by Melinda Minx
It should have felt like a new home, but something was missing. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it at first, but then Silas had left for the night. We decided we didn’t want to confuse Elijah too much by having him wake up with Silas still here.
Once Silas had left, I’d suddenly realized exactly what had been missing in the apartment.
It was a new day, and Elijah was playing with one of his Duplo sets on the living room floor. It was construction equipment: An excavator and a dump truck.
“Dump truck!” he shouted, slamming the dump truck into the excavator. The excavator slid backward—held in Elijah’s other hand—and then counter-attacked. “Eksavattorrr!”
“Why is the construction equipment fighting each other, sweetie?”
“They are ninja trucks!”
“Ah, okay.” I took the orange juice out of the fridge and poured myself a glass. I poured a smaller glass for Elijah, then mixed some water into his. Unchecked, Elijah would go through a whole carton of orange juice in one day, and adding water to his was one of the only ways I knew of to slow him down.
My phone rang, but it was back in the bedroom. I was juggling the water filter in my hands and still mid-pour.
“Can you grab my phone, sweetie?”
Elijah dropped his Duplo and rushed into the bedroom.
The phone stopped ringing, but Elijah didn’t come back. I inhaled deeply for patience. He had taken a habit of answering my phone for me, which was fine—and even cute—if it was my mom or Nadia calling. If it was a department chair from the hospital though, it probably made me look unprofessional, or like a frazzled single mom who couldn’t control her kid.
“Elijah,” I said, “who is it?”
“Jiu Jitsu Daddy wanna go to Denvuh!”
“What? Is it Daddy?” I had already put the drinks down and was going into the bedroom.
Elijah had the phone up to his ear and was giggling.
I stood in the doorway and crossed my arms. I watched as Elijah giggled and laughed louder. He started making fart noises into the phone.
“Is Daddy making fart noises?”
“Yes,” Elijah said, still laughing. “You want to hear?”
“I’ll wait until you two are done.”
I smiled as Elijah laughed at his father’s highly sophisticated sense of humor, and finally he looked up and handed me the phone. “I think he’s done farting.”
“Great.” I put the phone to my ear. “You’re going to Denver?”
“You are too,” Silas said.
“I’m starting work next week. In like five days.”
“We’ll be back before then. I’ve got a private jet. You won’t even have to take your shoes and belt off. At security, that is. You’ll probably take those off at night, along with your—”
“Elijah is right next to me,” I said, blushing.
“Hello!” Elijah shouted, and then he let rip a very loud fart noise. Silas chuckled.
“My family was kind of having a reunion in Denver. I also sort of kind of blew it off, but now my dad got hurt, so I’m going to go up there for the weekend. I figured you’re…” He hesitated for a second, but then he spoke with more conviction, “I figured you’re my family. You and Elijah, and I wanted to introduce you to everyone.”
“Oh.”
“That doesn’t quite sound like a ‘yes.’”
“Yes.”
“Don’t just let me guilt trip you into it. You don’t have to—”
“Sorry,” I said, “it’s just that being a single mom made me a lot less spontaneous than I used to be. I was running through all the stuff I’d need to get ready for Elijah, and Bella, and—”
“Private jet. My driver can get everything you need taken with you. It will go right onto the plane. You can pack as many bags as you’d like. You can bring really big oversized stuff. You’ll have unlimited leg space. Full comfort, no hassle. The dog can just hop onto the plane. No cage or anything else needed.”
“I already said ‘yes,’ Silas. But thanks for the sell, I’m looking forward to it.”
“When would you like to leave?” he asked.
“When is the plane leaving?”
“Private jet,” he said, “it leaves when I say, and in this case, we don’t leave until you say.”
“Um, have your driver pick me up in like three hours?”
We drove right up onto the tarmac. I didn’t even realize you could legally do that. I’d taken it as a given that along with the insane price of plane tickets, there was an extra cost of flying. It cost part of a person’s soul and dignity to get onto an airplane. Shoes off. Belt off. Shuffle into this weird scanner thing with your socks sliding all over the dirty floor. Hands up! “Is this your iPad, ma’am? It needs to be in its own tub! Did you bring any guns or bombs or deadly viruses in your luggage? No? Did you let anyone else put a bomb or gun or deadly virus into your luggage? What about your kid’s? Is that a real child, or a walking bomb or deadly virus? Are you sure?”
When the driver opened the door for us, and a friendly looking man in a flight attendant uniform stood at the bottom of a staircase and smiled at us, it honestly felt like getting away with murder to no have to go through the entire security theater.
“Mr. Winters is on his way,” the driver said, “he was finishing up with a client.”
“This is Daddy’s airplane?” Elijah asked, pointing up at it.
“Yep, Daddy has his own airplane.”
I was nervous again. I didn’t want to get too used to this. Maybe going through all the indignity to fly is what kept me honest and grounded? I wasn’t a billionaire, and I’d never aspired to be one. Even the most successful doctors still had to take their belts off and be suspected of trying to put bombs into their shoes. I was never meant to fly on a private jet.
There was a loud whirring sound, and I looked back to see a bright yellow shape barreling down the tarmac. I squinted, and then I realized it must be Silas in some kind of sports car.
Bella put her ears back and jumped back into the car to get away from the loud, scary sound.
“Mommy, look! A race car!”
The sound turned from a high-pitched thrum to a deep rumble as the car drew nearer. When the car was less than 200 feet away from us, it slammed the brakes on and began rotating slowly as it lost speed. The tires squealed and burned across the tarmac. The car skidded to a stop about fifty feet short of us, and the driver’s side door had rotated toward us by the time it came to a complete stop. The engine revved loudly one more time, and then cut off. The door opened, not sideways but upward, like the car from Back to the Future. Silas stepped out with a pair of sunglasses and a suit on.
He grinned up at me and pocketed his sunglasses. “Sorry I’m late.”
Elijah was jumping up and down. “Daddy is a race car driver! Mom! Look! Look!”
I crossed my arms and looked at Silas as he walked toward us. I tried hard to roll my eyes, but I was smiling too wide. “Was that supposed to impress me?”
He shrugged at me and cocked his head. “Not really. It was supposed to impress...this little guy!” He threw his arms open and grabbed Elijah up into the air. He gave him a big hug, then rubbed his stubble up against Elijah’s cheek. “You like my car?”
“Can I drive it? Please, Daddy! Please!”
“Maybe in 12 years.”
“Or 20,” I said flatly.
Elijah wouldn’t let it rest until he got to sit in the car.
“The door opens up instead of out.” I said, “what’s the point of that?”
“To look cool?” Silas said, helping Elijah into the driver’s seat. “My goal wasn’t to impress you, Emily, but you sure are smiling a lot.”
“I’m just happy to see you. Scary race car with weird doors or not.”
“It’s not a race car, it’s a Lamborghini.”
“I prefer my Italian products to be leather.”
“Oh, it’s got a leather interior.”
“I mea
nt purses and shoes.”
“I know,” he said, “and I’ve now taken note of that for future gift-giving occasions.”
He smirked at me and tapped a finger to his forehead, as if he were storing a piece of valuable information away for later.
I watched as Elijah jumped into the car with Silas. “Make sure Elijah doesn’t actually drive that thing!”
To my horror, Silas had Elijah sit on his lap, and he actually started the car up with our son in it. He revved the engine a few times, and Elijah squealed in excitement. I couldn’t hear him over the engine, but I knew what his face looked like when he squealed like that. It was a face usually reserved for when the ice cream truck drove through in summer, or for when we emptied out his Halloween bucket onto the kitchen table.
Fortunately Silas didn’t actually drive the car, and soon enough he’d turned the engine off again and helped Elijah out of the car.
“Mommy! I wanna be a race car driver!”
“You just said you wanted to be a pilot.”
“Why not both?” Silas said, tousling Elijah’s hair.
He leaned in to kiss me, but he stopped when I looked up at him and shook my head ever so slightly.
Not in front of Elijah. Soon, but not just yet.
We got onto the plane, and Elijah used the big and luxurious open space to yell very loudly, and then to run as fast as he could down the entire length of the plane, all while still yelling.
Bella chased after him, nipping playfully at his ankles as if to herd him.
“So much for a relaxing flight,” I said, squeezing Silas’ hand.
“He’s excited,” Silas said, “and to me, that’s exciting. I’ll take exciting over relaxing any day.”
The plane got ready for takeoff, and we all had to buckle in. Elijah got the window seat, which thankfully kept him occupied enough that I was able to talk to Silas without too much interruption.
“So what do I need to know about your family?”
From the way his face shifted as I asked the question, I knew there was some definite baggage in the Winters family.
“That bad?” I asked, smiling.
“It could be worse. I guess the best summary of things is that my mom died when my brothers and I were still young. My dad didn’t take it very well. He moved us out to Colorado and bought a horse farm. I think it was his way of coping, but he put himself more into his work than into us. We were all kind of left to fend for ourselves, which I suppose worked out.”
“How so?”
He shrugged. “My little brother Wilder dropped out of high school and became a professional Poker player—”
“That’s good?”
“He was very good. He hit it at the gold rush time in the mid-2000s. Played a lot online and in competitions. He made millions. It wasn’t exactly smooth though. There were some points where he nearly went broke. He’s always been a serial womanizer, and sometimes he lost focus on his career. He was always a bit of a black sheep, but he recently retired from Poker and bought a hotel in Vegas. His net worth just exceeded one billion, so if you judge a person’s success by how many zeroes are in their off-shore accounts—”
“I don’t judge people like that,” I said.
Silas smiled. “I like that about you. It means that I can’t just rest on my laurels. I need to actually impress you.”
“That’s why you drove the car up like that?”
He grinned and shook his head. “I told you, that was for Elijah.” He ran a finger along my cheek. “Though I can’t help but feel you liked it too.”
“It was cheesy, but I’ll admit it was a little bit cool.”
“Maybe the sunglasses were a bit too much.”
“It was overcast, Silas.”
“So you’re going to meet Wilder, and Wyatt too. Wyatt just stayed in Colorado with my dad. He helps run the horse farm. He’s very good at what he does, not that there’s a lot of money in it. To be honest, I consider him the most successful of the three of us. He always seems the happiest, and he’s got a good head on his shoulders. Not that our father sees it that way.”
“They don’t get along?”
“I think he expected all three of us to become billionaires. When Wyatt just stayed put and did what our dad did, it let him down somehow. Even though Wyatt is the one most directly helping him. I said that Wilder was the black sheep, but really the black sheep is my father. My grandfather was worth a lot—he’d have been a billionaire today if you adjusted for inflation. My father squandered the entire fortune. He wasn’t even able to afford to pay cash for the horse farm. If it weren’t for Wyatt’s steady hand, Dad would have gone bankrupt ages ago.”
“Good thing he has two billionaire sons.”
“Well,” Silas said, “neither Wilder or I would ever let him go totally broke, but we can’t actually give him too much money at a time. It just disappears. We’ve tried cutting him off before—mostly at Wyatt’s urging—because the more we give him, the worse he runs the business into the ground. It’s a tricky situation. It doesn’t help that my father sees two of his sons becoming billionaires by their own luck or talent. He feels like the wealth skipped a generation. That he was short-changed by fate.”
“Look! Look!” Elijah shouted. “We’re flying inside the clouds!”
“You want to see the view from the cockpit?” Silas asked. “There’s a much bigger window in there.”
Elijah nearly leapt out of his seat. When the seatbelt stopped him, he just slid out of the seat like a worm, plopped onto the ground, and shoved past both of our legs.
Silas knocked on the door, and the co-pilot opened the door. As soon as the pilot and co-pilot saw Elijah’s face, they both smiled and waved for him to come in.
Silas and I stayed just outside the cockpit while the co-pilot explained all the instruments to Elijah.
“Is your family excited to meet me?” I asked.
Silas grinned sheepishly and scratched at his neck.
“You haven’t told them I’m coming?”
“I told Wilder I was bringing some guests. I wanted to surprise everyone.”
“You’ve got to tell them before we arrive.”
“Yeah, yeah, you’re right.”
“What’s the hesitation?”
He ran his lips across his teeth. “I didn’t want to jinx it?”
“I didn’t take you for superstition.”
“I guess it was a tricky situation to explain over the phone. I only really talked to Wilder, and I didn’t want some kind of game of telephone spreading everything through the family. Wilder likes to embellish things.”
I laughed. “You’re weird about the fact that Elijah was kind of an accident? A very happy accident. And then adding on the fact that you just figured out he existed.”
Silas nodded. “I’ll call Wyatt as soon as we land. He’ll tell it to everyone straight, and by the time we arrive everyone will know you and Elijah are going to be there.”
We drove toward the Rockies. Silas rented a car which he drove himself. Elijah was bobbing up and down in his carseat.
“It probably looks a lot like Alaska,” he said.
“Less cold though.”
“What did Wyatt say?”
I’d been too nervous to ask. Silas had walked off to make the call while we were waiting for the car to be ready. He’d been gone for well over ten minutes.
Silas smiled. “He didn’t believe me.”
“What?”
“I mean, he eventually did, but he thought I was joking with him at first.”
“He thinks it’s funny?”
“I think it was just unexpected. By the end of the call he was congratulating me and asking about you and Elijah. He’s excited to meet you.”
“And everyone else?”
“He said he was going to tell them after we got off the phone, so we’ll see.”
“You’re going to have to meet my mom after this. She’ll be in New York shortly after we get back.”
“Grandma’s coming?” Elijah asked.
“Not yet, sweetie. Soon though.”
“What did your mom think about the whole situation?” Silas asked.
“She was always begging me to contact you. I couldn’t even tell her your name for fear that she’d call you up and spill everything.”
“Why was she so eager to have you contact me if she didn’t even know who I was?”
“Because she knew you were rich.”
He laughed. “You know I’m not even slightly worried about that, right?”
“About what?”
“That you just want me for my money.”
“Who said I want you at all?” I tried to give him a stern look, but I couldn’t hold back my smile.
We soon approached the gate to the horse farm. It was right up against the mountains, offering a truly majestic view. I could see the horses in the distance, and several different buildings scattered across the property.
“It must have been nice growing up here,” I said.
Silas shrugged and nodded. “The view and fresh air was nice at least. I went back to New York for the last part of high school. I wanted to get away from my father as soon as I could. That’s when I met Noah.”
There were dozens of cars—mostly trucks and SUVs—parked in the very long driveway. The house itself was a ranch style home, and from the outside it looked like it was at least four bedrooms. Certainly not a mansion, but not small either.
There was a bright-orange sports car parked along with the more mundane vehicles. “Is that Wilder’s?”
Silas nodded.
We got out of the rental car, and Silas helped Elijah out of the carseat.
“We can ride horsies now?” Elijah asked.
Silas crouched down next to him. “Not just yet, buddy, but we’ll try to find one that isn’t too crazy for you to ride on once we get settled in.”
He knocked on the door, and I felt my stomach churning and heart pounding. If I ended up together with Silas, these people were going to be my new family. Even if things between us didn’t work out, these people would be a part of my life in some capacity or another since Silas was Elijah’s father. I wanted them to like me.
