Luke pulled the Jag into the drive around in front of his house that evening rather than parking it in the garage. He wasn’t sure why. Except that the garage felt too permanent. Too closed in.
He wasn’t looking forward to the hours ahead.
“Luke?” His mother’s voice was shrill, calling to him from the living room when he came in the door.
“Yeah, I’m here.”
He wanted to go up to his suite of rooms. Get out of his suit. Take a long shower. Drink a bottle of whiskey.
He walked into the living room. She was sitting on the couch, shredding a tissue. As he watched, she pulled another from the box beside her, wiped her eyes, and proceeded to shred that one, as well.
“The Allens called. They told me someone from the casino called them and said that Amadeo had been arrested. They wondered if I’d heard from you. They’re on their way over.”
Luke picked up the phone. Dialed. Told his parents’ friends that he was home.
“Is it true?” Carol asked, glancing up at him with the skittish look of a frightened kitten.
“Yeah, it’s true.” He should sit. Rub her shoulder. Give her the kind of understanding his father would have done. Hands in his pockets, he strode to the bay window that looked out over the front yard.
“Why, Luke?” She’d started to cry in earnest, her voice raised. “You have to do something. Help him. Bring him home.”
Bring home the man who’d betrayed him? Betrayed all of them? The man was going to sell Luke a seventeen-year-old runaway’s baby! And not even tell him about it. Luke could’ve gone to jail.
“Do I, Mom?” He whirled, facing her. “Why? Why do I have to do that?” He just couldn’t talk to her the way Marshall would have. He wasn’t his father. Sometimes the things his mother said and did—and didn’t do—made him angry. It didn’t seem to matter that she was sick. He still got mad.
“He lied to us, Mother,” Luke said, pacing in front of her, so filled with tension he could feel the pressure pulsing along the sides of his neck. “He was using me. He’s a criminal and a thief. You know Francesca’s little sister? The runaway? He…”
Luke paced. He yelled. He told her everything. About Autumn. His son. The car accident. About Jackson, who was going to serve time in prison. And the dead girl in the desert. He told his mother he loved her. And that he hated how living with her made him feel—so trapped he’d lost any chance at a future. And all through the telling, he hated himself for losing it with her, a sick woman.
“Are you finished?” The words were issued in a shaky, too-high voice. He loved her and was there to care for her, yet he’d shaken her whole world and hadn’t even given her a pill.
“Yes.”
“Okay.” She pulled at the tissue, shredded and pulled again. “First. Your father always taught you that nothing valuable or good…comes easy.”
“Actually—” he stared at her bent head “—you were always saying that.”
She didn’t seem to have heard him. “So if something’s hard,” she said, enunciating carefully, “then you’d be remiss not to look for the possible good that might be coming from it.”
He sighed. He just didn’t have the patience for this tonight. He moved toward the door.
“Where are you going?” She was whining now.
“To call the Allens.”
“There’s a phone right here.”
He came back, picked up the receiver.
“Call them, Luke. I understand, but I’d like you to listen to me first.”
If he could listen to her he wouldn’t need to call them. He could play the next couple of hours by rote. She’d get more and more agitated, her words more and more irrational, her need for reassurance more and more cloying, impossible to fill.
He put down the receiver. Slumped on the couch, his head in his hands.
“Son? How would you ever know truth if you didn’t also know deception?”
How? Well, by definition…
“How would you recognize its value if you’d never gone without?”
He didn’t have an answer to that.
“Do you trust me, Luke? Do you believe that what I tell you is the truth?”
When she was herself. “Of course.”
“And Francesca? Do you think she would deceive you?”
No. But this wasn’t about Francesca.
“How do you know?” He heard a tissue coming from the box. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see little white pieces float down to her lap.
“Because I know how it feels not to trust,” he said irritably.
“There’s something about the Everson men that you may not know, Luke,” she said.
He could tell by the frailness of her voice that she was on the verge of a breakdown. Luke waited.
“For generations, the Everson men have been one-woman men. I realize that there’s no scientific explanation for this phenomenon, but all of you, from your great-great-grandfather on down, have shared the trait.”
She was shredding faster and faster. Talking faster, too. Luke had to concentrate to notice the signs at all. “It’s evidenced in your father’s steadfastness in the face of my illness.”
He wanted to tell her that she wasn’t ill. That she’d been a joy to his father.
And for the first time, Luke understood, deep in his heart, that this was the exact truth. When his father looked at his mother, he saw the soul and spirit of the woman he loved, not her illness. And all his life, being with her had brought him joy.
“Everson men cannot give their hearts lightly,” she said, starting to cry again. “Nor can they force love where it does not exist. They cannot settle for less than the strongest and truest love. And most important, when they find that love, they can’t walk away from it. Ever.”
“Love is an overrated illusion,” Luke muttered.
“No,” she sniffled. She pulled out a new tissue, took a breath that ended in a broken sob. “Las Vegas is filled with illusion. You know that. You’ve always known that. It’s why you hate it so much. But it serves its purpose—” she took a shuddery breath “—because its falseness also shows you what’s real. Do you know what I mean? Love isn’t the illusion, it’s the one thing that’s real. And it shows the illusion for what it is.”
A world that was spinning wildly out of control stood still.
“If you continue trying to walk away, Luke, that’s your choice, but your father raised you to be smarter than that.” The sentence was hard to decipher as Carol was crying steadily now.
“No, Mom,” Luke said, drawing her into his arms, “not just Dad. You raised me to be smarter, as well. Why didn’t I realize how much you did for me—still do for me?”
“You…were five years old…a baby…when I got sick. It’s all you knew….”
“Shh.” He rubbed her back as she cried. “It’s not all I know now. I love you, Mom.”
Her sobs grew to wails. “I love you, too, Luke. Now…please…get me a pill…and call the Allens.”
“I’m not leaving you like this.”
“Yes!” she hollered, her eyes wide as she looked up at him. “Yes! You have to!” She was screaming so shrilly the sound hurt his ears. “You’ll hate me forever if you don’t go!”
He tried to calm her down. But when her frantic cries of “Go now!” crescendoed, Luke collected her pills and called Betty Allen.
Francesca was sitting at a Monopoly nickel video machine in one of the Strip’s more upscale resorts on Thursday evening. Matteo was with Autumn. The girl was due to be released from the hospital the next morning.
It was too late to make any arrangements that evening, and Francesca was too tired to pack. But too wound up to rest. She watched the video reels spin, listened as the machine chimed railroad sounds. She’d hit the bonus round. Had to pick a railroad—a path that would determine the success of her journey.
“I’d take Short Line.”
Turning, she saw Luke, still in dress slacks and shirt, with sleeves rolled up his forearms.
“How did you know where to find me?”
“Easy—you’re predictable. When you’re worn out, you either play at the Bonaparte or here, and I took a chance that the Bonaparte wasn’t it.”
His presence was a comfort she wouldn’t have sought. His knowing her so well, a solace she couldn’t have imagined.
“The Short Line, huh?” she asked, looking back down at the screen.
“Yeah.”
“Why? Who wants a short journey?”
“So how about the Pennsylvania? I hear it’s a beautiful state.”
“And cold.”
“B&O?”
“It makes me think of body odor.”
“Guess that leaves Reading.”
“Okay, so what can I read into the fact that you’re here?”
“That it might be nice to take a walk on the Strip.”
She stood, yanked her T-shirt down over the waistband of her denim skirt, grabbed her black leather bag.
“You’re on the bonus round!” Luke said, glancing at the flashing machine. “Aren’t you going to choose?”
“I already chose,” she told him.
“You’ve got over a thousand credits there, with the potential to win a lot more.”
“Those aren’t the credits I want to win, Luke,” she told him in all seriousness. Standing there in the middle of a busy casino, money clanking and machines ringing around them, she smiled up at him. “I have all the money I need, and the ability to make more.”
“I can’t believe you’re just going to walk away! Why play if you don’t care about the win?”
“Oh, I care about winning,” she said, her gaze steadfast. “I play slots for the escape, the diversion. But the win I want isn’t on that machine.”
His expression changed, his eyes filling with an intimacy that thrilled her. “So where’s the win you want?”
“Odds are, it’s out there,” she pointed to the door. “I’ll find it somewhere during a walk along the Strip.”
They talked about practical things for a while. Francesca had called her mother after Autumn’s accident and Kay had agreed to turn guardianship of her youngest daughter over to her eldest. She was coming out for a visit over the Labor Day weekend.
Matteo had agreed with Francesca that Autumn had to at least finish high school before they contemplated marriage. And he, in the meantime, was going to get his degree and a job that would support her and the family they’d one day have. Although she protested having to wait so long to get married, Autumn didn’t appear too upset by the plan. On the contrary, she couldn’t seem to stop grinning. Or proclaiming to Matt and Francesca that she was the luckiest girl alive.
They all understood that there’d be issues for them to deal with in the future. But this time around, they’d have each other.
Because Matt’s family still needed him, they were all going to stay in Las Vegas. Francesca thought maybe she’d try her hand at children’s portrait photography. But she had a feeling there were more stories waiting to be told….
“You want to see something?” Francesca asked as they passed the Fashion Show Mall on Las Vegas Boulevard.
“Sure.”
She reached into her bag. Took out a stack of photos and handed them to him. “Meet Gian…”
He stopped under lights that made the Boulevard as bright as day even late at night. Studied each photo as though the child was his own.
People passed, in large groups and small, all ages, including children. And Luke stood with her at a cement embankment and looked at every single picture she had of the baby she’d loved so desperately and lost so tragically.
She didn’t realize there were tears on her face until, with a gentle thumb, he wiped them away.
“I opened the packet at the hospital this afternoon,” she told him. “Autumn wanted to see him. Both of the babies she gave up were boys. And now, with losing this one…”
“I love you, you know that?” Luke said, loudly enough to be heard amid the noise of the busy street, and softly enough to touch her heart.
“I love you, too.”
“I can’t promise I won’t make mistakes, be a jerk, make you unhappy, but I can promise that, no matter what, I’ll always do my best to be honest with you.”
“And I promise you the same thing.”
“I’m a little shaky in the trust department.”
“Well, they say that having something in common is good for a relationship.”
“Then I guess we have that going for us.”
“Maybe.” Francesca turned her head to meet his gaze, only vaguely aware of the people and traffic and lights and noise surrounding them. “You know, it occurs to me that trust isn’t so much about total honesty as it is about faith. No one’s perfect.”
“I’m not sure I follow you.”
“I find that I have faith in you to do your best. I trust you to do that.”
With a hand against her cheek, Luke stared down at her. His eyes took on a suspicious sheen in the glow of the streetlight beside them.
“The joke’s really on me, isn’t it?” he murmured. “You came into my life, exactly what I needed, and I’ve been too full of myself to see it. But all along, I trusted you, didn’t I?”
“I think so.”
“Yeah.” He nodded, leaned down and kissed her. And kissed her. Until someone bumped into them and they silently moved on down the walk. Hand in hand. Taking in the night. The sights. The sounds. And each other.
“You need to have another child.”
“Maybe. Someday.” Not anytime soon. She had a lot of healing to do before she’d be ready to face the months of worry that would accompany another attempt. The nights and days of worry, the panic every time she laid her baby down to sleep.
“Marry me?”
She wanted to. She really wanted to.
“You want children,” she told him. “I don’t know if…” She let her words trail off.
“I was going to adopt, anyway,” he reminded her. “If we need to, we’ll do that.”
“It’s not the birth that worries me, it’s afterward when…”
“So we ask for an older child who’s already made it past the infant stage.”
“I have to stay in Las Vegas. I promised Autumn.”
“I do, too. I’m a package deal, complete with a mother and the home she can’t leave.”
“What will you do here?” She was stalling; she knew that.
He shrugged. “I can always work for one of the other casinos,” he said, “but when I was talking to Don Brown, I started to think about setting up an agency like his, here in this town.”
She nodded. She could see him being happy in business for himself. Helping people. Protecting them.
An overweight man bumped into Luke in his hurry to get past them. “Marry me?” Luke said, his gaze never wavering from her.
“Okay.”
“Now.”
“What?” A couple jostled her, arms around each other, seemingly oblivious to everyone else in the world.
“Before the world spins again and some other crazy thing happens. I want to know that, whatever lies ahead, I’ll have you there, facing it with me.”
“But we can’t just get married! We need a license. A ceremony.”
He took her by the shoulders, turned her to look up the Strip, a road of brightly colored and blinking lights that offered practically everything a person could want. “We’re in Las Vegas, honey. Pick a chapel.”
She did.