Tripp sulks. “I wantthat!”
Knox shoves the slime in his brother’s face.
My jaw drops.
The boys are swinging at each other and Emilio tries to wrestle them apart. “Okay, boys. Come on. Who wants to go in the pool?”
“I do!” Tripp yells.
“Well, you can’t go in the pool if you’re fighting. Where the hell is Lyla?” Emilio looks around for his wife. Apparently, she’s not here.
“Mommy is talking to Aunt Hannah and Aunt Ashley,” Knox says.
Emilio nods with a resigned expression. “Well, let’s go see if she wants to go in the pool, too. But you have to behave.”
He leads the kids away.
Ayla and I look at each other. She bites her lip, trying not to smile. “Well. Good luck to them.”
“Remind me not to go the pool.”
“Oh come on. You love kids.”
“Apparently, not all kids.”
“It’s different when it’s your own.”
Which we never had a chance to learn about.
Holding that baby earlier was shockingly disturbing. I kind of had a hard time when one of my teammates had a baby about six or seven months after Kane died. I didn’t want to see the baby at all at first, but then I decided I should do it to get past it. It wasn’t that bad. But today… I don’t know why, maybe because Marco is almost the exact age Kane was.
Now here’s another reminder of our lost child. We’ll never know what a hellion Kane might have been.
“Okay, well the slime was a success.” I pick up a trash bag full of empty glue bottles. “I’ll get rid of this.”
“Thanks.”
Ayla goes over to the games corner she set up. Some of the older relatives—Nonna, Uncle Ernie and Angie, Ayla’s othergreat-aunt and her “kids” who are in their fifties, Vince and Melissa, and a few others I don’t know—are happily playing card games. I watch her check in with hernonnaand the others, smiling, laughing at something someone says. She goes over to the beverage station that’s been set up against one wall and gets more tea for Nonna.
Then she moves over to the genealogy table where a few folks are looking over the items and sharing stories. I join her there to listen to some of the memories for a few minutes.
As we move away from the group, I say, “We nearly got busted by Emilio.”
“Oh my God. Yes! What the hell! He probablydidhear we got divorced.”
“I think he was too trashed to think much about it.”
She makes a face. “He was a little lit.”
“I still don’t understand how you think people don’t know.”
“We’re a big family. Some of them live far away.”
It seems crazy to me, but it’s not my family anymore.
That evening, after the organized festivities, including a trivia competition won by Elisa and Bria, we end up with a party in our cottage. I’m not sure how this came about. I think Ayla offhandedly invited cousins to come by and they all show up. Luckily, they bring their own drinks because we did not prepare for this.
One good thing is it shows everyone Ayla and I are definitely sharing a bed so if anyone else thought they heard we were divorced, this should end that.
