“Maybe,” Noah said, then course corrected, because the last thing he needed was Jake thinking he’d promised Italians had mac and cheese. “Actually, I don’t know. You’ll have to find out.”
He turned back to Angela. “You’re taking Jake, I guess?”
“I’m taking both of you,” she said. “If you’ll come.”
“I can’t afford a trip like that!” Noah was doing okay financially, but an international trip wasn’t exactly in his budget.
“I’ll cover you,” Angela insisted. “Noah. You wouldn’t split the house, you wouldn’t take alimony, you wouldn’t take anything. Take the trip at least.”
Noah shook his head. Angela’s grandparents weren’t even his family anymore. One of the hardest parts of the divorce had been losing Angela’s big extended family. Noah’s own was…
Well,complicateddidn’t even begin to cover it.
Angela sighed. “You know what sweat equity is, right? It’s when the work you do counts for something, too. You paid into our marriage just as much as I did. Let me pay for the damned trip.”
Jake gasped.
Noah jokingly put his hands over Jake’s ears—he’d heard his mom swear before, plenty of times, even if Noah didn’t swear much himself. Jake shook Noah’s hands off with a laugh.
“Fine.” If money wasn’t a good enough excuse, at least his job was. “If I can get the time off work.”
“I already talked to Rick. He said you’re good as long as you bring him back a souvenir.”
“You what?” Noah blinked. Rick was the union’s business agent, the one who matched carpenters to jobs. He wasn’t Noah’s boss, per se, but hedidkeep Noah’s schedule. Angela couldn’t just talk to him. “I—”
“There’s another thing.”
Noah’s stomach dropped. There was something in Angela’s voice, some little shake. Like the day she’d said she wanted a divorce.
“Nonno and Nonna are thinking seriously about retirement. You remember they have that little wine store?”
Noah nodded. It was somewhere on a lake in Northern Italy. He’d seen it on a map, but he couldn’t remember the name.
“They asked if anyone in the family wanted to take it over, and I told them…” Angela swallowed. Her cheeks were turning pink. “I told them I would.”
Noah’s brain ground to a halt.
Angela? Wanted to move to Italy?
It made no sense. Angela had worked so hard to become a partner at her firm. She had family here; she had friends. She had Jake.
“We’re moving to Italy?” Jake asked, his voice quiet and nervous.
“I am,” she said. “And we’re going to go look at it and see if you want that, too. Okay?”
“What about my friends? What about my soccer team? What about—”
“Hey.” Noah kept his voice gentle, even though it felt like an elbow to the heart that Jake had skipped overWhat about my dad? “We’re not doinganythingwithout taking your feelings into account. Okay, buddy?”
It felt like he had sand in his throat, but he couldn’t worry about his own feelings right now, not right in front of Jake. He wished Angela had talked to him about this first, given him time to process it on his own before dragging Jake in, but he swallowed that back.
He’d deal with that later, too.
“You get to decide if you want to move with your mom or stay here with me.”
“Exactly,” Angela said. “That’s why I want us to go together. So we can all see it and make an informed choice. All right?”
“You’re staying here?” Jake asked, voice small.
