13
“So, are you really here just for me and Sofia?” I asked as we started back up Court, this time heading past the school where I worked and up toward Cobble Hill and more restaurants.
I liked Carroll Gardens. It was a little nicer than Red Hook and close enough that I could walk home on nice days. I also liked the fact that there were still traces of its original Italian roots in a few remaining shops and fire escapes. It felt a little like Belmont too, the neighborhood in the Bronx where I’d grown up. Close to home, and yet far enough that I’d gotten away.
“I—for the most part,” Xavier said. “I was supposed to be opening a new restaurant in Paris, but I pushed that date. I’m prioritizing New York for the time being.”
“So it’s a work trip.”
I wasn’t sure why that bothered me so much. Obviously, he was a busy man, but I didn’t like the idea of Sofia as an afterthought.
Or yourself, my subconscious sneered.
Oh, shut up.
He sighed, looking up at the cloudy sky, then back at me. “It’s a reason to be here until I know what’s going on with the real reason to be here. If you get my reasoning.”
I laughed. “Um, not really.”
To my surprise, he chuckled back. Not quite a laugh. But it was in the neighborhood.
“Look, when I left before, I was angry. Justifiably, I might add. But I thought about it, and now I’m mostly…” He shook his head, like he was trying to sort out the words. “Curious, I suppose. Still gutted about all of it, of course. But, right. Yeah. I guess now I’m mostly curious.”
Curious. Well, that wasn’t exactly what I was expecting.
“About what?” I asked.
“I want to know everything there is to know about her,” he continued as we walked. “I assume that will take time. So I made some. I’m a busy man, Francesca. But I won’t be too busy for my own blood. You see?”
I swallowed. What did that mean for me? Was he planning to hire some big-shot city lawyer to take custody away? Was he planning some kind of revenge that would undo the life I’d built for me and Sofia?
Looking up at him, the way he glowered at nearly everything we passed, I wondered if he was the kind of person for whom revenge was an everyday practice. Which made me wonder if he had any of the softness required to love a child.
“So, let’s start at the beginning,” he said.
“Which one?”
“You find out you’re pregnant. And you think I’m in London, engaged. So…what next?”
I closed my eyes for a moment, inhaling the scents of Brooklyn in the winter. Car exhaust, a few hints of wood burning fireplaces, and the thick overlay of ice and snow. It was a tactic I generally used to keep me in the here and now. Those weren’t really days I liked to think about. Most of them had been blocked out.
But I couldn’t be scared of them anymore. It was the past.
“Fear,” I admitted. “I was scared to death.”
Xavier was quiet for once, waiting for me to continue.
“I finished that semester—I only had a few weeks left, you see. And I intended to continue graduate school that fall. But by September, I was showing. A lot. My family knew, of course, and I needed to make some real plans. But then all that went to hell too.”
“Because she came early, right?”
“Almost two months,” I confirmed. “She was tiny. Two pounds, four ounces. Like a pack of chicken breasts, no bigger.”
He held his hands out in front of him, clearly imagining something that size cradled between them.
“She was in the NICU for another two weeks. I spent the first few sleeping there with her, but then they made me go home.” I sighed, resisting the urge to stop. The terror and confusion and fatigue of those days were rushing back with every word. “I cried every night until she came home with me. I was so, so scared. You can’t understand—”
“Unless I was there,” he said quietly. “Yeah.”