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I’m not usually a nervous flyer, but for some reason this time I’m gripping my seat with every bump and wiggle of the aircraft as it hits turbulence.
Having Luna on board makes me hyper aware of exactly how dangerous it is to hurtle at nearly a thousand miles an hour in a metal tube across an ocean.
If there was a safer form of transport, I would have taken it.
But this was my only option.
My mind moves forward to the villa. My Nonna is a little to the north, happily ensconced in the town she grew up in, where she gets to reign supreme among all of the Italian nonnas in town who attend church just as regularly as she does. She will be thrilled, of course, to hear about Luna and to come down…
“You will not call Nonna.”
My sister interrupts my thoughts and I narrow my eyes at her. “Gia, don’t be ridiculous. Of course I’m going to call her. And the zias and everyone who will need to come to be a part of Luna’s life, and…”
“Elio. You are many things. But right now, you are being stupid.”
I’m angry with her now. “What did you say to me?”
“You’re being a moron. Take two seconds to think.”
“I was thinking well until you arrived, harping about me being an idiot at my shoulder,” I grumble.
“If you do that, you’re going to fuck it up.”
“Fuck what up?”
“Your relationship with your child. And her mother,” she adds darkly.
I huff. “I don’t care about Caterina.”
Gia shoots me a glance. “That’s cold.”
“It’s accurate.”
The look she gives me is searching. Like she’s trying to discern if I’m telling her the truth or not.
I’d like to know the answer to that as well.
Gia sighs and sits back. “Luna doesn’t know you. You are a stranger in her life. You haven’t said a single word to her?—"
“That is not my fault,” I snap.
She holds her hands up in surrender. “Be that as it may. The truth is still that Luna has no idea who you are. Can you imagine being in her position?
“She’s finally reunited with her mom. She’s away from her uncles and everything she knows. She had to run away from armed men who started a fire at the house she was in.
“Do you honestly think that she’s going to be happy with a bunch of old women who don’t even speak English?”
I pause.
Luna doesn’t speak Italian. The thought honestly never occurred to me. In my mind, no child of mine would ever speak English before Italian.
Everything about this feels wrong.
I have a daughter. I have a family.
But it doesn’t look like anything I had ever envisioned.
I had always wanted to be a father and to have a family. Those were dreams that, when I first met Caterina, I had been so excited to fulfill.
