I Don't Need Your Blue Roses Anymore novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: Tea at Mallory's

Mallory lived on the third floor of a stucco building near the Gold Line station.

I had helped her carry every box up those stairs eight years ago.

She opened the door before I knocked, in a cream sweater and bare feet.

"I knew you'd come," she said. "I made tea."

She had.

Two cups stood on the kitchen table beside a plate of the shortbread I liked.

Her mother's folded walker leaned against the wall by the door, and a photograph hung over the sofa.

It showed a row of kids in front of a lemon tree on a narrow street, squinting at the sun.

I had seen that photo a hundred times and never once looked at it.

"Sit," Mallory said. "Please. You look exhausted."

"I'll stand."

"Then I'll sit." She poured her own tea. "Dean called. He says you made him cry on a porch."

"Where did the money go?"

She stirred her cup slowly and tapped the spoon twice on the rim.

"You're going to be angry," she said.

"Mallory."

"Half of it went to the wedding. Half of it went to my mother."

I had known her mother since I was twelve.

She had cooked for me when my own house had no one cooking.

"Her care home raised the monthly rate," Mallory said. "I couldn't cover it."

"You could have asked me."

"For what? Eleven thousand a month?" She laughed without any humor in it. "You'd have said yes, and you'd have told your father, and he'd have written a check and made it his."

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