Page 69 of Mack

She kept reading. Simmons had been sentenced to the minimum of three years.

Three years. She sat back in her chair.

That was why he’d been busy.

“Oh, dear Lord,” she whispered.

He’d been in prison. That was why he’d never shown up, why the years had passed in silence when she’d always half expected him to appear. She’d wondered, in those first months, why he’d stayed away. Now she knew.

And she knew something else too. Three years in a cell with nothing but time and anger had a way of focusing a man like Troy. He wouldn’t have spent that time letting it go. He’d have spent it thinking about her. Building up every grievance, every humiliation, every moment she’d stood up to him. Telling himself it was her fault. All of it.

He’d have walked out of that prison ready.

She closed the laptop and sat very still for a moment.

She didn’t know how she was going to handle him. But she knew she had to do it alone. Telling Mack meant Mack would do something, and Troy had already made clear what that would cost. Telling her parents meant watching her father’s hands shake again, and she couldn’t do that to him twice.

She’d figure it out. She always had.

On the drive home she watched the rearview mirror the entire way. When she pulled into her driveway and saw her mother’s car already there, she sat for a moment and made herself breathe. She had to walk in there and be fine. She was very far from fine, she thought as she got out of the car.

She must have been convincing because Georgia left without asking a single question. And if any woman on earth could tell when something was wrong, it was Georgia Nichols. She had a radar for it that had never failed in Mallory’s memory.

But tonight she hugged her daughter, kissed T.J.’s forehead, and walked out to her car without a backward glance.

Mallory locked the door behind her and stood in the quiet of the hallway.

T.J. was already in the living room, dinosaurs arranged, Finding Nemo apparently non-negotiable. She could hear the opening notes from the other room.

She leaned against the wall and let herself have thirty seconds of not being fine.

Then she pushed off and went to sit with her son.

Friday evening Mallory pulled into her driveway after closing up the shop and sat in the Tahoe for a moment before getting out. T.J. was spending the night at her parents’ place, which meant the house would be quiet tonight. She’d been looking forward to it all week, but

she wasn’t looking forward to it anymore.

She’d been checking the street every night since Monday. Looking for anything that didn’t belong.

Tonight, everything looked normal. Porch light on, yard quiet, neighbors’ houses lit up against the dark. She got out, quickly looked around, opened the back door on her vehicle and pulled several bags of ribbon for her shop.

She was halfway up the porch steps when she heard boots on the walk behind her. She knew before she turned.

Troy stood on the path, hands in his coat pockets, looking at her like he had every right to be there.

“Nice place,” he said.

“Get off my property.” She kept her voice level. “Right now.”

“Relax.” He moved toward the steps. “I just want to talk.”

“We have nothing to talk about. Leave or I call the sheriff.”

“You keep saying that.” He climbed the first step. “Yet, you haven’t done it yet.”

She held her ground at the top of the steps. “Because I was hoping you’d be smart enough to walk away on your own. I see I was wrong.”

He smiled. “Where’s the boy?”