Page 76 of Mack

Mack stayed back, two cars between them, as the truck wound through town. He kept his eyes on it with his hands loose on the wheel and told himself he was just driving.

When the truck turned onto Mallory’s street his jaw tightened.

He drove past the turn.

He went to the end of the block, made a loop, and came back around. By the time he turned onto her street the truck was parked two houses down from hers, engine off, lights out. Just sitting there in the dark.

Mack pulled over and cut his lights.

He sat there for a long moment, watching the truck, watching her house. Her porch light was on. Her Tahoe in the driveway. She was home.

He picked up his phone but put it back down.

He had no grounds. No complaint had been filed. No law had been broken that he could prove. A man sitting in a truck on a public street wasn’t a crime, and if he walked up there right now, he’d be acting on personal reasons and Troy’s lawyer would have it thrown out before it even got started.

He knew all of that.

He also knew that the man in that truck had put a look on Mallory’s face that had made her push away the first good thing that had happened to her in years.

His hands tightened on the wheel.

The truck sat there for twenty minutes. Mack sat there too, watching, engine idling low. Then the truck’s lights came on, and it pulled slowly away from the curb and drove to the end of the street and turned.

Mack didn’t follow.

He sat outside her house in the dark for a while longer, looking at her porch light, and thought about knocking on that door. He didn’t do that either.

He put the cruiser in drive and went back to his rounds. But he kept the photos on his phone. He wasn’t done yet.

****

Three days without Mack and Mallory had already lost count of how many times she’d reached for her phone.

She hadn’t called. She wouldn’t. She’d made her choice and she was going to live with it, because the alternative was Troy making good on his promises and she couldn’t let that happen. Not to T.J. Not to her parents. Not to Mack.

She told herself it was the right thing every morning when she woke up and every night when she couldn’t sleep, and she almost believed it.

“Mama, can we call Mack?”

She was washing the dinner dishes when T.J. asked. She kept her hands in the water and her voice even.

“Not tonight, baby.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s late and he’s probably working.”

T.J. accepted this with a small frown and went back to his dinosaurs. She exhaled slowly and went back to the dishes.

That had been Tuesday.

Wednesday, he asked if Mack was coming for dinner.

Thursday, he wanted to know if they could see the horses.

Friday morning, while she was doing his hair before Georgia picked him up, he looked at her in the bathroom mirror with those big brown eyes and said, “Is Mack mad at us?”

She had to look away.