I built a wall between my life and my father's world, brick by careful brick, and I‘ve been maintaining it ever since.
Nico has never met his grandfather and I intend to keep it that way for as long as I can manage it.
What I didn’t intend was to walk in for a job interview and find the other half of that equation on the other side of a conference table.
Chapter Four
VALENTINO
The bread from Morano's is still warm when I park outside Vaughn's house.
I don't call ahead anymore. Haven't for two years. At some point the standing Saturday arrangement stopped being an arrangement at all. I simply appear, the door opens, and there’s coffee already made.
This is, I'm aware, the closest thing I have to a family breakfast.
I try not to think much about that.
The front path has a tricycle blocking half of it, tipped on its side with the cheerful abandon of something that was ridden hard and abandoned mid-thought.
I step around it, shift the bread to my other arm, and knock twice before pushing the door open.
"Tino!"
Tom hits me somewhere around the thigh at full running speed, both arms wrapping around my leg with the strong grip only a child can manage.
He’s three, turning four soon. You can see Vaughn in the structure of him even now, that compact strength, and Riley in the gaze and the still, commanding way he seems to fill whatever space he enters.
He is also, inexplicably, wearing one rain boot and one sock.
"Where’s the other boot, Tom?" I ask.
He considers this for a moment. "The garden."
"Why?"
"I was doing something."
I accept this and extract my leg gently from his grip, crouching to his level. He immediately tries to take the bread bag.
"That's for breakfast," I tell him.
"I know." He tries again.
"Tom."
He drops his hands with a sigh of profound suffering and then pivots and runs back toward the kitchen, the rain boot thudding unevenly against the wood floor.
The second you step into the kitchen, you know a child lives here. Crayons lie uncapped beside a half-colored dinosaur, Riley’s laptop hums quietly near a cold cup of coffee, and a wooden train sits in the fruit bowl like it has always belonged among the oranges.
Riley is at the stove. She's in one of Vaughn's old shirts, hair pulled back, handling the kitchen with such ease you'd think it's natural.
I'll tell you right now. It's not.
She turns when I come in, and her face immediately lights up.
"You brought Morano's," she says.
"I always bring Morano's."
