Page 122 of Ivory Ashes

He frowns. “What’s ‘vacation?’”

I cringe. Survival has been the name of the game for the last six years. There wasn’t time, money, or energy for random trips. Still, it feels like a bona fide Mom Fail that my son has never heard the word “vacation” before.

“A vacation is an adventure,” I explain. “A fun thing you do just because you want to.”

Dante gapes at me like I just told him we’re going to live in a magical treehouse and eat nothing but candy for the rest of our lives.

Then he frowns. “But we don’t have any money.”

If it was possible to die from humiliation, those six words would kill me stone dead.

Mikhail already knows my situation with Dante wasn’t exactly lucrative before he came along. That was obvious enough, given my job as a personal assistant to a man with chronic Funyun breath and the apartment held together with tape and hope.

Still, the fact I’ve said that we don’t have money out loud enough times for my five-year-old to repeat it now verbatim is a punch to the gut.

I’m still reeling, trying to figure out what to say, when Mikhail kneels down in front of Dante. “Do you know who owns this jet?” he asks. When Dante shakes his head, he points to himself. “I do. And the house where we live?”

“You? You own the castle?” Dante guesses.

Mikhail nods. “What about the swimming pool and the pantry full of snacks and the cars in the garage?”

“You,” Dante answers a bit more confidently.

“Exactly. I own all of that and I’m sharing it with you and your mom,” Mikhail explains. “All of this stuff is ours now.”

Dante gasps. “The jet is mine?”

“That’s right. Yours and mine and your mom’s. We all three own it. And we all three have enough money and time to go wherever we want in the world, whenever we want.”

“Disney World?” Dante blurts. “Can we go there?”

Mikhail shrugs. “Sure. It’s not where we’re going today, but we’ll go one day.”

“Where are we going today?” he asks.

I expect Mikhail not to answer. I’m actually about to warn him that if he doesn’t answer, we'll be in for many hours of Dante repeating the same question ad nauseam.

But Mikhail surprises me with an actual, factual response.

“Costa Rica.”

“What?” Dante and I blurt at the same time for very different reasons.

“I have a house there,” Mikhail continues, as casually as if he’s telling us he owns two pairs of shoes. Like it’s no big deal.

“What’s Costa Rica?” Dante asks.

I try to explain it to him, but I give up and hand him my phone so he can watch a travel video for Costa Rica on YouTube. That quickly transitions to him watching a movie, which ends with him slumped in his seat with drool on his shirt and a half-finished juice box clutched in his fist.

“I can’t believe you’re taking us to Costa Rica,” I mumble for what has to be the hundredth time in an hour.

Mikhail and I moved to the back of the plane so we wouldn’t wake Dante up. According to Mikhail, we have a lot of plans once we arrive, so it’ll be good that he's rested.

“You didn’t need to do this,” I tell him.

“I don’t do anything I don’t want to do.”

I suppress my snort. I don’t doubt that for a second.

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