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I felt it. Just thought it was worth it, I guess.
She calls me a moment later. I’m surprised to see she’s awake, until I remember it’s only dinner time in Chicago.
“Hey, Auntie.”
“Hey, love. How are you doing?”
My aunt’s voice is like stepping into a warm bath. I can picture her so clearly: the smile lines around her eyes, her look like we’re sharing a secret, the way she holds her shoulders like she’s barely suppressing a laugh.
I was feeling kind of stressed and shitty, but now I can honestly reply, “Not bad.”
“How’s the Russian coming on?”
“Medium.”
“And the roommates?”
“Oh, they still hate me. Well, half of them anyway.”
She laughs, a laugh that’s very like my own, though probably a little nicer.
“Give it time.”
It occurs to me that Aida has her own experience with hostile roommates, having married into a family that feuded with ours for about two hundred years prior to the wedding. She had to live in their house. Eat at their table. My aunt Riona was probably ten times meaner than Jasper could ever dream of being.
Somehow, Aida made them love her.
People say I’m like my aunt. But I know the truth. While we both can be funny and wild, Aida is warm at heart. I have cruelty in me and spitefulness. I’m more like my father—and everybody hated Nero.
Just ‘cause I’m like him doesn’t mean I have to behave like him.
“Can I ask you something?” I say to Aida.
“Yeah, shoot.”
“You were a stranger in a strange land … how did you do it? How’d you get the Griffins to accept you?”
She lets out a soft sigh. “Well … are you a visitor? Or is this home?”
I have to think about that for a minute.
I’ve come to realize that none of the Wolfpack has family they want to return to. Jasper has none at all, Hakim’s parents think he’s a criminal who’s disgraced their name. Chief is the product of a failed marriage, both parents having moved on, remarried, and had children with their new families. Andrei was raised by his grandparents, one now dead, the other in a retirement home. And Vlad is a Petrov himself, though only distantly related to Adrik.
When Jasper accused me of playing a game here while intending to return to Chicago, he wasn’t entirely wrong. I do still think of Chicago as home.
But I want to build my life here with Adrik. I’ve committed to that. More than I’ve ever committed to anything before.
“I don’t know,” I say, at last.
I can hear my aunt’s gentle breath on the other end of the line, listening, not judging.
She says, “They’ll accept you as family if you treat them as family.”
“I do,” I say. “Mostly.”
She laughs.
“Just remember this, little love. I’m a Gallo … but I’m also a Griffin.”
