Most of them. When I told her that I had left my full-time job at the winery for a part-time one with the Woodsmen, she got upset. “You’re going to formalize some kind of agreement between you and César, right? About expenses, who’s going to pay for what? A custody agreement, too, right?” she asked me, and the questions kept niggling. The niggling about the future got worse when various members of César’s family, great-aunts and uncles and some much older cousins, had questions of their own.
“Aren’t you going to marry her?” was a common one for César. “Why won’t you marry him?” was another directed at me. More than a few relatives definitely weren’t shy about expressing the opinion that our future would have to be settled, not through legal agreements and lawyers, but by a priest and a ring. The more I tried to convince people that we weren’t ever going to get married, the angrier they seemed to get at César, like it was his fault somehow. I didn’t want that, so I just smiled and changed the subject to soccer.
A few hours later, I sat on the floor of my bedroom, thinking about packing, because the move had gone from conceptual to real when I’d seen the new house. There was a lot for me to organize; I didn’t want to throw everything in bags like I had when I’d arrived at this place. It was around midnight and I was really tired, but I wasn’t ready to go to sleep quite yet. I was so lost in thought, I didn’t hear anyone come in.
“You’re up late.”
I looked up at Valeria in her pajamas. “Yeah, I guess so,” I agreed. “Did you enjoy the dinner?”
She sat down on my bed. “It was great. It was sweet of my brother to take us out.”
“Your brother is very sweet,” I said, nodding.
Valeria nodded back. “My mom said you convinced her not to bitch at him about how much everything cost, so thanks for that. It’s a very old, annoying argument between us all.”
“You’re welcome.” I sighed and put down the stack of pictures I was holding. I felt awful. I had been looking at this stuff for too long, and what Ellie had said to me before in the car about Soleil had also made me pretty upset. The later it got and the more I thought about it, the worse I felt.
“Are you crying?” Valeria asked me, and I wiped at my cheeks. Always, so I just shrugged. “What are those?”
“Pictures of my mom,” I told her. I handed her the one from the top of the stack. “That’s her next to me. None of these are organized or dated, but I think I was graduating from fifth grade. Notice the cap and gown but my very small stature.”
“Who’s the guy?”
“That’s my dad.” Although I hadn’t known it at the time. “He’s a real douche,” I explained. “I don’t have anything to do with him.”
“He looks familiar to me,” she said, staring at the picture.
Clearly, she wasn’t a football fan, if she didn’t recognize Warren Wilde. “Maybe you see a resemblance between him and me.”
She studied my face. “No, you look just like your mother. I keep wanting to ask, is that your natural hair color? Do you curl it like that? You could be in a hair ad. In fact, you could be a model.”
“Thank you. My aunt was a model, my sister’s mom, and I guess I do take after that side of the family.”
“Wait, your aunt is your sister’s mom?” Valeria looked confused.
I forged ahead. “This is just how my hair does itself naturally and I leave it alone. Except sometimes, if it’s too wild, then César reminds me to fix it before I go to work. Tonight I tried to do myself up a little for your family.”
“They all really liked you,” Valeria told me. She hesitated. “You know, I didn’t like you at all when you came to Florida. I thought you were a scam artist out to trap my brother.”
“Thanks,” I responded. “Thanks a lot. You know, the feeling of hatred was mutual.” She nodded and shrugged. “Yeah, you were super nasty, but I get why,” I continued. “I see how much you care about your brother and you were protective.”
“Yes. But also,” she said, but then hesitated again, and looked down at her hands. “My husband and I have been trying for a baby for a few years. I’ve done the shots, a couple rounds of IVF…I’ve done everything up to and including standing on my head to get pregnant. It was hard to see you guys do it by mistake.”
“I’m sorry,” I told her awkwardly. “I wasn’t trying to flaunt it…”
“I know. And, um, I’ll tell you something that I just told César. But don’t repeat it, because only my parents and grandma know, too.” A huge, blinding smile spread across her face, César’s smile. “I’m pregnant.”
So that started me crying again as I lurched up off the floor to hug her, but for sure they were happy tears this time, not more about what Ellie had told me, that my mother was just as bad as my father.
Chapter 12
“This is so beautiful,” I said to Katie, looking around her house.
“Thanks,” she answered. “When I first met Davis, he had some furniture, but he hadn’t cleaned in about a year. It was disgusting in here.” She looked around too, at the flowers, the trays of food, the balloons and party decorations. Mostly everything was pink. “I think it did turn out pretty well.”
“It’s going
