Protecting What's Mine(57)

Could she jump? She was scared. Was the ground worse than that hot, stuffy room? Worse than no food and being alone?

Then the scene was shifting. She wasn’t alone. Linc was on the ground.

“I’ll catch you,” he promised.

She trusted him. She believed him. She was falling.

There was a face on a stark white sheet that was slowly turning red. His face. The face of a dead man. The one she’d killed.

Mack woke, gasping desperately for air.

She swung her legs over the side of the bed, clumsily kicking the bedrail with her boot.

She held a hand over her scar. The phantom sensation of pain made her skin feel clammy. It was just after four. And there was no way she was going back to sleep.

Two and a half hours of unpacking every remaining moving box and carefully stacking all the cardboard neatly in the garage that was too small to house her SUV later, Mack picked up her phone and dialed.

Violet answered chipperly. “Nguyen residence, Violet speaking.”

“Hey, Vi. It’s Mack.”

She managed to sound both amused and annoyed at the same time. “I know it’s you.”

“I didn’t think your Mom and Dad’s landline had caller ID,” Mack said.

“It doesn’t. But that doesn’t mean I don’t recognize your voice. Jeez, Mack. Sometimes I think you think you’re a stranger.”

The easy, almost sisterly banter soothed Mack’s soul. She settled onto the kitchen chair and propped her foot up on the table. “How’s the school year going so far? Any trouble with that shithead from last year?”

“Oh. My. God. So get this. I show up on the first day of school ready to just lay it out and be serious with her like you told me, right?”

“Right.”

“So I get there, and I’m all ready to be all calm and sh—stuff. Tell her she’s no longer welcome to be disrespectful toward me or anyone else. And one of Lynnetta’s minions walks by and she’s all ‘Did you hear about Lynnetta?’ and I’m like ‘No,’ and she’s like, ‘Lynnetta got caught bullying some loser eighth-grader online over the summer, and her parents were so pissed they shipped her off to some boarding school for mean girls.’”

“No way,” Mack said, knowing the required response.

“That’s exactly what I said. So new year, no Lynnetta, and tenth grade is basically the best year of my life,” Violet said.

“That’s amazing.”

“I know, right? Oh, hang on. I need to grab breakfast before school. Want to talk to Mom?”

“Yeah, that would be great,” Mack said.

“Hey, come home sometime before you become an actual stranger, okay?” Violet said. She didn’t wait for a reply. “Moooooom! It’s Mack!”

“Mack!” The joy and surprise in Dottie Nguyen’s voice made Mack feel both guilty and relieved.

“Hey, Dottie.”

“I was just thinking about you. How’s Benevolence? How are you adapting to small-town doctoring? Do people call you ‘doc’?”

Of course Dottie would remember the name of the town Mack had mentioned in passing when she’d told the Nguyen’s she was relocating. The woman’s care and attention to detail were in stark contrast to Mack’s mother’s self-centered existence.

“As a matter of fact, they do call me ‘doc,’” she laughed.

“When can we come visit?” Dottie demanded.

She meant it, too.

Mack’s heart clenched just a little. She’d always been grateful—painfully, pathetically so—for Dottie and Winston Nguyen (comically known as Win-Win) and the ten weeks she’d had with them as a child. Strangers who’d immediately proved to be far more stable than any blood relative Mack had known. They’d all cried when she left. She’d spent years after wishing it could have been longer. When she’d turned eighteen, she’d found Dottie on Facebook and sent her a message. “You probably don’t remember me, but…”

Dottie had remembered. And she’d been overjoyed then, too. Had peppered her with questions about how she was and what she was doing. And when Mack had confessed her desire to go into medicine, Winston, a thin, energetic podiatrist with an entire catalog of terrible foot jokes, had counseled her on pre-med programs. They’d offered to help her pay for college. She hadn’t accepted. It was a point of pride to do it all on her own. But the memory of that earnest offer still made the stalwart Mack just a little teary-eyed.

“Vi just asked me when I was coming to visit you guys.” Violet had been the foster kid Dottie and Winston could keep. Mack had been both overjoyed for them and profoundly sad that it hadn’t been her. But the decision hadn’t been in the Nguyen’s hands any more than it had been in her own.

“No reason not to do both,” Dottie insisted. “What are you doing for Thanksgiving?”

Mack laughed, feeling her chest loosen. “I haven’t even picked up candy for trick-or-treaters yet.”

“I know you, Mackenzie. If I don’t nail you down and make you put the date in your calendar, it will never happen. We’ll come to you for Thanksgiving,” she decided.

She felt a tickle of panic. “My place is the size of a dollhouse.”

“We’ll get a hotel room.”