by Madyson Grey
“Most likely. Especially if it’s a big one,” he said.
When they got home, they took all their stuff in the house. Lena was on hand to welcome them home.
“How was the trip?” she asked.
“It was fabulous!” Victoria exclaimed. “We went to the Queen Mary and spent the night in a gorgeous stateroom.”
“I knew you’d like it,” Lena said, beaming.
“You knew where we were going?” Victoria asked.
“Yeah, Rafael asked me if I thought you would like that,” she admitted.
“You two! Scheming behind my back!” Victoria scolded them laughingly.
“Worked, didn’t it?” Rafael said with a teasing grin.
“Yep! So I guess you can do it any time you want to,” Victoria said.
They gave Lena the little gifts they had gotten her on the ship. She was totally delighted with them and expressed her joy and thanks over and over. She loved the t-shirt that declared, “Being a Princess isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”
After a quick lunch, they went upstairs to pack another suitcase and get ready to fly out later that day. Rafael printed out the plane tickets and Victoria put them in her purse so they wouldn’t go off without them. They had to leave at three o’clock in order to get to the airport two hours before their flight took off.
Because they would be driving a rental truck back, they took a cab to the airport. Lena would have been glad to drive them, but they didn’t want her out in the traffic that is generated around LAX so soon after getting out of the hospital. Eventually, they were settled on the plane and it was taking off.
Victoria was lucky enough to have gotten a window seat, so she enjoyed watching the varying landscapes so far beneath the plane. The Tehachapis gave way to the flatness of the San Joaquin Valley. The central valley was a mixed bag of towns, field crops, and citrus groves.
They passed Sacramento, and the flatness gave way to rolling hills. Those eventually became green with the evergreen-covered Siskiyou Mountains where they left California for Oregon, but not before Mount Shasta’s majestic snow-capped peak and Mount Lassen to the east was seen from her window.
The green mountains subsided into the evergreen, oak, and madrone-covered hills that stretch from Ashland north nearly to Eugene. Then the terrain flattened out somewhat from there to near Salem, when the hills raised their tree-clad heads once more. Portland with all her children stretched out beneath the plane for several moments until they crossed the mighty Columbia River and the ground beneath her became Washington State. Before long, now, they’d be landing at SeaTac, formally known as the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.
As Rafael and Victoria exited the airport terminal, they began looking for a taxi. Fortunately, they were able to hail one right away. Victoria gave them her address and off they went. Her apartment was in the Queen Anne district that was north of downtown Seattle, and about a fifteen-mile drive from the airport. Fortunately, as late as it was, the traffic wasn’t too horrible.
When they finally arrived, Rafael got out their luggage, paid the taxi driver, and they went inside. To Victoria, it felt like she’d been gone for months instead of less than two weeks. It was a strange feeling of coming home, and yet not home. After a mere thirteen days back in LA, Seattle no longer felt like the home she had worked so hard to make it. They were tired, so they simply went to bed that night to get rested up for the job of packing all of Victoria’s belongings over the next couple of days.
The next morning, they got up starving for breakfast, but there was nothing available there. The milk that Victoria had left in the fridge two weeks earlier was spoiled. So they dressed and went in search of breakfast. Victoria knew of a little café not far away where they could get a good meal.
“Say, isn’t that the Space Needle just over there?” Rafael asked just before they got to the café.
“Yeah, that’s it. You wanna go see it while we’re here?” Victoria asked.
“Sure, I’d like that,” he answered. “Maybe after we eat?”
“It’s as good a time as any,” she said.
They parked Victoria’s car and went inside the café. The waitress recognized Victoria as soon as she walked in.
“Hey, Vicky,” she called out. “Haven’t seen you in a while. Where’ve you been keeping yourself?”
She led them to a booth and they sat down.
“Hi, Jan,” Victoria replied. “I’ve been in LA the past couple of weeks. My dad died and I had to go down.”
“I’m so sorry. I didn’t know,” Jan said. “Looks like you had a good trip though, in spite of everything.”
Jan gave Rafael a significant look.
“Well, some good as certainly come out of it,” Victoria conceded. “Jan, this is my husband, Rafael Rivera.”
“Husband! Girl, you move fast!” Jan exclaimed. “You say you were gone two weeks? Or did you have him on the string all along?”
“Yes, two weeks. No, no string. It’s a very, very long story. Just suffice it to say that he was my dad’s protégé and has been a real lifesaver these past weeks. I don’t think I could have survived with my sanity intact if I hadn’t met him,” Victoria told her.
“Well, congratulations, girl. I’m glad for you,” Jan said. “Are you going to live here or go back to LA?”
“I’m going back to LA. We’re just up here to move my stuff,” Victoria explained.
“I’ll miss seeing you in here, but I wish you well,” Jan said. “Now, what do you want to eat this morning?”
The couple gave Jan their order and she went to give it to the cook. In record time, their breakfast was set before them.
“As long as we’re out, let’s just go on over to the art museum so I can turn in my resignation,” Victoria said over a plate of hash browns and eggs.
“Sure, that’s fine,” Rafael said. “In fact, let’s do that first, and then go to the Space Needle.”
“That works,” she agreed.
When they were through eating, Rafael paid for their breakfast and left Jan a nice tip. The girls hugged each other goodbye, and then they left, heading for the art museum.
“Want me to go in with you, or stay out in the car?” Rafael wanted to know when he parked the car at the museum.
“I’ll go in alone, if you don’t mind,” she told him. “I think it would be best that way.”
“Sure, no problem.”
Victoria was warmly greeted when she walked into her former workplace. The two other employees who she ran in to wanted to know all about her trip. She kept the telling short and left out all the sordid details, saying only that the funeral was hard, but that she’d met someone, had gotten married, and was only back in Seattle to move her things back to LA. The other two expressed their dismay that she was leaving them, but congratulated her on her marriage. Then she excused herself and went to the manager’s office.
She knocked on the door, then opened it and went in when invited.
“Hi, Vicky,” Mrs. Danforth said in a surprised voice. “I didn’t expect to see you back so soon. How was your trip? I’m so sorry about your father.”
“Hi, Mrs. Danforth,” Victoria replied. “Thank you. My trip was all right, I guess. As good as any funeral trip can be. The good part was that I met someone special and married him the day before yesterday.”
“Married! Wow! You move fast,” Mrs. Danforth exclaimed. “He must be special to move that fast.”
“Well, I have my dad to thank for a lot of it,” she said. “He was so sure that we would be right for each other that he set us up together before he died. He just hadn’t bothered to let me know about the deal. It’s all good, though. I’m now grateful to my dad and am very happy with Rafael. He is very special.”
“Rafael? Hispanic?” Mrs. Danforth asked.
“Yeah, his father immigrated from Mexico before Rafael was born.”
“That’s nice,” Mrs. Danforth said.
“The reason I’m here,” Victo
ria began, “is that I need to turn in my resignation. I’m going to move back to LA. All the reasons that I left have … have gone away. Being back there made me realize that I miss the California weather. And there are a lot of loose ends that I have to take care of. My dad left his business to me, and the house, so I need to be there.”
“Your mother?” Mrs. Danforth asked gently.
She knew that much of the reason Victoria had come to Seattle seven years ago was to escape her mother. Victoria sighed.
“She had a complete breakdown and is in a psych ward,” she said sadly. “She assaulted her housekeeper, held Rafael at gunpoint, and I think she killed my dad. But that hasn’t been proven yet. It’s a really long, ugly story. You don’t want to hear it and I don’t have time to tell it.”
“Sounds like you’ve been through the ringer the past couple of weeks,” Mrs. Danforth said sympathetically.
“Through it backwards and forwards, several times,” Victoria said. “Anyway, I decided I’d rather tell you in person than call you from down there. I had to come up to move my stuff back to LA, so I just waited until I got here.”
“Well, I’m sure sorry to see you go. You’ve been a great asset here at the museum. But I understand that sometimes our lives take sudden twists and turns that we didn’t expect. And you have to do what you have to do.”
Mrs. Danforth got up and came around her desk to take Victoria’s hands in hers.
“Best of luck to you, Vicky,” she said. “If you ever get up this way again, be sure to stop in and see me.”
“I will. Thank you for being so good to work for and so understanding now.”
“Oh, I almost forgot,” Mrs. Danforth said, going back around her desk.
She opened a drawer and took out a white envelope.
“Here’s your last paycheck,” she said, holding the envelope out to Victoria.
“Oh, yeah, thanks,” Victoria said.
After saying goodbye to Mrs. Danforth and her co-workers who clustered around her after she left the office, Victoria took one last glance around the place where she had been so happy for the past several years. Then she left, went to the car where Rafael waited, and left that part of her life behind her.
Chapter 2
They drove over to the Space Needle complex and got out and walked around. They rode the elevator up to the observation deck and looked out over the city.
“This is cool up here,” Rafael said. “I’ve wanted to do this for years.”
“I like it, too,” Victoria said. “I’ve come up here quite a few times in the last few years.”
They fooled around there for a while, and then decided they’d better get back to Victoria’s apartment and get her things packed. Victoria bought a tiny Space Needle model to commemorate her time in Seattle. On the way back to her place, they stopped at the truck rental place to place a hold on a truck and to buy packing boxes and materials. They also rented a car dolly to put her car on to take south with them.
They picked up a frozen pizza to have for lunch, along with a quart of milk, a loaf of bread, and some cheese for sandwiches, and then hurried back to get busy packing. By bedtime, they had the majority of her things boxed, labeled and stacked in the living room ready to load into the truck the next day. The next morning they had a quick breakfast of cereal and milk and packed up the kitchen.
By noon, everything was packed up except for a few cleaning supplies. While Rafael drove her car to pick up the rental truck, she cleaned the apartment. Then she went to the manager’s apartment and turned in her keys. She apologized for not giving notice, but when she briefly explained her situation, the manager said it was all right, and, after inspecting the apartment, said that a check for her cleaning deposit would be mailed to her soon.
Rafael returned and they began toting boxes out to the truck and loading them. It took a good hour or longer to get everything carried out to the truck. Victoria was grateful for a ground floor apartment, and one that opened onto the parking lot, so they didn’t have far to carry the boxes. A hand truck that was provided with the truck helped considerably.
At last the last box was in place in the truck and the car had been rolled up onto the car dolly again and secured in place. Victoria took one last look around the apartment that she had called home for four years. She had first lived in a dormitory while she was in college. She’d had some good times here; but, just as she had come to make a change in her life, she was leaving to make another change.
She pulled the door shut, made sure it was locked, and then joined Rafael in the truck. It was three o’clock in the afternoon by the time they pulled onto Interstate 5 headed south. They wouldn’t get very far today, but the more miles they put behind them, the closer back home they would be.
After they had cleared Portland, they began to look for a place to eat. Victoria spotted a fast food place just off the freeway at Woodburn, so they pulled off, grabbed a bite and got back on the road just as quick as they could. By the time they hit Roseburg, Rafael was tired of driving, and getting sleepy. So they took an exit, found a motel, and called it a night.
They were up early the next morning, and decided to drive at least as far as Medford before stopping for breakfast. Since it was only about an hour and a half’s drive, they were good with that. Sure enough, by eight o’clock they were pulling off at Central Point and into the big truck stop there.
After a good breakfast and refueling, they were on the road again, armed with snacks and cold drinks. Rafael set his speed for a steady sixty-five miles per hour, which he held even climbing the Siskiyou Summit south of Ashland, the highest point on Interstate 5. Victoria held her breath as they started picking up speed going downhill, but Rafael slowed down some and carefully negotiated the curves. At the first sighting of Mt. Shasta, Rafael was impressed with its size and beauty. As they descended into Yreka, the view of the wide Shasta Valley nestled in between the majesty of the mountains was breathtaking.
By the time they got to Stockton, the truck had to be refueled, so they exited the freeway where they could see a gas station. As long as they were stopped, Victoria walked over to a burger place next to the gas station and got them burgers, fries, and milkshakes for lunch while Rafael was refueling the truck.
On the road again, Rafael once again set his speed at sixty-five and held it there as traffic permitted. It was close to three o’clock and they still had about a five-hour run or more, depending on how bad traffic was once they got close to LA.
“I think we’ll make it on in tonight,” Rafael told Victoria. “Even if it’s late, we’ll just keep rolling.”
“OK, just don’t get too tired,” Victoria said. “Better to stop even if we’re close than to take a chance on a wreck just because you got sleepy.”
“I’ll be all right,” he said. “If I do get too tired, we will just stop. But I think I’ll be fine.”
As the miles rolled by, they tossed ideas back and forth about what to do for a really nice, memorable wedding trip. Hawaii. The Bahamas. New Orleans. A cruise. A motorhome rental. The Grand Canyon. Yellowstone. The ideas flew back and forth between them a good share of the day.
The final decision was that they would buy a small Class C motorhome and travel as far as Galveston, Texas, and take in as many sights between home and there as they possibly could in one month. Rafael thought that one month was as long as he dared be gone from the business until he was more firmly established as the CEO. Even that was pushing it, he felt. But he really wanted this trip to be a memorable one. He had never traveled outside of southern California in his entire life, so there were a lot of places he wanted to go to and see and do.
Although Victoria’s parents could well afford to travel, they didn’t do much of it. David was wrapped up in the business much of the time and Marian was completely involved in her social circles. Sometimes if David had to make a business trip to another city, he would take Marian and Victoria along. There were even a few occasions, when Victoria was a
little older that Marian didn’t want to go, but Victoria did, so David would take just her. Those were very special trips during which father and daughter bonded even closer, if that were possible. Victoria would always treasure the memory of them in her heart.
The Grand Canyon, Albuquerque and Santa Fe, were major points of interest to stop at along the way to Texas. Once inside the borders of Texas, there were so many places to go and things to see that they would be hard pressed to get them all in. Austin and San Antonio, with its Alamo, were at the top of the list. Then, of course, Galveston and on to Corpus Christi. On the way back, they would hit up Roswell, New Mexico and White Sands National Monument, Tombstone and Tucson, Arizona, and the Yuma Territorial Prison.
A month was a short enough time, but if they were a day or two late coming home, at least they wouldn’t get fired. As they hammered out the major places of interest they each wanted to stop at, Victoria wrote them down on a scrap of paper. At home, they would map out the exact route and figure out what dates they could be gone for that long. It would be a month or so at least, they figured, to get a handle on things at work and to find out what was going to happen to Marian. Maybe even longer.
It was close to ten o’clock that night when Rafael finally turned the rental truck into the Thornton driveway. Victoria hopped out and opened the gate, and then got back in. Rafael pulled the truck up into the circle drive to the front door. He shut of the ignition and heaved a sigh of relief. The long day was finally over. They took only their one suitcase in the house, leaving the unloading until the morrow.
Lena was waiting up for them. Victoria had called her when they were a couple of hours out and let her know that they would be in that night. They didn’t want to scare her by coming in so late unannounced. After being assured that the trip had been successful and safe, Lena excused herself and went to bed, leaving them to do the same.
After quick showers, the two exhausted travelers collapsed into bed and were soon fast asleep. When they awoke the next morning, they were in no hurry to get up. But after they had satisfied their morning desire, they got up. Victoria dressed in a pair of old jeans and a shirt to get the truck unloaded.