Page 56 of Mack

He sat for a moment in the quiet of the truck. He thought about a little boy with a quivering lip telling him he’d made a promise. He smiled and went inside.

****

Mallory stood at the front window and watched his truck until it disappeared around the bend, then stood there a moment longer just because she wasn’t ready to move yet.

Last night something had shifted. She could feel it like you feel a change in weather before it arrives, a pressure in the air, a difference in the light. She wasn’t sure yet whether to be grateful or terrified, so she settled on both and went back to the kitchen.

T.J. was where she’d left him, Blue in the chair beside him, conducting some kind of conversation that only made sense to the two of them.

She got the Cocoa Puffs down, poured his bowl, added milk, and set it in front of him. He picked up his spoon without looking up from whatever Blue was being told.

She poured herself a fresh cup of coffee and leaned against the counter and looked at her son.

He’d asked Mack to stay and build a snowman. He’d cried, almost, when Mack said he had to go. In three years, T.J. had never done that with anyone outside of family.

She wrapped both hands around her mug.

She thought about Mack standing in her kitchen this morning like he belonged there, coffee in hand, completely at ease. The way he looked at T.J. when the boy came running in. The way he’d crouched down beside his chair when it was time to leave, eye to eye with him, serious about the promise. She thought about what he’d said in the dark.

I want you to want me to stay.

She did. That was the terrifying part. She really did.

“Mama?”

She looked up. T.J. was watching her with his spoon halfway to his mouth, Cocoa Puffs threatening to slide back into the bowl.

“Eat your breakfast, baby.”

“Are you thinking about Mack?”

She blinked. “What makes you say that?”

He shrugged with the easy certainty of someone who simply knew things. “You were smiling.”

She looked down at her coffee, smiled and nodded.

With the snow coming down and the wind picking up, there was nowhere to be and nothing to do but stay inside. Mallory built a fire, got T.J. settled on the couch with his blanket and both dinosaurs, and let him pick the movie.

Finding Nemo. Naturally.

She watched it with him like she always did, half paying attention, half somewhere else entirely. When it ended, she found something new and T.J. accepted the change without complaint, which meant he was close to napping.

She tucked the blanket tighter around him and settled back into the corner of the couch with her coffee, the fire crackling low, the snow pressing soft and white against the windows.

It was a good day to stay inside.

She had her little boy warm against her side, a fire going in the hearth, and Mack Reinhardt thoroughly and completely on her mind, and she found she didn’t much mind any of it.

The following morning, Mallory woke to a different kind of light.

She tossed the covers back, padded toward the bathroom, and stopped when she glanced at the window out of the corner of her eye. She backed up and pulled the curtains open.

Snow. Everywhere, and still falling. At least a foot of it, maybe more, the whole world gone white, silent, and still.

She picked up her phone and called her mother.

“I was just about to call you,” Georgia said.