Dedicated to Emadotcom and ddddiane for their absolutely motivating comments.💞

Happy friendship day, lovelies! 💖💕

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Chapter 37| The Truth Behind Everything

"It is true that those we meet can change us, sometimes so profoundly that we are not the same afterwards, even until our names."

-Yann Martel, Life of Pi

• • •

Eva Millington stood at the door of her house. Before pressing the doorbell, she drew in a deep breath contemplating what she was going to say to her daughter once she went inside. She had never been a stringent parent to either of her kids. Maybe because she never needed to. With Jacob always getting straight A's and Mallory managing to score decently enough to prevent trouble, she never thought she'd get a call from school for one of her kids telling her that she was not just scoring badly but was failing her subjects.

Bad grades wouldn't really have worried her that much with everything going on in her daughter's life, but she couldn't ignore what she had found out from her conversation with Will. Mallory was trying to get her case reopened without so much as informing her own mother! That infuriated her. And so she began organizing her thoughts and pressed the doorbell.

"Hello there, stranger." Her daughter's face greeted her as soon as the door opened.

Mallory's hair were wrapped up in a towel as she was wearing a bathrobe. She must have been in the middle of applying makeup, something which she hardly did unless she was going out on a date. A lazy smile was dancing on her face as she welcomed her mother inside.

Eva returned the smile which came out forced whilst raking her brain for any prior information her daughter might have given her.

"Is everything okay?" Her daughter began no doubt noticing the expression.

Eva shook her head moving past her daughter.

"You forgot, didn't you?" Mallory facepalmed. "Mom, you were supposed to be home early to help me. I have a date with Andrew?"

Her mother hung her coat on the rack and tossed her bag on the couch as she confessed, "I guess I did."

Over the past weeks, she had seen the relationship between the two teenagers progress. She could still remember how less than a month ago, Mallory had a nightmare and somehow sleep walked out of the house, getting lost in the night. And while she was performing a surgery, it was Andrew whose phone she could reach and who finally found her.

While she was more than grateful that her daughter was alright except for her injured feet which she got from walking barefoot all night, she still had a lot of qualms in digesting the story. It was riddled with loopholes but no matter how many times she pushed the duo, they didn't waiver from the original story. Soon she had to give up with the hope that if it were anything important her daughter would have trusted her with it.

"You are unbelievable," Mallory rolled her eyes. "Anyway, it's okay. It's just a little makeup. I think I can manage it alright. I swear, one of these days I need to get myself a girlfriend. I mean Ben is good for nothing when it comes to girly stuff and well, it's not like I expect him to know it. But a girl can appreciate some moral supp --"

"Mallory, are you nervous?" She broke her daughter mid-rant

"What? Me? Ofcourse, not." She asserted rather quickly.

"Mallory, sit down." Eva motioned her daughter towards the empty space next to her on the couch.

"Yeah, okay. Just give me half an hour, I'll be back. Meanwhile maybe, you can freshen up and heat some leftovers. I made pasta last night and saved you some. I knew you must be hungry when you'd get back."

"I asked you to sit down," she said, trying to ignore her child's considerate attitude. She was so not good at the strict mother thing.

"It's already past four, Mum. And I need to be ready well before five. I mean the ball starts at seven and it's a two hour drive to Sacramento."

"Sacramento? Seriously, Sacramento?!? And when were you planning to tell me that you are going to drive across highway to another city?"

"Umm...you never asked?"

"Sit. Down." Eva's voice was firm this time. "We need to talk."

• • •

Andrew looked down at his freshly ironed suit that was carefully laid down on the bed. His eyes darted towards the bedside clock. He still had almost two hours before Mallory came to his place assuming that she would be there exactly by five. Moving towards the cabinet next to his bed his eyes landed on the invitation.

It was Victor's fundraiser. He had a chilling sensation as he thought about meeting his guardian, this time intentionally. Honestly, he did not want to go. He did not want to deceive the one person who he cared about. But he didn't have a choice.

It was his fault after all. He went out of the way to pique Victor's curiosity. It wasn't deliberate. But he just let the conversation flow. And now he knew that if he ignored the invitation, Victor would research the Sages and then it would only be a matter of time till he found out the truth about the faux identities and gradually about him. That couldn't be risked, not until he accomplished what he came for.

He picked up the invitation and tossed it next to his clothes. Then his eyes landed on Mallory's journal, he picked it up and opened the dog-eared page. He had tried reading the entry four times in past three weeks but he couldn't make it past the first few words. With the substantial tear stains that made the text almost hard to decipher, he knew. He knew what he was about to read and he couldn't bring himself to make it past the first page.

Mum says it's not my fault. Jacob says that my nightmares are just from PTSD. They trust me. They trust me so much...but they don't know. They know nothing. Dr. Adler thinks I need to put down my emotions, she says I need to write in detail about how I feel. Well, here it is.

I feel like I'm going fucking crazy. I feel sick when the nightmares remind me about what I did. I feel disgusted with myself. But most of all I feel guilty. How could I take lives and then go on like nothing happened? How is that different from those monsters who captured us? Doesn't killing make me a monster too?

That's it. That's where Andrew stopped every single time. He couldn't bring himself to turn the page. He didn't have the heart to read about how the girl he knew as Mallory Millington could have somehow been the reason of his sister's death. Knowing that she was forced to do it and reading about it in detail were two different things and he wasn't quite ready to cross that bridge just yet.

• • •

In seventeen years of her existence, Mallory had only seen her mother with that look on her face twice. The first time was when she was thirteen and Jake was in his freshmen year at college. She distinctly remembered how an extremely worried Jake had brought home a girl who he believed was pregnant after a one night stand with him. It was only a few tests later that they found out that her missed menstrual cycle had some other underlying medical cause and not pregnancy.

She remembered her mother making the duo sit down and reprimand them for their actions. She was furious at the irresponsibility of the two "adults" who didn't even think of consequences of their actions. Her mother was on the verge of vowing the two into celibacy.

The second time was much more serious. It was when Mallory had accidentally overdosed on her sleeping pills after a particularly nasty nightmare. It was her brother who found her on the floor passed out amidst gazillion tablets, moments after it happened. She was immediately transported to nearest hospital. Till date, Mallory knew that her mother didn't believe that it was an accident. She thought it was Mallory's attempt at taking her life.

Now, sitting next to her mother on the couch, she couldn't help but think back to all the lies she had told her mother ever since they moved back. Any of them could have been the reason of her mother's current state, she admitted to herself as she anticipated what was about to come.

"Talk about what?" She enquired unable to keep the nervousness out of her tone. Did she really just want to talk about the Sacramento thing? She hardly thought so. What else had her mother found out? Was it something related to Andrew? Maybe she had somehow found about Marko? Or did she knew that Mallory omitted any mention of Richard?

Her mental monologue was stopped when her mother spoke up.

"Your school called," her mother began.

Mallory slumped in relief. So that's it. Her school called. Maybe it wasn't as bad as she thought it was. After all it was just her school. What could be the worst case scenario? She could deal with it. Hell, she was craving to have a normal average teenage conversation like that with mother. Something she hadn't had the fortune of having for a long time.

"They did?" She tried to hide her relief.

"Yes. Your attendance is falling short. You have been postponing meetings with your guidance counselor for months now. You do realize that eleventh grade is very important for college? What are you planning to do with your life, honey?"

She faltered momentarily. How was she supposed to answer that? How could she tell her mother what all was going in her life? And so for some time she remained silent trying to compose her thoughts.

Finally, she confessed, "Mum, I've been trying. I've been trying so hard to turn in my assignments on time and work for some extra credit, but it's difficult to cope up after missing so much."

It wasn't really a lie, just not the complete picture.

"So, you are saying that the only reason that you are not doing well at school is because you are having trouble adjusting?" Came her mother's voice seemingly picking on the half truth too.

"Yeah," Mallory replied not liking the tone her voice took.

"Honey, why did we move here at the first place?"

Where was that coming from? She wondered as she alleged, "So that the three of us could have a normal life."

"Oh, really? And it has got nothing to do with Emily?"

"W-What?" She fumbled.

"I talked to Will, Mallory. And he told me everything."

It was like a bomb had been dropped. The room was dead silent. For a second, all she could hear was her heart which was beating twice as fast as it normally did. She could physically feel the sweat slowly trickling down her back.

And just when she had a sense of impending doom, her mother's voice broke the silence, "And while we are at it, I want to talk about what business you have in Sacramento too."

"I--" she opened her mouth to explain but her mother's outstretched finger silenced her.

"Save it," she interrupted, her tone held dismissal, "I know you are going to give me some other creative lie. So, why don't you save yourself some time and tell me the complete story because you sure as hell aren't stepping out of this house before you do exactly that."

"But, mom, it's really important for me to go with Andrew to this party,"

"Important, really?" She inquired nonchalantly. "Unless there are lives dependent on it, I don't think I really care how important."

"There might be," Mallory's voice was dead serious.

Her mother looked at her, and cocked her head, "In that case, why don't you start speaking already? The earlier you fess up, the earlier you can go."

Mallory's shoulders slumped knowing no way out of it, "Okay, what do you wanna know? From where should I begin?"

Her mother leaned back on the cushion and looked at her expectantly, "From the beginning, please."

• • •

"Hey, Andrew!" Julie greeted the moment he opened the door.

"Hi, Julie."

"Look who's here with me," she said animatedly pushing a pouting Evelyn from behind her.

"Hi Andrew." The girl grumbled and stomped past him to sit on the couch.

"Evelyn, where are your manners?" He called out.

Evelyn chose to remain silent.

He sighed turning towards her caretaker, "Come on in, Julie."

"Are you okay?" She asked instead.

"What? Yeah, of course. Why would you ask?"

"Because, I've known you for almost two years now and you have never invited me inside your house, ever. The only times I got to see the inside was while waiting for you with her."

"I just feel a little awkward with my housemate around but now since he is gone, it's okay, I guess."

"Nope. That's not it," she stared at him thoughtfully, "Looks like someone's teaching you manners."

"It's that girl Mallory," Evelyn called out from the couch whilst flipping through channels.

"Oh, yeah. Riiiiiight," she drawled with a smug face. "I have heard a lot about her."

"Julie, how old are you?"

"Thirty three,"

"Then why don't you act like it?" He shook his head.

"I'm young at heart, kid."

He glared at her as she smiled.

"If you two are done skindering, maybe close the door and come inside? It's getting a little chilly inside."

"Skindering?" Andrew raised his eyebrow.

"Yeah, she is preparing for spelling bee by taking it too far, so don't be alarmed if she tries to slip in some more big words into conversations," her caretaker smiled.

"Okay," his eyes widened in surprise before he regained his normal stoic expression.

"By the way, I gotta talk to you about something too."

"Yeah, sure, what is it?"

"Later," she knowingly looked at Evelyn's back that faced them.

"In that case, come on inside, I'll fix us some lunch."

"Well," she made a cringing face. "I've heard a lot about your cooking and they are not all good things."

He smiled, "So, she is spilling my secrets now, huh?"

"Looks like it."

"Don't worry, they are just ham sandwiches. I cannot possibly ruin them, can I?"

"My sources say you can," she alleged cockily and moved past him to the kitchen.

"I hate you, Evelyn." Andrew grumbled shutting the door close.

• • •

It was a little over four when Mallory called Andrew saying that she might be a little late because something came up. He didn't put in too much thought into it because he knew from experience that Victor's events never began on time. So, while Julie was upstairs putting Evelyn down for a nap, he had found himself slumped on the couch with the journal in his lap which he had unconsciously brought down with him in an attempt to conceal it.

His eyes darted towards his cellphone screen. Noticing that he still had a lot of time to kill, he thought he might as well do what he was trying to escape for so long. And so, he put his head down on the couch and stretched his legs, then picking up the journal with a heavy heart, he opened it up.

Let's unravel your deepest secret, Mallory Millington. He thought wryly at the strange sense of deja vu and before he knew it he was immersed in the horrors that the writing had to offer.

• • •

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Heya!

How are you, people? I hope you are all doing good. :)

So, anyway what do you think about the chapter? Do let me know in the comments. 💞

Anyway, two more chapters are almost ready to be published. One would come out sometime tomorrow and the other by this weekend Excited?!?!?

Have a wonderful day!

-Ridhima

~P.S. aka shameless self promotion~

So, a few days ago I made an Instagram page for my quotes and poems. And if you are in that kind of stuff, do follow ms_book_worm on Instagram. (I follow back. ;) )

~End of shameless self promotion~

You can go and read ahead now. Happy reading! :D