Page 13 of A Valentine's Day Gift
Chapter Five
A month passed.
Then another month.
Three months.
When it got to be four months, Vinny had to face facts. Allie had made her decision. She didn’t want to shake up her life, and he understood why. First and always was the kids’ welfare. So no more letters. He needed to move on. Not that he wanted to date. This thing with Allie had been so much more than that, a deeply meaningful friendship like she’d said.
Fridays always reminded him of her. That was the day she’d give him a home-cooked meal and also the day he’d stopped by her art studio to slip a letter under the door. Now it was nothing.
He drove home from work, thinking ahead to the weekend. It was September and the boys were back to school and sports. Vince and Nico had football games. Angel had soccer. Life was good. He had things to look forward to; his life was very full with the kids.
He pulled into the driveway, parked, and got the mail. He rifled through the usual bills and junk and then froze. A letter from Allie. His adrenaline kicked in—heart pounding, sweat beading on his forehead. He got back in the truck and stared at it for a moment before ripping it open.
Vinny,
My divorce is now official. This wasn’t because of you. I’ve been very unhappy for years. My boys have been acting out during their visits to their dad every other weekend, but are otherwise fine at home. I have full custody, as I hoped, and got the house, which I wanted to keep the boys’ lives as unchanged as possible.
All this to say, I’m in a much better place now. How about that cup of coffee?
Allie
Joy spiked through him, quickly followed by nerves. This was an invitation to start something. He’d been devoted to one woman since he was seventeen years old. He was thirty-eight now. Would Maria be okay with him seeing another woman? Would his mother-in-law, who was still very involved in his and the boys’ life, be okay with it? Could his boys, who still missed their ma, handle him moving on? Washeready to move on?
He swallowed hard. Now hehad a difficult decision to make.
That night Vinny did something he hadn’t done in a long time. He pulled out the framed picture of his wedding day from his nightstand drawer and set it on the nightstand. It had hurt him to look at it before, seeing the two of them so young and happy, thinking their whole lives were ahead of them together. Maria had been gone more than two years now, but it felt like longer. She’d been fading away for five years before that, only a wisp of her former vibrant self.
The boys were asleep, but he still didn’t speak out loud. Instead he looked at her picture and spoke to her in his head. He confessed how lonely he’d been, how sad, how he couldn’t sleep sometimes with the burden of grief and responsibility he carried. He asked her permission to move on.
He got nothing from it.
She was just gone, and no amount of wishing or hoping or praying was going to change that.
He spent the rest of the weekend agitated. He didn’t like not having a definite decision on what to do. He liked a clear way forward, but as he spent his time cheering for his kids from the sidelines, doing the Sunday errands of food shopping and new clothes for Vince, he knew only one thing—he wanted to see Allie again. He didn’t know if that meant for a cup of coffee or a relationship or what. He waffled back and forth on his intentions. He wanted to be clear because the last thing he wanted was to hurt her.
Sunday dinner at his in-laws’ house had him in charge of cooking as usual. For the first time, Loretta didn’t supervise him at all. Instead she sat in the living room, holding her husband’s hand as he rested in a recliner. His father-in-law, Mike, had been sent home from the hospice to die in the comfort of his own home. His boys sat on the sofa, all of them watching a game show.
After he set the food on the dining room table—two pans of lasagna, warm Italian garlic bread, and salad—Loretta declared he was now an official Italian chef. Only took two years and change plus many scoldings, but he’d graduated.
“Thanks, Loretta. It was all your great recipes.” She wrote nothing down, all of it top secret, only shared one person to another.
“You did good, Vinny,” she said. “You did what you should for your boys so they know their mother’s cooking.”
“This is Ma’s recipe?” Vince asked.
“They’re family recipes,” Loretta replied. “Passed down the generations. And now I taught your dad to keep the tradition going. Hopefully he’ll teach you boys one day or your wives.”
Vince curled his lip in disgust. “Wives! Blech.”
“Gross,” Nico put in.
“I wanna get a wife,” Angel declared, which made them all laugh. He had a long way to go from first grade to wife.
Loretta shook her finger at the boys. “Vince and Nico, you might feel very differently in a few years.”
“No way!” Vince proclaimed. Nico heartily agreed.
