Page 48 of Good as Gold
“What is this thing?”
“A baby carrier. Here. He’s getting heavy for me.” She lifts Micah’s chubby body from Benito’s hip and tucks him into the contraption. He’s facing outward from my chest, and he seems to like it.
Fair enough.
Nicole scampers ahead of us as we walk between the pear trees. It’s so early in the growing season that their leaves are the size of a fingernail. But I know from experience that this place will be lush and green within weeks.
“Catch any bad guys this week?” Zara asks her twin.
“Got a couple,” Benito says. “But I’d rather hear about Matteo’s week. How’s Leila holding up? That’s twice now that Rory has embarrassed her at the bar.”
“She’s all right, I guess. Although she says she’s sworn off alcohol.”
Benito grins. “I’d drink, too, if I had Rory for an ex.”
“Yeah, well.” I clear my throat. “That night I walked her upstairs, I ended up staying over. Just to make sure she was okay.”
“Really,” Ben says meaningfully. “How noble.”
I give his shoulder a playful shove. “It wasn’t like that. But she asked me something crazy.”
“Was it—please rip off my clothes and do me?” Zara asks. “Because I think she’s always wanted to ask you that.”
“She hasnot. Obviously. Otherwise, that would have already happened. But you’re not that far off.”
Zara gives me a searching look. “What? I don’t understand.”
“This is in the vault,” I say quietly. “Deep in the vault.”
“Of course,” my sister says. And Benito nods.
“She wants a child, and she’s making plans to do that alone. That night when she got ripped, she asked me…” I clear my throat again. “To be the father.”
“So I wasright.” Zara claps her hands together in delight. “Sort of.”
“Are you going to do it?” Benito asks.
“Heckno.” He must be joking. “I’m not the kind of guy who could knowingly get a woman pregnant and then leave town. That’s what Dad did. And we hated him for it.”
“Hmm,” Zara says, and I’m sure she knows what I mean.
Our father was the worst—always leaving my mother to struggle alone. Always promising to do better and then repeating his mistakes.
I haven’t seen him since I was eighteen years old, when he left for good. Later that year, I petitioned the state to change my name. I was born Julian Matteo DeSimone, Junior. As soon as I’d hit middle school, I’d shaken off my father’s first name by asking people to call me Matteo.
Then, at eighteen, I asked the court to legally change my last name to Rossi—my mother’s last name. My siblings liked this idea so much that they did the same thing the following year. They didn’t even wait to turn eighteen—they asked my mother to sign off on it.
She did it, too. After all those years of putting up with his bullshit, she’d finally realized she didn’t have to anymore.
The whole lot of them seem much happier now. Not that I’ve been around much to see it.
“You’re nothing like Dad,” Zara says now.
“Thanks? I know that, though.”
“Do you?” She shrugs. “The whole guilty routine you’re doing this week says differently.”
“Hey! Don’t give him any grief for that,” Benito argues. “My car is so shiny right now.”
