When I Found You (Silver Springs #8) - Brenda Novak Page 0,1

about the integrity of the roof and the rat droppings she spied in one corner. Did they have a rodent problem?

This was hardly the sanctuary she’d envisioned. But since when had anything ever been easy for her? With a mother who’d dragged her all over hell when she was a child and consistently put her own needs first, Natasha had always had to fend for herself.

She’d get through this, too.

“Maybe you should play on the porch while I sweep,” she said.

He peered out the door. “When will Uncle Mack be here?”

“Any minute.”

“Uncle Mack” was driving the rental truck that carried all of their belongings, other than what she’d been able to squeeze into her car. He wasn’t really her son’s uncle. As far as she was concerned, a long-ago marriage that had, for a fleeting time, joined her family with his didn’t qualify. It wasn’t as if they’d grown up together. He’d been twenty-five when they first met, and she sixteen. Neither did they get together for the holidays or anything like that. His father was just another man in the long line of men who’d been in her mother’s life, except that he’d had five sons who’d stepped in to help her at a critical point when she was a teenager.

But she and Mack had always struggled to figure out exactly what role they should play in each other’s life. Ever since she’d lived with him and his brothers before she went to college, she hadn’t had a lot of contact with him, especially since her son was born. So she’d been surprised when he’d called, out of the blue, and insisted on coming to help her move.

No doubt he’d heard about what’d happened to her practice and her marriage and felt sorry for her. She hated being the object of his pity, once again, especially after all she’d done to make something of herself. Not only had she put herself through medical school, she’d survived the insanely long shifts required during residency—while raising a young child, no less—and, after eleven years of pushing for all she was worth, had finally achieved her dream. She’d become a pediatrician and started her own practice—only to be leveled just when she’d thought she was home free.

“He left when we did,” Lucas said.

“He can’t travel as fast in that big truck,” she explained. Her son had taken to Mack instantly. Maybe it was because he’d lost his father and his friends all at once, but the relationship worried her.

“Maybe he doesn’t know how to get here,” Lucas said.

“He has his phone, and GPS will lead him right to us.”

She went out and got the cleaning supplies from her Jetta, which she’d parked in the unattached garage. She was eager to get started on the house.

After setting the supplies inside the door, she gingerly picked her way up the stairs. Because she was afraid they wouldn’t hold her weight, she made Lucas stay in the living room until she’d scaled them first. But they seemed sturdy, so she let him come up.

Fortunately, the bedrooms weren’t as bad as the living room. There were no broken windows, no water damage, no rat droppings. She tried to tell Lucas that his room would soon look as good as the one back home, but he wasn’t buying it. He trailed slowly after her, so dejected he could hardly put one foot in front of the other, but he didn’t want to be left in a different room, either.

The rumble of a large engine sounded as they were checking out the laundry facilities, which were—along with a plethora of spiderwebs and Lord knew what else—in the musty, unfinished basement.

“There he is!” Lucas exclaimed and ran up to greet him.

Natasha took a few seconds to compose herself. She didn’t want Mack to know how disappointed she was in the condition of the house, just as she didn’t want him to know that she wasn’t bouncing back as readily as she’d hoped from everything that’d happened in LA. She didn’t have a lot left, but she had her pride.

“This is it?” Mack said, as she met him in the living room.

“It won’t look so bad once I get it fixed up,” she replied.

He removed his sunglasses. About six-two, he had powerful shoulders, dark hair and large brown eyes that were currently filled with doubt. “Really? Because it looks like a bulldozer would be the best way to fix it.”

“It’s structurally sound.” She wasn’t sure she fully believed that, but