Page 39 of Accidental Vegas Vows

“That’s old. How old is Damien?”

It shouldn’t have weirded me out that he was calling him by his first name, but in fairness, the kid barely knew him. “Forty-five, I’m pretty sure.”

His mouth popped open into a circle. “That’s like, really, really old,” he said. His free, not-sticky hand gripped mine as we crossed the road, the high-rise office in sight. His fingers twitched as I held them, his eyes focusing in on our joined hands. “That’s… nine.”

“Nine?” I glanced down at him, making sure his ice cream wasn’t leaning too far to fall off onto the busy sidewalk.

“Yeah. My age nine times.”

Damien said he was five, right? Five times nine… Math wasn’t my strongest subject by any means, but my God, the kid was right. Was that normal? “You know multiplication?”

He nodded. “Mmhmm. Mom taught me my times tables before she died.”

Well, there was the dead-mom-thing Damien said to look out for.

“Where’s Damien?”

“In a meeting,” I said, scanning my keycard at the side staff entrance. I hoped that if we came in through there and not the main entrance, we’d avoid some of the looks we’d gotten on our way out. “He should be out soon.”

“What kind of meeting?”

“A board meeting. They’re really important.”

“Have you ever been to a meeting?”

I shook my head as I ushered him toward the elevator. “Not one like that.”

“I wonder if I’ll ever go to a meeting.” His head cocked as he watched himself in the reflective surface of the elevator, his ice cream still dripping, splattering his shoe. He’d barely touched it.

In my head, I’d imagined this going a lot worse than it did. But the kid was insanely calm about everything, and although he’d been ever so slightly rambunctious when we’d stopped off at the park briefly and he chased a pigeon, I couldn’t help but wonder if dealing with the death of his mother and the overwhelming shift of gaining a new parent and leaving behind everything else had matured him prematurely.

My brother had gone through something similar when one of his friends broke his neck falling off a bike in front of him. It was as though he was someone new, someone intensely mature and reliable, overnight.

“You know, for being thrust into a whole new life and a weird situation, you’re handling it really well for a five-year-old,” I said.

“Thanks.” He full-on bit the top of his ice cream, stuffing so much into his mouth that his cheeks blew up like a chipmunk. Okay. Maybe not wildly mature. “Is Damien nice?”

“What do you mean?”

“He was nice to me this morning, but he wasn’t very nice to Auntie Grace. I don’t want him to not be nice to me.”

I took a deep breath and dropped down to his level, watching in the corner of my eye as the number on the elevator rose. “Your dad is…” He doesn’t need to know about my situation with Damien. “He’ll be so nice to you, Noah. He just didn’t know you were coming this morning, that’s all. It caught him off guard, you know? Surprised him. He was only upset with your aunt because he didn’t have enough time to get the house all ready for you. He wanted it to be perfect when you came.”

The elevator dinged one floor below the one I’d pressed. The doors opened, and there was Damien, his eyes fixed on something far to his right as he called out an overtly poised goodbye to someone I couldn’t see. But then he looked at me, squatting on the ground in front of his child, and everything about him softened.

“Speak of the devil,” I chuckled.

Noah’s eyes flicked between me and Damien. “Huh? What does that mean?”

I shook my head as I stood up. “Nothing. Just a turn of phrase for when someone you were just speaking about shows up.”

“Are you saying that he’s the devil?”

“She better not be,” Damien said, stepping across the threshold and letting the doors close behind him. “Mint chocolate chip, huh? Good choice.”

Noah held up the half-eaten scoop on the disintegrating cone with pride.

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