Page 12 of The Woman in the Hollow
“Thirty-two hours of labor,” Giulia said. “No epidural. You owe me flowers. Do you like to garden?” she asked, turning to me.
“Oh, you know, I’ve never really done it. I’ve lived in apartments my whole adult life.”
“Dante has a really nice front garden.” To that, Dante closed his eyes and shook his head. “I’ve been taking care of it for him since he bought the house, but I would be happy to pass it off to another enthusiast.”
“Ma, Hazel did a really great job setting up the garden center for Halloween,” Dante, looking close to shifting in his seat, said.
“We are all coming to see it. Me, his brothers, their wives…”
“And Valley, my sister,” Dante said. I got the feeling from his inflection that Valley was also single.
“Valley. That’s an interesting name.”
“Valentina,” Giulia explained. “Nino, Massimo, Dante, Santo, Valentina, and Augustine.”
“Six! Wow. You’re a supermom.”
“Do you have any siblings?” she asked.
“I have one sister.”
“Older? Younger?”
“Younger. She’s just seventeen as of two months ago.” I’d left the day after her birthday. My mom guilted me to stay until then. Though I was still getting ragged on for not coming home for her next beauty pageant.
“Is all your family in Florida?”
“Yeah. It’s actually just my mom, grandmother, and sister.”
“All girls.”
“Yeah. And you had so many boys.”
“Runs in the family. Do you want children?”
“Ma!”
“What?”
“You’re not supposed to ask that.”
“Why not?”
“I babysat every kid on our block growing up. I love kids. I’m just nowhere near in a place to start a family.”
“Oh, so you are with someone,” Giulia asked, looking deflated.
“No. No, I’m single. But I would need to be a lot more stable before starting a family.”
“That’s where a husband comes in handy.”
“Ma, you—”
“Hey, Aunt G,” another voice joined our conversation, making me turn to find another tall, dark, handsome man with impossibly great bone structure.
“Lucky! I didn’t know you were here.”
“Promised the kids pizza. Well, I promised Via a night without cooking. So I’m going with pizza.”
