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“Your home is fine!” I calm him down quickly. “What I meant to say was no, I’m not taking you home yet. Aria has asked that I bring you back to our place so that you can meet your grandchildren.”
“Children? Plural?” he says, turning to face me, a look of disbelief on his face. “There are more of them, now?”
“Yes,” I say with a laugh. “We have quite the family. I’m sure you’ll be quite proud to see it.”
Gabriele is quiet for quite some time as he plays nervously with his fingers. It’s odd to see him so out of place in the world, but prison will do that to a man.
“And we’ll show you around the house, maybe let you page through some of the albums so that you can catch up on all that you’ve missed. The kids will be so happy to meet you,” I say.
But Gabriele just stares silently out of the window.
“I can’t see them like this,” he eventually says, his voice cracking. “Look at me. I look terrible. I need new clothes if I am going to meet them. I need to neaten up a little.”
He has a point, and it couldn’t harm. So, I stop at a nearby mall and give him strict instructions to meet me back at the car in forty minutes. I use that forty minutes to get my mind straight again. Gabriele has taken me by surprise, and I’m not sure how to behave around him now.
And I suspect, neither does he.
But as that forty minutes draws to a close I see him exit the mall, looking dapper again. He has a fresh suit and a fresh haircut and I recognize him more as the Gabriele I used to know, just thinner. But in his hands, he carries shopping bags loaded with candies and sweets.
“You can’t bring all of that to our house!” I laugh as I open the trunk.
“You bet your ass I can,” he says. “I have five years of sweets to make up for! I won’t let you stop me.”
“Fine,” I chuckle. “But then we’re going to have to convince Aria to let you babysit, because I amnotdealing with that sugar high.”
“Sounds like an excellent plan to me,” Gabriele laughs as he closes the trunk.
“Aria’s not going to like this,” I tease.
“Some of it’s for her,” he says calmly as he walks back to the passenger side of the car. “Well, I’m ready now, so what do you say, are we going to meet these kids?”
He doesn’t look so nervous anymore. Rather, he looks excited. I know how easy it is to be overwhelmed by the world when you’re on the outside again, and I pity him a little. He puts on a good show, but I can see the way he looks at all the buildings as we drive past them.
The car comes to a stop outside our new home. It is a large brick face mansion with ivy growing all the way up the front of it. It is nothing like any of the homes that I used to live in, but it has been perfect for the kids.
“So, this is your place then?” he asks.
“Yes, we bought this about three years ago, during Aria’s second pregnancy,” I explain. “We wanted somewhere with a yard, and Aria wanted somewhere that she could garden.”
“Well, this certainly looks like that kind of place,” he says.
“Are you ready to go inside?” I ask. “We can sit out here a while if you like?”
He takes another glance at the house before taking a deep breath. “No time like the present,” he mumbles before pushing the door open and stepping outside.
I ring the bell once to let Aria know that we have arrived, something I agreed to do before we left. If I ring the bell once, then Gabriele is being friendly. If I ring it twice, then there is trouble. We are hardly through the door before Aria comes flying around the corner and throws her arms around her father.
“Welcome back, father!” she says with a large smile. “And welcome to our home!”
Gabriele glances at the wall of family photographs, and in the corner spots a photograph of himself and Aria when she was a child, with her mother smiling brightly alongside them. He stops to look at it, but Aria doesn’t give him time to linger.
“Come and meet the kids,” she says, taking his hand, and leading him toward the living room.
Gabriele enters the room and is hardly there for a second before three of our children have come to greet him. He bends down and they happily hug him and giggle as he hands them sweets from his pocket.
“This is Alessandro,” Aria says, pointing at our eldest. “He is five years old, as you know.”
Alessandro gives his grandfather an eager wave before turning his attention back to his game.
