That Thing Between You and Me

37. The Truth Behind Everything

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

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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 --"