“What is it?” he’d said. “It’s nothing. I know already. It won’t keep me from you.”
I’d started crying almost immediately. I missed his voice. I craved his hands. I wasted thirty seconds of a two-minute phone call trying to put myself back into a staid little box.
“Don’t tell me,” he said. “Whatever it is—”
“I can’t…” My breath hitched. Got it together. “Because of the injuries. I can’t have children.”
“Contessa—”
“I understand if that’s a deal-breaker for you.”
“I saw what happened, my love. This isn’t a surprise.”
It was exactly that response that soothed me. If he hadn’t already known, I might have thought he was just gathering strength to leave me, or that he hadn’t digested what it meant. But he wasn’t caught off guard. He’d already dealt with it, and he still wanted me. For months, I didn’t know what that meant. Us wanting each other. Us “being with” each other. One year of separation or ten. Anything in between.
Over the course of his time in prison, I continued to insist I didn’t remember anything from that night, and Margie pushed for parole from behind the person who actually claimed to be his lawyer.
“For you,” she’d insisted. “I’m doing it for you. But if he hurts you, I’m coming down like a hammer.”
I’d agree to anything. To get him out, I forked over everything the guys sent in tribute. Cash. Untraceable and convenient as hell for doing stuff like greasing wheels and buying an olive orchard in Temecula. I got a place with multiple buildings for my family and promised the children pony rides.
I thought of him every day. I slept on one side of the bed. I left his dresser drawers empty. I set him up with a desk and a space in the office before I even knew what it meant to run an orchard.
“You have pains,” Valentina said as she wiped down a big ceramic bowl in my new kitchen. When she visited the orchard, she acted as if she owned the joint. “You should lie down.”
“I’m fine.”
She’d arrived that morning and taken on the chores as if she enjoyed them. She’d served Antonio with divorce papers soon after he was sentenced, and there hadn’t been much fuss. He was a felon. The Church didn’t like it, but the Church didn’t have to. She handed him to me on a platter and announced that she didn’t expect me to get in the way of her and Daniel.
I wouldn’t, but I explained what my ex-fiancé had done and what she could expect from him. Apparently, she expected exactly what he had to give. That day, Daniel had illustrated exactly that by plopping himself on the couch when they arrived and watching a game with the men. He was still an irritating douchebag, but what could I do? He was family now.
“You look a little bent,” Sheila said.
“I’m fine. Don’t make me say it again.”
“Yes, boss,” Sheila and Valentina said in unison.
I snapped the dishtowel at both of them.
Zia nudged me to the side. “You’re in the way.”
“Sorry.”
“You want to stand in front of the stove? You can cook.” She took the lid off something brown and stewey and stirred it with a wooden spoon.
“No, no, I’m good! You cook.”
She held up the sauce-smeared spoon. “Taste.”
I blew on it and put my lips to the wood. “Oh my god, what is it?”
She flapped her hand at me. She was always impatient with what I didn’t know.
“He’s late,” Jonathan said, strolling into the kitchen. “Maybe they decided to keep him.” He plucked two glasses from the cabinet and filled them with water.
“That’s not even funny.”
“I’m not laughing,” he said.
The children were though. And shouting. They tracked mud all over the kitchen. Bonnie opened the fridge and nearly dropped a gallon of milk.
“You left your wife on the patio to come in here and give me a heart attack?” I said to Jonathan.
He kissed my cheek. “She loves it here. We’re buying the place next door.”