Page 165 of The Mafia's Christmas Baby
We keep them anyway.
Like umbrellas, you only forget them once.
On my off days I bake too much for this apartment and send half of it down to Rosa’s café because some things are medicine and sugar is one of them.
I do it early, when the sky is blue with sleep, and walk back while the city is just stirring.
Lucia watches from her bouncer chair and holds court with a stuffed giraffe that has strong opinions about cinnamon.
Nico works a job that gives him a W-2 and a headache.
He runs morning logistics for a warehouse by the water in Red Hook, nothing glamorous, just the honest shuffling of pallets and the math of moving things from where they are to where people think they should be.
He leaves at four and comes back at noon, smells like coffee and forklifts, and drops a new word of the day into our kitchen like a souvenir.
Cross-dock. Palletizer. Backorder.
He complains about taxes at breakfast like a citizen.
He tells me the schedule for the week in straight lines.
I nod like a queen approving a parade.
Sometimes his phone buzzes with a name that belongs to a man who taught him to count knives without looking.
Those calls are short and polite.
The new consigliere was chosen without us.
Good.
When Don Vincent calls, which has happened exactly twice, Nico speaks like a son, not a soldier.
He says I'm well.
He does not say our daughter’s name.
The Don does not ask.
That is the agreement.
We keep the family and the Family in separate drawers.
Rafe has become a godfather with a whistle.
He visits and pretends he is not counting minutes in his head.
He sets the baby monitor to a channel that could reach the moon.
Tino installs a door chime that plays three notes when it opens and three when it closes, and only he knows how to change the song.
Rosa comes over with bread and advice and the look that says she is nobody’s grandmother and also everyone’s.
There is still the city.
The old car across from our building finally moved and never came back.
The van that liked our curb stopped liking it.
