“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 friend pick 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.”