"I'll get it," Sofia said, wiping her hands on her apron.
"Sofia, wait?—"
But she was already at the door, throwing it open with the enthusiasm of a much younger woman.
"Nadia! Come in, come in. You're even more beautiful than Daemon said."
I closed my eyes. Of course, Sofia would lead with that.
When I reopened them, Nadia stood inside the front doorway, holding a bottle of wine, looking both amused and nervous. She'd changed out of her monogrammed jumpsuit into dark jeans and a soft green sweater that made her eyes impossible to look away from.
Our gazes met across Sofia's cluttered living room, and something sparked between us. Recognition. Heat. Possibility.
Then Nadia took in the room, and her lips twitched. The china figurines, the lace doilies, the floral explosion. She'd thought I was exaggerating about the main house. Now she knew better.
"Thank you for inviting me," Nadia said to Sofia, though her eyes stayed on me. "Something smells amazing."
"Carbonara," Sofia said, her words firm enough to be deemed al dente. "My nonna's recipe. Come, come. We eat while it's hot. Daemon, bring the pasta!"
As Sofia ushered Nadia toward the dining room, talking a mile a minute in English and Italian, I caught Nadia's eye. She looked overwhelmed but charmed. The Sofia effect in a nutshell.
I grabbed the large bowl of pasta, its warmth seeping into my hands, and followed them to the table.
This would either be the best idea I'd ever had, or it would blow up in my face.
And given my track record, both.
FIVE
NADIA
I almost didn't stop at my parents' house.
Sofia's dinner was at seven, and I had a full day behind me, and roughly forty minutes to shower, change, and not arrive looking like someone who'd been on her feet since four in the morning.
My mother's text said only that Emma wasn't feeling well, which in my family's language meant anything from a sniffle to needing an airlift to a major hospital.
We may as well have had a helicopter on standby.
I knew it the moment I walked through the door and saw Emma at the kitchen table, one hand pressed to her jaw, her eyes glassy. She'd passed the point of ignoring the pain, and when she moved her hand, there was no missing the swelling on the left side of her face.
"Hey," I said, crouching in front of her. "Open up for me."
She did, reluctantly. I checked her mouth with the flashlight on my phone. Her lower gum at the very back was inflamed and possibly infected.
"How long has this been hurting?"
Emma's eyes slid sideways toward my mom, who stood in the kitchen doorway looking helpless and worn. "A week," she admitted. "Maybe two."
"Two weeks," I said, fighting to keep my voice level. "And you said nothing."
"I didn't want to make a fuss." Emma lifted her chin when she said it, desperate to handle this like a grown-up. It almost worked.
Fifteen years old and already fluent in the family language of not making a fuss. Old enough to understand exactly what things cost, old enough to feel the weight of it, and apparently old enough to decide that suffering in silence was the adult thing to do. Still, I couldn't blame her. Wasn't I guilty of the same behavior?
My guess was a wisdom tooth giving her grief. I couldn't see the infection yet, but I didn't need to. The swelling and the pain level told me everything. Hadn't I suffered the same thing at her age?
"She needs to see a dentist today," I said to my mom. "Not tomorrow. Today."
