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Without sitting down, without even unbuttoning his coat, Karl left her sitting on the floor holding tight to the hat she’d knit him.
* * *
SHE DIDN’T KNOW how long she stayed on the floor. By the time she unfolded herself, every muscle in her body was stiff. The apartment smelled like pot roast. Like a home with people who sat around a table together and talked about their days. The pot roast was a liar. She turned the oven off, but left the pot roast in so it could continue to cook in the cooling oven until Karl got home. Then she went into her room to pack.
Resourceful. She shoved her clothes into her suitcase, leaving one of her winter coats in the closet. Practicality beat out pride, so she took the cheaper of the coats Karl had bought for her.
You’ll manage, Vivian, you always do. She yanked the bags filled with her personal items out of the closet. She’d planned on unpacking them tomorrow—good thing she hadn’t grown too comfortable. Her father had gotten her ejected from the only permanent home she’d ever known, and now his specter managed to get her kicked out of her temporary home, as well, just as she’d begun to feel settled.
You always land on your feet. Just like your mother. Except her mother was dead.
She hadn’t seen Aunt Kitty in two decades, but her aunt was still family and family looked out for one another. Even if neither of them had any Irish blood in them, St. Patrick’s Day counted as a holiday, right? By the time Vivian drove from Chicago to Reno, it would nearly be time to don the green shamrocks. When Aunt Kitty expressed surprise at seeing her, Vivian could just make vague references to the upcoming holiday.
Or she could throw herself into her aunt’s arms and cry.
The fact that Reno was still Nevada and jobs would be hard to find in casino-land was a problem she would have the entire drive to think up a solution to. Anything was better than seeing Karl and his expressionless face again.
Vivian didn’t think she could stand Karl’s cold gaze, not after she knew what he looked like when warmth filled his eyes.
She left Xìnyùn in his cage on the kitchen counter. If Aunt Kitty wouldn’t take her in, Vivian wanted to limit the number of dependents she had.
The odious doorman must have had a sixth sense about her, because he was waiting in the garage for an elevator when she stepped off with her bags.
He raised an eyebrow. “May I help you with your bags, Mrs. Milek? It is Mrs. Milek, right?”
Humiliation flooded her face, but she blinked it away. She didn’t owe this man an explanation. She didn’t owe him anything. “I can get it, thanks.”
And she would carry her own bags, even if her back was killing her. Feeling his smirk on her shoulders for the walk from the elevators to her car would hurt worse than her back, anyway.
She realized she had forgotten to leave Karl a note—and that she’d embarked on a foolish mission—at the same moment she was able to see through the snow long enough to realize she’d gotten on the wrong highway.
Despite their long and comfortable phone conversation, she’d still not seen her aunt since she was a child. Showing up on Aunt Kitty’s doorstep with an unborn child for which her aunt bore no responsibility was hardly the way to further a pleasant family relationship. Jelly Bean was a responsibility she and Karl shared; they would share the bond even if neither of them wanted anything to do with each other. Not to mention that her aunt lived in Reno. Vivian might be able to say, “I’ll think about how I’ll get a job in Nevada later,” while in an apartment in Chicago. But that laissez-faire attitude would desert her the moment she crossed the Nevada–Utah border.
No matter how cold Karl’s eyes had looked as he’d informed her she no longer had any secrets, she couldn’t be the type of person to hurl herself off into the distance with no plan.
Her more immediate problem was that she’d left her keys in the apartment, which she had meant to do so that she couldn’t convince herself her behavior was stupid and return to Karl’s. She’d been so driven by her shame and anger that she’d purposely made it impossible for herself to retreat without anyone noticing she’d been reckless. If she wanted back in the apartment, she’d have to ask the odious doorman to let her in.
