“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.”