“Daddy! Now we’re fifteen minutes behind!”
“I’ll bump the speed up to fifteen over the limit,” he told Val.
She gave him a cocked brow.
He winked right back.
“Think about it, okay?” he asked.
Valeria wet her bottom lip. “I will.”
“Good.”
One more kiss to his wife’s lips, a quick I love you, and he was chasing Maria’s calls to hurry up before the two slipped out of the house into the cool October air. It felt like it was going to be a good day, though.
It always did with them.
11.
Valeria
“BAD traffic?”
Valeria smiled tiredly as she pulled the book bag from her wiggling daughter who was already trying to run toward the woman who asked the question. Chris’s mother, Cara, waited in the middle of the large Guzzi mansion’s entry in front of the winding staircases.
“Bad accident on the highway,” Val explained, standing straight with a dangling, pink book bag in her hands. “Ended up sitting there for almost an hour before we could pass, and by that time—”
Cara laughed. “The highway was so backed up with cars, yeah. That drives me crazy, too. The only bad thing about living in or near a major city.”
“Nanna!”
“Hey, pretty girl! Come give me some love.”
Val took the chance with her daughter’s distraction to set the girl’s bag, shoes, and jacket aside. Across the entry, Cara greeted Maria as though she had known and loved Val’s daughter for her entire life. The second after the girl asked Cara if she could be her nonny, though she mostly used nanna, Chris’s mother took her new role seriously. Playdates, movies, special dinners, and visits every chance she could. Maria loved every single second of it.
It warmed Val’s heart because it was everything her daughter hadn’t even known she needed. Chris gave them an entire family. Maria had more uncles and aunts than she could keep count of between the Guzzi family and Haven’s new family with the Marcellos. It also kept them busy running from one country to the next, but she wasn’t about to complain, either.
Sometimes, a person didn’t realize what they were missing until they finally had it. Valeria had never been more aware of that fact until now. Not that it made a difference to how she felt—all she could ever be for what she had now was grateful. This life she had was only possible because of them. She would do anything to protect these people.
Always.
“Did you finally do it?” she heard Cara ask.
Maria nodded, her excitement practically filling the mansion full. “I did. I sang it all and didn’t make one mistake.”
“See, I told you. Well done, Maria.”
Val smiled.
Maria had been practicing the French version of Canada’s national anthem ever since she started at the new school. Over the summer, she had every single person she could singing it back to her, so she could sing along with them.
Finally, she got it.
The kid might as well have her moment.
She worked for it, after all.
“Guess what I’ve got to celebrate?” Cara asked.
Maria glanced over her shoulder and her eyes went wide in her joyful anticipation. Just as fast, her attention went right back to her grandmother. “What?”
“The special candy-coated popcorn we found the last time we went to the—”
“Yassss!”
Cara laughed, standing straight and giving Maria a kiss to the top of her head when the girl hugged her legs as though she might never let go. “You’ll find it in the kitchen. Be careful, it’s next to the teapot.”
“Oh, is the tea for me?” Val asked.
“I had to do something special for you, too. Even if it is only tea, Val.”
“You are special enough, Cara.”
The older woman only shrugged and smiled. With one more order for Maria to go find her treat, the girl left the grown-ups alone as she headed for the kitchen. Valeria finally took the time to take off her own coat and shoes before hanging her purse from a waiting hook near the door. Cara crossed the floor to stand close enough that she could pull Val into a hug.
“And how was your day?” her mother-in-law asked.
She didn’t think many women were as lucky as she was to have in-laws who cared about their children’s significant others as much as Cara Guzzi did. Well, even Gian was always calling to make sure Val and Maria had everything they needed whenever they might want it.
“A little uncomfortable when they pulled my IUD out, but other than that,” she said, “it was pretty good.”
Cara made a face. “Ouch.”
“Yeah, well ... it needed to be done. I knew when I had the stupid thing put in that at some point in time, it was going to have to come back out. Maybe if they were kinder about the fact it hurts, women wouldn’t feel so traumatized after the process.”
“Agreed,” Cara murmured. “But very little about women’s reproductive health is about making us comfortable, or so I have learned over time. Especially if you get an older man as a doctor—bonus points if he has white hair and opinions about things that are none of his goddamn concern.”
Wasn’t that the truth?
“The doctor gave me orders to come back for the shot after my first cycle resumed. That could take a couple of weeks or a month. Who knows?”
Everything was up in the air.
Cara clearly heard the off tone because she raised an eyebrow at Val, saying, “Did I miss something?”
Val took a second to think if she wanted to respond honestly to Cara’s question, or just brush it off because it was something personal between her and Chris. Honestly, though, she needed someone to talk to. And not someone who was currently pregnant—like Ginevra, or Haven—because they were biased.
“I never thought I wanted more kids after Maria,” Valeria said quietly, “but I think that was more because of my circumstances and, you know, how she came along to be mine.”
“And now?”
Valeria laughed lightly. “Chris said something to me this morning as I was getting ready and he was leaving—to think about it. Now, that’s all I’ve done all day. I feel like I’ve talked myself in a million circles. How do you know if you’re ready for a child?”
“You have a child, Val.”
“Another child, then.”
Cara gave her a look. “Or do you mean a child you willingly create.”
“I never use those words for my daughter. I will never call her a product of—I love her, Cara. And I know my life now isn’t anything like what it used to be.”
“But that doesn’t change the trauma, or what used to be. And nobody—including my son—expects you to wake up one day and forget everything that came before him. I promise you that.”
“Maybe I worry, too.”
“About what?”
“That I’ll feel differently this time around ... or more. Maybe that the glass ceiling over my head will shatter. I don’t know. Everything?”
Cara reached out and cupped Valeria’s cheek with a soft touch that only a mother could have. She patted her with the same kindness, saying, “And no matter what, you’re a wonderful mother. She knows that—we all know that. The rest is all up to you, Val.”