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“Yeah,” Dom said softly. He smiled down at her. “That’s her name.”
Her voice was softer when she spoke again. “You named her Lucia?”
“Talia did. Lucia Celeste.” He’d noticed the middle name when Matt had been going through the papers earlier.
His mother inhaled sharply. “She gave her your name?”
“And yours, Ma,” he pointed out.
“Oh, Dominic.”
The tenderness in her voice nearly cracked him open, and he blinked against the sudden sting in his eyes. “Anyway, she said she couldn’t do it anymore,” he continued. “So she left Lucia with me and drove away.”
It was the wrong thing to say.
His mother’s softness vanished. “She abandoned her?”
“It’s complicated,” Dom hedged.
“She left a three-week-old infant at your apartment, with someone who has no experience with babies.” Celeste’s voice was flat.
“She brought medical records and formula and clothes. She didn’t just leave her on the sidewalk.” Dom wasn’t sure why he was defending his ex-girlfriend when his mother wasn’t wrong.
“That does not make it better.” His father’s voice was deep with disdain.
“I know that, Pops.” Dom sighed. This conversation was going about as well as he’d expected.
“Where is this girl now?” his father demanded, his voice suddenly closer. His mother must have thrust the phone into his hand, the way she always did when she was too irritated to speak.
“I don’t know,” Dom admitted.
“What do you mean, you don’t know?” Frank’s voice rose another notch, though Dom couldn’t tell whether the anger was aimed at him, Talia, or the entire situation.
He heard his mother slam cabinet doors and pots against the stove as she muttered under her breath. He didn’t need to see her to know she was furious. The louder the cookware got, the angrier she was.
“She isn’t answering me.”
His mother began speaking rapidly in Italian. Dominic caught enough to understand that none of it was complimentary toward Talia, her judgment, and possibly several generations of her family.
“Ma.”
“What?” Celeste snapped.
“Stop.”
“I am not doing anything,” she said.
“You’re cursing,” Dom said.
He cut his eyes toward CJ and Evan, now comfortably settled together on the couch, wearing identical expressions of poorly concealed amusement while they actively enjoyed his suffering. He couldn’t blame this whole situation on them, but for sure, this train wreck with his parents was their fault.
“I’m praying.”
Dom narrowed his eyes. “You’ve never prayed like that in church.”
CJ snorted, then covered his mouth with one hand. Evan turned away, shoulders shaking with silent laughter.
“Who else is there?” his mother demanded.
