Page 118 of The Woman in the Hollow
Keeping it all in the family.
“Absolutely,” she agreed. “Just let me steal a sweatshirt from the shop first.”
Yeah.
Well.
I offered to help her steal the sweatshirt. One thing led to another. And we were once again late to a function with the family.
Hazel - 2 years
“Jack, they don’t need your help!” I called to our most eager, most dedicated employee.
Jack (short for Jack-o-Lantern) was our sweet Golden Retriever who came to us through a local rescue while we’d been knee-deep in wedding planning.
He’d been too energetic for his first home. But his high-energy, eager-to-please personality, mixed with his quickness in picking up new commands, meant he made the perfect house—and work—companion.
It took all of one day to teach him where he was, and wasn’t, allowed to go. He greeted each customer with bright eyes and a wiggling tail.
He loved to help people pull their garden carts to the car and, on occasion, drag a large planter around.
He’d been over the moon when we filled the place with pumpkins he could move as well.
But he was currently trying to help someone with their scarecrow before they finished stuffing it.
Jack, as it turned out, was a staple at the garden center. I actually felt bad on the days I wasn’t working, because people were disappointed if they stopped in and didn’t get to see him.
That disappointment would be growing soon, though, I thought as I pressed my hand to my rounded belly.
I was closing in on the third trimester. And Dante and I both agreed that I needed to step back from a lot of the actual boots-on-the-ground parts of running the garden center.
I could still do all the planning and management stuff, but from home mostly. At least until the baby was able to come to work with me.
Sunshine, fresh air, it would be a great place to raise a curious, energetic toddler.
But not great for a newborn. Or an exhausted mama.
Not that I would betootired.
One major perk to the Grassi family was that it was the ‘village’ everyone said you needed to raise a baby.
I’d already been pulled into that with the others as they got pregnant and had babies. I’d made meals and delivered them, done shopping, chores, and, yes, pulled a few overnights so both parents could catch up on sleep.
As soon as we’d announced the pregnancy, tins of food started showing up endlessly. Then, I kid you not, a deep freezer to keep storing it all.
I was pretty sure that we wouldn’t need to cook for the whole first two months already. And the dishes hadn’t shown any signs of slowing down.
On top of that, both Giulia and Dante’s Aunt Adrian had promised to each come by every week so we could either have a date night… or a good, long nap.
It was easy to be excited about parenthood when you had such a great family to have your back.
Speaking of family…
“How’s it going?” I asked my sister Hannah as she walked up carrying a large pumpkin.
A few months ago, she wouldn’t have even been able to pick the thing up; she’d been so weak.
Hannah had shown up to our wedding looking gaunt, skeletal, only for me to realize that she’d taken our mother and grandmother’s food and exercise advice to the extreme.
