Chapter 40
RILEY
A week later, the image of Las Vegas in my mind has completely realigned itself.
When I first came to this city—as a baby in the arms of Richard Blackstone, who had just convinced a collection agency to accept me as debt repayment—Las Vegas was the only thing I knew.
The last time I was here, a month ago, it was the golden cage from which I was kidnapped.
And now, a week after the showdown at the Onyx Grand and a positive pregnancy test, Las Vegas has become something else.
Now it is also the city where we went on our honeymoon. Delayed, without a plan, but with everything Vaughn’s credit card could provide.
For seven days, we moved into a suite at the Four Seasons, as far from the Onyx Grand as you can get in this city without crossing the city limits. Marble floors, a bed you could play hockey on, and a bathtub larger than the server room where I worked for years.
We did a lot in that bathtub. Even slept. But mostly other things.
I went twenty-seven years without sex. Now I’m pregnant, married, and was staying in a deluxe hotel room, and I decided the universe owed me something.
So we took it.
Mornings: late breakfasts on the terrace, Eggs Benedict with avocado because the baby—the little person in my belly, whom I’ll just call that from now on because "embryo" sounds like talking about an experiment—likes avocado. At least, that’s what I tell myself.
Afternoons: Wellness. Massages, manicures, facials.
Once, we scrapped the entire afternoon plan because Vaughn looked at the masseuse and decided he could massage me himself.
The masseuse just shrugged, pocketed a hundred-and-fifty-dollar tip, and we went back to the suite, where the massage turned into something else at the threshold.
Evenings: Casinos. But not the Onyx Grand.
Never again the Onyx Grand. Instead, the Bellagio, the Venetian, the Aria.
Vaughn played poker and blackjack while I stood by, watching him read people who had no idea they were being read.
Once, he won fifteen thousand dollars and gave it away on the walk back to the hotel to a homeless man sleeping under a neon sign.
“Karma,” he said. “I need a lot of it right now.”
And at night: well, exactly what a newlywed couple does at night.
On the seventh day, we woke up and Vaughn said, “It’s time.”
I knew what he meant. Less than two hours later, we were in the back seat of Valentino’s Mercedes, and the desert was passing us by again, but this time in the other direction.
Back to Oregon. Back to my parents.
***
Loraine’s kitchen smells like freshly baked banana bread and home.
The four of us are sitting at the table—Loraine, Howard, Vaughn, and I.
Marvin the cat has curled up on the windowsill and watches us with the bored superiority of a creature that knows exactly it is the true ruler of this household.
His orange fur glows in the afternoon light filtering through the curtains.
“Well?” Loraine asks, sliding a cup of coffee over to me—decaf, with a stern look that says: Don't you dare argue. “How was the honeymoon?”
I feel myself turning red. Vaughn grins into his coffee.
“Good,” I say. “Very good. Quiet.”
“Quiet,” Loraine repeats with a raised eyebrow.
“Relaxed.”
“Relaxed.”
“We... slept a lot.”
Howard stuffs a piece of banana bread into his mouth to keep from laughing. Loraine looks at me as if she’s rarely heard so much nonsense at once.
“Riley,” she says. “I’m a nurse. I’ve worked in ERs. Nothing shocks me anymore. You don’t have to act like you played Sudoku for a week.”
“Mom.”
“I prayed for a long time that you’d be happy one day, Riley. That you’d be in love. That you’d find someone who looks at you the way Vaughn looks at you. You can tell me about it. Not everything. But something.”
Vaughn coughs into his coffee. Howard pats him on the back with significantly more force than necessary, and I hide my face in my hands.
“Oh my god.”
“What?” Loraine asks innocently. “I’m your mother. It’s my job.”
“You’ve been my mother for barely four weeks.”
“I’m making up for the other twenty-seven years now.” She pats my hand.
***
We talk for a long time. About the baby, who wasn't planned but around whom almost everything will revolve from now on. About the doctor's appointment Loraine already made for me with a gynecologist in Portland she’s known for twenty years. About the nausea, which has subsided. About the fact that I’ve been eating pickles, which gives Loraine far too much joy because when I was a baby in her belly, she had a pickle obsession that my father had to endure.
We talk about the Thompsons, who had no child for twenty-seven years and will soon be grandparents.
We talk about Richard.
“Will you let him have contact with the child?” Loraine asks.
Vaughn and I talked about this question for a long time. And the truth is, we don't have an answer yet. That might sound illogical after everything Richard Blackstone did to us. And yet, I’ve learned never to say never.
Eventually, after the third slice of banana bread, Vaughn puts down his fork, leans back, and looks at Howard.
“Howard.”
“Hm?”
“I’d like to speak with you briefly. If the ladies will excuse us.”
“With me?” Howard asks. His eyebrow lifts by a millimeter.
“Just briefly. Out on the porch.”
Loraine and I exchange a look. I have no idea what Vaughn is up to, and clearly Loraine doesn't either, but she’s smart enough not to ask.
“Of course,” Howard says and goes outside with Vaughn.
Loraine and I stay in the kitchen, and Marvin opens one eye, watches us both for a moment, and closes it again.
“What are they doing out there?” I ask.
Loraine refills her coffee.
“Looks like your husband is asking your father for your hand in marriage.”
“What?”
“A little too late, but yes.”
“Mom. That—we’re already married. We’re expecting a child. The order is completely mixed up.”
“That,” Loraine says, smiling at me over the rim of her cup, “clearly doesn't matter to the man out there on the porch.”
I stand up and go to the kitchen window. Through the frosted glass, I can make out the two silhouettes. They are standing side by side by the wooden bench. Howard drinks from his cup. Vaughn is talking, facing forward, as if it’s important to him not to stare at the ground while he speaks.
I can’t hear the words. But I see Howard’s shoulders.
Tense at first, high. Then slowly dropping. Then a nod. Then another.
Then Howard places his hand on Vaughn’s shoulder.
Loraine is standing next to me. The two of us peer through the glass like two teenagers watching a boy through a garden window.
“Howard never cries,” Loraine says softly. “Okay—he cried last week when you said you were pregnant. But before that, not since the day he had to give you away.”
“Vaughn doesn’t normally cry either,” I say.
“He’s wiping something from his eye.”
“That’s the wind.”
“It’s not the wind.”
We stand at the window. Outside, Howard embraces Vaughn—briefly, once, a man-to-man slap on the back that would ring out if we could hear it. Then both take a step back, and Howard slaps Vaughn on the shoulder again, and they nod to each other like two men who have sealed a deal.
Loraine turns away from the windowpane before they come back. She goes into the kitchen and puts the coffee pot back on the stove as if nothing happened. I follow her and sit at the table. Marvin yawns on the windowsill.
The door opens, and the two of them sit down without saying a word.
“Well?” Loraine finally asks.
“All settled,” Howard says. He reaches for his coffee.
“Settled how?”
“Just settled. Man stuff.”
“Howard.”
“What?”
“Howard Thompson, if you don't tell me immediately what happened out there—”
“Vaughn asked for Riley’s hand,” Howard says boredly, as if announcing the weather. “Retrospectively. Out of courtesy. I said yes. Done.”
Loraine claps her hand over her mouth.
“And,” Howard adds, as if he’d only just thought of it, “he said he’ll make her happy, and if he doesn't manage that, I’m welcome to wring his neck.”
“Very reassuring,” Vaughn says.
“I’m serious.”
“Me too.”
Howard grins. Vaughn grins. They both drink coffee.
I look at Vaughn. “You asked my father for my hand. Even though I’m already your wife. Even though you kidnapped me.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because it felt right.”
“You’re a—”
“I know.”
Loraine reaches across the table and taps me. Her eyes are wet. She says nothing. She winks at me, and that wink means: This man is an idiot, and he’s yours, and I’m incredibly glad about it.
I nudge Vaughn with my knee under the table.
“Idiot,” I say softly.
“I love you too.”
***
Later, after the fourth round of banana bread, we come to speak of the future.
“The house three blocks away,” I say to Loraine. “The one with the white facade. Is it still available?”
Loraine’s face lights up as if someone flipped a switch.
“Yes,” she says, and I swear she checked that yesterday. “The realtor’s name is Steve. I have his number.”
“Of course you do.”
“You’ll have to see if you like it, of course,” my mom says.
“We’ll look at it,” I say. “This week.”
“This week will be difficult,” Vaughn says suddenly.
“Why?”
“Because we’re flying to Montreal.”
Howard raises an eyebrow. “Who’s flying to Montreal?”
“We are,” Vaughn says. “A friend is getting married. A very good friend.”
“Cayden?” I ask, since this information is just as new to me as it is to my parents.
“Cayden,” Vaughn replies.
“And you’ll come back after that?” Howard asks.
“We’ll come back after that.”
“To buy the house?”
“To buy the house.”
Loraine leans back and looks at us both with that warm, satisfied gaze of a woman beginning to realize her life has just changed forever.
The daughter she missed for twenty-seven years is sitting at her kitchen table, pregnant, married, on her way to a wedding in Montreal and then to a house three blocks away.
I wish I had a photo of her face at this moment.