Chapter 35
RILEY
Day two without Vaughn.
The test is still lying on the nightstand.
I haven't touched it since yesterday. It just sits there, in its plastic packaging, waiting. Like a witness ready to testify against me at any moment.
I should eat breakfast. That’s rational, that’s sensible; it’s what an adult woman does before making a decision that will change her entire life. I call room service and order toast with butter and an orange juice. The man on the phone asks, “Just that?” and I say, “Just that,” and hang up.
The toast arrives eventually, and I eat half of it. The orange juice tastes like pure chemicals, and after two sips, I feel like I’m going to throw up again.
I pull on sweatpants and a shirt and sit by the window. Las Vegas lies beneath me like a flat, glittering carpet. Ten in the morning, and the city looks like it has a hangover. The neon signs flicker weakly against the daylight. The Strip is almost empty.
I think of Vaughn. Wonder where he is right now. In a bar that’s already open at this hour? On a park bench? Is he even still in this city? I want to be angry with him—I am angry with him—but anger alone isn't enough to push away the fear lying beneath it.
The fear of what this test will show.
The fear of what happens once I have certainty.
And exactly that certainty is what I need now.
I stand up and go into the bathroom, sit on the closed toilet lid, and turn the plastic package over in my hands.
The back says: “Result in two minutes.”
I open the packaging.
The stick feels like all the plastic in the world—light, cheap, somehow unworthy of what it’s about to perform. A pink cap protects the tip. The instructions in the insert I read three times because my brain refuses to sort the words into meaningful sentences.
Collect urine. Dip stick. Wait.
My hands tremble as I dip the stick. I place it on the edge of the sink, face down, because I don't want to see it for the next two minutes.
I wash my hands more thoroughly than ever before in my life. I rub soap between my fingers until it lathers, and I use the hot water because I need the feeling of doing something cleansing. My eyes stay on the sink. The stick lies there, white and innocent, face down.
I dry my hands, sit on the edge of the bathtub, and stare at my feet.
Eventually, my hand reaches for the stick on its own, but I don't turn it over right away. I hold it between my fingers, still face down, and breathe in deep and out again.
Then I turn it over.
Two stripes.
Dark pink. The result is clear and leaves no room for interpretation. No faint second stripe where you could argue if it’s a line or a shadow or my brain’s wish to see the stripe it wants to see. Two unmistakable, perfectly equal stripes.
Positive.
I am pregnant.
The thought is too big to fit in my head. It slips out on all sides, rolls through my brain like a glass marble, shatters into small pieces, assembles itself again.
Pregnant. I, Riley Thompson, now have a human being in my body, growing a few more cells with every passing second.
My knees go weak, and I slide from the edge of the tub onto the floor. The tiles are cold. My back hits the bathtub, and I stay sitting there, stick in hand, thinking of the father.
The man who kidnapped, married, lied to, and loved me, in that order, and who is now walking around somewhere in Vegas, probably thinking he’s doing us a favor by moving away.
From a man who found his own parents dead in their bedroom when he was sixteen and has believed ever since that closeness is a death sentence.
Great starting point for a family.
I stand up and wash my face with cold water before looking at myself in the mirror.
Honestly, I look pretty terrible.
Which doesn't stop me from making a decision.
“All right then,” I say aloud. “All right.”
I go back into the room, sit on the bed, and pick up my phone.
There is an unread message on the lock screen, but it’s from Valentino, not Vaughn: Everything okay? Need anything?
I don't reply; instead, I look up the number I recently saved in this phone.
Loraine Thompson. Mom. Saved with a photo I snapped of her with my new device—she’s standing in her kitchen laughing, while Howard makes a face in the background.
My thumb hovers over the name.
I hesitate briefly, but not because I’m afraid Loraine will react poorly.
Loraine wouldn't react poorly. Loraine lit a candle every year for twenty-seven years for the baby taken from her.
A woman who has saved up that much love doesn't explode over her daughter’s unexpected pregnancy.
She probably smiles and says something warm and silently starts making a plan somewhere in Portland on how to teach me to knit baby booties.
It’s something else. It’s the fact that I’ve only met her three times.
Three times. One evening at her house, a breakfast in the diner, a goodbye on the sidewalk.
That’s barely more than an extended weekend.
And now I’m calling her to tell her she’s becoming a grandmother? Is it too soon? Too much? Too—
I stop.
Too much for whom?
For Loraine, who would ask me over the phone how I’m doing and would want to know the answer before even thinking about the pregnancy? For Howard, who would wordlessly pour me a glass of whiskey, even if I tell him I’m not allowed to drink any?
No. If I’m honest, it’s all too much for me. Because I realize I’m still the old Riley, the one who grew up in a server room, who never learned to ask for help because asking for help in Richard Blackstone’s house meant weakness.
But I am not that person anymore.
I press Mom.
It rings twice. “Riley?”
Her voice immediately reminds me of how she hugged me on the porch three days ago, poured into a single word. And I break.
Not loudly. No sobbing, no moaning, nothing dramatic. Just tears suddenly running down my face as if someone turned on a tap. My throat tightens. I can't get any words out.
“Riley?” Loraine’s voice turns sharp. Not angry—alarmed. “Baby girl, what’s wrong? Did you talk to Richard Blackstone?”
I take a deep breath. “Hi, Mom.”
“Hi.” A pause. I hear her sitting down. “Tell me.”
Where do I start. At the showdown with Richard? At Vaughn’s flight? At the two pink stripes lying in my hand?
“I’m pregnant,” I say.
Silence. Then a sound that’s somewhere between a laugh and a sob. “Oh, my baby.”
“Mom, I—”
“Wait.” I hear her calling something into the background, and then Howard’s muffled voice asking back. Loraine answers something I don't understand, and then: “Howard knows. He’s sitting at the table with me now. We’re both here. Go on.”
That image—my parents, the two of them sitting at their kitchen table listening to me—makes the tears come again.
“The test was positive this morning,” I say. My voice trembles. “I’m sitting here, I saw the result an hour ago, and I didn't know who to call—”
“You called the right person,” my mother says.
“Mom, it’s complicated.”
“Isn't it always?”
“Vaughn is gone.”
Silence. A short, held breath. “What do you mean, gone?”
“He bolted yesterday. From the Onyx Grand parking lot.
When we spoke—we had just realized that I might be pregnant.
He doesn't have a vasectomy, he lied—no, he didn't lie, I assumed he wouldn't just sleep with me unprotected, and oh dammit, I don't know either. Before I could even take a test, he just walked away.” The words pour out of me as if someone had opened a dam. “He bolted, Mom. Before the result was in. Before we could talk. He just left me standing in the parking lot and disappeared through the Strip, and I’ve been sitting in this hotel room for three days hoping he’d come back, and he hasn't, and now I have a positive test and an empty chair across from me and—”
I take a deep breath.
“And I don't know what to do.”
Loraine is silent for a moment. I hear her exhaling slowly.
“Okay,” she says. Calmly. “Okay, Riley. Breathe.”
I breathe.
“One more time.”
I breathe again.
“Good. Now listen to me. You’re twenty-seven, you’re healthy, you’re a remarkable woman, and you will be a great mother.
That is Fact Number One. Fact Number Two is that Howard and I are here.
Always. No matter what Vaughn does or doesn't do. This child has grandparents. It has a room. It has a family waiting for it. Do you hear me?”
“Yes,” I whisper.
“Good.” Her voice softens. “And now the other part. The part about Vaughn.”
I press my face into the palm of the hand not holding the phone.
“Mom, he bolted.”
“I know. I heard.”
“How can I trust a man who bolts as soon as things get serious?”
Loraine pauses. When she answers, her voice sounds like a woman who has worked night shifts and has learned not to overreact in moments of crisis.
“Riley. I don't know this man particularly well. I had him in my kitchen for one evening, and we ate sandwiches, and Howard was considering throwing him through the wall. That’s not much. But I’ll tell you what I saw.”
I am silent.
“I saw a man who drove a woman to her biological parents without her having to ask him. A man who waited in the car outside the house until she came out on her own and brought him in. I saw how he looks at you, Riley. He feels something for you.”
I stare at the wall of the hotel room.
“He still ran away,” I say quietly.
“Yes. He ran away. And that was wrong, and the next time I see him, I’m going to tell him that, Howard will support me, and then there won't be any cake for him for a while. But, baby girl—”
“Yes?”
“People run away because they’re afraid. Not because they don't feel anything.”
I am silent. A tear drips onto my knee.
“You told me what happened to his parents. How he found them. What he’s carried with him for thirty years.
” Loraine’s voice is very low now. “A man who has gone through that needs a minute when he hears he’s becoming a father.
Maybe two. But this man didn't run away because he doesn't want you. He ran away because he’s afraid of breaking everything for you.”
I think of Vaughn in the elevator, his hand on my hip.
I think of Vaughn in the kitchen in the safehouse, pouring coffee without asking.
I think of Vaughn on the wooden bench in front of my parents' house, listening to Howard even though Howard talked for twenty-five minutes about a fish he caught ten years ago.
“Give him time,” Loraine says. “Not an infinite amount, but at least a few days. You have an incredible story behind you. You don't throw that away in a Las Vegas parking lot just because one of you panics.”
“And if he doesn't come back?”
“Then you come to us. You are not alone.”
I can't answer. I press the phone tight to my ear and cry.
“Baby girl?”
“Yes?”
“Eat something. Drink water. And call me again when you’re ready. No matter when. Middle of the night. Tomorrow morning. Next week. I’m here.”
“Okay.”
“And Riley?”
“Yes?”
“I am so proud of you. That you called. That you aren't staying alone.”
I press my lips together.
“I love you, Mom.”
“I love you too, my heart. More than I can ever tell you.”
I hang up. The phone sinks into my lap. I sit there with a wet face and a positive pregnancy test on the nightstand, and for the first time in two days, the hotel room doesn't feel so big and empty.
I sit by the window and look down at Las Vegas.
Vaughn is down there somewhere.
Loraine is right. He didn't run away because he feels nothing. He ran away because he feels too much, and because no one taught him what to do with "too much."
I place my hand on my still-flat stomach, which shows no sign yet of what is growing inside.
“We’ll wait a bit longer,” I whisper. “A few days. We’ll give him time.”
A few days. Not forever. But a few.
And if he doesn't come—then I’m going to Loraine.
Because now I have a mother who listens.
And because I’m becoming one myself.