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“Please check on Michael!”
The first words I’d spoken all night flew out of my mouth while I hammered down the stairs. Nonno stopped in the front doorway, allowing a few errant flakes inside while Kate looked up from her book on the couch.
Nonno closed the door and faced me.
I knew what he was going to say. That it was rich of me to start speaking now when I wanted something. Not two hours ago, when he and Nonna had lectured me until my ears were bleeding on the sin of premarital sex, the dangers of a criminal like Michael, and all the things that might happen to me, from an unplanned pregnancy to going straight to hell, all because of a boy.
I hadn’t spoken. I hadn’t had anything to say. At least not anything that they wanted to hear. They didn’t care that I was in love. They didn’t know Michael like I did.
And I wasn’t sorry. Not even a little bit.
Now, though, I had to use my voice.
“He’s—I know you’re mad, Nonno. But it’s cold. The city just issued a blizzard warning, and he doesn’t have anywhere else to go. It’s the right thing to do, and I…I want to make sure he’s safe.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Kate cringing.
“Lea, do you even know if he went back to the garage?” she wondered. “Would he actually go there after what happened?”
I honestly didn’t know. He had probably stopped in, if only to get what few things he had, but other than that, I didn’t know where else he would go, either. Someone who was living in his boss’s garage didn’t have a lot of options.
“Stop.”
We all turned. Nonno’s face was bright red under his old-fashioned fedora, though his voice hadn’t lifted a decibel. A good sign. At least he wasn’t yelling anymore.
My grandfather’s eyes softened as he looked at me, and for a moment, I saw a flicker of understanding. He sighed heavily and nodded.
“Okay,” he finally said, his tone begrudging. “I’ll check for him. But this changes nothing, Lea. Not a one.”
I launched down the stairs and wrapped Nonno in a hug. “Thank you,” I whispered fiercely into his ear.
He stiffened but eventually returned the squeeze.
It was the first sign I got that things would be all right again.
“And don’t—please don’t hurt him?” I couldn’t help but add.
Nonno extracted himself enough to deliver a particularly scathing look. One that clearly said I had no place to warn him about anything.
I had the decency to blush. He called his goodbye in Italian to Nonna before shutting the door behind him.
* * *
Four hours later, Nonno hadn’t come back.
I had called the garage six times and only received the same voicemail with Nonno’s gruff message on it again and again. I even yelled as loud as I could on the voicemail, hoping the sound would carry up to the breakroom, where Michael might hear me.
Either he wasn’t there, or things were too intense to answer.
I wasn’t sure which was worse.
“That’s it,” I said, grabbing my coat. “I’m going over there.”
“Lea, no,” Nonna chided from the couch, where she was darning a pair of Nonno’s socks. “That’s a bad idea.”
“It’s a fine idea,” I said. “I can’t sit here and wonder if something went wrong between them. I need to know.”
My grandmother huffed, then set her mending aside. “Okay, then I will come too.” She stood and called up the stairs. “Kate! Lea and I are going to the shop to find your nonno! Watch the girls, okay?”
