“Sure.” She kicked at a loose piece of lava rock. “Lots of speaking. They’re constantly speaking. Never shut up.”
“Have you told them?”
She took a deep breath of the salty air. “Not yet.”
“Why,amore?” The word made her pulse jump, but she steeled herself against it.
To Italians, every woman they passed in the street wasamore.
It didn’t mean anything.
“My mom’s not herself,” Akemi told him. “Most of my sisters are here, plus their kids. It’s just… not the right time.”
“It sounds like the perfect time,” he encouraged her. “You can tell most of your family all at once, and the news will make your mamma happy again.”
“I don’t thinkanythingwill make my mom happy again.”
“Amore, do not talk that way. Nothing is forever. Her grief will get smaller with time.” When she didn’t reply he added, “This isgoodnews.”
“Itisgood news,” she agreed, “but I’m not sure they’ll see it that way.”
“Ma perche?” he exclaimed.
“You live in Italy. I live everywhere and nowhere. I’m not going to quit traveling just because I have a baby. They’re not going to like that. Any of that.”
“They love you,” Lorenzo said softly. “They’ll understand.”
“Those two things don’t always go hand in hand. Almost never, actually. In my experience.”
“Maybe the understanding comes later. But they cannot understand you if you don’t communicate,amore mia.”
A cool breeze from the mauna whipped past, stirring her unwashed hair and the peasant skirt she’d been wearing for three days straight.
The plan had been to slip in and take a shower, get something to eat, and get a decent night’s sleep before breaking the news to her family.
Well, at least they’d fed her.
Maybe she should just get it over with.
“I should go back inside,” she said. “Have a good day at work.”
“Have a good night,vita mia.”
Akemi switched her phone into airplane mode and dropped it into her pocket.
She didn’t go into the house right away. Instead she stood staring out over the back fence, one hand resting on the baby bump that was still imperceptible to anyone but her.
The app on her phone claimed that her baby was now the size of an avocado. Given her own diminutive stature, it was probably a puny avocado. Still, the life growing inside of her wasold enough to make a fist or suck their thumb. A real, actual baby.
It still shocked her, how fiercely she loved this seed of a person she’d never even seen. As the years ticked by, the possibility of becoming a mother herself had felt more and more remote. She figured that, like Halia, she would content herself with being an auntie.
Then this.
This miraculous surprise.
From the moment Akemi realized that she was expecting, she’d wanted this baby with her whole heart.
She had doubts, of course. Mountains of them. But those doubts were about her own capacity, the countless decisions that she would have to make on behalf of this brand new person.
