“Do you think their husbands wouldn’t let them?” Snapper asked.
His mother rolled her eyes. “Wouldn’t let them? When do you think this was, the dark ages?”
He chuckled. “It was just a theory.”
Lucia muttered something under her breath I couldn’t hear.
“Ma?” Snapper pressed.
“If Eduardo told Concepción she couldn’t do something, he would’ve met with the same fate as your father if he tried it with me.” She opened a drawer, took out a rolling pin, and held it up.
“Jeez, Ma, what would you have done? Smacked him with that?”
She smiled. “More than once.”
While we finished breakfast, Lucia kept up her steady stream of conversation—Cru and Daphne’s upcoming wedding, how Brix and Addy’s daughter, Reagan, was already walking and getting into everything, questions about my parents and how Felicity was doing. “Coco told Alexis that she wanted to be a winemaker for Halloween this year,” she added with a laugh.
“How old is she now?” I asked.
“Seven going on thirty, just like Alex was at that age.”
Snapper lifted his fork with his left hand, since his right still held mine, and took a bite of his cinnamon roll. “What about Alfonso?”
“Like most four-year-old boys, he changes his mind every day. You were the same way. When you were his age, you wanted to be a smashing pumpkin. Your father and I had no idea what that meant until Gabriel explained it was a band. All I could envision was how much fun your brothers and sister would have covering you in pumpkin guts.”
I squeezed his hand. “That’s adorable.”
“Don’t encourage her,” Snapper muttered, but he was smiling too.
“I have many stories,mija.” Lucia’s eyes sparkled with mischief. “Like the time when you two were—what, thirteen?—and you tried to make wine in the barn.”
“I was eleven,” I corrected. “And it was Snapper’s idea.”
“It was a joint idea,” he muttered. “You said, and I quote, ‘How hard can it be?’”
“And you said, ‘Let’s find out.’”
Lucia laughed. “It exploded all over the barn. Took you two days to clean up the mess, and the barn smelled like rotten fruit for weeks.”
“Worth it, though,” Snapper said. “We learned what not to do.”
“You learned that you can’t just put grape juice in jars and hope for the best,” Lucia continued. “Though I suppose that’s valuable too.”
The warmth in this kitchen, the easy laughter, and the way Snapper’s mother looked at us like we were exactly where we were supposed to be made me wistful. I loved my family, and my sister and I teased each other incessantly, but this was at a whole other level. Not only did Snapper have six siblings, but there were ten kids in Lucia’s sister’s family, and they lived less than ten miles from here. Our family was so small in comparison and proportionately less fun.
When we’d finished eating and helped clean up—over Lucia’s protests that I was a guest, which I ignored because I’d been helping in this kitchen since I was old enough to reach the sink—Snapper said, “I should get Saffron home. She’s got prep work before Wednesday.”
“Of course.” Lucia hugged me. “Take care of yourself,mija. Don’t work too hard. And don’t be such a stranger. You’re welcome here anytime, you know.”
“I do and thank you.”
She held me at arm’s length, looking at me with those knowing eyes that always seemed to see too much. “You look tired. Make sure you rest, okay? You can’t take care of the vineyard if you don’t take care of yourself first.”
“I will.”
“Promise me.”
“I promise.”
