by Jamie Knight
“That is a tough one,” Cooper said, rubbing his chin like the philosopher he fancied himself to be.
“Don’t I know it.”
“All you can really do is give your dad time, I guess.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right.”
That was all I could do really, and it would probably be a long wait. It had taken almost a month to convince Lila to even think about getting back together, and Conrad was about a thousand times more stubborn than her.
I had Lila and Billy on my mind most of the day and made the somewhat bold decision to go and see them after work, even though we didn’t actually have a meeting arranged.
“Hi,” Lila said, surprised but not displeased to see me.
“Pizza?” I asked.
“You didn’t get another job.”
“No, I mean, would you like to go out for pizza.”
“Sure, I’ll just nip off and fetch our son.”
Vegas didn’t have the most sterling reputation for pizza in the world, yet I had still managed to find a pretty decent place.
“This is really good!” Lila said again, reaching for her fifth slice.
Billy, a bit more restrained than his dear mother, contented himself with gnawing on a large bit of pizza crust, looking happy as can be.
“I was thinking. What would you think of coming to stay with me? You and Billy that is. I have to move in a month or so, but maybe we could pick a place together.”
“That might make sense,” Lila said, not committing either way.
It wasn’t quite a win, but it felt like it was, particularly in light of what her opinion of me had been not too long before. I was even hoping I could convince her to stay over again and had brought in some things for Billy to make it easier.
When we got back to my building, there was a large black car outside the door as we approached. I didn’t know exactly who it was but recognized the kind of car. I got ready in case I had to fight.
The doors opened. Conrad and my stepmother, Malina, got out. I could feel Lila tense behind me. I had turned to explain to her what was happening, but she had already set off running with Billy. I wanted to go after her, but I knew I had to deal with my dad first. Maybe I would get that punch in after all.
Chapter Fifteen - Lila
I don’t know how far I ran. I just knew I had to keep going. I had to get away. Adrenaline did most of the heavy lifting after that. Billy seemed okay at first. He might have thought we were playing a game because he started laughing. Though he went quiet when the game didn’t end. I didn’t even think about calling a cab. Though that would be a hell of a lot easier than what I was doing right then, but there was no time to think about that.
I was nearly falling down by the time I got to Aria’s house. The door was unlocked, which was good because I really didn’t want to have to bother with a key. I tore through the house and down the hall. Putting Billy in his crib, I suddenly realized I wouldn’t be able to take it with us, which kind of broke my heart. I got out the bags from under the bed and started to pack. Nothing too much. Just things I didn’t think we could do without.
If Conrad thought he was getting my son, he had another thing coming. We would go somewhere he could never find us.
“Jesus! What’s going on?”
I whirled around and saw Aria standing in the doorway, looking quite concerned indeed.
“Leaving,” I said, getting back to my manic packing session.
“I can see that. Any particular reason?”
“Conrad.”
“Okay, I’m going to need a bit more than that, honey, Conrad who?”
“Conrad, fucking Conrad! Billy’s grandad. Carl’s dad. He said he would get custody, so I ran. I ran, and I came here. He knows. I saw him in the car. He knows. He knows we’re still in Vegas. He has connections, you know. Scary, bad connections. At least, I think. They all do, don’t they? Casino guys? The mob runs those, I think. Anyway, I have to get away. He won’t take my baby!”
“Why would he do that?” Aria asked, keeping calm.
“He said he would. He said Billy had to be raised his way, or he would sue and get him. He has friends in the courts. He said so. He’s going to take my baby if he finds me. We have to go. I went before, and that made him mad.”
“Lila!”
I snapped to attention and looked at Aria in shock. I had never heard her raise her voice before. Fixing my gaze with hers, my friend came over and took me firmly by the shoulders and sat me down on the bed.
“Billy’s grandfather doesn’t know you’re here. You don’t know he was there for you. It could have been a coincidence.”
“But he saw me! He said he’s going to take my baby. I won’t lose Billy. I’m a good mom.”
“And you got away. You’re safe now. He doesn’t seem to have followed you, and no one knows you’re here. The house is in my grandmother’s name, right? Unless Conrad tailed you, he has no way of knowing that you’re here. Conrad doesn’t have any leverage. He isn’t a blood parent and there isn’t any cause for concern with you because, like you said, you’re a good mother.”
“Will you check?” I asked, still paranoid.
“Okay.”
Aria went over to the window and looked out onto the street. I assumed she was looking for big black cars.
“Any big black cars?” I asked.
“No, there’s a small black dog and someone walking it, but other than that, there’s nothing.”
It felt like every muscle in my body relaxed at once. I looked over at Billy, who was standing up in his crib, hands on the railing, regarding me with grave concern. Aria left the room, briefly returning with a glass of apple juice.
“We still need to go somewhere else,” I explained, “we’ll never be free of him until we do.”
“Carl or Conrad?” Aria asked.
I hadn’t even thought about Carl. He seemed as surprised as I was to see Conrad there. As far as I knew, they hadn’t even spoken in years. And he was being so sweet and responsible. I really couldn’t believe that he would have told Conrad where I was. Even if he had, he would have gone to Aria’s place, not Carl’s. I could have been all a crazy coincidence.
However, Aria didn’t know Conrad like I did. He was almost my father-in-law, after all. At least I liked to think so. He was really okay underneath it all, but he was also stubborn as an old mule and had a tendency to always think that he was right, even when he was quite plainly wrong. If he believes it is in Billy’s best interest, he wouldn’t hesitate to take him and had the kind of high-priced lawyers who could work that sort of legal sorcery. Even with Carl and Aria on my side, I didn’t have much to fight him with, and Conrad always got his way with the possible exception of when Carl and I ran out on him.
“We need to go,” I said firmly, letting Aria know I was thinking straight.
“Okay.” She nodded.
Aria left the room again, coming back this time with a roll of bills — a large roll of bills. “Take this. I’ve been saving for a rainy day, and it seems pretty wet right now.”
“No, I-I can’t,” I said, shocked she would even try to give me anything.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I can make my own way.”
“Okay, well here,” Aria got a post-it from the night table and wrote out a name and phone number.
“Ryan White?” I asked.
“He’s my brother’s best friend from way back. He lives in Austin on a huge ranch. Tell him I sent you and he’ll help you out. Get you an apartment and all that. He’s really nice and super-rich. He actually owns that advertising firm we went to. Where you saw Billy that first time?”
“He does?”
“That’s one of the reasons why I wanted to go there. Yeah, small world, right?”
“Tiny,” I said, staring at the post-it, overwhelmed by the cosmic synergy of it all.
Three hours later, Billy and I were in an ai
rport lounge, waiting for a flight to Austin. I had already called Ryan from a payphone, putting in about thirty quarters. He was expecting us and would meet us at the airport.
It was disorienting how quickly everything was happening. Just that afternoon, I had been planning on moving in with Carl. He didn’t know it, but I had intended to make it a permanent arrangement. We would have found a new place together and lived there together until Billy grew up. That was the plan anyway. Now it was all gone, and I felt like I was breaking Carl’s heart by leaving him behind, but I didn’t have a choice.
Chapter Sixteen - Jinx
There were several things I wanted to say to my dad right then, particularly in lieu of the fact that the sight of him had made Lila flee in terror — something he obviously didn’t see. None of them were terribly nice things. All of them boiling like acid in my head.
However, I kept silent, and my fists holstered, deciding to hear him out. I was an adult. I was sober. I was a father. Besides which neither of my moms would have liked it had Dad and I come down to fisticuffs — particularly considering the state he would have been in afterward. I had been in my share of fights. The biggest battle dad had ever had was getting his pants on in the morning over his ever expanding waistline.
“Here to do the hit yourself, are you?” I asked.
He sighed exaggeratedly. “Now, Jinx, you know those are just nasty rumors.”
“Yeah, but I still like busting your chops about it,” I said.
“Fair enough, shall we go up?” Dad said, taking it a lot better than I might have expected.
The elevator seemed more cramped than usual on the way up. Dad not helping much. Getting to the floor, I got out first, rushing a very confused Lucky to the bedroom, leaving him with a toy so he wouldn’t bark.
“Was that a dog?” Malina asked.
“Yeah.”
“What breed?” she asked, seeming genuinely interested. She wasn’t my mom, but I still liked her.
“French Bull Dog-Pug cross.”
“Oh, how cute!” she gushed, showing her young age.
“If you like that sort of thing,” Dad grumbled.
“Please sit, would you like something to drink?”
“White wine, please,” Malina said, gracing herself onto the couch.
“Scotch on the rocks,” me and dad said in unison. He had been having the same drink for as long as I could remember.
Pouring out an apple juice for myself, I carried the tray of drinks over to the couch and sat down in the nearby chair, placing the tray on the coffee table between us.
“I have to tell you something about Lila,” Dad said, after making inroads into his scotch.
“Oh?”
“She took your kid and ran,” he said, gravely.
“What?” I asked, shocked.
“She’s gone kiddo. She had your baby. She took him and hit the road.”
“I don’t understand. Why?”
Dad grumbled something that I didn’t quite get. Something about the court or whatever.
His wife sighed. “He threatened to take her baby because she wasn’t complying with his every demand,” Malina explained.
“What?!” I screamed, standing up sharply, the fuck-the-world punk rearing his head once again. Forget stupid punching. I was ready to strangle Dad with his own hideous tie.
“Yes, it’s not very nice, is it?” Malina glared, looking straight at Dad, making her chastisement quite clear.
“You are going to tell her it was an empty threat,” I said, it in no way being a request.
“I was just doing what was best for Billy and —”
“I’m a third-degree black-belt,” I pointed out.
“Wait, you know about Billy?”
“Yes,” I said bluntly.
“She’s back in Vegas?”
“Yes, and we’re back together,” I said, slowly unclenching my fist.
“I didn’t know. I’m really sorry. I promise I’ll back off. You two do what you think is best,” he said, seeming to realize that being involved at all meant backing off a bit.
“You were a great father but not the best dad,” I said, bluntly, “if you want a do-over, have a kid with Malina. She’s certainly young enough. Then Billy will be an uncle.”
There was an uncomfortable silence where they passed odd looks between them. Suddenly crestfallen, my stepmother looked down at the floor.
“We can’t actually. It’s my fault,” Malina explained, trying and failing to hide her depression.
“Now, honey, it’s no one’s fault that your infertile,” Dad said, putting an arm around her.
I was surprised by this show of support. Maybe the old man actually had changed over the years, at least in some ways.
Dad looked at me. “You could always come back to the casino and take over your old job. It has to pay better than what you’re doing. Even if it doesn’t, I’ll give you a raise.”
I sat down in the chair across from him. “I can’t, Dad. It would be like an alcoholic buying into a bar.”
“Oh, that old silliness. You can’t have a gambling addiction! You’re rich, and you didn’t lose anything,” Dad said.
“Except for my mind, morals, and self-respect. The money was yours, not mine. The money I’m making now is all mine. I’ve pulled myself up by my bootstraps from nothing and become my own man, just like you’ve always said people should. Like you did in the beginning. It may not be as much as you have or as much as you wanted, but I earned every bit of it. None of which even touches on the two years with Lila and Billy that I lost because of my addiction. I’m not losing them again.”
“I get that. Why don’t you ask them over here so I can apologize in person?”
That actually sounded like a good idea. I didn’t want to take Dad around to Aria’s and disrupt Lila’s sanctuary. Bringing her to my place felt more like neutral ground.
Lila wasn’t answering her phone, so I decided to go down there myself. It was a bit of a risk, but it was worth the chance.
Unconsciously wiping my feet on the mat, I knocked lightly on the door, not wanting to come off as too aggressive. However, when the door opened, if looks could kill, I would have dropped dead right off the stoop.
“Hi, Aria.”
“She’s not here,” Aria said bluntly.
“Where did she go?”
Lila’s friend just glared at me. Her arms crossed tightly in front of her. I realized that she didn’t trust me, and at least part of that was because of what my dad had done. He had a way of pissing people off. It was clear that Aria wasn’t going to tell me anything, so I got out of there and went back to my apartment, where my dad and stepmother were waiting.
“She’s gone,” I said, glaring at my father.
“Gone?” Dad asked dumbly.
“You scared her off again. We were coming back here when we saw you pull up. She literally ran away at the sight of you.”
I was going to say more, again none of it good, but I held my tongue. It just wasn’t worth it anymore. My love and my baby were gone, and I was never going to see them again.
Chapter Seventeen - Lila
Austin, Texas, was a culture shock. It wasn’t really that much smaller than Vegas, and the crowds weren’t much bigger, especially during tourist season on the strip, or the crime rate that much higher. The big difference was the laidback attitude. The Texans I met were relaxed and civil, trying as hard as they could to help me.
One of the first things I did when we got there was go shopping for clothes with Ryan’s wife, Ryan footing the entire bill. They really were kind and generous people, though I still planned on paying them back every cent when I could. Which might be sooner than it otherwise would have been because Ryan managed to pull some strings and get me a one-bedroom apartment for six-hundred-dollars a month. It was a fourth-floor walk-up, but we made do.
If all that wasn’t enough sweetness for one human to
contain, Ryan also gave me a job as a receptionist at his company, something I was more than qualified for. His main office happened to have one of the top-rated private daycares in the city.
I was at my desk one day about two weeks after we arrived when I answered the phone and just about fell out of my chair.
“I’ve got the monthly report for Sure Thing Graphics,” Carl said after I had done my bland introductory speech, letting the caller know who they had reached, just in case they didn’t know.
I had nearly forgotten that Ryan owned Carl’s advertising firm, which was quite profitable going by the numbers Carl was reading off. I wondered if he always did that or if he had been deputized for that month. It didn’t seem like a job a copywriter would do — more an Art Director or something like that. Did they take it in turns?
None of it was a particularly good or healthy thing to think. I could feel myself start to panic, realizing that I would have to speak again at some point.
“I will pass those numbers on—” I said as quickly as I could.
“Lila?!”
I was just about to hang up.
“Please listen, Lila,” Carl begged, making me halt.
I still didn’t speak but I sat there and listened to what he had to say figuring I owed him that much at least.
“My father is through trying to control you. He didn’t really mean it when he threatened to take Billy away. He was just talking out of his ass like he so often does. I know that it is hard for you to believe, mostly because you know him, but we came to an understanding, and Dad is done with all the strong-arm bullshit. He has backed off and will let us raise our son how we see fit. Please come back to Vegas or at least wait until I can get to Austin. I miss you both so much.”
I hung up without speaking. It was all too sudden. I couldn’t talk, let alone commit to anything significant like that.