Not that she was thelast, last. More like the only one with Dawson blood running through her veins. The last true Dawson to carry on her family’s legacy.
Strangely, being a ‘blood’ Dawson didn’t afford her any special privileges in spite of her family’s wealth. Like Cinderella, she had to deal with a stepmother and stepsister.
Unlike Fairytale Cindy, Mallory’s stepmother was the most gentle, loving soul on the planet even if she’d become a little self-centered after the death of her husband.
At times Donna Dawson was so loving and accepting, she forgave the unforgivable without batting an eye. Especially when it came to Mallory’s stepsister.
That’s why Mallory found herself doing something she’d sworn she wouldn’t, putting herself in the middle of something she’d promised herself she’d stay out of.
Then again, since her dad died, she hadn’t been able to say no to her stepmother. Not when the woman was the onlyfamilyMallory had left.
She’d been seven when Donna came into her life and ten when she had married Mallory’s father and made them more than a family of two even if they were fractured and pieced together.
Would things have been different if her dad hadn’t died?
Would the last six years have been better?
Would Donna have clung to Mallory as tightly as she had if that drunk driver hadn’t run a red light?
They’d never know. They’d lost—the world had lost—a great man that night, and the lives of his loved ones had been irrevocably changed.
Mallory sometimes wondered if Jeffery Dawson’s presence could have stopped their pieced together family from falling apart. She didn’t think so. As much as she’d like to blame the drunk stranger from that long ago night, she knew things had splintered long before that.
And even if she found herself somewhere she hadn’t planned to be, doing something she’d vowed not to, she was happy to be in Sunnyville. Really happy.
Everything she’d seen so far appealed. She thought a city smaller than her native New York would make her skin itch—she was city born and bred after all, but this mid-sized township with its friendly inhabitants made her feel more welcome than her birthplace ever had.
Hopefully that would still be the case once her reason for being here was revealed. Not that everyone she came into contact with would know who she was or what she’d come here to do.
If she could get away with it, no one would find out. She’d keep to herself, find out the information she needed, then leave without anyone the wiser.
A couple of weeks at most.
Regrettably, Mallory knew the situation was far too complicated and would take a lot longer. She’d taken a six-month lease on an apartment instead of staying at a hotel because in spite of her initial plans to get in and get out, she knew it wasn’t likely.
She knew her stay in Sunnyville, while temporary, wasn’t going to be short.
Donna had begged her to come earlier and Mallory had tried. She’d flown into San Francisco and driven the almost two hours to Sunnyville for a day six months ago but hadn’t been able to locate the person she’d sought.
After her failed trip, her stepmother had hired a private investigator and what the man discovered had almost destroyed them both.
How they hadn’t known about any of the things in the PI’s file was just as much of a shock as what was in it.
Her stepmother had taken it hard. For weeks she’d stayed at home, in her nightie, barely leaving the bedroom she’d shared with Mallory’s father, refusing calls from her friends—from Mallory.
It had gotten to the point where Mallory had thought she would have to call their family doctor and get Donna on anti-depressants.
But finally, her stepmother had pulled herself together and now Donna wanted to know if she could have contact with her grandson. Which meant contacting her grandson’s father.
There was no point contacting her daughter.
No. Mallory’s stepsister would only spew more lies and after the last lot and the devastation left in their wake mere weeks after Jeffery Dawson’s death, neither she nor Donna wanted to deal with that again.
But Maddox was a different story.
Donna deserved to know the boy, and he her. She’d be a wonderful grandmother and Mallory would do everything she could to make sure the two met and established a relationship. They just needed to approach it in a way that didn’t do Maddox—or his father—any more harm.
She had already taken the first steps in her plan. Tomorrow, she had an appointment to speak with a detective at the Sunnyville PD. He’d been the arresting officer when Renee had been charged with kidnapping her own son.
