Epilogue
VAUGHN
The window of opportunity is exactly twenty-three minutes.
I know this because Tom has been asleep for eleven minutes, his average morning nap lasts thirty-four minutes, and Valentino announced himself for breakfast at nine o’clock. It is currently eight-thirty-seven.
Twenty-three minutes. Subtract three minutes for undressing, two minutes for dressing afterward, and at least one minute to make the bed look halfway presentable before an Italian with bread rolls stands at the door.
That leaves seventeen minutes.
Riley is lying beneath me, grinning as if she can read the calculations in my head. She probably can. After a year of marriage—a real marriage, not the tequila version from the Elvis chapel—this woman has learned to read my thoughts.
“You’re calculating,” she says.
“I am not.”
“You are. You have your calculator face on.” She pulls me down to her by the collar of my T-shirt. “Stop calculating and kiss me.”
No one tells you beforehand that sex, once you have children, becomes a feat of logistics. The books say that babies enrich your life, that they bathe everything in a new light, that love grows. What the books don't say: that love grows, but the opportunities for sex shrink.
Tom sleeps in intervals of thirty to forty minutes between six and ten in the morning.
Between ten and twelve, he’s awake and wants to be entertained.
In the afternoon, he sleeps for two hours, but during that time Loraine drops by to check on him—and an aroused wife and a mother-in-law in the same apartment are two things that are not compatible.
In the evening, he’s wide awake until nine, and after that, Riley and I are so exhausted we fall asleep sitting up.
So, we have seventeen minutes right now, if Valentino is on time. Twenty, if Portland traffic is heavy.
“Vaughn.” Riley pulls my shirt over my head. “Seventeen minutes is more than enough.”
“For you, maybe.”
“For both of us. You’re forty-six, not eighty-six.”
“Nearly forty-seven.”
“Even worse. Hurry up.”
I kiss her. No lead time, no slow approach. My mouth on hers, my tongue against hers, and she moans softly against my lips—she’s learned to moan quietly, because the nursery is right next door and Tom’s hearing is better than any surveillance system I’ve ever programmed.
My hand slides under her shirt. Her skin is warm from sleep. Her body has changed since the pregnancy—softer at the hips, fuller at the chest—and I find it more beautiful than before. I tell her so, to which she always replies, “You’re biased,” and I always answer, “Correct.”
Once we’re naked, I enter her, and she bites her lower lip as she curls her legs around my hips. Her hands grip my hair. We move quickly—not frantic, but efficient, because seventeen minutes is seventeen minutes and because a year with a baby teaches you to set priorities.
“Vaughn,” she whispers finally. “Faster.”
I speed up. The bed creaks softly—too quiet for Tom, loud enough for my pulse. Riley’s breath hitches. Her fingers claw into my back. She comes with a suppressed gasp, biting into my shoulder, and the slight sting of her teeth on my skin sends me right after her.
I release inside her, burying my face in her neck and breathing in her scent.
We lie still for thirty seconds. Then:
“How much time?” she asks.
I check the clock. “Nine minutes.”
“A record.” She kisses me on the nose. “Shower?”
“No time. Valentino will be here in nine minutes.”
“Then you’ll smell like sex at breakfast.”
“Valentino will survive.”
***
Eight minutes later, we’re sitting in the kitchen. Riley has made fresh coffee, I’ve set the cups on the table, and not a sound comes from the nursery. Tom is still sleeping. Average exceeded.
The house we live in is three blocks from the Thompsons'. White facade, large garden, a porch from which you can watch the sunset. Howard built the wooden bench out front. Loraine planted rosebushes.
And outside stands Gerald.
Yes, Gerald. The cactus. Valentino brought him back from the desert in a cooler. When he stood in the doorway with that cactus, Riley cried and laughed at the same time, and Valentino just stood there looking like he’d just personally delivered the Mona Lisa.
I think of our son, Tom. Thomas Howard Mercer.
Eight months old, red hair like his mother, eyes like mine, and a temperament that suggests he inherited the best and worst of both of us.
He sleeps like a rock, screams like a siren, and reaches for anything that glitters—a trait Riley attributes to me and I attribute to her.
He is the best thing that ever happened to me.
I didn't know it was possible to feel this way. Thirty years of revenge, and not a single moment of it felt like the moment Tom first gripped my hand. His tiny fingers around my index finger, his gaze—unfocused, wondering, completely trusting. Cayden was right. Being a father isn’t a talent.
It’s a decision. And it’s the best decision I’ve ever made.
Richard Blackstone didn't witness Tom’s birth.
Riley sent him a message—short, factual, no invitation.
He replied: Congratulations. When you’re ready, you know where to find me.
It was the first time they’d had contact since the conversation in Vegas.
Riley didn't cry. She put the phone away, changed Tom’s diaper, and sat on the porch that evening looking at the stars.
'Someday,' she said. Someday she will visit Richard. Not today. Not tomorrow. But someday.
The doorbell rings.
Valentino is at the door. Leather jacket, sunglasses on his head, and a paper bag in each hand.
“Rolls,” he says, pressing the bags into my hand. “From the bakery in Hillsboro. The one with the sourdough.”
“You drive thirty minutes for rolls?”
“I drive thirty minutes for good rolls. There’s a difference.”
He steps inside and hangs his jacket on the hook next to the door. Since we’ve lived here, Valentino has had his own hook. And his own mug—the black one that says “World’s Okayest Driver” that Riley gave him for his birthday. He accepted the gift wordlessly and has used the mug every visit since.
Valentino walks into the kitchen, nods to Riley, pours coffee into his mug, and sits at the table as if he lives here.
In a way, he does. He lives in an apartment in Portland—a spartan one-room place he chose himself, even though I offered him the guesthouse.
He refused. Valentino needs his own space.
But he has breakfast with us three times a week, he works on the garage with Howard, and Tom has learned to smile at the sight of him—which Valentino acknowledges every time with an expression as if someone had just handed him a medal.
“How was the drive?” Riley asks, buttering a roll.
“Uneventful.” Valentino drinks his coffee. Then he adds, with the casualness only Valentino can manage: “I installed Tom’s car seat in the back yesterday, by the way. Just in case.”
Riley and I exchange a look.
“Valentino,” I say. “You have a car seat. In your Mercedes. The Mercedes you used to carry out a kidnapping.”
“Times change.” He shrugs. “Besides, the kid has red hair. Someone needs to look out for him when you two are busy.”
He grins. Valentino rarely grins, and when he does, it changes his whole face.
A sound comes from the nursery. Not a cry—more of a cooing experimentation with noise that means Tom has woken up and finds the world around him amazing.
Riley starts to get up, but Valentino is faster.
“I’ve got it,” he says, already on his feet. “Eat. The rolls are getting cold.”
He disappears into the hallway. Thirty seconds later, I hear his deep voice from the nursery—quiet, in Italian, in a tone I’ve rarely heard from him.
Riley looks at me over her coffee cup.
“He’d be a good father,” she says softly.
“Don't tell him that. He’ll panic.”
“He has to stop being alone eventually, Vaughn. He deserves someone.”
I think of Valentino. Of the man who fled Calabria and has let no one close enough to be hurt ever since. Who sleeps in cars and lives in one-room apartments and yet brings rolls to us three times a week because he needs a family, even if he’d never admit it.
Tom’s laughter drifts from the nursery—gurgling, unrestrained, the kind of laugh only babies can do because they haven't learned to hold it back yet. And beneath it, Valentino’s voice, Italian words I don't understand, but which sound like a lullaby.
Riley is right. Valentino deserves someone.
Perhaps that person is already waiting somewhere out there. In a city he doesn't know yet, in a life that hasn't crossed his. Perhaps she will be loud where he is quiet. Perhaps she will force him to get out of the car and walk through the door.
Perhaps he will fight it. He probably will fight it. He is Valentino Ferretti—he fights anything that threatens his carefully constructed solitude.
But I fought it too. And Marcel fought it. And Griffin, and Beckett, and Cayden.
And we all lost.
No, that’s not right.
We all won.
I smile into my coffee and bite into the sourdough roll that Valentino drove thirty minutes through morning traffic.
Outside, the sun shines on the garden where Loraine’s rosebushes are blooming and Gerald stands.
And in a room at the end of the hall, an Italian holds a red-haired baby in his arms and sings something to him that sounds like home.
I wish for him that one day he can hold his own child in his arms.
And then, Valentino’s story will begin.
The End