Chapter Twenty-Three

Rue

Three weeks later…

“Have dinner with me tonight.”

I turned away from the mirror where I was checking my makeup and looked at Richard, sure that I hadn’t heard what I thought I had. I stared at him for a few moments and then took a step toward him.

“What?” I asked.

He finished tying his shoe and stood, shaking the front of his pants to straighten them and ensure that the pleat fell smoothly. It was something that had irritated me when I first saw him do it, thinking that he couldn’t possibly be fussier, but now it was almost endearing. He took a step toward me and took my hands in his.

“Have dinner with me tonight,” he repeated.

“You mean like a date?” I asked.

“No,” he said, and I felt my heart sink a little. “Not like a date. Not kind of a date. Not something similar to a date. A date.”

“You’re asking me on a date?” I asked, my heart lifting and a smile coming to my lips.

Richard laughed and nodded.

“Yes,” he said. “I am asking you on a date. I want to go on a date with you. I want to pick you up and bring you on a date. I want to be on a date and look beside me and see that you are there with me. I want to accompany you to dinner and have it be romantic in nature. I want this to be our first date. I want to date you and have it begin now.”

“OK,” I said, laughing. “Alright. I got it.”

“Are you sure?” he asked. “I think that I could come up with a few other ways to say it if you give me a minute.”

“I’m sure.”

“Then will you?”

I nodded, my smile getting bigger.

“Yes,” I said. “I would love to go on a date with you.”

Richard grinned and squeezed my hands.

“Perfect. I’ll have Abraham bring you to your apartment, so you can get ready. I’ll be there to pick you up at seven.”

“My apartment?” I asked. “But I don’t have anything there that I would want to wear on a date. Especially my first date with you.”

A glint came to Richard’s eyes and I knew that I had, yet again, underestimated this man.

“You might have something waiting for you,” he said.

“You were pretty confident in yourself, weren’t you?” I asked.

“More like hopeful.”

“And if I had said no?”

“Is there any way that you would have?”

“No, but what if I had?”

“Then you would be very prepared for the most formal birth in recorded history. Our daughter would have the most glamorous delivery of any child ever.”

I felt my breath catch in my throat.

“Our daughter?” I asked.

Richard pulled me closer to him until I could feel his heart beating in his chest. The rhythm was fast and deep, and I concentrated on it, enjoying the security of it. He nodded.

“It’s something that I want to talk to you about at dinner tonight.”

I nodded back, and he smiled, bringing his mouth down to gently touch mine.

“I’ll see you at seven?” I asked.

He nodded and kissed me again. My heart was fluttering in my chest and the butterflies swarming around in my belly were doing a bang-up job competing with the baby’s tumbling that she had gotten extremely skilled at in the past few weeks. I couldn’t get the smile off my face as I headed out of the house and into the waiting limo. Abraham headed in the direction of my apartment without me saying anything, telling me that this was all put into action well before Richard asked me to go to dinner with him that night.

When we arrived at the apartment, he escorted me to the door and unlocked it for me just as he always did. There was something about that that I really liked. It went beyond just feeling special because he was helping me. It was more that I was never the one who unlocked the door. This kept me from feeling like the apartment was a replacement for my home in Whiskey Hollow. As long as I wasn’t treating this apartment like my home, Richard wasn’t trying to control me, he wasn’t trying to change me.

I thanked Abraham and walked into the apartment. As soon as I went into the bedroom, I saw a large white box tied with a red ribbon sitting in the center of the bed. As I walked closer, I saw another smaller box behind it and a third behind that. Smiling at the thought of Richard going through so much effort for me, I untied the ribbon on the biggest box and lifted the lid. Pushing the pieces of tissue paper aside, I saw a stunning red dress. I reached in and withdrew the dress, holding it to me and spinning around to look at myself in the full-length mirror on the wall behind me. The dress had a delicately scooped neckline and a flared skirt that fell just above my knees.

Resting the dress back into the box, I reached for the smaller box behind the bigger one. Opening it, I found a pair of shoes perfect for the dress. My hands were shaking slightly as I picked up the third box. I sat on the edge of the bed and held the box on my lap for a few seconds before lifting the lid. Nestled inside against a bed of white velvet was a necklace, a pair of earrings, and a bracelet. I grinned as I took the bracelet and slipped it over my hand.

I put the bracelet back into the box and undressed before walking into the bathroom. A basket sat on the floor beside the tub, filled with my favorite scented bubble bath, bath salts, and lotion. A new pouf was tucked behind the bottles, making the assortment even more appealing. I ran a warm bath and poured some of the bubble bath under the stream of water, immediately filling the room with the sweet fragrance. Twisting my hair on top of my head, I stepped into the bath and slid down into the lush bubbles. I lingered in the bath, luxuriating in the sensory experience, then stepped out and used one of the thick, soft towels set beside the basket to dry myself. I felt refreshed and beautiful as I took my time doing my makeup and styling my hair. I still had some time when I was finished, so I sat down to write a letter to the baby.

****

Dear Baby,

I am going out on a date with your daddy tonight. I can hardly believe it. Of course, it’s something that I’ve been dreaming of and hoped would happen, but I couldn’t really let myself think that it would actually happen. Over these last few months I’ve tried to ignore that I was falling in love with him. Even as we got closer, I didn’t want to let myself admit what I was feeling. It would just make it much too hard when the time came for you to be born and for us to go our separate ways. I didn’t want to have to think about losing you and the man that I loved at the same time. It would be just too much for me to bear.

That was before today. Finally, your father asked me to go to dinner with him. It’s not the first time that we’ve eaten together, of course, but this is different. He finally said that it was a date. He finally admitted that he was feeling the same things that I was. Then he mentioned you. He told me that he wants to talk about you when we go out to eat tonight. I can only hope that he wants the same thing that I do. You know what that is. You are so close to my heart that you can hear it beat every second. I can only imagine that you know what’s in it. If he wants what I hope he does, maybe my heart can finally stop longing for what I thought would never be, and instead start dreaming of something far more wonderful than I could have ever hoped.

Something is going to change tonight, my sweet little one. Our lives are going to be different. I just know it.

I love you.

****

I put down my pen and put the letter aside without signing it. I didn’t know what to sign. Just my name didn’t seem like enough anymore, but there wasn’t anything else that seemed appropriate. Not yet. Not until I knew for sure.

I checked the time and saw that it was only a few minutes until Richard was supposed to arrive to pick me up. The butterflies felt like they had gotten their second wind as I let the dress drop down over my head and settle around my thighs. I put the earrings in and secured the necklace around my neck. I had just stepped into my shoes and drawn the bracelet over my hand when I heard the knock on my apartment door.

A real date.

I was smiling so hard my face hurt as I scurried toward the door as fast as my burgeoning belly would allow me, and opened it, but the expression melted when I saw who was waiting for me outside.

“Abraham,” I said.

“Hello, Miss Rue,” he said. “You look lovely this evening.”

“Thank you. Where’s Richard? Is everything alright?”

“Everything’s fine. There was a brief delay, so he sent me to get you and bring you to the restaurant. He says that he will meet you there and will probably even make it there before you.”

“Where is he?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Abraham said. “He had me drop him off at the Central Hotel. He said that he will be to the restaurant shortly. That’s all I know.”

“Did he seem upset?”

I was starting to panic. What could be keeping him?

Did I misunderstand what he meant when he asked me to dinner tonight?

“Everything seemed perfectly normal,” Abraham told me. “We should leave if you want to make your reservation on time.”

He was starting to sound impatient and I stepped out of the apartment. Abraham reached behind me and closed the door, locking it. I almost reached for the keys that I had in the tiny black purse I was carrying, as if I could somehow extra-lock the door. Abraham guided me toward the limo and I felt slightly unsteady on my feet as I went, thoughts of everything that could be happening, all of the ways that this could be going wrong spiraled through my head. As I slipped into the backseat and Abraham closed the door behind me, my mind suddenly cleared.

He specifically said that this is a date. Specifically. He wouldn’t say that if it wasn’t what he meant.

I forced myself to calm down, drawing in a few breaths as I tried to relax and bring myself back to the happiness that I had been feeling. The limo glided through the streets of the city and I watched the lights gradually coming on though it was still too early in the evening for it to be dark. This was the strange time of a summer day, when the clock said that it was sliding toward nighttime and many children were being tucked into bed, but the sun was still bright enough that you felt like you should be doing something productive. I distinctly remembered having that feeling when getting ready for prom in high school. I felt so fancy, dressed up in the gown that Grammyma had made for me and taking three hours to style my hair in a way that I look back now and know looked little different than something that would have taken me just a few minutes. I had felt glamorous, but when I stepped outside of the house to meet my date, the sun was still shining, and I felt far too gussied up. Rather than feeling grown up, I suddenly felt like a little girl toddling around in dress up clothes.

As we made our way down one of the main streets of downtown I noticed the large, ornate sign for the Central Hotel ahead of us. We were directly in front of it when traffic grinded to a halt and Abraham had to stop.

“What the hell is going on up there?” he muttered, and I saw him craning his neck to see what was causing the delay ahead of us.

I turned to look out of my window at the hotel, wondering where Richard was inside of it and what he was doing. As if my thoughts of him had guided them, my eyes scanned across the huge picture windows at the front of the hotel and landed on Richard. He was sitting at one of the small tables in the hotel’s exclusive lounge, two glasses of wine on the table in front of him. And sitting across from him was Flora.

I felt my heart jump into my throat and I turned to press myself closer to the window so that I could watch what was happening between them. They were leaned toward each other over the table, obviously caught in an intense discussion. I saw Richard reach across toward her and Flora take his hand. He gave hers a squeeze and she offered him a hint of a smile. The limo was starting to roll again, and I twisted to make sure that I could continue to watch them even as we pulled away. They were nearly out of sight when I saw them both stand and walk around the side of the table so that Richard could gather Flora into a tight embrace.

The breath seemed stuck in my lungs as I turned around and pressed my back to the seat, my hands coming to rest protectively over my belly as I fought to keep my emotions under control and my mind from spiraling out of it.

“Funeral,” Abraham muttered.

“That’s what it feels like,” I whispered back.