When I Found You by Brenda Novak

Six

The porch light was on, giving Mack the impression Ace was expecting him, but he couldn’t find a box, a bag or anything else at the front door. He considered calling Natasha to ask for Ace’s phone number—he knew Ace had roommates and didn’t want to wake the whole household by pounding on the door if he didn’t have to—but he was afraid Natasha had fallen asleep, and if he disturbed her she’d be up for the rest of the night.

After checking one more time around the stoop and nearby bushes, he lifted his hand to knock, but the door opened before he could make contact.

“You must be Mack.”

A tall, slender man stood there in a tank top, cutoffs and flip-flops, someone who looked like the quintessential Southern California surfer, with gleaming teeth, a deep tan, a leather necklace and bleached bangs that were so long he had to keep flipping them out of his eyes. “Yeah, I’m Mack,” he said, instantly wary. Something wasn’t right: he could tell. What kind of game was Ace playing? Why hadn’t he just left the box outside, as he’d said he would? “And you’re Ace, right?”

“That’s right.”

In an attempt to be polite, Mack stuck out his hand, but Ace wouldn’t take it, so Mack said, “Can I get what I came for?”

“In a sec. First, I have something I’d like to say to you.”

Mack took a step back. He could hear the suppressed emotion in Ace’s voice. “What’s that? Because I don’t think there’s anything to say. We don’t even know each other.”

“For one thing, I’d like to hear you say you’ve never slept with my wife.”

That was a loaded question, one Mack knew he had to handle carefully. He couldn’t categorically deny any sexual contact with Natasha. What if Lucas turned out to be his? How would he explain that? He hadn’t touched Natasha since she’d been married, but clarifying would give away that he had touched her before. “I don’t see why that’s any of your business—not at this point.”

“She lived with you and your brothers for three years when she was only sixteen. I can’t believe none of you tapped a piece of ass that fine and that accessible.”

Mack felt his muscles bunch but told himself to keep a cool head. “As you’ve mentioned, she was only sixteen. I was twenty-five. Sleeping with her would not only have been morally wrong, it would’ve been a crime.”

“And you’re claiming that stopped you? When she was dying to fuck you and her mother was always so stoned she had no one to look out for her?”

Even Ace’s choice of words were inflammatory. “We were there to look after her,” Mack said, keeping his tone measured.

“You expect me to believe you didn’t do anything with her before she turned eighteen? You’re lying, and that’s why she’s so screwed up she can’t love anyone but you.”

“I didn’t touch her when she lived with us,” Mack reiterated. “It wasn’t like that.” But there were certainly moments when the situation nearly got away from him. The harder he’d tried to keep his thoughts and desires under control, the harder she’d tried to make him change his mind. Sometimes she wouldn’t close her door all the way when she was changing, if she knew he was the only one at home, or she’d purposely walk back to her room after a shower in nothing but a towel. Even when his brothers were around, she’d brush up against him at every opportunity. She’d kept him so sexually frustrated he’d slept with a lot of other women, just to satisfy that urge. By the time she’d moved out at nineteen, it had been all he could do not to give her exactly what she was asking for—until they’d both had their fill.

But, somehow, he’d managed to restrain himself for seven more years. It wasn’t until that Christmas, when she was in her twenties, that he hadn’t been able to deny himself.

“You’re so full of shit,” Ace scoffed.

“Look, is there a point to this?” Mack asked. “Because it’s late, I’ve got a long drive ahead of me and I’d just as soon be on my way.”

“Actually, I do have a point.”

“And that is...”

“Lucas is my point.”

The hair stood up on the back of Mack’s neck. “Your son?”

“That’s just it. Is he my son?” Ace asked, his eyes sparking with tightly leashed fury.

“Far as I know.” Mack wasn’t about to say anything more, not if he could help it. First, he had to establish Lucas’s paternity. Then they could figure out a way to deal with the results.

“You’re saying you don’t think he could be yours?” After reaching inside the house, Ace held up a small journal, which he opened and began to read aloud. “‘God, I’m tired. And I have a big test coming up. I need to concentrate, and yet I can’t quit thinking about Mack finally stripping off our clothes and pressing inside me. Nothing in my life has ever felt so good. I didn’t want to come, because then I knew he’d come and it would all be over. But it was impossible to hold back. I’ve never had a night like that one. The only problem is, I’m not sure what I’m going to tell Ace. Do I stay in the relationship—or get out of it?’”

“That’s enough,” Mack grumbled.

Ace sneered at him but seemed to be choking up at the same time. “Do you want me to give you the date of this entry?”

“No.” He already knew the date. It had been two days before Christmas over seven years ago. He hadn’t been able to forget that night, either.

“That stupid bitch lied to me!” he cried. “She told me she loved me. I never knew she’d been with anyone else, not after I started seeing her. I assumed a pregnancy meant the baby was mine.”

Mack winced. “To be fair, I don’t think she knows any different.”

“She had to have known there was a possibility!” His voice had been rising all along; now he was shouting. “Tell her I don’t want anything to do with her ever again. Tell her I will never even look at Lucas, never come near him, never be his dad. She used me. She used me because she couldn’t have you. And now she’s wrecked my life,” he said and slammed the door.

Natasha would never have purposely used Ace or anyone else. She wasn’t the type. She must’ve thought she loved him enough to make it work—to create the family she’d always wanted and never had. Or she wouldn’t have married him. But Mack still felt partially responsible. The way he’d responded to that night had been wrong. He was sorry for that, but he couldn’t change the past. So what did he do now? And, more specifically, how did he react in this moment? Ace still had Natasha’s journal and pictures, and he obviously wasn’t planning on giving them back.

Mack stood on the stoop, trying to decide if he should risk a fight by pushing the issue. He wanted to, but even if he banged on the door, he doubted Ace would answer.

“What a mess,” he muttered as he returned to his truck.

Once he was behind the wheel, he called Natasha.

Her voice was thick with sleep when she answered. “You okay?” she asked.

“I’m fine.”

“Did you get my stuff?”

“Um, ran into a small wrinkle there.”

“What happened?” Her voice was much clearer now. The surprise had woken her up.

“Ace is a little upset.”

“Why?”

“Apparently, he found an old journal inside your box of pictures.”

“A journal?”

“Yep.”

She went quiet. Then she said, “Oh. My. God.”

“Yeah.”

“He read it?”

“He did.” Mack didn’t add that he’d read it aloud to him, as well.

“And? Did it get ugly between you?”

“Not too bad, but he says he wants nothing more to do with you or Lucas.”

This declaration was met with silence. After she’d had a chance to process it, she said, “He doesn’t want to wait until we find out for sure?”

“He was upset, didn’t seem concerned with proof. He may come back later and demand it, but we should have the results by then.”

“I should’ve burned that journal,” she said, so low he could barely hear her.

“Don’t be too hard on yourself,” he said. “You’ve been through a lot. You’re physically and emotionally exhausted.”

“Yeah, I am,” she admitted. “And as nice as you’ve always been to me, I wish I’d never met you.”

She disconnected and Mack let his head fall onto the steering wheel. He couldn’t believe this had to happen, especially before Natasha could get back on her feet and feel strong enough to take another blow.

He started the engine and was about to head back to Silver Springs. But he couldn’t let Ace keep Natasha’s pictures. Once they were lost, they’d be gone for good. And she already had such a meager endowment from her childhood.

Putting the truck back in Park, he released his seat belt and got out. As far as he was concerned, Natasha and Lucas would both be better off without Ace. The dude could get the hell out of their lives if he wanted to, but he wasn’t going to hang on to Natasha’s belongings just to spite her.

As Mack stalked up the walkway, he saw the curtain move in the front window. Ace had been watching him. Good. Now he could open up and hand over her stuff, or Mack would bang on the door until he did. “Listen, I know you’re pissed off,” he called through the panel. “Maybe you have a right to be. What’s happened hasn’t been good for any of us, and I’m sorry if I’m to blame. But I can promise you that Natasha has never tried to hurt anyone. She’s not that kind of person. When she married you, she must’ve loved you and believed Lucas belonged to you. So give me her things, and after I take a paternity test, I’ll let you know the results. Fair enough?”

The door shuddered beneath a violent blow. “You can go to hell!” Ace shouted.

“The two of you are divorced,” Mack reasoned. “You have no right to keep her pictures. You have no use for them.”

“I’m going to burn them,” he announced. “That’s what I’m going to do, because it’s what she deserves.”

“No, you’re not,” Mack said. “There’s no way I’ll ever let you get away with that. So just give them to me and I’ll go.”

Another male voice entered the fray, someone they’d apparently disturbed with their argument: “Shut up! What’s going on? I’m trying to sleep!”

“It’s nothing,” Ace called back. “Mind your own damn business!”

“Hey, help me out here,” Mack shouted. “Ace has his ex-wife’s baby pictures, and I’m here to get them. That’s it. Once he gives me those, I’ll be gone and you can go back to sleep without all the racket.”

“I’m about to call the police,” the man threatened.

“There’s no reason to get the police involved,” Mack responded. “Just hand me her things.”

“Get the hell off my property!” Ace shouted.

“I’m not leaving until I get those pictures,” Mack said. “Go ahead and call the cops, do whatever you’ve got to do, but you’re going to have a problem with me as long as you try to hang on to Natasha’s things.”

The door flew open and a much larger man than Ace—larger than Mack, too—loomed in the opening. “Get the hell out of here!” he growled.

Mack felt his hands curl into fists. “Sorry, I can’t do that. I’m not going, which leaves you two choices—you can try to make me, or go ahead and call the cops.”

The guy glared at him before turning to Ace. “Are you being a spiteful little bitch? Do you have some of your ex-wife’s pictures?”

An argument ensued between them, but right in the middle of it, the guy must’ve realized that what Mack wanted was by the door, because he shoved a small box into Mack’s chest. “Here, these look like what you want. Take ’em and get out of here,” he said and slammed the door.

Mack quickly dug through what he’d been given. Sure enough, it was photographs of Anya and Natasha when Natasha was young, a painting she’d done as a child, her birth certificate, a small jewelry box he and his brothers had once given her for Christmas and a few other things. The journal Ace had read wasn’t in there. He must’ve set it somewhere else, somewhere his roommate didn’t notice, but Mack supposed he was lucky to have gotten as much as he did.

Deciding to accept the compromise, he carried the items he’d recovered back to the car. I have most of your stuff, he texted to Natasha, but he didn’t get a response.

Natasha woke up before Lucas, pulled on a light dressing robe and went down to see if Mack had gotten home. She’d been so upset about Ace finding her journal and reading what she’d written that she’d never expected to be able to fall back to sleep last night, certainly not before Mack arrived. She did toss and turn and stew for a while, but she’d been so exhausted that she’d eventually drifted off in spite of that. Relocating had taken all of her energy. And she’d been through so much with Ace—over the past year, in particular—she was growing immune to the upset. This was just more of the same.

Except for what it might mean for Lucas. She felt terrible for her son. Had she not kept that journal, and the paternity test Mack was about to take came back negative, Ace would never have had to know there was a possibility that he wasn’t the father. Now he’d try to punish her for what she’d done with Mack, try to paint it as a betrayal when it was really just a case of bad timing. Even then, it wasn’t as if she’d tried to trap him. He’d been the one who’d wanted to get married. He’d pressed her for months until, after Lucas was born, she’d finally relented.

Mack was asleep on the couch. Despite what she’d said to him last night, she was relieved to see that he was safe—and that he had returned in spite of her harsh words.

With a sigh, she raked her fingernails through her hair and went back upstairs to the bathroom. She had to shower and go over to New Horizons. Last night when she’d emailed Aiyana Buchanon to thank her for sending the dinner from Da Nonna, Aiyana had asked her to stop by the school this morning, take a quick tour and check out the nurse’s office to see if she was going to need any supplies that Aiyana could order before she started, and she’d agreed. Since she’d interviewed via Zoom, and had never actually visited New Horizons, she was looking forward to seeing the campus.

The hot water pounding down on her sore muscles felt so good it was difficult to get out. The old house had its problems, but water pressure wasn’t one of them.

She’d just finished putting on her makeup and drying her hair, which took forever because it was so thick, when Lucas stumbled into the bathroom.

“Where’re you going, Mommy?” he asked, still half-asleep as he squinted up at her.

She crouched to give him a hug. “To work.”

“What about me?”

“My boss would like to meet you, so I’m taking you with me. Go potty while I make breakfast. Then I’ll lay out your clothes.”

“Can I stay here with Uncle Mack?”

“No. Uncle Mack was up late. We need to let him get some rest.”

“But...will he still be here when we get back?”

After what she’d said to him, Natasha wasn’t sure. As much as she understood she’d be better off, in some ways, if he left, there was a part of her that dreaded the moment he drove off.

Damn her traitorous heart.

“I think so.”

“You don’t know?”

Last night Lucas had asked, over and over again, when Mack would be back. She knew he wasn’t going to be happy when Mack went away and felt as though she needed to prepare him for that moment. “No, I don’t know, and we can’t put any pressure on Mack, okay? He won’t be staying long. You need to remember that and not get too attached.”

Leaving him in the bathroom, she went to put on her red dress, which she paired with a white belt and heeled sandals. She stared at herself in the mirror, discouraged to see how the dress hung on her. It used to fit so nicely. But she didn’t have time to worry about how skinny she was getting.

After pulling her hair back, she squirted on some perfume and went down to make pancakes. That was when she found the small box containing her pictures sitting on the counter.

Apparently, Mack had been able to reclaim her memorabilia after all. The journal wasn’t there, but as she sifted through the photographs she would’ve lost without him, she couldn’t help regretting what she’d said on the phone last night. There was no reason he’d had to take her in when she was younger, no reason for him to provide the money she’d needed to get ready for college, no reason to stay in touch to keep her from feeling too lost and homesick that first year, no reason to come to LA to help her move or reclaim her pictures.

But he’d done all of those things.

Damn it.He always did this to her—made it impossible for her to hate him.

“Can I have strawberries on my pancake?” Lucas asked.

“We don’t have any strawberries. How about peanut butter?”

“Okay.”

Mack woke up at eight thirty, just as they were getting ready to leave. “What’s going on?”

“I have to meet my boss and take a tour of the school.”

“You can leave Lucas here with me, if you want. I can watch him.”

She thought of the paternity test he’d said he’d bought last night and felt a frisson of fear. What would it mean if Lucas was his? “No, that’s okay. Aiyana told me I could bring him, that she’d like to meet him.” She grabbed her purse and started digging through it for her keys.

“My truck’s parked behind your car. Just take it.” He got up and grabbed his fob off the counter and tossed it to her.

“Okay. Thank you.” She gestured at the box filled with her pictures. “How’d you manage that?”

He scrubbed a hand over his beard growth. “I just insisted on it.”

She lowered her voice. “And you left Ace in one piece?”

He glanced at Lucas. “Of course I did.”

“Thank you. I appreciate it.”

“No problem.”

She grabbed Lucas’s hand to lead him out, but as soon as they’d descended the porch steps, she turned around and led her son right back inside. “Mack?”

He’d opened the refrigerator. At the sound of his name, he closed the door so they could see each other. “Yeah?”

She felt an unnerving wave of tenderness as she looked at him and tried to convince herself it was just gratitude. “I’m sorry.”

He studied her for several seconds before he responded with, “So am I.”