And none of them ever felt this much like home.
Epilogue - Ruby
Two years ago, I arrived in Las Vegas with a few dollars, a duffel bag, and a five-year-old who asked me every twenty minutes if we were almost there.
I had no idea where there was.
I think I've found it.
I'm sitting on the back porch of our house, with a yard and a lemon tree that Marcus has appointed himself sole guardian of, watching the late afternoon light turn the sky above Vegas that particular shade of orange that still catches me off guard sometimes. Like the city is reminding you that underneath all the neon and noise, there's a desert that was here long before any of it and will be here long after.
My feet are up on the porch railing because my ankles have been swollen since Tuesday and my lower back has been staging a protest since Monday, and Delia is sitting on my bladder like she's testing the structural integrity, which is both uncomfortable and completely on-brand for a girl who isn't even born yet.
Delia Mae Mercer.
My grandmother's name. Jake's last name.
I look down at my stomach. Seven months of proof that life can surprise you in the best possible ways, and put my hand flat against the side where I can feel a small foot pressing outward with increasing insistence.
"Easy, baby girl," I say softly. "Your dad's almost home."
As if on cue, I hear it. The rumble of a motorcycle engine coming up our street, distinctive and low, a sound that my body has learned to recognize the way it recognizes my own heartbeat.Two years of listening to it and I still feel something loosen in my chest every single time.
The engine cuts. The gate opens.
"Mama!" Marcus's voice erupts from inside the house a split second before the back door bangs open and he careens out onto the porch in his socks, nearly sliding off the edge entirely. He's seven now, and somehow both more chaotic and more wonderful than he was at five, which I wouldn't have thought possible. "Dad's home! I heard his bike!"
"I heard it too," I tell him. "Inside voice, please."
"We're outside."
"The neighbors can still hear you."
He considers this with the serious expression he uses for important philosophical questions. "Okay but Mr. Patterson is basically deaf so—"
"Marcus."
"Inside voice," he agrees cheerfully, then turns and bellows toward the gate, "DAD! WE'RE ON THE PORCH!"
I give up.
Jake appears around the side of the house, still in his cut, helmet tucked under one arm, and Marcus launches himself off the porch steps like a small missile. Jake catches him without breaking stride. He's been doing this for almost two years and he never misses, not once, and swings him up onto his shoulders like he weighs nothing.
"How was school?" Jake asks.
"We did fractions. I hate fractions. Also, Tyler said my dad was scary and I said yeah, that's the point."
Jake's mouth does the thing I love. That slow, reluctant curve that took me months to draw out of him and now appears with increasing frequency. "Smart kid."
"I told him you're actually really nice unless someone's being a jerk."
"Also accurate." Jake's eyes find mine over Marcus's head, and there it is, that look. The one that still catches me off guard after two years because I spent so long believing no one would ever look at me that way. Like I'm the fixed point. Like everything else is variable and I'm the constant.
"Hey," he says, coming up the porch steps.
"Hey yourself."
He leans down, Marcus still perched on his shoulders and kisses me. Soft and unhurried, his free hand coming to rest against my stomach with the tenderness that never fails to make my eyes sting.
