When I Found You by Brenda Novak
Five
Mack left right after dinner. Natasha let Lucas help her unpack the kitchen, but once she got him into bed, she spent the remainder of the evening pacing. Was she facing yet another big upheaval?
If the paternity test came back positive, and Mack moved to Los Angeles, he’d be close enough to visit Lucas. Which meant he’d become a fixture in her life, too. There’d be phone calls to coordinate visitation, and he’d come to the house to take their son and bring him home. Maybe he’d even stay over once in a while. And she’d have to be amenable. How could she not be accommodating after everything he’d done for her?
And yet...how would she cope with having Mack back in her life? With having the man she’d always wanted to love her love her son instead?
Her phone began to ring. She could hear the vibration on the counter. Grabbing it, she checked the screen. Dylan was trying to reach her. She didn’t hear from him often, and they’d spoken recently, so she wondered if he was calling because he couldn’t get hold of Mack.
She pressed the talk button as she went out onto the front porch, where the katydids were singing and the air was cooling off as it grew late. “Hey, Dyl.”
“Tash, how are you?”
She sank onto the top step. Dylan was like a big brother to her. She loved him but also resented the fact that Mack had always put Dylan and his other brothers first, that he’d chosen to abide by their sense of propriety over being with her.
But Mack and his brothers were especially close and incredibly loyal to each other. They’d had to be to survive. So she supposed she should’ve expected that she would never quite be one of them—and yet, because they’d taken her and her mother in when they were homeless, she would be off-limits in a romantic sense. “Hanging in there,” she said. “What about you?”
“The same. It’s crazy busy at the shop.”
“That’s a good problem to have. How’re Cheyenne and Kellan?”
“Great. Chey’s now a beekeeper. We have a colony in our backyard. Not sure if I mentioned that the last time we talked. And Kellan is enjoying summer until football practice starts next month.”
“He’s growing up fast.”
“He sure is,” Dylan said. “How’s the move?”
“I’m managing.” She decided not to mention Mack. She was so used to Mack downplaying any attention he gave her that she’d made a habit of doing the same.
“From what I hear, you didn’t get a very good divorce attorney.”
Mack must’ve shared that recently, because even he hadn’t known much about her divorce until a couple of days ago. “She did her job.”
“Not according to Mack. He insists you got fleeced, which makes me feel terrible. I offered to help. Why didn’t you take the money and get a decent lawyer?”
Because she didn’t want to go even deeper into debt. And when she accepted their help, she fell more firmly into the “sister” category, something she’d been fighting ever since she’d fallen in love with Mack. Yes, along with her mother, they’d taken her in for three years when she was in high school. But they’d been adults at the time; she was the only minor. She hadn’t been raised with them or by them. And she would’ve traded everything the Amos brothers had ever done for her if only it would also have changed the nature of her relationship with Mack. She’d wanted him that badly.
But what they could’ve had together was in the past, she reminded herself. She wasn’t going to let her obsession with Mack dominate her life anymore. She’d made that decision when she married Ace, had cut all emotional ties—the ones she could cut, anyway. Now that she was divorced, and Mack was coming around again, it could get difficult. She wasn’t stupid. But she was determined to guard her heart and not wind up the brokenhearted young woman she’d once been. She would do anything to avoid that. “Because I didn’t want to fight,” she said. “I just wanted out.”
“I can understand that, but now you have to pay spousal support? That’s bullshit. Why can’t he work?”
That Ace made no real effort to support himself grated on her, as well. The men she’d admired most—the Amos brothers—worked hard. But when she’d been negotiating the divorce, she’d been so consumed with grief over the loss of Amelia Grossman that she hadn’t had the strength or the presence of mind to make sure that their finances and belongings were divided fairly. She simply hadn’t cared enough about physical objects and money to stop Ace from taking advantage of her. A child had been lost. “It’s only for the next three years.”
“Only?”he echoed, clearly perturbed. “What about all the student debt you’re carrying? Do you have enough to get by?”
She hoped he hadn’t been told she’d been unable to rent the moving van. “I’ll be fine, Dyl.”
After a slight pause, he said, “Would you tell me if you needed anything?”
“Of course.”
He sighed. “Since I’m not there, I can only take your word for it. But Mack will be closer to you now. I guess he’ll make sure.”
“Los Angeles is an hour and a half away. Mack and I won’t even see each other.”
She knew that statement was dependent on Lucas’s paternity, but he didn’t. Even still, he said, “Oh, really.”
“Yes, really,” she said, irritated by the skepticism in his response.
“Okay.” He backed off, but she could tell it was only to placate her. “By the way, I saw your mother last night for the first time in a long while.”
Natasha wanted to continue to insist that Mack wasn’t going to be a big part of her life—only as much as she had to allow if it turned out that he was indeed Lucas’s father. But with Lucas’s paternity still up in the air, she decided that now was not the time to keep going after that. “Where was she?” she asked, allowing herself to be distracted instead.
“Are you ready for this?”
She sat up straighter. The simple answer was no. Her mother had always been an embarrassment, had chosen the exact wrong thing to say or do in almost every situation. “That’s ominous.”
“She was at my father’s.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I’m not. I think they’re seeing each other again. She might even be living there.”
She shook her head. “They’d be stupid to get back together. It came to blows there at the end.” And she knew her mother was at least as much to blame as J.T. Anya could get abusive when she drank.
“Not only do they fight like cats and dogs, neither one of them will stand up and be responsible for themselves. But they aren’t the type to learn from past mistakes, or they’d both be in a much different situation right now.”
“You deserved a better father,” she said. “You all did.”
“And you deserved a better mother. But you’ve got us, so who needs her,” he joked.
“I can’t thank you enough for everything you’ve done.” She was truly grateful, had no idea what would’ve become of her without them. And yet...she knew all too well that having her life intersect with the Amos brothers—Mack in particular—had been as much a curse as it was a blessing.
It was an hour after Natasha had hung up with Dylan and gone back inside to unpack her bedroom that her phone went off again. Rocking back on her heels from where she was crouched in front of the dresser, putting away her clothes, she reached up to get her phone.
It was Ace.
“Oh great.” Her ex-husband was the last person she wanted to talk to, but she knew it wasn’t reasonable to think she could cut him out of her life entirely. That would require some time, possibly a lot of it.
Taking a moment to find her center, she answered. “Hello?”
“You make it to Silver Springs okay?” he asked.
As if he cared. He knew she’d have Lucas and would be loading and driving a big truck—something she had no experience doing—and yet he hadn’t offered to lend a hand. “Yeah. Everything’s fine.”
“How’d you do it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t tell me you moved all by yourself.”
He’d been hoping she’d need him, that she’d call and ask for his assistance so that he could show her what she’d be missing out on in the future.
Sometimes he was so transparent. He may have asked for the divorce, but he hadn’t really wanted it. He’d threatened to leave her to shock her into lavishing him with more attention and apologies for what they were going through. After all, she was the one who’d hired Maxine Green. Nothing bad would’ve happened had she not done that (he said). Instead, his threat to dissolve their marriage—at a time when she was going through so much in other regards—had broken the last of her loyalty and commitment, and she’d realized she wasn’t happy, either. “No, I had someone help.”
“Who?”
“A friend.” She was reluctant to give him Mack’s name. She knew he’d say something sarcastic. She’d made the mistake of telling him about Mack—not everything but some of it—and he’d never forgotten or let it go. Although she’d since tried to act as though Mack had never been anything more than a childish crush, he’d thrown Mack up to her again and again, whenever they got into an argument. What? I can’t compare with the great Mack Amos? I’m not the man he is?
He wasn’t. But she’d never said that. She’d revealed too much that night, after they’d both had several glasses of wine, and he would never let her take it back.
“What can I do for you?” she asked. They’d already agreed that he’d pick up Lucas a week from Friday. So why was he calling now?
“It’s not what you can do for me. It’s what I can do for you,” he announced.
That would be a first. She was being sarcastic herself, but he had to be the most selfish person she’d ever met. “I don’t understand.”
“I ran across something of yours. Something I’m pretty sure you’ll want back.”
Natasha couldn’t imagine what that could be. Some of Lucas’s baby pictures? She’d want those, but Ace would never give them to her. Just to be spiteful, she doubted he’d even allow her to make copies. Could it be a piece of her jewelry? She’d never owned anything of much value. She had the locket Mack had given her at her high school graduation. Other than that, she didn’t have any jewelry she particularly cared about. Her wedding ring had been the only thing Ace had ever given her. It’d been expensive, but his parents had paid for it, and she’d already pawned it for $2,500 to be able to stay afloat until she could get on her feet again. “What is it?”
“A box of your childhood pictures and stuff.”
She got up and walked over to the window. He had that box? The pictures in it were the only ones she had from when she was little. Her mother wasn’t much for hanging on to things—she’d been too transient—so Natasha felt lucky to have that much. “How did that wind up in your stuff?”
“I have no clue.”
“Where’d you find it?”
“In an even bigger box with my yearbooks and other things I took out of the attic. You must’ve stuck it in there after we got married and forgot about it.”
That was plausible. She’d been so busy trying to be a wife and mother while finishing med school, and then fulfill her residency, she hadn’t given much thought to anything else. She’d been trying to outdistance her past, not dwell on it. “I’m sorry about that.”
“No problem. Would you like me to drive it out to you tomorrow?”
Absolutely not.She didn’t want to have any unnecessary contact with him.
She considered asking him to mail it instead, but she doubted he’d go to the trouble. And if he got the impression she didn’t want to see him, she wouldn’t put it past him to toss it all. He was bitter about the divorce, far more so than she was, even though he was the one who’d first wanted to call it quits.
“Sure. That’d be great,” she said. But then she thought of another solution. It wasn’t perfect, but it was better than having Ace come to Silver Springs.
“Actually, my friend’s in LA returning the moving van right now. If you’ll just set it out on the stoop, I could ask him to swing by and pick it up. Would that be okay?”
“Him?”he said.
She winced. “Yeah.”
“Who is it?”
“No one you’ve met.”
“What’s his name?”
“Does it matter?”
“I just want to know his name,” he said.
It sounded as though he was getting upset, so she relented. “It’s Mack, okay?”
“Mack Amos? From the family of rowdy boys who raised you?”
“They didn’t raise me. They let me and my mother live with them for three years so I could finish high school.”
“Oh, that’s right. That’s when you fell in love with the youngest one.”
“Nothing happened with Mack when I was living there, and you know that.”
“Because you were too young, and he was too honorable.”
Hearing the sarcasm in those words, she ground her teeth. “He was.”
“Is that why you’ve never gotten over him?”
Thank God she’d never told Ace about the night she’d spent with Mack over Christmas. She’d never felt as though she owed that to him. As far as she knew, he’d been seeing other women during the same period. “I’ve told you before—that was just a childish crush.”
“Really? Because sometimes I wonder if Mack Amos is the reason I could never really break through.”
“Let’s not start this,” she said. Ace always complained that she was too aloof, too hard to engage, too indifferent to him, even though she’d tried hard to be otherwise. “I gave our marriage everything I had.”
“No, you didn’t. You held back. You didn’t even care when I asked for a divorce.”
“I’ve been very fair with you all along, including the divorce. I gave you everything you asked for, even though I could’ve gotten out of spousal support. I don’t have an income right now myself, not until I start my new job.”
“Your earning potential is a lot greater than mine, since I was the one to make the sacrifice of staying home with Lucas.”
Sacrifice? It was hard not to laugh. He hadn’t stayed home to do her any favors. He’d done it so that he could game 24/7. But she decided not to say that. Why let this argument escalate? “Whatever. I still gave you what you wanted.”
“Out of guilt. Not love.”
“Not guilt,” she insisted. “I never did anything that wrong. So, please, just put the box out and let my friendpick it up.”
“Your friend. Sure, why not? He can come by. Give him my address and tell him the box is here waiting for him.”
Something in his voice made her uneasy. “You’d be stupid to mess with Mack, Ace.”
“Oh yeah? Is that a warning?”
“Just a heads-up.”
“You think he could take me?”
Easily.But she didn’t want them to wind up in a fight, and she hadn’t told Ace that to make him feel inferior. “No. He’s not part of this. He’s just helping me move.”
“Then what are you worried about?”
What was she worried about? Although Ace could get angry and say some stupid things, he’d never been violent. She’d had almost no contact with Mack since they’d married—certainly not the type that should make Ace think Mack had interfered in any way. Besides, they were divorced. She could hang out with whomever she pleased. “Nothing. Never mind. So you’re putting it out?”
“Yep. Right now.”
She figured she’d talk to Mack, see what he thought. If he wasn’t comfortable going there, she’d drive over as soon as he returned so that someone would be home with Lucas through the night. As much as she’d tried to outdistance her past, she hated to risk losing her personal items for good, when she had so little from her childhood to begin with. “Okay, thanks,” she said and disconnected so that she could call Mack.
He answered on the first ring. “I just got the truck back,” he announced. “Heading your way now.”
“Have you already left the LA area?”
“Not quite. Why?”
“My ex-husband has a box of pictures and other stuff that means a lot to me. It’s all I have of my childhood, and I’m afraid of what he might do to it if I don’t get it from him right away. I know it’s late, so I feel bad asking, but he said he’d set it outside if—”
“You want me to grab it? Of course. Where does he live?”
Mack acted like it would be no big deal. And it shouldn’t be. Maybe she was reading too much into Ace’s response. Mack had nothing to do with their marriage falling apart—other than existing. “I’m a little hesitant to give it to you,” she admitted.
“Is it that far?”
“It shouldn’t be. It’s Burbank, but he was acting strange on the phone. I’m afraid he might give you a hard time just because you’re helping me.”
“Why would that be any of his business?”
“You know how messy divorces can be. Old feelings, resentment.”
“Well, if there are any hard feelings, I think it’s better that I pick it up instead of you.”
“Except I don’t want him to start anything.”
“I’m not worried about that.”
Should he be? She hesitated while weighing it all out in her mind. No. It should be no big deal. Mack was already in LA. If Ace set out her memorabilia, he could grab it and the two men wouldn’t even have to see each other.
“I’ve already turned around,” Mack said. “Text me his address.”
She crossed to her bed and dropped onto it. “Okay. I’m probably worried for nothing. You’d only be picking up a small box.”
“Right. I’ve never even met this man. Why would we have a problem?”
“Exactly.” Feeling better about the whole thing—and hoping she could get her pictures and other mementos before something happened to them—she provided Ace’s address.
