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I raised an eyebrow. “You mean, when you laughed at my misfortune?”
“I’m so glad you met my Emma,” Lane said. “She couldn’t have found a better person for her. I think I knew she wanted something else in her life, but I never quite understood her.”
“She’s something else,” I said.
An idea came to me, one that had been on my mind for quite a while. “Lane,” I asked. “I want Emma to be my wife. I want a real wedding. May I have your daughter’s hand in marriage?”
“Call me old fashioned,” Lane said, “But she’s already married to you.”
“Not in this country,” I replied. “And not with her new identity.”
“You want to marry her, as someone else?” Lane looked at me like I was crazy.
Iwascrazy. I was crazy for his daughter, and I was crazy about my own daughter. My girls filled me with a power that I didn’t know I had: love. I wanted to marry Emma as myself, and I wanted the wedding to go off without a hitch.
Lane had agreed to sit Esther the day I proposed to Emma. She didn’t see it coming. We made our way to the Wat Arun. She, of course, wanted to climb it. I agreed without hesitation, but there was a big man at the foot of the steps.
“Aaron!” Emma said excitedly. “Where have you been?”
“Getting everything ready, of course,” he said, with the nonchalance of someone ordering their coffee black.
“Ready for what?” she asked.
“Think you’re ready for that climb?” I asked.
She said her goodbyes to Aaron, who told her he’d be waiting for us when we got down. As we started the climb, we reminisced on our first time up here.
“I can’t believe it’s been a year since we were last here,” she said. “Having a baby sure does make getting out just a little harder.”
“We have your father to care for her,” I said.
“He almost sold me,” Emma said, referring to the time when she had been kidnapped. We both laughed at that.
“I wouldn’t have met you if your father wasn’t so bad with the mafia,” I said. I held her hand, her soft skin giving me energy to ascend up the last few steps.
She looked out at the city below us, the turquoise colored water against the decorative cityscape, perfect for distracting her. I got down on one knee and when she turned around, she gasped.
“Will you marry me?” I asked. “Let’s do this whole wedding thing all over again.”
Emma was speechless.
Needless to say, when we got down we were both happier than ever. Even after Esther’s birth, it felt like the new lease on life wasn’t quite done with us. There was so much to look forward to in our futures. Aaron took pictures of us when we got down, and Emma showed him the ring I got for her.
“It’s so much better than my father telling me that I had to marry Jack because of the baby,” Emma said.
We all laughed.
5 YEARS LATER
Esther was turning five and starting school.
Life was good. I constantly marveled at how lucky I had turned out to get swept away by Jack. To his credit, even he didn’t know things would turn out this way. There was no indication that we had once been deep in the heart of the mafia. I always wondered what happened to Karen. She was quite an anomaly, having been such an integral part of the Reed and King’s feud. Even though I didn’t like her, my heart still went out to her. Jack had told me he had found her drunk in my father’s room. When I asked my father, he said he didn’t know. Regardless, whatever happened between those two, if anything had happened, was beyond me. Father was more intent on being a good grandfather.
It was the first day of school, and we had enrolled her in a private international school. The headmaster came out to greet us as we dropped her off.
“Only one of you can bring her in,” the headmaster said.
This had been emphasized to us the day we had enrolled Esther, but the reminder still stung. In previous conversations between the three of us, it had been unanimously decided that I would be the one to take her into the building.
