“Your theory?”
“Remember? I mentioned it this morning before I was cut off.” He shoots me a stiff look. “That vacation time should be mandatory. Six weeks minimum.”
“How did he respond to that?” Seth asks.
“He nodded. And then he said, Hm. Just like that. Hm. Seemed like he was really thinking it over. And then he asked me my name. He zipped up, shook my hand, and said, Thank you, Aidan.”
Mira grimaces. “Without washing first?”
“Yes. Washing, then shaking,” Aidan clarifies. “He acted like what I had to say was really important. He listened. He really listened. To me. It wasn’t just lip service, like I get at school. What I said mattered—at least to him it did.”
Seth and Mira are exuberant, asking more questions, Mira giving him a spontaneous hug and then blushing crimson when she realizes what she has done. Aidan turns the attention to me.
“You haven’t said anything, Des. What do you think?”
I don’t want to spoil his moment, and I know Aidan doesn’t like to think of such things, but since he asked, I must tell him. “I was just thinking, what are the chances?”
11
CHANCE WEAVES THROUGH OUR LIVES. For some it is made of a golden thread. Will and Caroline Faraday had seemed destined for happiness. That is what Aunt Edie had told me. Many times. It was like a story she read from a book over and over again. She wanted me to understand and know my parents. To understand her only sister.
They married young, “without two nickels to rub together,” as Aunt Edie put it. But they had endless amounts of hope for the future. Will was a pilot, and Caroline was good with numbers, and they began a courier business with a rented plane and an office on the kitchen table of their apartment. They took any and every job they could, and soon they owned the plane, plus two more. From then on, it seemed like everything they touched turned to gold. Within a few years their small courier service had grown into a national, then international shipping business. They ventured out into other businesses, which also prospered. Their company entered the ranks of the Fortune 500 by the time they were both twenty-eight years old. Through it all, they remained best friends and wildly in love. But for all their happiness, they knew they were missing something. They wanted a family. Will was an only child and had always dreamed of a houseful of children. Aunt Edie was much older than her sister, so Caroline grew up as an only child as well and longed for a large family. “When you were born, their happiness seemed complete. The world revolved only around you, Destiny.”
I remember those years. I remember them well. Seven years. They are all I have. Because, as Aunt Edie puts it, “It wasn’t until your mother became pregnant with Gavin that things began to unravel. One thing just seemed to lead to another.”
It was usually about this point in her story that she would begin wiping at her eyes and telling me how sorry she was for everything I had been through. And it was always then that I would ask for one more chance. One more chance to be a good girl. One more chance to make them love me enough to keep me with them—the way they kept Gavin.
I only brought it up for a few visits because it just made Aunt Edie cry more. After that I would remain silent while she talked, and I would think about chance and the order of it, rather than the randomness, and wonder why some chances stacked up to make everything right, and some stacked up to make everything wrong.
12
WE FINALLY LEAVE the hilly lane to Drivby behind us, and Seth presses the pedal to the floor to gain some distance on the road. I am well aware that I have only eight miles left to my designated nineteen before I must hand the floor over to Aidan, and I still have a few more things to say. Especially now.
He and Mira are chattering in the back seat. I turn and join their chatter. “Isn’t it odd, Aidan, how you just mentioned being president this morning?”
His smile dims. “Yes, I thought of it too.”
“I forgot about that,” Seth says. “Very weird.”
Aidan frowns. “Just say it, Des. Get it out of your system, and let’s move on.”
Mira says it for me, though much more enthusiastically than I ever could. “That’s a freakish coincidence!”
I smile. Some things come so easy. “Nothing much to add,” I say.
“But you will,” Aidan replies.
When he’s right, he’s right. “I guess you’re just one of those one-in-a-million people who gets an audience with the president and gets to speak his mind on exactly the subject that he had just been raving about.”
“I wasn’t raving.”
“Debatable. But since we’re on the subject of presidents and coincidences anyway—do you know about the ones with Kennedy and Lincoln?”
Aidan sighs.
“I want to hear,” Seth says, eyeing Aidan in the rearview mirror.
“They were both assassinated,” Mira offers.