Page 116 of 28 Summers
But now.
Now, Mallory has to make a decision. Own up to what she’s been doing and stop. Or deny what she’s been doing and continue.
The spot in her eye is as bright as a flare.
“Okay,” Mallory says.
“Okay what?”
“Okay, I’ll stop,” Mallory says. “I’ll stop.”
“You will?” Ursula says. She narrows her eyes. Her irises are so dark, they’re nearly black, two chips of obsidian.
“Yes. You have my word.”
“Ah.”
“Ursula,” Mallory says. “You have my word.”
Ursula nods. “Thank you.” She inhales and seems to take in her surroundings for the first time, moving her eyes around the cottage. Does she approve? And why does Mallory care? She should feel nothing but disdain, or maybe hatred, toward this woman, her longtime rival, but she doesn’t, not quite. Ursula stands and clicks in her dusty stilettos over to the screen door, and Mallory feels almost sad that she’s leaving. In losing Jake, she loses Ursula too, her shadow opponent, the woman who has been hovering over Mallory’s shoulder, motivating her to be her best self. If Mallory were honest, she would admit that the competition with Ursula was inspiring to her.
At the door Ursula turns around. “You make him happy, you know.”
Tears, a flood of them, press—but Mallory won’t cry in front of Ursula.
“Yes,” Mallory says. “I know.”
Two weeks later, the text comes to Mallory’s phone:I’m here.
She locks up the cottage—the day before, she went hunting for the keys and found them deep in the junk drawer—and heads to the hiding place she’s chosen, forty or fifty yards away, behind a dip in the dunes. It’s childish to play games like this, she knows, but this was the best option among a host of terrible ones. Jake can’t know that Ursula knows. This has to seem like it’s coming from Mallory. If Mallory calls him, she’ll end up confessing about Ursula’s visit. Mallory considered textingSomething came up, I have to cancel.Or evenI’ve met someone, please don’t come.But she can’t be cruel. And, selfishly, she wants to set eyes on him.
She doesn’t respond to his text and another text follows:You there? Hello?
It’s amazing how seamlessly this relationship has worked on just a simple routine and trust. Nothing has ever trumped their time together—things almost had, several times, but they prevailed.
Until now.
She waits. Will he come or will he sense something is wrong and abort? His radar must be on amber alert anyway, with Ursula running for president. His every move must be monitored.
A little while later, Mallory hears a car. She peers up over the dune to see a Jeep enveloped in the usual cloud of dust. He’s here. Mallory’s heart leaps exactly as it has for the past twenty-six years.
Whocaresabout Ursula?she thinks.
Except…Mallory gave her word. She knows Ursula was hesitant to trust her, probably figuring that a woman who’d slept with her husband for so long would have no problem lying to her face about stopping.
The car door slams and Mallory shudders. From her hiding spot, she sees Jake get out. She moans softly. Jake! She can tell just from the way he’s carrying himself that he’s agitated—confused, maybe even angry. He strides up to the pond-side door and tries to open it, but it’s locked. She hears him murmur something, and then he goes around the house. She can’t see him but she imagines him standing on the porch, checking out the beach in each direction. She hears the creak of the door to the outdoor shower and she breathes a sigh of relief; she had considered hiding in there.
“Mallory!” he yells.
She closes her eyes. His voice.
“Mallory! Where are you?” He’s shouting; he must not care who hears him. There’s a messy edge to his voice, not tears, exactly, but maybe some panic. Has something happened to her? Is she okay?
Mallory travels back to the first summer when they yelled for Fray on the beach. Mallory had been so terrified, she remembers, or as terrified as a twenty-four-year-old girl who had never had anything bad happen to her could be. She has often scared herself by imagining how awful it would have been if Fray had drowned. Without Fray, there would be no Link. Mallory wonders if she would have gotten married to someone else and had different children—presumably she would have. She and Jake wouldn’t have bonded, except in crushing guilt.
It’s astonishing how the events of one evening can influence so much. Mallory thinks about her parents. Why did Senior not just stay in the Audi and call AAA? Well, because he was Cooper Blessing Sr. and would have deduced that he could change the tire himself in half the time it would take for AAA to arrive. Kitty had gotten out of the car—well, because she was Kitty and liked to supervise, always.
“Mallory!” Jake yells again. “Mal! Mal, please! Where are you?”
