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After a shitty day of more running around trying to deal with the issue at the bakeries, I arrived home just in time for dinner.
As I walked into the hallway, Adelina greeted me. “Hello Mr. Lorenzo. I will have dinner on the table in ten minutes.”
“Thank you, Adelina.”
Clara’s head popped out of the den. She must have heard the door and my voice. She scampered forward but stopped in front of me. “Hi,” she said shyly.
I felt a pang of sadness, remembering how before her mother died, I would come home from work and she would launch herself at me and run into my arms.
I gave her a smile. “Hi, yourself.” I scooped her up in my arms and gave her a hug. I frowned as I looked at her, noticing that she was wearing a different dress from the one she’d put on for breakfast this morning. “Is this a new dress?” For once she wasn’t wearing her old blue dress.
She nodded and then wriggled to get down from my arms. I set her down, and she did a slow twirl in front of me.
“You look beautiful,” I said softly. And she really did. The new dress was a similar shade of blue to the old dress, but it fitted right and looked smart rather than shabby.
Just then, the cat strode in like he owned the place. He began to weave his body around Clara’s legs in a figure of eight.
“Careful he doesn’t trip you up,” I warned.
“Cat hungry,” she said in her small voice.
I felt like saying that the fucking cat would just have to wait for his dinner like everyone else. Instead, with forced pleasantness, I replied, “Adelina told me dinner will be ready in a few minutes.”
Clara reached down and stroked his snowy fur.
As I watched them, I noticed that Clara and the cat were wearing matching ribbons. Anni had been brushing Clara’s hair every morning—which I still didn’t know how she’d achieved—and tying a ribbon in it. The cat had exactly the same ribbon tied to its collar in a bow. The cat looked fucking ridiculous, but I kept my thoughts to myself.
She stroked his ears, earning a deep purr from him as he rubbed his head against her hand. “Nice Wilbur,” she murmured.
Wilbur. She’d just said his name.
I hadn’t heard her say anyone’s name since her mother died—not mine, not Clemente’s, and not Anni’s. But she’d just said the cat’s name.
I knelt down to her level. “You said Wilbur—good job, Clara. Can you say Dadda as well?”
That’s what she had always called me. She hadn’t been able to say Daddy to start with and had called me Dadda, and then Dadda had stuck. I hadn’t heard her call me that in over a year.
Clara didn’t say anything.
“Dadda,” I said slowly.
She looked at me in with her solemn, brown eyes.
“Just try to say it once,” I pleaded with her.
But as I was met with resolute silence, I realized that I wasn’t going to hear her call me that today or anytime soon.
And the thought made my heart ache with such an intensity that I thought it would burst.
Clara continued stroking the cat, and knowing that she was concentrating on him and not on what I was saying, I stood back and said quietly, “Mia preziosa, forgive me for what I did to your mother.”
A moment later I heard a noise, and looking up, I saw Anni walking toward us.
CHAPTER 28
LORENZO
