Page 14 of Coming Home for Fall 2
“Don’t say that.” Ariel clicked her tongue judgmentally. “This is a really nice thing they’ve decided to do. Who cares if she’s not super forthcoming? I don’t see what the big deal is.”
“The big deal is that this person could be scamming them!” Mallory didn’t mean to get so animated, and she looked around, embarrassed, after raising her voice.
“Okay, I’ll play along. How might she be scamming them?”
Though Mallory hated the way her sister made this all seem like some kind of game, she continued to argue her side of things.
“There are a million ways,” she said. “She could be planning to steal a bunch of stuff from them one time when everyone is out of the house. Or she’s going to go looking for their social security numbers at some point. Or she could just be lying about being homeless in the first place.”
“But why would she willingly go live with mom and dad if she had a home of her own?”
Mallory didn’t have an answer to this.
“Mal,” her sister said, using the tone of voice she reserved specially for sibling lectures. “Is it possible that your reaction to this has more to do with you than it has to do with this woman? Are you sure you’re not just… projecting?”
“What do you mean?”
Ariel sighed and leaned back into her chair. “Okay, I’m going to say this, but I don’t want you to get offended.”
“No promises.”
She made a face but went on. “It’s no secret that you’ve needed a lot of support from mom and dad over the years. You’ve gone back to live with them on multiple occasions, and it seems like you’re staying under their roof again now.”
“It’s temporary.”
“I know, I know,” she said placatingly. “I’m not judging you. You’ve always been way harder on yourself than anyone else in the family. That’s why I’m thinking you might be putting some of those feelings on this woman. What’s her name?”
“Sasha.”
“You might be putting some of those feelings on Sasha,” Ariel repeated. “Maybe subconsciously you feel like you’ve scammed mom and dad a bit, and so you don’t trust that Sasha could really just be someone in need of help. You want to make her out to be a villain because you’ve decided that needing anything from our parents is a crime.”
Mallory was quiet for a beat. Then she shook her head. “No. I think she’s just a liar. But thanks for the psychoanalysis. I didn’t realize that you were filling some of that new free time with getting your license to practice psychology.”
“No need to be snarky,” Ariel said. “I wasn’t trying to psychoanalyze you as much as I was just trying to get you to see things from another perspective. Besides, that was some really insightful stuff! Some people pay their therapists a lot of money to have revelations like that.”
“Sorry,” Mallory said, shrugging. “But I don’t have any money and I lost my health insurance so that advice has to be on the house.”
Ariel laughed, but then her face quickly changed. “Wait a minute, you lost your health insurance… Does that mean you lost your job?”
Mallory said nothing.
“I was afraid that might’ve been the case when you texted saying you were back in Ferndale,” Ariel said. “But a part of me was just hoping you went home early for the holiday. What happened?”
“I don’t really feel like talking about it,” Mallory said. “It’s a long story anyway, just like you and the publishing woman.”
This wasn’t exactly true. Mallory probably could’ve summed up the events that led to her getting let go pretty easily. She’d stopped making sales after realizing that she was potentially causing people harm, and then Donovan let her go. But she didn’t feel like getting into all of that with her sister right then. It wasn’t what she’d driven two and a half hours to talk about.
“But please, save me the scolding. I already feel bad enough as it is, and I’m working on a plan to get my life back together.”
Ariel put her hands up in submission. “Alright, fair enough. I don’t feel like scolding you anyway. I have to be a parent to three people already, I don’t need to add you to the list.”
The waitress came back with their drinks and Ariel ordered her food. When it was Mallory’s turn to put her order in, she hesitated. Since her sister had mentioned omelets, that had been on Mallory’s mind, but they weren’t cheap. Was it going to make her look even worse if she ordered one of the most expensive items on the menu when her sister was footing the bill?
“She’ll have the same as me. The Denver omelet,” Ariel ended up saying when Mallory couldn’t make up her mind fast enough. “But with no mushrooms.”
The waitress nodded and went to put their order in.
“You remembered that I don’t like mushrooms,” Mallory said, smiling.
