“Fine, I’m sorry. I promise this has nothing to do with Matteo.”
“Just… give it a lot of thought, okay?”
“I will.”
Work just doesn’t appeal to me anymore. I haven’t stepped foot in my office in over a week and I barely even miss it. The more time I’m out, the less I want to return.
“We should have dinner sometime,” Valentina suggests. “Me, you, and the other Vitales. Matteo’s kept you all to himself for long enough.”
“I think that’s just out of respect to me. He doesn’t want to overwhelm me with his entire world. At least not until he’s sure I can handle it.”
“Trust me, you can handle it. I did it too, after all.”
I smile at the look in her eyes. Her love for her husband shines through enough that it makes everything else seem unimportant.
“I’m glad you’re happy, Val.”
“Yeah.” Her gaze drifts across the room to the twin bassinet positioned near the window, where two small shapes rise and fall in slightly offset rhythms. A smile crosses her face that I can only describe as helpless. “I really am.”
I look at them. The two of them. Tucked side by side as though they’re already keeping each other company the way they have been for nine months. I remember the weight of the girl against my arm in the hospital corridor. I haven’t let myself think about it too carefully since.
I’m not letting myself think about it now.
“Sal is already insufferable,” Valentina continues, the helpless smile not going anywhere. “He called Raffaele to announce it three times because he kept forgetting he’d already called. He had strong opinions about the bassinet placement before I’d even come home.” She shakes her head, the fondness in it completely bottomless. “He was more excited than I was, if you can believe it. I was still in shock and he was already talking about names.”
“That sounds exactly like him,” I say.
I look at her, this woman I have known since we were teenagers, who used to cry in my dorm bathroom over boys who weren’t worth it—and she looks like none of that ever happened. She looks like someone who has finally fully landed.
I’m so happy for her.
And then something else arrives. Quiet and cold and entirely uninvited.
One of the babies stirs in the bassinet—a fist uncurling, a mouth opening and closing on nothing. I watch it without meaning to. I think about the weight of a small body against my arm. About how it felt to look down at a face that new to the world and feel something move through me I didn’t have a name for.
I haven’t seen my period in weeks.
I wrote it off, stress, disrupted sleep, two weeks of a life that bore no resemblance to my own. But weeks. My mind starts backtracking against my will, pulling up dates I wasn’t tracking and mornings I wasn’t paying close enough attention to.
Matteo and I are not exactly careful. Sometimes things escalate before either of us thinks to slow down. I’m on birth control, have been for years, but my mind snags on the first night. Before anything was certain. Before either of us was thinking about consequences.
I have no idea how that may have affected things.
My heart does something clumsy and unpleasant behind my ribs.
No. I can’t be. That would be—no.
I’m sure everything’s fine.
“You okay, Lin?” Valentina is watching me with a slight frown. “You’ve gone a little pale.”
I let out a soft breath, clenching my jaw.
“I’m fine,” I say. “I think I just need to eat something.”
She doesn’t look entirely convinced, but she lets it go. Valentina has always known when to push and when to wait.
When my phone buzzes in my pocket, I pull it out with a frown. Valentina waits patiently while I read the text, inwardly sighing at the words.
