Chapter 32
AREK
Mac called Thursday morning, on my day off, and said, “He wants to meet you.”
Kace was hanging out with Tyler, Jules was at the library, and I was sitting on my porch with coffee, practicing the act of doing nothing.
I was not checking my email. I was not reviewing lab results.
I was sitting in a chair, drinking coffee and existing, which still required conscious effort.
Hopefully, it would get less excruciating over time because so far, I sucked at it.
“How’s he doing?” I asked.
“Good. He’s been exploring the property, hiking the trails. Played guitar on the porch for two hours last night. Today, he wants me to teach him how to build something.”
My heart went all soft for him. “That’s wonderful.”
“Yeah. He’s…” Mac cleared his throat. “He’s a great kid.”
“I’m so glad you get to spend time with him.”
“This morning, he told me he wants to meet the guy his dad is seeing. His words.”
“The guy his dad is seeing.” I snorted at that expression. “Classic.”
“And he’s excited to meet your kids. Also his words.”
“They’re dying to meet him. Well, Kace is dying to meet him and Jules is apprehensive, hoping he’ll have something in common with him.”
Mac was quiet for a beat. “He brought books. He had one backpack with clothes, but he also managed to stuff three books in there. I’d say there’s a good chance they will find common ground.”
Hope bloomed in me, full and fierce. My precious boy, so eager to find a friend of his own.
He liked hanging out with Tyler, but Tyler was Kace’s best friend, not Jules’s.
I wanted that for him—though I wouldn’t object to a friend who didn’t quite have as much of a death wish as Tyler did. “That would be wonderful.”
“Dinner at your place tonight?” Mac asked.
“Yeah.” I swallowed. “I’m nervous.”
“You’re nervous? About meeting Boden?”
“What if he doesn’t like me?”
“Arek.” The voice dropped to that low Mac frequency that bypassed every defense I had. “He’s going to love you. Everybody loves you.”
“That’s not—”
“Dinner tonight. Six o’clock. Your place.”
He hung up before I could spiral further, which was either deeply inconsiderate or deeply strategic. Knowing Mac, it was the latter.
I spent the afternoon not preparing an elaborate dinner.
The old Arek would’ve driven to Collins, bought ingredients for something impressive, spent three hours in the kitchen constructing a meal designed to communicate I am worthy of your father’s love through the medium of food.
The new Arek—the one who was learning, painfully and imperfectly, to stop performing—made burgers.
Good burgers, with homemade patties, decent buns from Brianna’s, and all the toppings laid out so people could build their own.
Plus, corn on the cob because it was summer, and a salad because I was still a doctor.
Simple, unpretentious, the kind of meal that said welcome to our home without saying please approve of me.
Kace, naturally, had opinions. “Burgers? For meeting Mac’s son? Shouldn’t we do something fancier?”
“Burgers are perfect, Kace.”
“What if he’s vegetarian?”
“He’s not. Mac told me.”
“What if he’s allergic to something?”
“He’s not.”
“What if—”
“Kace.” I put my hands on his shoulders. “It’s dinner. Not a state visit. We’re going to eat burgers and be normal.”
“We’re never normal, Dad. Have you met us?”
“Fair point. We’re going to eat burgers and be ourselves.”
Jules appeared in the kitchen doorway, drawn by the commotion or the smell of grilling beef, I couldn’t tell which. He surveyed the scene with his usual silent assessment. “What does Boden like?”
“Guitar. Classic rock. He’s on the debate team. Oh, and Mac said Boden brought three books with him.”
Jules’s eyes widened ever so slightly. “He likes books?”
“He stuffed three books into a backpack to bring with him here.”
Jules nodded, filing this. I watched the information settle, watched him construct a preliminary profile of the person who was about to enter his space.
Jules always met new people strategically, with the careful preparation of someone who’d learned early that strangers could be dangerous and knowledge was the best defense.
At five forty-five, Mac’s truck came down the street. I was standing at the kitchen window, pretending to check the corn and actually watching the road with the focus of a man whose entire emotional future was arriving in a Ford F-150.
Mac got out first. Then the passenger door opened, and Boden stepped out.
He was taller than I’d expected. Lanky, still growing into his frame, with dark-blond hair that fell across his forehead and Mac’s jaw.
He was wearing jeans and a Stones T-shirt, and he stood in my driveway, looking at my house with an expression that reminded me so much of Mac that it made my heart ache.
Mac’s hand found Boden’s shoulder. A brief touch, guiding, and they walked up the path together, and I watched the man I loved walk toward my house with his son beside him and felt the full, staggering weight of what this evening meant.
Two families meeting. Two broken things becoming something new.
I opened the door before they knocked. Mac’s eyes found mine immediately with that quick check-in, the silent communication we’d developed. I’m okay. He’s okay. We’re here. I nodded, an answer to a question he hadn’t asked, and then I looked at Boden.
“Hi, Boden. I’m Arek.” I extended my hand.
Boden shook my hand. His grip was firm, and his eyes met mine with a directness that was pure Mac. “Hey. Nice to meet you.”
“Come in. The boys are excited to meet you.”
“Excited” was generous. Kace was vibrating at a frequency visible from space, positioned at the top of the stairs in what he clearly believed was a casual stance but which radiated the intensity of a retriever spotting a tennis ball.
Jules was in the armchair with his book, the picture of studied indifference that I knew was anything but.
Kace descended the stairs at a speed that defied physics.
“Hi! I’m Kace. You’re Boden, right? Your dad is awesome.
He taught Jules to paint, and he came to my basketball game, and he built us a chair.
Do you play basketball? Do you really play guitar?
Jules plays piano. Did you know that? Well, he’s learning. He’s pretty good. Do you like—”
“Kace,” I said. “Breathe.”
Boden’s face did something I hadn’t expected. He grinned, showing me a real grin, wide and surprised, the response of a teenager confronted with another teenager’s uncontainable energy and finding it genuinely funny.
“I’m Kace,” Kace repeated, slightly less explosively.
“Yeah, I got that.” Boden’s grin stayed. “I do play guitar. I don’t really play basketball, but I’ll watch. What position do you play?”
Kace launched into a detailed account of his basketball career, complete with hand gestures and sound effects, and Boden listened with patient amusement.
Mac caught my eye from across the room, and the relief on his face—subtle, controlled, but unmistakable—told me he’d been holding his breath for this moment too.
Jules hadn’t moved from the armchair. His book was open, but his eyes were on Boden, watching, registering, running his silent assessment. When Boden’s gaze eventually found him, Jules held eye contact without flinching.
“You’re Jules,” Boden said.
“Yes.”
“My dad said you read a lot.”
“I do.”
“What are you reading?”
Jules held up the book. The Count of Monte Cristo. Boden’s eyebrows lifted. “That’s a good one. I read it last year for English. The revenge stuff is great, but the Abbé Faria chapters are the best part.”
Jules’s expression shifted by a degree, the micro-adjustment that, in Jules, constituted a seismic event.
Someone his age who’d read the same book and had an opinion about which chapters were best. Someone who hadn’t said, “Oh, that’s a long book” or “Isn’t that boring?
” but had engaged with the material as if it mattered.
“I agree. Everyone focuses on the revenge, but the real story is the education. What he learns in prison is what makes everything else possible.”
Boden dropped onto the arm of the couch nearest Jules’s chair. “Exactly. And the way Dumas writes the escape… That chapter is insane.”
“I haven’t reached it yet.”
“Oh man. You’re going to lose your mind.”
And just like that, something clicked, two puzzle pieces finding their fit. Boden angled his body toward Jules, Jules’s book lowered to his lap, and a friendship started.
I went to the kitchen to finish dinner…and to prevent anyone from seeing the tears that had formed in my eyes.
Mac followed, and for a moment, we stood side by side at the counter, listening to the sounds coming from the living room—Kace’s interjections, Boden’s laugh, Jules’s rare but growing contributions.
“He likes them,” Mac said quietly.
“They like him.”
Mac’s hand found my lower back. He didn’t say anything else. He didn’t need to.
Dinner was chaos in the best way. Five people at a table built for four, elbows bumping, condiments passed in every direction, Kace narrating his burger construction process as if it were an Olympic event. Boden ate two burgers and three ears of corn with the metabolic urgency of a teenage boy.
“These are really good, Dr. Jacobson,” he said.
“Thank you. And Arek is fine,” I said.
“Arek.” He tested it. Nodded. “Cool.”
The conversation moved the way conversations did with teenagers—fast, lateral, unpredictable. Kace asked Boden about San Francisco. Boden asked Kace about Forestville. We talked about basketball, the summer, the river, hiking, books, and god knew what else.
Jules listened, contributing when the topic interested him, retreating into observation when it didn’t. Mac ate quietly and watched his son interact with my sons, and the unguarded, wondering expression of a man seeing something he’d been afraid to want made my eyes sting.
After dinner, I started to clear the table. Mac took the plates out of my hands. “Go sit down. I’ve got this.”
“Mac—”
“Arek.” The single, devastating eyebrow. “Sit.”
I sat. On the love seat under the pergola in the backyard, near the door, with a glass of wine and the sounds of Mac washing dishes inside and the boys’ voices drifting toward me.
Kace had commandeered Boden for a tour of the backyard, which consisted primarily of Kace’s failed attempt at a skateboard ramp and a fire pit that had never been used.
Jules had followed, book under his arm, maintaining his characteristic three-foot radius of personal space while remaining close enough to listen.
I watched Boden crouch next to the fire pit and say something to Jules. Jules responded. Boden nodded seriously. Then Boden pulled out his phone and showed Jules something on the screen, and Jules leaned in to look, and the distance between them closed from three feet to one.
Mac appeared with a glass of water and sat beside me. We watched as three boys negotiated the unfamiliar terrain of each other—Kace’s volume, Jules’s stillness, Boden’s careful navigation between them.
“Jules showed Boden his piano,” Mac said.
“When?”
“While you were grilling. Boden asked, and Jules took him upstairs. They were up there for ten minutes. I could hear them playing something together.”
I stared at him. Jules had let someone into his room. Jules, who treated his personal space like sovereign territory, who closed his door against the world with the firm boundary of a kid who needed walls to feel safe, had voluntarily invited a stranger upstairs to see his piano.
I leaned against Mac’s shoulder. His arm came around me, automatic, the gesture we’d made so many times it had become reflex. The evening light was golden and warm, crickets sang their song, and the boys’ voices rose and fell in the backyard like music.
“Five,” I said.
“Five what?”
“There are five of us now.”
Mac was quiet for a moment. His arm tightened around me. “Yeah,” he said. “There are.”