Page 156 of The Mafia's Christmas Baby
The rain starts for real, soft and steady, a sound the city doesn’t fight.
I look at her and see the woman who helped me outwrite a man who thought noise could beat a ledger.
I see the mother of a child who will get boring stories at bedtime and rides to school that don’t require a second car two blocks back.
I see a life that fits inside a small apartment with a chipped mug and a clean table.
It won’t be simple.
It won’t be safe in a way that makes movies.
But it will be ours.
That counts.
I stand to lock the door and check the windows because ritual keeps me honest.
She rolls her eyes like she always does and then checks the other side without telling me she did.
We’re a team that way.
Good teams are quiet.
In bed, we lie the way we have started to, my hand under her palm.
Outside, the city is loud in other people’s apartments.
In here, there’s only the radiator arguing with itself and the rain making the street shine.
27
NICO
Christmas eve
The tree is crooked on purpose because she says it makes it look alive.
The good lights work, the cheap ones mutter, and the radio is stuck between a choir and static that sounds like snow.
I’m stirring sauce like it’s a time bomb and proofing dough like I can make patience rise faster by glaring at it.
Outside, Bayard wears a halo of steam and streetlight.
Somewhere a bell ringer is waging a personal war with a kettle.
Elisa pads in wearing my old college sweatshirt and those socks that make her look like she robbed a candy cane.
She leans on the doorjamb and breathes slowly.
Not the normal slow. The careful slow.
“Contraction?” I ask.
“Christmas spirit,” she says and then winces. “And yes. Light. I can still mock you.”
“Time?”
“Three minutes long. Ten minutes apart.” She looks at the clock. “Or twelve. Don’t look at me like that.”
