“That’s not how volcanoes work!”
I give up. Some battles aren’t worth fighting. Not with Luca anyway. Honestly, I shouldn’t be knowing fully where he got his blocked ears from.
Dante appears beside me, stealing a cherry tomato from my salad bowl. I slap his hand but he just grins, that rare genuine smile that I’ve been seeing more and more often lately.
“Dinner’s almost ready,” he says. “If Rosa ever stops criticizing my sauce.”
“Your sauce is fine,” Rosa calls from the stove. “It would be better with more garlic.”
“It has plenty of garlic.”
“It has adequate garlic. There’s a difference.”
I laugh and lean into Dante’s side, his arm coming around my shoulders automatically. This is what normal feels like. This is what I was running toward all those years without knowing it.
“Dad!” Luca comes charging into the kitchen, nearly knocking over a tray pan in the process. “Dad, I have a question.”
“What’s up, buddy?”
“Will the new baby have scary eyes like you?”
The kitchen goes quiet. Elena freezes by the table. Rosa turns from the stove with her eyebrows raised. Dante looks at me, then at Luca, then back at me.
“What new baby?” he asks slowly.
Luca rolls his eyes like we’re being impossibly dense. “The baby in Mama’s tummy. Nana Rosa said Mama’s eating for two now. That means there’s a baby, right? We learned about it in school.”
I’m going to kill Rosa. I was planning to tell Dante tonight, after dinner, when we were alone. I had a whole long ass speech prepared. But apparently my son and his grandmother had other plans.
“Scarlett?” Dante’s voice is careful and questioning. Like he’s afraid to hope.
“Surprise?” I say weakly.
He stares at me for a long moment, those grey eyes searching my face for confirmation. Then he laughs. A deep happy sound, emanating from the deepest part of him. Then he pulls me intohis arms and spins me around, right there in the middle of the kitchen with everyone watching, and I’m laughing too, tears pricking at my eyes.
“A baby,” he says against my hair. “We’re having a baby.”
“We’re having a baby.”
Luca tugs at Dante’s sleeve. “Dad. You didn’t answer my question. Will the baby have scary eyes?”
Dante crouches down to Luca’s level, still grinning like an idiot. “My eyes aren’t scary.”
“They’re a little scary. But I like them anyway.”
“Then maybe the baby will have scary eyes too. Would that be okay?”
Luca considers this seriously. “Yeah. I’ll teach the baby not to be scared of them. Big brother stuff.”
I have to turn away so no one sees me crying. Hormones. Definitely the pregnancy hormones.
We finally sit to have dinner and it’s chaotic and absolutely perfect. The kids make a mess that will take an hour to clean up, Rosa complains about the garlic levels at least three more times, Elena tells stories about Marco that make us laugh and cry in equal measure, and Luca asks approximately seven hundred questions about the baby, including whether it will like dinosaurs and if he can pick its name and if babies know how to play video games.
Normal family stuff. The kind of normal I never thought I’d have. The kind I’d stopped believing existed.
Later, after everyone’s gone home and Luca’s asleep with Biscuit curled up at the foot of his bed, Dante and I sit on the back porch watching the stars. It’s cold but we’re wrapped in blankets, pressed close together, his hand resting on my stomach where our child is growing.
The night is quiet. Peaceful in a way that still surprises me sometimes. No guards patrolling. No alarms ready to blare. Just crickets and the distant hoot of an owl and the sound of Dante breathing beside me.
