My Mom & My Dad

Chapter 9: The Weekend in Vegas (Part 1)

A/N: This entire chapter is told from the point of view of Emily.  In previous chapters Emily's narratives are in italics.  But since she's the only one telling the story in this chapter, I've decided not to italicize anymore, for easy reading.

**********************

Emily:

That Tuesday after the Sunday when all four of us were in church, Mom got a call from Oliver. She was doing some work for QC on her laptop while she was busy making lunch. She had just sent an email to the IT department when the bell rang for the timer she had set for the chicken baking in the oven. At exactly the same time, her phone rang. She put the phone on speaker mode and dashed to take the chicken out of the oven.

"Hey! Miss me?" Oliver asked with a level of excitement that was all too evident in his voice.

"Why would I miss you? We just saw each other Sunday," Mom teased. She giggled as she skipped towards the kitchen counter, almost dropping the chicken in the process. It's been fun watching my mom each time Oliver's name was spoken, or her phone rang and she'd look to see his name and photo flashing on the screen. She would behave like a little girl who had just been given a treat. In fact, in many ways, she acted a lot like me.

"Aw! That's too bad. Coz I miss my Felicity every minute, every hour, every day," Oliver responded.

"That's so sweet," Mom remarked. "But Mr. Queen, sir, I'm working right now, so if you're not calling about business, I'm afraid I'll have to put you on hold."

"Fe-li-ci-ty," he spoke my mom's name one syllable at a time.

"Hey, that's not fair! You know I can't win when you start saying my name that way," she retorted.

"Okay, okay. You don't have to say you miss me too... even if you really do," he said as he chortled. "But I did call about business."

"I'm listening, sir," Mom said with a more formal tone of voice.

"How would you like to go down to Vegas for the weekend? You and Emily. With me. And Diggle."

"I thought you said this was business? Sounds like a vacation."

"It is business. The Board of QC would like me to look into a potential partnership with another multi-million-dollar company based in Las Vegas. They'd like to consider putting up a subsidiary over there. A meeting's been set up Friday afternoon."

"So what would I be doing if  I were to come with you?"

"I thought it would be wise to have you inspect the company's computer systems and see if they're compatible with our own. You know, so that if the deal pushes through, the transition would be better facilitated, and communications with a subsidiary there would go more smoothly."

"And Emily?"

"Well, I thought you two might want to visit your folks while we're there... make the most of the free ride aboard QC's private jet."

"Sounds wonderful! We haven't been home since we moved to Starling. No matter how hard I've worked on our budget, there hasn't been much saved enough to buy us both roundtrip tickets to visit my parents. Thank you for this opportunity. Emily will be so excited to see her grandparents!"

"Will you be excited for me to meet your parents?" Oliver asked. The tone of his voice clearly showed that he was expecting an honest answer from my mom.

"Of course! That'd be great! I've been telling my folks about you, you know. I've been wondering how I could get you to meet them. This is just perfect! We can have Friday night dinner with my parents, and then sightsee all day Saturday. I'll be your tour guide. I'll take you to the best places, show you where I went to school, where I was born and gave birth to Emily. Oh, you and Diggle are gonna love Vegas!"