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“You’re stuck there now,Nonnu,” Max announces pointedly, but I simply nod my agreement.
“That’s fine.” Mattius' tiny body is light and soft, a stark comparison to my muscular, hard frame. I look down at the vulnerable boy in my arms. In his face, I see versions of my boys, of myself. See the ghost of my late wife.
Were my sons this vulnerable once?
I suppose they were.
Max leaves me to join his wife in the pool, but not before shoving his brother Bronson into the water.
The splash brings laughter.
“Look at you,” Bronson’s wife, Shoshanna, says, ambling towards me with her son, Darius, carried in a sling and her other son, Stone, trudging after them. Evident in the grin and cake on his cheeks, Stone has been up to mischief. Of all my grandsons, I believe him to be the boldest. But I have four born within two months of each other, so we’ll see what personalities arise. The chance to be more to them, to know them, sends a warm current through me.
I’ll be better for them.
“Nonnu, I ate cake, Fawn, made, one,” he yells with little consideration for the sleeping boy in my arms; such is a toddler’s default volume, I have come to realise.
“Shh,” I offer, low, to not scare Stone with my tone—he’s a wildfire at times. Passionate. He reminds me of my youngest, Xander. “Mattius is sleeping,se? Did you start the cake without me, my boy?”
Shoshanna shakes her head. “He shoved his hands straight into the sponge cake Fawn baked for us. He ate one of the little fondant knight’s heads off! I feel awful about it. Luckily, the dogs are inside licking the tiles clean.” She bites her lower lip. “Do you think she’ll be upset?”
“I wouldn’t worry about Fawn.” I keep my voice deep and quiet, rocking back and forth on instinct to lull my grandson. “It will take more than a ruined cake and some crumbs to bother that girl.”
Shoshanna nods. “That’s true.” She eyes me for a moment. “Do you want my boys, too?”
Before I can answer, she pulls my grandson from her cloth-carrier and places him on the tiles, where he splashes in the puddles welling around my feet.
Then she tugs her denim shorts and shirt off, kicks her shoes to the grass, and joins her husband and the others in the shimmering blue water.
Stone plops down beside Darius, and now I’m minding three of my grandsons.
I look out over my family.
In the pool, Cassidy is wrapped around Max. She is the young ballerina girl who stopped us in our tracks and gave us hope for a life outside of the Family legacy—she gave us Kelly.
Young Fawn, drained from raising two Butcher brothers, sleeps like an angel on the lounger—she is the last piece that connects us all.
And Shoshanna—I have known that girl for most of her life. She was my Bronson’s childhood girlfriend. One he never let go of. I understand that kind of commitment to a woman. I have loved once and forever. Even went as far as to marry a woman I knew I could never fall in love with.
I didn’t want to replace you, Maddie.
So, I married an unlovable woman.
My eyes coast across the backyard, taking in the sight of each of my sons with their partners. My chest squeezes in tight with sentiment so strong it’s consuming.
Bronson: my wild boy. So much like my father. Max: my carbon copy. And Clay: more like our late Don, Jimmy, than me, in regrettable ways, but for his heart.
My boys.
My men.
My Butcher men.
