasted longer. As it is, I stayed long enough to get our names on the same credit cards and now I’m paying off charges he ran up…. Anyway, my future baby could do a lot worse than Kyle Scanlon for a father…. Yep, Kyle-sweetie is goin
g to fill the cup for me.”

  Rachel stared at her sister. “That is so sick and disgusting.”

  “I want kids and Kyle has agreed to be the donor if I don’t get one in four years. My eggs won’t be there forever, you know. Just think, your little niece or nephew could have Kyle for a father. Wouldn’t it be neat to have a little Kyle running around the house? You could buy him toy trucks and take him to the playground and—”

  Rachel knew that Jada was teasing her, trying to distract her. She settled into her damp torn jacket and her dark mood. “Shut up, will you?”

  “Just a little torment to ease what we’ve been going through for the past few days, sis,” Jada returned easily. “Bob is at the house, staying with Mom. She’s really torn up and feeling guilty. I guess we all are.”

  Each sat wrapped in their own thoughts, the windshield wipers clacking until the ice cream truck pulled into Trina Everly’s driveway. The modest, well-tended home in a quiet neighborhood had been where they grew up, had played in the backyard overlooking the Pacific Ocean, and had loved Mallory. Roses would bloom across the front of the house as they did every summer, the decorative shrubs would need trimming. The spacious lawn with the stone walkway leading down to the mailbox on the street would need mowing. The white shutters on the brick siding would need cleaning. And Mallory wouldn’t be sitting at the backyard picnic table this summer….

  When Jada and Rachel ran up the steps to the back porch, their mother was waiting with a worried frown and her hands on her hips. Bob Winters’ hand rested on her shoulder. In comparison to Trina’s tall, slender body, Bob carried weight around his jowls and his midsection. Older than Trina’s fifty-two years, Bob was gray and thinning.

  It was a scene that had met Rachel often through the years—her mother and Bob, waiting for her to come into the house…but this time, Trina’s face was pale and etched by grief. At her side, Bob looked grim. Protective of Trina, worried about her throughout the days since Mallory’s death, Bob leveled a look at Rachel that said You shouldn’t worry your mother. Not now, when she’s so upset about Mallory.

  Within the back porch, Rachel hugged her mother, lingering in Trina’s tight embrace. “I’m fine, Mom.”

  “You’re cold and chilled.” Trina Everly had that fair, blue-eyed blonde look that still attracted men’s admiring stares. Her hair, cut in layers, was soft and shoulder length, adding to a youthful delicate look. But Trina was anything but delicate when it came to protecting her children, Mallory included. Life hadn’t been easy for Trina as a twenty-two-year-old divorcée with two babies in tow and an unemployed, disinterested ex-husband who had left her responsible for bills. By working days as a waitress and a telephone saleswoman and a bookkeeper at night, she’d scrambled out of a dirty apartment into low-income housing.

  Then she’d found that she could play pool with the best and had brought home extra money from bets and tournaments. Local sponsors backed her, glad for the advertising. A woman who met horrible circumstances with dignity was good for advertising, too. Neptune’s Landing pitched in to help the local minor celebrity, and in a few years, Trina found another talent—that of selling used cars. Now she owned her own business, Trina’s Used Cars, and this charming oceanfront home into which they had moved.

  Dedicated to her children, Trina had dated often, but selectively. Then, when Rachel was just eleven, Trina had met Bob, the new owner of Neptune’s Landing’s Handy Hardware store. Bob, a widower, had easily become a gentle, stable part of the Everlys’ lives. He was often at Trina’s home, comfortable in it, contributing little fix-up jobs; a marriage offer was always on the table, but Trina had remained too scarred from her early marriage to accept it.

  As a woman, Rachel had recognized the looks shared by her mother and Bob. Though Bob never stayed overnight when the “girls” were home, the couple was in a long-term, comfortable, and definitely sexual relationship.

  Trina leaned back from the embrace and smiled wearily, her metal braces glittering around the neon pink rubber bands, the color matching Jada’s. “Go take a shower and we’ll talk later. Bob and I were just looking at pictures of Mallory. I—”

  Bob’s arm reached to draw Trina close. Suddenly looking her age and helpless with grief, Trina leaned her head on his shoulder.

  “She’s tired. You all are. The kitchen is loaded with food—cakes, pies, casseroles, soups, sandwiches—the whole town seemed to stop by and bring something, and that’s a credit to the high esteem that they hold of your mother. Can I get something for you to eat? Warm a casserole or some soup for you?” Bob asked Rachel and Jada as he removed Rachel’s torn leather jacket. He studied it. “It was always Jada or Mallory who came home with—”

  He paused briefly as if wishing he hadn’t reminded them of the day’s funeral, of a loved one now gone, then continued, “The other two used to come in scraps, their clothing torn or muddy. This time it’s you. Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. Just working off a little of the last three days by walking in the rain.” Rachel was grateful for Bob’s remark, meant to welcome and lighten the heavy dark emotion of the past few days.

  “See? It isn’t always me ruining clothes,” Jada responded with a slight, sad smile. The brief silence seemed to echo the thought of all: Sometimes it had been Mallory….

  “I took a walk across that empty lot next to Nine Balls and tripped. The mud was cold and the rubble unfriendly. I should have known better to do that in the dark.”

  “You could have been hurt. But I’m so glad you’re home now, I just wish—” I just wish Mallory was here, too…. Trina recovered and added, “You need a hot cup of cocoa and some food. You should eat something, Rachel. I don’t think I’ve seen you eat anything during all this…. We’ll never eat all that food our friends brought. They knew Mallory was having a hard time. But this—”

  Bob kissed Trina’s blond head. “They knew you loved her and that’s why they came to the funeral and visited here this afternoon. They know how hard the last two years have been for you.”

  Drained by the last few days, Trina leaned against him. “I did love her. Rachel and Jada may have been born to me, but Mallory was just the same. I loved her from the moment Rachel brought her home, a scraggy little frightened thirteen-year-old.”

  “You fought to adopt her, Mom. She loved you, too.”

  “I have to believe she did. If only she loved herself as well—” Trina roused and hugged Rachel and Jada briefly. “Go on now, clean up and make that shower nice and hot so you won’t catch cold.”

  Jada kissed Trina’s cheek. “I’ll make Rachel something she can’t refuse. She’s been at—”

  With a dark look, Rachel stopped Jada from completing her sentence; her mother had enough to deal with, let alone worrying about her brooding at Mallory’s apartment or arguing with Kyle.

  “I just had to go for a walk, to get some fresh air. I’m okay, Mom,” Rachel said again as she moved down the hallway to the comfortable bedroom they had shared once with young, frightened Mallory. Filled with Jada’s things now, a divorcée moving back into her mother’s home, the room echoed memories of thirteen-year-old Mallory. She’d been fiercely tough on the outside, rudely accepting new clothing and kindness, but her terror that she would be once more rejected or somehow cruelly treated had been evident. She’d gradually warmed to the Everlys, living as a daughter and a sister, but there was always that slight hesitation, that reserve that said she didn’t really think she belonged….

  “You were my sister, Mallory, in everything but blood,” Rachel stated passionately as she kicked off her ruined shoes. “Now look what you’ve done. Mom looks like she’s been through hell—And how am I going to pay you back for—”

  Rachel pushed away another time, one in which Mallory had come to be with her, to ease her back from the darkness three years ago…. Three men in ski masks had stalked her as she crossed that New York park at night, and they’d caught her, pinning her to the dirty rubble of leaves, hands hurt
ing—

  But the man who had prepared to rape her couldn’t perform and one of the others had laughed, turning his fury on them—then she’d been alone and naked on the damp ground, too shaken and bruised to move.

  On the dresser, a picture of Mallory in an ornate pewter frame caught Rachel. In the later years, when Mallory was getting that hard, knowing look, she’d had the picture taken and gifted each of the Everlys with it. “Don’t forget me, Rachel,” she’d said quietly as she watched the gift being unwrapped. “I had this taken without makeup, just for you, Jada and Mom. Show it to anyone else and I’ll kill you. Maybe someday I won’t be around—and maybe then someone will look at my picture and remember me as different than I—” she had floundered before rushing away.

  In the picture, Mallory had the wild look of an Irish scamp, feisty, with a mass of reddish gold ringlets and sky blue eyes. Mallory’s image stared back at Rachel as memories churned around her—giggling late at night, picking over every detail of Lori Walker’s horrible but expensive taste in clothes, their plans to travel to France and hike across Europe. And there was always plenty of boy talk, fads, music, and sex—except Mallory was always very quiet when it came to that topic.

  At sixteen and sexy, Mallory had suddenly demanded her own room.

  At twenty-one, she was waitressing and saving money for her dream, a business of her own—and she was openly dating a new mechanic in town, twenty-two-year-old Kyle Scanlon. She’d wanted to move in with him—

  The thought of Kyle with Mallory fueled Rachel’s anger as she stripped for her shower. She used Jada’s shampoo and body gel and scrubbed thoroughly, trying to wipe away the way he’d looked at her.

  Rachel shoved open the glass door, stepped onto the bathroom floor and toweled dry quickly. “Scanlon hasn’t changed at all.”