Legacies

6.

"You're really going to Florida?" Gia said.

Jack lay on the couch in his apartment, content and thoroughly spent after a leisurely hour of lovemaking with Gia. She lay curled against him, her head on his shoulder, her breath warm on his chest.

"Just to make him happy."

"And maybe just to shut him up?"

"Hopefully, that too."

"What happened to this firm resolve to tell him in no ' uncertain terms that you would never move to Florida?"

Jack shrugged, and the motion lifted Gia's head.

"I tried," he said, "but I just couldn't do it. The poor guy is so sincere. He wants so badly for me to succeed."

"Does he think you're such a failure?"

"Not so much a failure as a guy with no plan, no agenda, no rudder, so to speak. And in that sense I think he feels he failed me." Jack felt his contentment slipping away. Why had Gia brought this up? "That's what makes it so hard. It'd be easy to blow him off if he'd been a bad father. But he was a good one, always making an effort to be involved with his kids, and he can't understand where he went wrong with his youngest. So he keeps trying, figuring sooner or later he'll get it right."

"He did leave you a rudder of sorts," Gia said, staring at him with those blue wonders. "You've got a moral compass, a value system. That must have come from someone."

"Not him. He's a citizen. A white-collar, churchgoing, taxpaying veteran of Korea. He'd have a stroke if he knew the truth."

"You're sure of that?"

"Absolutely, positutely, one hundred percent sure."

"And so you're going down to Florida."

"Sure as hell looks that way."

"Can Vicky and I come along? At least as far as Orlando?"

"Hey, now there's an idea," he said, brightening. He kissed her forehead. "Disney World. We've never been there. And the Universal place. I want to see 'Terminator 3-D.'"

Maybe Florida wouldn't be so bad after all. For a week.

"Let's do it."

And then it was time to get dressed and pick up Vicky.

But "3-D" stuck in Jack's brain for some reason, and he treated Gia and Vicky to a late-afternoon IMAX 3-D movie.

Vicky loved it, but Jack came away disappointed. All that screen, those neat 3-D glasses… you'd think they could do something better than close-ups of bugs and fish. Why not a real movie—like a 3-D IMAX haunted house? That would be something to see.

They found a restaurant called Picholjne nearby, where they had dinner and made plans for going to Florida. Vicky was ready to bounce off the walls with excitement, and Jack found himself beginning to look forward to the trip.

What better way to see Disney World than with a child? he thought, drinking in her smile and her bright eyes.

The only time Vicky stopped talking about Mickey and Donald was when the fabulous dessert tray came by. She had two.