Jakey?” Noah knocked on the bathroom door. “You still doing okay, buddy?”
“Don’t come in!”
“I won’t. Do you need anything?”
“No.” His voice got smaller. “Don’t be mad.”
Noah dropped his voice, made it as gentle as possible. “I’m not. You can’t help it if you don’t feel well.”
“Okay.”
Noah pinched at his cross. Poor Jake. An upset stomach and an upset mother.
Angela was pacing back and forth in the living room, furiously swiping on her phone to check the ferry times. Angela had so many great qualities. She was feisty, intelligent, kind, organized, loving. But she’d never been particularly flexible, and when you had a nine-year-old, you needed to be.
Jake couldn’t help an upset stomach. Maybe it was the different food in Italy, or maybe it was the stress of travel, or maybe it was just that sometimes people got sick.
Noah knocked again. “I’ll be close if you need me. Just holler, okay?”
“Okay.”
Noah popped his head in the kitchen, where Ramin was helping Maria and Tomaso with the dishes. He looked right at home, smiling as he scrubbed the ravioli pot, and Noah’s heart swelled.
He shook himself. If he hadn’t been so distracted with Ramin, maybe he would’ve noticed Jake wasn’t feeling well sooner.
“All good?”
“Va bene,” Maria said, elbowing Ramin. “I might steal his passport so he has to stay here.”
Ramin laughed and blushed. Noah made himself turn away, heading toward the living room.
Angela was biting her lip and looking out the window, her phone held limply at her side.
“We’ll be okay,” he told her. “It’s not like we’re in Siberia. What’s the worst that could happen?”
She sighed. “Nothing. I don’t know. We have stuff to do in Milan tomorrow. If we don’t make it back, we’ll have to cancel, and it was really hard to get tickets to seeThe Last Supper, and I know you wanted to see it—”
“It’s fine,” he said. “Jake is more important.”
“I know he is! You don’t think I know that?” Angela snapped.
“Angela.” Noah took a deep breath. “If you’re going to get frustrated every time you have to adjust your plans because of Jake, you’re going to spend your life here constantly frustrated.”
“So, what, the answer is him staying with you? What kind of future is that?”
Angela’s voice was dripping with disdain. She did that sometimes—in her more self-aware moments, she admitted she was “allergic to being wrong”—but Noah didn’t miss that side of her.
Like usual, she regretted it right away.
“Sorry. That was…”
Unkind. Rude.
“Kind of bitchy, wasn’t it?”
Noah shrugged. This is how it always went, when they fought. She got mad, said something mean in the heat of the moment, and always, always managed to poke the scabbed-over wound that Noah’s parents had left him with. He’d had years of therapy, but that didn’t mean he was magically better.
Noah kept his mouth shut. He wasn’t going to agree with her, even if some part of him secretly did, because being mad at her wouldn’t solve anything. Neither would name-calling. Or swearing.
