With the stress of that, and the attitude of this man greeting her the way he had almost to the second she sat down across from him, and Valeria was just over this day. It wasn’t like her to be so short-tempered, but everybody had their days.
This day was clearly hers.
Chris gave her more than enough time—and repeated the sentiment time and time again—to figure out what she wanted to do. He had close to thirty businesses spread across Ontario and Quebec—she could pick one to run if she wanted. Or she could stay home with her daughter. Maybe even go to school.
It was her call.
He said nothing.
Valeria finally decided that she would like to go back to school. Likely for business, or something relating to business. The second she made that decision, she was told to pick a university, and Chris even came home with a stack of pamphlets to help her choose. Any school she wanted, she could go. If they wouldn’t take her then they would pay her way in.
Val almost wanted to laugh at that—she’d not even finished high school, although the papers Chris brought home one day said she did. A private tutor was ready to be at her beck and call as soon as she started a university to help her along the way.
It was a privilege she’d never had.
Yet, Val wanted to try to do this on her own. Take some courses that would look good. Get her GED and work with online courses to add to her list of credits. Would it take longer? Oh, yeah. By a couple of years, but that was the right way.
Chris didn’t argue.
“You know what,” Valeria said, deciding to stand from her chair and leave the meeting altogether, “I don’t think today is the right time for this. I have some other things going on, and perhaps I’m just too sensitive right now to discuss something like furthering my education.”
Across the desk, the officer folded his arms over his chest and eyed Valeria with a bit more respect than he had earlier. “You’re a great candidate for a good many programs at this school, Mrs. Guzzi. The plan laid out in your file to get your transcripts where they need to be is perfect and exactly what you need to do. I hope to see you sitting on the other side of this desk for us to have another conversation when you’re ready.”
Valeria smiled and nodded. “Me, too. Thank you.”
“Have a good day.”
“You, too.”
• • •
Later that day, Valeria opened the bathroom door to find Chris leaning against the wall where she had left him before entering the bathroom to take her pregnancy test. He took one look at her face and sighed.
“Not pregnant?” he asked.
Valeria shrugged and handed over the test. “No. Again.”
“Val—”
“At what point do we move on from it’s just taking some time to there might be something wrong, Chris?”
He tapped the test against his hand. A rhythmic tap-tap-tap that for whatever reason, she found incredibly soothing. He said nothing and she watched him smack that thin strip of plastic against the palm of his hand for too many minutes to count.
“There’s nothing wrong,” he murmured.
“That took you at least two minutes to say.”
Their gazes met, but he smiled and shrugged even if she was in no mood to be happy.
“Doesn’t make it any less true, though,” he pointed out.
“But something might be wrong,” she replied.
“Or we haven’t given it enough time. It’s like ... there’s only a couple days in the month where anything can even happen, Val. We’re busy. You run back and forth between here and New York. We have another kid who makes us tired a lot of the time. You want to go to school—I have work all over the city all day. Who is to say we’re not just ... missing the mark?”
Except she tracked her cycles.
And when they had sex.
She knew ...
Valeria opted not to point any of that out to Chris.
“But,” he said quietly, stepping in closer to her with open arms that she took because his embrace always made her feel better when nothing else did, “if it would make you feel better, I could see about an appointment with a fertility specialist.”
She gave him a look.
He sighed, quickly adding, “Not because I think something is wrong, but because I think they could give us some information about what to know, what to look for, and what our options are if it continues like this.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, babe. I’ll do anything you want.”
“But you still don’t think something is wrong?”
“It’s only been a few months, Val. Maybe the universe—or God—is just saying not yet.”
Or maybe something was wrong.
Lots of women had one child, and experienced infertility after the fact. There was a whole name for it and everything. She didn’t want to worry, but that was kind of impossible. And as each month passed with no positive pregnancy test, she realized just how much she actually wanted a second child.
Chris hugged her tighter like he could read her mind. “Whatever you need, Val. I promise.”
16.
Chris
“HOW are things here?” Corrado asked. “Heard you’ve been stepping up a bit more for Papa, huh? Never thought to mention that to me when we talk on the phone. Then again, you don’t call as much as you used to.”
“Is that what you want? I can check in five times a day if you’d like.”
“Don’t be fucking cute. I get enough of that from Les.”
Chris gave his twin a grin. “If you’re asking about business, it’s good.”
“And you. I’m asking about you. Your wife. Little Maria, who by the way, Ginny and her sisters keep asking about because they want to do a sleepover. As though there isn’t enough estrogen in my house on a daily basis. All of that good shit, too, yeah.”
That had him smiling because all he ever needed to do was think about Val and Maria to make him happy. “It’s great, man.”
Corrado nodded. “Yeah, I know all about that.”
“How’s Ginevra?”
“Very tired.” Corrado made a noise under his breath. “But so are the rest of us, too. Happens when you have a six-month-old baby in the house, and all that. We’re making it work. A bit easier with three people because we can take shifts.”
Chris couldn’t help but laugh at that. “Shifts, really?”
“Trust me, it works. Coraline is ... she still has her days and nights mixed up, or that’s what everyone tells me. Really, I just think she likes being up at night, and we’re looking at the rest of our lives with that kid.”
And yet ...
Chris gave his brother a look from the side. “You still love it.”
Corrado nodded. “Wouldn’t give this up for the world, man. Last week, we were trying to set up the new TV—me and Les—and Coraline just looked at us across the room where she was sitting in her bouncy thing, and she gets quiet before screeching and pointing at us before shouting Das. We’d been trying to get her to say that ever since she started saying Mama at four months old.”
Never had Chris seen his brother light up quite like the way he did right then. Like his whole world was owned and revolved around a blue-eyed baby girl with black curls. And that kid was the luckiest baby in the world because not only did she have one daddy who adored the ground she walked on, but she actually had two.