By the time Caterina arrived, the doctors were more differential, the rooms nicer. People looked at us with respect.
And still, Carlotta’s hand found mine and squeezed.
We’d learned to pack the good blanket and sneak in the cookies she liked because the hospital wouldn’t let her eat for thirty hours with Vito.
When Caterina arrived, she opened her eyes and found the sound of her mother’s voice like she’d been waiting for it all along. Months later, I watched my children play in the garden while Carlotta pinched basil leaves for sauce, and I thought if time had any mercy, it would freeze in that moment.
But it didn’t.
It moved, and the rooms changed, and cribs turned into beds, and then into empty beds.
Still, as many times as I’ve been through it, I’ve never learned to get used to it. Every time the screen flashed with that image and the echo of a tiny heartbeat filled the room, I felt the same awe. A tiny, stubborn life that asked for nothing and changed everything. “There it is,” Carlotta would say, catching her breath and smiling that smile that filled my heart.
I can still smell the lemon oil she used on the table the night we brought Lucia home, the powdered sugar on Carlotta’s fingers from the sfogliatelle my aunt insisted she eat. I learned to build cribs from badly translated instructions, to warm bottles with one hand while buttoning a onesie with the other, to count tiny breaths in the dark because it gave me peace of mind.
Four times, I thought I’d used up all the miracles I was allowed. Four times I was wrong.
Now I sit here with these new prints in my hand, and it’s all the same. Carlotta would have laughed at me. She would have pressed her palm to my cheek and said, “Look at you,” like I’d surprised her all over again.
I look down at the little image, frozen on paper, and let myself be exactly what I am: a man who has seen this wonder before and is just as awestruck by it as ever.
I wanted to walk Elena to the car after, stand with her under that useless little portico and see her off. Or drive off with her.
The way a father should.
Instead, I left like a ghost through the service corridor with a nod from Bianchi.
I asked Elena to lunch before I went. She said yes.
Lunch will be ready without me overseeing it, but I stand anyway, meaning to go check the pan for the lemon broth, tosmell the bread, to make sure the greens are washed twice as I asked.
I make it two steps toward the hall when the glass doors slide and Vito comes in with the kind of energy that fills a room.
He stops when he sees the prints. “Is that—?”
I hold the sleeve out. He takes it carefully, like it might crack. His face does a thing I haven’t seen since he was small—open, unguarded awe.
“Madonna,” he breathes, a grin breaking. He tilts the strip to catch the light. “That little… bean.”
“Peanut,” I say, hearing Bianchi’s voice. “Seven weeks, six days by measurement.”
He squints at the numbers, nods like he understands. “Everything good?”
“Perfect.”
His grin widens, then softens. He looks up at me, and I see it hit him, the reality of it. “How was… the prosecutor?”
“Elena,” I say. “She’s having my child, Vito. You can call her by her name.”
“Just… weird is all.” He clears his throat. He hands the images back. “Is she okay?”
I feel the corner of my mouth go. “A little in disbelief. But yes. She’s handling it well.”
I don’t mention the look of wonder in her eyes as she gazed up at me. The warmth of her lips on mine. The small, needy sound that poured out of her when her tongue grazed mine.
That I keep to myself.
Vito sits back, thinking. It’s always written on him when he thinks; he doesn’t have Nico’s stillness. “You’re bringing her here?”
