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He met my gaze for the first time in many months. His eyes were questioning, and if he’d just ask, I’d tell him whatever he needed to hear. He curled his small fingers around the ball then threw it. We spent a long time like this until Loulou was panting and eventually carried her ball over into her basket, done with chasing.
That was when I noticed Giulia half hidden in the doorframe, her eyes so soft my own heart skipped a beat. She cradled Simona against her chest, who still looked sleepy.
“Happy birthday, birthday boy,” she said as she walked in. “How about cake?”
Giulia lit three candles on top of a cake, which was sprinkled with what I learned was funfetti. Daniele’s eyes became wide as he took in the cake. I lifted him on one of the chairs so he could get a good look at it. “You have to blow out the candles and make a wish.”
Simona tried to lean away from Giulia to touch the candles, and her face scrunched up in frustration when she couldn’t. “Do you need help?” Giulia asked Daniele as he blew out only one candle with his first attempt.
“You’re three, a big boy. You can do it,” I told him.
He gave a small nod and blew even harder. Both candles snuffed out this time.
“Good.”
Giulia beamed as she cut the first piece of the cake. When she pulled it out, its colorful layers became visible.
“Wow,” Daniele breathed. I froze, unable to believe what I’d heard. One simple word, the first word Daniele had spoken in my presence in months.
Wow, indeed.
I had to agree with him, not just because of the rainbow funfetti cake. Giulia set down a plate in front of me and sank down on a chair with Simona on her lap, who used the moment to shove her fingers into Giulia’s cake slice.
Giulia’s laugh rang out like a bell as she snatched up Simona’s tiny hand and put it in her mouth to lick away the buttercream before wiping the remains off with a napkin. I couldn’t stop staring at her.
She noticed, her expression morphing from embarrassment to confusion. She felt her face as if she expected there to be more cake then brushed out her bangs in the nervous gesture she often expressed. I couldn’t believe I’d focused on what I perceived as wrong with Giulia—like her bangs, her quirky dresses, her age—when I first met her instead of realizing what was good. And there were so many things that even the small annoyances faded into the background. Giulia was perfect for my kids and me. Maybe because of her age because she was still youthfully optimistic, naively reckless, and daringly unconventional.
She wasn’t what I’d wanted in a wife, but hell, if she wasn’t exactly what I needed.
“Is Dad a bad man?”
I almost fell off the ladder, my breath lodging in my throat. Daniele had said one or two words at the most in the two weeks since his birthday, and now he chose the morning before Christmas Eve for a loaded question like that. I waited for my initial shock to fade before I hung up another ornament on our Christmas tree. Then I slowly climbed down.
Daniele sat among the boxes with Christmas decorations, which I’d bought because I worried Gaia’s old things would bring back too many hurtful memories, while Simona ripped apart the silver tinsel that she discovered in one of them.
I sat down beside Daniele, searching his face. He was spinning a red ornament on the floor, watching it with a little frown. Loulou had dashed off the moment Elia had carried the tree into the living room this morning and refused to go anywhere near it. “Who’d tell you something like that?” It couldn’t be something he had decided for himself. He was too young.
“Mom.” His voice was a fluttering whisper and my heart ached hearing it. He still didn’t look at me, only at the ornament.
“What did she say?”
“That Dad’s bad. That he hurt Andrea and that made Mom sad.”
I bit my lip, trying to decide what to say. I bid my time by taking a piece of tinsel out of Simona’s mouth, which led to an angry cry, but I was too distracted to react. Put off by my lack of reaction, she fell silent.
Daniele lifted his eyes, meeting my gaze head-on. He trusted me enough to ask me this question, a question that must have weighed heavily on his thin shoulders in all these months. The truth was out of the question. And if I was being honest, I wasn’t sure how to answer his question truthfully. All I knew was Daniele deserved a happy childhood after everything he’d gone through. Lies were a slippery slope that eventually made you stumble. “Your uncle betrayed your dad. He ran away because he didn’t want to be punished for his mistake. That hurt your mom very much. She wasn’t herself after your uncle left her. That’s why she didn’t know what she was saying, Daniele. Your dad does everything to protect you and Simona because he loves you. He’d never hurt you or your sister.”
