“Tweet! Penalty!” Paris shouted, pointing a finger at Blaze. “Your shoelace is untied! Five minutes in the dungeon!”
“There’s no dungeon in soccer!” Blaze protested.
“There is now!”
I watched Alec jog alongside Austin. They were talking, not playing. Austin gestured to the sky, probably explaining some cloud formation or aerodynamic principle, and Alec nodded, listening intently. The rigid tension in his shoulders was gone. He looked like a boy again.
“Look at them,” I murmured to Theresa.
“Who?”
“Alec and Austin. And the rest of them.” I gestured with my mug. “Not long ago, my lot marched around like little soldiers afraid to step out of line.”
“They look like a mess,” Theresa noted with a smile.
“Exactly. A beautiful, loud, unstructured mess.” I took a sip of tea. “Mrs. Kowalski is going to have an aneurysm when she sees the grass stains on those trousers.”
“Let her,” Theresa said, leaning her head on my shoulder. “Grass stains wash out. Memories stay.”
The game ended not with a final whistle, but with a collective collapse. The boys, exhausted and sweaty, flopped onto the lawn in a heap. Paris declared herself the winner for reasons no one understood, and everyone seemed fine with it.
“Snacks!” I called out. “Kitchen! Now!”
The resulting stampede nearly took the patio doors off their hinges.
I found Austin in Marco’s study later that afternoon. The boy sat in his father’s oversized desk chair, a photo frame in his small hands. I recognized it from my previous visits—Marco and Theresa on their wedding day, looking impossibly young and happy.
I knocked softly on the open door. “Mind if I join you?”
Austin looked up, quickly setting the photo down face-up on the blotter. “It’s okay. Mom says I can come in here whenever I want. It helps me think.”
“I know. It’s a good room for thinking.” I entered slowly, respecting the space that still held so much of Marco Carideo. Books lined the shelves—medical texts, engineering manuals, science fiction novels. A half-finished model airplane sat on a side table, frozen in mid-assembly.
I pulled up a visitor's chair across from Austin, giving him the power position behind the desk. He watched me warily, those brown eyes missing nothing. He didn't fidget like a typical eight-year-old; he waited.
“I wanted to talk to you about something important,” I began, my heart hammering unexpectedly. I’d negotiated multi-million-dollar contracts with less anxiety.
“Is it about you and Mom?” Austin asked, cutting straight to the chase.
I blinked, momentarily thrown by his directness. “Yes, actually. How did you know?”
He shrugged one small shoulder, though his gaze remained steady. “You look at her the way Dad used to. Like she’s the only person in the room. And she laughs real laughs when you’re around, not the fake ones she does for company.”
The observation, so astute and heartbreakingly protective, stole my breath. I leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees to bring myself closer to his eye level.
“You’re right,” I said. “It is about your mom and me. The truth is, Austin, I care about your mom very much. And I care about you, and Rome, and Paris, and Aspen too.”
Austin nodded once, sharp and businesslike. “I know. You brought Rome the otter. And you let Paris win the arguments about the rules.”
I suppressed a smile. “She makes very compelling arguments. But I’m here because... because I want to ask your permission for something. Man to man.”
That got his attention. He sat up straighter, his hands folding on the desk in an eerie echo of a CEO taking a meeting.
“I want to ask your mother to marry me,” I said simply. “To become a family—all of us united. But before I do that, I wanted to talk to you about it. Because you’re the man of the house right now, and your opinion matters very much to me.”
Austin was silent for a long moment, his eyes dropping to the photo of his parents before returning to mine. When he looked back up, the vulnerability was stark.
“If you marry her,” he said, his voice quiet but firm, “does that mean we forget Dad?”
