Page 48 of Mack

“Absolutely. What about Rex?”

“Too tired,” T.J. said with great gravity.

“Smart to let him rest.” Mack looked up at Mallory over T.J.’s head, his expression steady and patient. “Go. We’re good.”

She looked at the two of them. She was still waiting for something that wasn’t coming, then went to finish getting ready.

Mack’s truck was warm and T.J. was buckled in his car seat in the back having a serious conversation with Blue about horses, and Mallory sat in the passenger seat watching the snow-covered fields pass and tried to keep her breathing even.

She was meeting his parents.

She hadn’t thought about what that meant, not fully, until right now. She’d said yes at the diner because it had seemed straightforward enough in the moment, because Mack had looked at her the way he always did and she’d believed him. She still believed him. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was everything else.

His parents didn’t know her. They’d know she was divorced. They’d know she had a three-year-old son by another man. They’d know their son had taken up with a woman who came with complications, and people could say all the right things about that and still feel differently when it was sitting across the dinner table from them.

She’d seen it before, that particular brand of polite disapproval. The pause too long before answering a question. The smile that didn’t reach the eyes. The way some people looked at a single mother like she was a problem that had been allowed to happen.

She pressed her hands flat against her thighs.

These were not those people. She knew that. Mack was nothing like the man she’d known before, which meant the people who raised him were probably nothing like what she was bracing for. Probably.

“You’re quiet,” Mack said.

She glanced at him. “Just thinking.”

He reached over and covered her hand with his without taking his eyes off the road. He didn’t ask what she was thinking about. He just let his hand there, warm, and steady, and let her have the silence.

She turned her hand over and laced her fingers through his.

T.J. had moved on from Blue and was now telling the window something important about snowflakes.

Mallory looked out at the road ahead and made herself breathe. Whatever came next, she’d handle it. She always did.

****

Mack pulled into his parents’ driveway and cut the engine. The house was modest and well-kept; a single story with a covered porch, the place his parents had settled into comfortably after leaving the ranch. Through the front window he could see the warm glow of the lamp his mother always turned on when she was expecting company, the same lamp she’d had his entire life, just in a different window now.

He sat for a second before getting out.

He had called his mother earlier in the week to ask about a day and time. She’d told him dinner would be ready, as if it was already settled and there was nothing left to discuss. His father had gotten on the line briefly to say they were looking forward to it.

Mack got out and opened the back door to unbuckle T.J., who had fallen asleep somewhere in the last mile, Blue clutched to his chest.

“Hey, buddy.” Mack touched his shoulder. “We’re here.”

T.J. stirred, blinked, looked around, then looked at Mack with the unfocused gravity of someone not fully awake. “Are the horses here?”

“Not here, buddy. We’ll see them another time.”

That was enough. T.J. raised his arms and Mack lifted him out.

Mallory was already at the front of the truck, her coat buttoned up, her hands in her mittens, her chin lifted in that way she had when she was steeling herself for something. He knew that look now. He wanted to tell her it was going to be fine, but he also knew that telling her didn’t do much. She’d have to see it for herself.

He shifted T.J. to one arm and reached for her hand with the other.

She looked at him.

“They’re going to love you,” he said. “Both of you.”