Cynthia Reese - Sweet Justice

Mallory wended her way through the maze of cartons to the door. This apartment complex hadn’t appeared too friendly—it was a low-income subsidized complex where people seemed suspicious of newcomers. She’d chosen it in spite of the atmosphere, because it had a stackable washer and dryer, and it was handicap accessible.

Maybe she’d been wrong. Maybe there were neighbors out there who cared enough to introduce themselves.

She looked through the peephole and took a step back.

There, on the tiny stoop, stood Andrew Monroe.

And he was holding a take-out pizza carton.

* * *

ANDREW WAS DEBATING between leaving the pizza on the porch and ringing the doorbell for a third time when finally the door swung open.

The Mallory Blair it revealed looked nothing like the one he’d seen before. Gone was the polished wardrobe, and in its place a faded T-shirt and jeans. Her hair was pulled back in a neat ponytail, save for one strand of auburn silk that had escaped across her cheek. The biggest change was her glasses—the dark rims framed her intense green eyes and made her look like some glamorous scientist in a television commercial.

“Hi,” she got out. The awkwardness was apparent. “I— How did you—”

“Katelyn’s address on her chart. I honestly thought—” he glanced around at the other low brick duplexes. “I thought maybe you’d written down the address wrong. It didn’t seem to fit with...uh, what you’d live in.”

Did her chin jut out a bit? Yeah, it did.

“This was handicap accessible. And it’s just temporary,” she cut him off in a stiff voice.

He shifted the pizza to his other hand. “Well, uh, it occurred to me that maybe, what with moving in and all, you guys could do with a pizza.”

Okay, so he was a rat and he was actually using the pizza as a pretext for spying on her, which was exactly what Dutch had advised against. In fact, the lawyer’s last words that morning had been “Stay away from Mallory Blair. Far, far away, understand? The less you have to do with her, the better.”

Apparently, though, Andrew couldn’t have picked a better thing to bait Mallory with. The way she was regarding that pizza... Man, her mouth was practically watering. She seemed to be of two minds as to whether she should accept his Trojan horse, but one mind was definitely winning.

“Well, come on in, but please excuse the mess. And Katelyn is asleep, if you’ve come to see her.”

Andrew followed her in. “No, no, it was you—” He broke off and pretended to stub his toe on a carton to cover up his nearly blurted-out confession. This spy business was for the birds.

“What? Are you okay?” She had already bent down and appeared ready to whip off his steel-toed work boot to inspect for damage.

“Yeah, but I hope the same goes for whatever’s in the box.”

Mallory glanced at the label, which proclaimed it to be Mallory’s Shoes. “Oh, yeah, it should be fine. Well—if I marked it right, that is. Apparently I labeled more than a few things wrong, but my old landlord was insisting that I move out before the next due date or pay a full month’s rent. I asked if I could pay for a few extra days—”

She broke off as she entered the tiny kitchen, as if she were suddenly aware of what she was saying and to whom. To fill the silence, Andrew supplied, “No dice, huh? Maybe he had other folks wanting to move in?”

Mallory shrugged. “Maybe. I got us out just in time. What’s a few mislabeled boxes, right?”

“The pizza okay on the table?” He went to move a big ugly brown glass, but Mallory leaped to intercept him as if the thing was a priceless antique.

She cradled it against her chest, her cheeks pink with embarrassment. “Uh...it was my dad’s. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to insult you. It’s only... When we had to sell everything...after... Well, there wasn’t much left, which was just as well, because we didn’t have much space. So...that’s my inheritance. My dad’s favorite iced-tea glass.”

Something about the way she held it so protectively moved Andrew. He cleared his throat, looked away. “Crazy, isn’t it? The things we hold on to? For me, it’s my dad’s reading glasses. He’d started needing them right before he died, and, well... I still have them. Sometimes...sometimes I take them out and put them on and try to see the world like he saw it. Silly, huh?”

“No,” she said in a rush, full of energy and force. “No, it’s not. Not when it’s the only thing you’ve got left to hold on to.”

Now her mouth curved into a rueful grin. “I do have something we can actually use to drink out of, so let me put this away. Will ice water be okay?”

Andrew kicked himself for not thinking to bring a liter of cola. “Uh, I wasn’t planning on staying— I just was dropping this—”

“No, I insist. Do, please, have a seat. Uh—but, you’ll have to move that box—”

“No worries.” He smiled and waved her away. “You get that ice water, and I’ll clear the chairs for us.”

After she set two more reasonably sized drinking glasses—dainty stemmed water goblets—on the table along with a couple of ornately decorated china plates, he noticed that she quickly folded cloth napkins into an elegant restaurant-style. “Wow,” he commented. “Fancy, aren’t we?”

“Well, of course, in honor of your generosity, only cloth napkins will do.”

“Not even Ma brings out the cloth napkins much anymore,” Andrew commented. “And she’s a stickler for things like that. I’m impressed that you’ve been able to find the china and the napkins in all your boxes.”

“That’s about all I’ve been able to find, that and the pots and pans. I thought I’d gotten things down to the bare basics after our last move, but apparently not. And I even held a yard sale before this move.”

“You move a lot, then?” Duh, that was smooth, Monroe, he thought to himself. To prevent himself from saying anything else, he took a bite of the pizza—still warm, despite the drive and the wait outside for her to answer the door.

Mallory must have been starving, because her pizza slice was history, and she was reaching for another. “This is good! I should wake Katelyn up...”

“If she’s asleep, maybe she needs rest more than food. Maegan said she worked her pretty hard today.”

“Your sister...” Mallory’s eyes filled. “She’s wonderful. So patient and thorough. I wish we could have had a therapist like her at the rehab facility. I’m sure Katelyn would have already been walking if we had.”

“Maegan is good, and I’m not saying that because she’s my sister. Katelyn’s in excellent hands, Mallory.”

“I—I can tell.” Mallory put the second slice of pizza down on her plate and fiddled with her napkin. “She’s so good at motivating Katelyn, and that’s not always an easy task.”

Andrew was surprised at Mallory’s comment. “That’s...well, your sister seems pretty driven to me. She seems to want to get better and to be willing to put the work and effort in.”

Mallory took a bite of the pizza, chewed it thoughtfully, and only after she’d washed it down with a swallow of city water did she answer, “Yes, and no. She has great intentions. She gets started with a bang, but...she’s not... I wish she would stick with things, you know? Finish things.” She trailed off and seemed lost in thought for a few minutes. And then, abruptly, she answered the question he’d posed a few minutes earlier.

“I only move when I have to. You know, if the rent goes up at the lease renewal. Try squeezing all the things that came from a house into an apartment. Or even a quarter of the things. After every move, I want to sell everything down to a Zen-like bareness. Then I think, ‘Gee, I might need that...or what if I miss that?’ I sound like a hoarder, don’t I?”