Page 20 of Mack

She held his gaze for a long moment. The kitchen was warm and quiet around them, smelling of fried chicken and dish soap and something that felt dangerously close to normal.

“I think I’d like that,” she said.

He nodded once, like that was enough, like he wasn’t going to push it further than she was ready to go. He moved toward the front door and she followed; arms folded against the chill she knew was waiting on the other side.

He opened the door and the cold air rushed in. He settled his hat on his head, stepped out onto the porch, then turned back to look at her one more time.

“Lock up behind me,” he said.

She almost smiled. “Goodnight, Mack.”

“Goodnight, Mallory.”

She closed the door, turned the deadbolt, stood in the foyer with her back against the door and her eyes closed for a long moment.

T.J. liked him. She liked him.

That was either the best thing that had happened to her in years, or the most terrifying. She wasn’t sure yet which one it was. Maybe both.

****

The cold hit Mack when he stepped off the porch and he welcomed it. He needed it.

He climbed into the truck, started the engine, and sat for a moment before pulling out of the driveway. The house was dark behind him except for the warm glow of the living room window. He watched it in the rearview mirror, then pulled onto the road.

The drive home took sixteen minutes. He knew because he counted them, which told him something about the state he was in.

He’d been in that house for three hours and it had felt like no time at all. That was either a good sign or a warning, and he wasn’t sure yet which one it was. He’d told himself going in that it was just dinner. That he wasn’t looking for anything.

He’d known that was a lie before he’d even rang the doorbell.

The boy had done something to him. He hadn’t expected that. He’d walked in prepared to be polite, patient and give T.J. whatever space he needed, and instead the kid had shaken his hand for a stuffed dinosaur and narrated almost an entire movie against his side and said I don’t have a dad as you’d report the weather, and Mack had sat there feeling something he didn’t have a name for yet.

He turned onto the long gravel drive that led to the house, the headlights sweeping across the dark pines, and killed the engine. He sat in the quiet for a moment.

He thought about Mallory standing in her kitchen doorway, arms folded, watching him at the dishwasher like he’d done something remarkable. He thought about the way she’d looked at her hands when T.J. said what he said. He thought about her saying I think I’d like that, careful and honest, not giving more than she was ready to give, and he respected that. He more than respected it.

Mack got out of the truck, boots crunching on the gravel, and looked up at the sky. Out here away from town the stars were relentless, the kind of sky that made a man feel small and that was somehow a relief.

He didn’t know where this was going. He wasn’t sure he needed to yet, but he just knew he’d be back.

Inside, he hung his coat and hat on the rack by the door and stood in the quiet of the house for a moment. It was a good house. He’d always known that, even as a kid. High ceilings, wide plank floors, windows that looked out on the mountains from every room. His mother had kept it warm and full of noise, his father steady and solid at the center of it all. Good people who had built something real here and held onto it hoping he’d come back someday.

Tonight, the quiet felt heavier than usual.

He went to the kitchen, poured two fingers of whiskey, and stood at the window looking out at the dark. The barn was a shadow against the tree line, and beyond it the mountains rose black against a sky full of stars.

He thought about what Sam had said. That he hoped Mack would stay.

He smiled as he thought about Betty Lou sizing him up like she was deciding whether he was worth the trouble. He thought about Clifton in the early morning, the pine-scented air, the single stoplight, people calling out to him by name now when he walked down Main Street as if he’d never left.

He’d spent twenty-two years moving through the world like a man with no fixed point. The Marshals had been his anchor, and when that was gone he’d realized he hadn’t built much else. No roots. No reason to stay anywhere in particular.

He swirled the whiskey in his glass.

Then he thought about a little boy patting the cushion beside him on a couch without looking up. ‘You can sit here, Mack’.

He downed the whiskey, rinsed the glass in the sink, set it down, and headed to bed.