Page 92 of The Mafia's Christmas Baby
“I thought it would be hard,” I say. “The old news. The irregular cycles. The cyst. I didn’t think it would be here without my seeing it coming.”
She squeezes my hand and then lets go.
She wipes under my eye with her thumb and stands to stir the soup even though it does not need stirring.
“How far?” she asks.
“I don’t know, exactly,” I say. “A few weeks. I have not told anyone.”
“You have not told Nico,” she says. She uses his full name after that. “Nico Riccari.”
So, the word is definitely out on the street.
I shake my head.
My throat is tight.
“I'm not ready. I don't know what it means in his world. I don't want to be a story he has to use to move a room. I don't want to be leverage. I don't want to bring a child to a table with ledgers and guns.”
She listens.
She takes a breath and pours herself tea from my kettle like she has lived here all her life.
“You can't hide a child,” she says. “Not from the father. Not from yourself. You know this already.”
“I know,” I say.
I look down at the soup so I don't have to see my own face reflected in it. “I'm afraid of his reaction. I'm afraid of what it makes us.”
“It makes you parents,” she says.
“That is not a costume he can put on for the Council. That is not a headline. Don't keep this from him. That is not how you were raised.”
Her voice is not angry.
It's steady.
It cuts through the noise in my head.
She reaches across the table again and takes my hand.
“Be careful,” she says. “Be smart. Don't go anywhere alone if you can help it. And don't lie to Nico about the most important thing you will ever say.”
I nod.
The tears come again and then stop.
I eat more of the soup.
She packs the rest into containers and labels them with tape because she can't help herself.
She kisses my forehead and tells me to sleep.
At the door, she looks back once more. “Call your doctor,” she says. “Tomorrow. Do it before work.”
After she leaves, the apartment feels too quiet.
I wash the bowl and set it to dry.
