When I Found You by Brenda Novak
Three
After being awakened by Lucas at three in the morning and getting him back in bed, Natasha couldn’t drop off again. Pulling on a cardigan over the gray silk tank top and matching shorts she’d received at her bridal shower almost seven years ago, she slipped down the stairs and past Mack, who was sleeping on the old couch from the den, to go outside and sit on the front steps, where she could gaze at her new town and feel the cool breeze rustling the leaves of the maple tree taking up most of the front yard.
So much had changed in her life. And in such a short time. Only eighteen months ago, she’d been getting her credentials and negotiating contracts with the various health insurance companies that were popular in LA, signing a small business loan for financing and investigating medical record software so she could run her office as efficiently as possible. She’d also been spending a great deal of time with a commercial real estate agent, searching for the perfect location for a pediatrician. Instead of buying into an existing practice, or purchasing the practice of a doctor who was retiring, she’d chosen to start out on her own. She’d been eager to set the tone for how her patients would be treated from the very beginning. Even though Los Angeles was a big city, she wanted to offer small-town care, the kind where a doctor took a greater interest in getting to know her patients and maintained a lasting relationship with each one.
She’d expected her first few years to be tough, knew it would take time to build a practice, and cash flow would be a challenge. Being a doctor wasn’t only difficult when it came to getting through school and paying back a mountain of student debt. Insurance companies took so long to pay after she’d seen a patient. And it was difficult to collect from people who left the office without taking care of their share.
But she’d known the challenges she’d face and had still been optimistic, especially when, in her first three months, she’d outpaced all her projections. She’d thought she was going to make it, that she would continue to grow and become an important part of the community—had never dreamed that something she couldn’t have planned for, something unforeseen, would bring her down.
When it could’ve been so many other things—why was it that?
She sighed as she leaned back and stared up at the sky. If not for Maxine Green, she’d probably be back in Laguna Beach, giving babies their immunizations and helping sick kids get well before going home to Ace and Lucas at night. Her marriage could’ve withstood her success; it just couldn’t withstand her failure. Ace wasn’t capable of supporting her, financially or emotionally. He’d always relied on her to support him, and she’d done her best to play that role—until she just...couldn’t.
The screen door creaked and she twisted around to see Mack. He was barefoot, like she was, but wearing shorts he’d made himself by cutting the legs off a pair of sweatpants. They rode low on his narrow hips, and he wasn’t wearing a shirt, so she could see his well-muscled torso—something that would be better for her not to see.
Besides being only half-dressed, his hair was mussed from sleep, but he didn’t seem remotely self-conscious. She’d never known him to be self-conscious. Vain, either. That was part of his appeal. He was just himself, always. With thick, curly hair he often let grow too long, a prominent chin and jaw—one that sported a five-o’clock shadow almost immediately after he shaved—eyes that somehow saw the best in everything and a pair of dimples that gave him a megawatt smile, it was sometimes difficult for her to look away. His teeth weren’t quite straight, and one of his incisors had a slight chip, but even those imperfections added to the overall character of his face.
Damn him, she thought, wearily. After everything she’d been through, she should not be feeling the same old attraction.
She supposed some battles she’d have to fight forever.
“Having trouble sleeping?” he asked.
Mustering what she could of her defenses, she wrapped her cardigan tighter around her. “Lucas woke up. He was disoriented, what with being in a new place. After I helped him find the bathroom, I couldn’t go back to sleep. What about you? What are you doing up?”
He sat on the step beside her. “He must’ve come downstairs after you took him to the bathroom.”
“He woke you?” she asked in surprise.
He lifted a hand. “It’s fine. He’s on the couch. I’ll take his bed when I go in. At least he’s back to sleep.”
“His bed will be way too small for you. I’ll move him. I’m sorry.” She’d have to risk waking Lucas again when she carried him upstairs; it wasn’t as if Mack had many options. Other than boxes, the beds and that couch were all they’d brought in. By the time they’d cleaned the house, they didn’t have the time or energy to haul any more.
“He’s quite a kid.”
She was glad Mack liked Lucas, couldn’t help wanting him to. “A handful,” she acknowledged. “But I never dreamed he’d bother you. The divorce has him missing Ace, I guess.”
She’d never seen Luke take to someone so quickly. Of course, it would be Mack.
His sidelong glance gave her the impression he had something weighty to say, something beyond the parameters of what they’d discussed since he’d come to LA. Afraid for what that might be, she stiffened, but when the intense expression left his face and he turned away, she could tell he’d decided not to go forward with it and relaxed.
“Must be tough to deal with what your nurse did,” he said instead. “Is that what keeps you up at night?”
She generally avoided talking about this, as well. It was too fresh, too painful. But with Mack, she preferred this topic to some of the others he could’ve chosen. At least this had nothing to do with them. “Part of the reason.”
“What’s the rest?”
“The divorce. The loss of my practice. Having to move and work as a school nurse after all the effort I put into becoming a doctor. Take your pick.” She frowned, feeling the terrible burden of regret, which somehow grew heavier at night. “But mostly what my nurse did.”
“I’ve never heard of anyone doing anything like that before. You must be devastated.”
“There are so many emotions zinging around inside me I don’t know how to cope with them all, so I try to ignore the crushing pressure on my heart. I have a son who’s depending on me. I can’t give way.”
“You’re going to be fine,” he said. “You’ll get over this.”
“Maybe I will, but what about the family who lost their little girl? I doubt they will. I became a doctor because I wanted to help people, especially children. To think that my nurse would purposely harm my patients...” She squeezed her eyes closed as she remembered all the times she’d had to call an ambulance to her office, not realizing that Maxine was capable of doing the things she’d done—and then the worst day of her life, when the child she’d been trying to save didn’t survive. “That’s just...beyond my understanding.”
He rested his elbows on his knees. “I don’t get her motivation. What did she have to gain?”
“Attention. The adrenaline rush of causing the alarm. Feeling important and in the thick of it. In some misguided way, I believe she wanted to put these children in danger so that we could then be praised for saving them. That’s the closest I can come to explaining, after reading everything I can find on Munchausen by proxy.”
“So she was doing you a favor,” he said sarcastically.
“She painted it that way once I confronted her.”
“That’s crazy. I don’t know how she lives with herself.”
“I don’t, either. After what’s happened, I can barely go on.”
He nudged her knee with his own. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
She would’ve said nothing and let it go at that, but she felt obligated to clarify. She knew he was especially sensitive to any reference to suicide. His mother had killed herself with pills when he was just a little boy, and he’d been the one to find her. Natasha hadn’t been intimating that she’d do anything like that, but because of his background, she could see why his mind might automatically go in that direction. “It means I can’t help feeling responsible.”
There. She’d said it. What she felt in her heart but had been terrified to say for fear just speaking the words aloud would establish them as fact. Had she been more aware, more diligent, more intuitive—instead of focusing so much effort and energy on her crumbling marriage—maybe she would’ve recognized what was going on much sooner. And that could’ve saved little Amelia Grossman’s life.
Mack took her hand. “Listen to me, Tash. It wasn’t your fault.”
“How do you know?” she asked as she stared glumly down at their entwined fingers.
“Because I know you.”
That simple answer caused the tears that’d been lurking just below the surface all day to well up again. Guilt and doubt ate at her constantly, especially on long nights like this one, when she was prone to blame herself for the divorce, too. After all, she’d known from the beginning that she didn’t love Ace nearly enough to make that kind of commitment. She’d just been grateful someone wanted her, and that smacked so much of her mother it made her sick. “I wish I would’ve wised up sooner,” she said softly. “You’d never expect...never think...that someone you know and like...”
He squeezed her hand. “You had no clue and you put a stop to what she was doing as soon as you learned.”
That wasn’t good enough. She’d been too late for one child, and she didn’t know if she could live with that. She wanted to tell him so, but the words jammed up in her throat.
Desperate not to allow herself to lean on Mack for the emotional support her own husband hadn’t been able to give her, she pulled her hand away under the guise of wiping an errant tear. “We had to call an ambulance to my office four times in the first eight months my practice was open.”
“I’m guessing that’s a high number of emergencies?”
“For dealing with routine office visits, yes. I kept racking my brain for the cause. At first, I thought it might be a strange allergen from the tenant improvements. We had new carpet and paint put in when I leased the space. After I ruled that out, I thought maybe a weird virus was going around, and we were unwittingly passing it from one child to the next because our cleaning service wasn’t being thorough enough. So I started sterilizing the place myself every night, which only put me home later and caused that much more friction between Ace and me. I never dreamed what was happening could be purposeful, that it could be Maxine. She seemed so nice, so normal, so innocent. She’d cry whenever we had something go wrong, and I would have to comfort her!”
“That’s evil,” he mumbled. “How was she doing it?”
“She was using a muscle relaxant, one that’s effective in small doses and very hard to detect, and that would send the child into cardiac arrest.”
“Where was she getting it?”
“From my own medicine stash, which is even more disturbing. But the closet was locked, and I was the only one with a key. Plus, I checked those shelves constantly. None of the medications appeared to have been tampered with and none were missing.”
“So what was going on?”
“She’d stolen my key, had her locksmith roommate make a copy of it and replaced it before I even noticed. He testified in court that he duplicated it for her because she said she needed it—didn’t even question why. My attorney thinks he was hoping to curry favor with her, thinking he might get lucky.”
“But you said none of the medications were missing.”
“They didn’t appear to be missing. Succinylcholine is a clear liquid that comes in a vial. She’d used a syringe to draw it out before filling the vial back up with water. It wasn’t until after the Grossmans lost their eighteen-month-old daughter that I overheard a Dateline episode Ace was watching about a nurse who killed his love interest with the same thing.” Her stomach hurt as she remembered that night. “It was late, and I was trying to clean up the kitchen. I hadn’t been to work in several days. After Amelia, I closed the practice for a week, couldn’t even go in. But I got in the car that night, drove over to my office and tore that closet apart using a magnifying glass to examine every bottle and package. That’s when I found the needle marks.”
“I’m so sorry.”
The anger and betrayal Natasha felt, along with everything else, made her grit her teeth. “I wish to God I’d never hired her, wish her application had never crossed my desk. I felt sorry for her, if you can believe that, because she was alone in a new place. She wanted to come over to my house all the time—now I think she wanted to be me—and I allowed it because I was trying to be a friend.”
“Just hearing about it is enraging.” He shook his head. “How’d you meet her? Where’d she come from?”
“Pennsylvania. She answered my ad, told me she’d recently been through a rough breakup—wanted kids but her ex wouldn’t hear of it—was tired of the cold winters back East and wanted to move to California. And she came with a glowing recommendation from the hospital where she’d worked before, so...how was I to know?”
“They liked her at that hospital?”
“Not really. It came out in court that they’d had several babies die under her watch. They were being sued by some of the parents and didn’t want to risk more trouble. So they asked her to resign, and she agreed as long as they gave her a recommendation so that she could move on.”
“They knew she was dangerous and gave it to her anyway?”
“They had their suspicions. But they didn’t have proof. They just wanted to be rid of her. And I relied on their recommendation. Her background check came back clean, and there wasn’t anything in her file that told me she might be dangerous.”
“You should sue the hospital.”
“That’s what everyone says. And I’ve thought about it. But it would take a lot of time, energy and money—and if I win, it would be the hospital that would pay, not the people who are responsible.”
“Don’t tell me they still work there.”
“No. They’ve been fired. I could sue the hospital anyway, of course, but do I really want something that terrible consuming so much of my life? Those things aren’t quick. And there’s no guarantee I’ll win, even if I go through the agony.” She preferred to bring an end to that chapter of her life as soon as possible—cut away the negativity and move on. “I’ve decided it’ll be better for me, and Lucas, if I just start over.”
He scrubbed a hand over his face. “Well, you did everything you could. The death of that child is on the person who gave her the recommendation, not you. No other doctor could’ve seen her coming.”
“That’s what I keep telling myself.” She swallowed hard. “I just wish I could believe it.”
He put his arm around her, but she was so tempted to lean into him that she leaned away instead, and he let his arm drop.
They sat in silence for several seconds. Then he said, “I’m sorry, you know.”
She could tell by his tone and manner that he was now broaching an entirely different subject. “I don’t want to talk about us.”
“Okay, but...can I just say one thing?”
“No.”
“Come on, Tash. You’re the one who never came back, not for good.”
Only because she couldn’t take the soul-crushing rejection. Because she was determined to build a meaningful life instead of sticking around Whiskey Creek with her heart in her hand, hoping he’d eventually see her differently. She refused to beg for a man’s love the way her mother did; she’d seen how far that had gotten Anya. “If that’s the way you see it, I’ll take the blame.”
“I’m not blaming you. I’m... I want you to know how sorry I am that—”
“You don’t owe me any apologies,” she interrupted, too afraid to let him finish. “You’ve done a lot for me over the years, and I’m grateful.” He’d also smashed her heart into a thousand tiny pieces over and over again, which had eventually caused her to marry someone she shouldn’t have, but she wasn’t going to try to explain how he’d triggered that cascade of bad decisions. Mack couldn’t love her the way she’d always loved him. Period. End of story. Given that, nothing else mattered.
“I know I’ve hurt you, and I feel terrible about it,” he said. “That was never my intention. I’ve always wanted you to be happy, tried to look out for you.”
“I’ve just been through the worst year of my life,” she said. “I can’t deal with this right now, okay?”
The reedy sound of her voice must’ve gotten through to him. He pursed his lips as he studied her. “All right.”
“I’m getting tired.” She covered a fake yawn. “I think I’ll go in and move Lucas so that we can get back to bed. See you in the morning.”
He didn’t answer. Neither did he follow her inside.
After the screen door shut, Mack sighed. Natasha wouldn’t trust him. In the three days they’d been together, she’d been careful to show her appreciation for his help, but she remained wary of anything too reminiscent of where they’d been before.
He couldn’t blame her. He’d let her down. But whenever he looked at the past, he couldn’t see how he could’ve done things any differently. Except for that Christmas seven years ago when his desire for her had simply overcome his restraint, he’d been as circumspect as he could be, especially considering how difficult it had been almost from the start.
She’d been only sixteen when he met her, and yet she’d let him know right away that she wanted him. He’d thought it was a childish crush, at first, but she never wavered. And when he started to feel the same attraction, he became alarmed. He didn’t want to be the kind of lech who would move in on a sixteen-year-old! Besides, he and his brothers had let her and her mother come live at the house to help Tasha get through school, which would’ve made a physical relationship with her even more predatory—as if he was taking advantage of the fact that she didn’t have a mom decent enough to look after her properly.
He’d never admitted his true feelings—to anyone, especially her. He’d resisted even when she came into his room right before she left for college and told him she was in love with him and wanted to give him her virginity. Although she’d been nineteen at the time, technically an adult, he’d refused because he’d been thinking of what was best for her. In his mind, nineteen was still too young. Not only was his father still married to her mother at the time, he’d known if he took her to bed, she wouldn’t leave. She’d stay in Whiskey Creek to be with him, and he wanted her to have the opportunity to experience more of life, to see what was outside their small town before she tied herself down to him or anyone else.
He cursed under his breath at the memory of how difficult that night had been. But even if there hadn’t been such an age difference between them, he couldn’t do anything that would embarrass or humiliate his brothers. He wasn’t going to make it any harder for them to live down the stigma of what their parents had done. If not for Dylan, Aaron, Rod and Grady, he didn’t know where he’d be. His older brothers were the ones who’d always looked out for him. They’d all warned him to stay away from Natasha. And he’d listened—until that night in Whiskey Creek when he’d finally succumbed. After that, he’d freaked out because he couldn’t believe he’d crossed that line, and while he was trying to come to terms with whether or not he could allow himself to take what he wanted, she’d gone back to seeing Ace.
“Damn it,” he muttered and scrolled through the photos he’d saved on his phone. They were pictures of Lucas that Natasha had sent to Dylan periodically and Dylan had shared on their brothers’ group chat. Mack had saved every single one of them, because it was the only way he could watch Lucas grow without running the risk of screwing up Natasha’s life again.
Until this opportunity arose.
He wasn’t sure how things would go while he was here. What’d happened in the past had created too many scars. But now that Natasha’s life had already been disrupted, he wasn’t leaving until he learned about Lucas.
And if it was what he thought it was, he was definitely going to be part of his son’s life.
