“Oh my God, the poor girl. Is he okay?”
I frowned at her genuine-sounding concern for Addy but shook it off. “He’s fine now, but Addy and I took the jet to Portland to be with him.”
“You’re in America?”
“Yes. I’m still here. I can’t bring myself to leave, but we found out she’s pregnant, and I fucked up. I fucked up badly, Mama. She chased me away, but she wants to stay here.”
My mother’s silence seemed to stretch into infinity. When she finally spoke, pure ice dripped from her tone. “What did you do? Marco Ricci, what on earth did you do to her?”
“Wait. What?” I raked a hand through my hair and rested my elbow on my knees. “That’s your first question?”
“Yes.” She’d never spoken to me like this before. “I treated that girl terribly, and she responded with grace and respect. If she’s chased you away, you must have done something awful.”
Pain speared through me at the fresh, raw memory. It felt like a white-hot lance separating one side of my heart from the other. “I didn’t know what to say, so I ducked out without saying anything. I just needed a few minutes to talk things through with Aldo.”
“Does your brother have your child growing in his belly?” she barked, and I was so surprised by her question that I laughed. “Don’t you dare laugh about this, you imbecile. Answer my question. Does your brother have a fetus conceived there by your sperm in his womb?”
“Obviously not.”
“Then you don’t leave the woman who has your child in her body to go speak to your brother,” she yelled. My mother never got loud with me. Spirited, yes, but not loud. She was loud now, though. All-caps loud. “What is wrong with you? Have I taught you nothing at all?”
“Aldo is my support system just as much as her brother is hers. Why is it okay that she needed to talk to him, but I couldn't do the same?”
“Because she had just found out she was pregnant.” Her volume went up, as did her pitch. “Where the hell has that big brain of yours gone?”
I held up my hand and braced it on the seat in front of me. “You’re going to have to spell this one out for me, Mama.”
She muttered a string of Italian curses before releasing an exaggerated puff of air. “Men. I swear you all have your emotional growth stunted at conception and it never catches up.”
“Let’s go with that. Will you please just tell me what to do?”
“Now he wants me to tell him what to do,” she spat. “The woman you’re in love with, the same one who had just found out she was carrying your baby, told you to leave, and you left?”
“Well, yeah.” I frowned. “I was respecting her wishes.”
“Respecting her wishes?” she parroted, and I could practically hear her rolling her eyes at me. “Her wishes were to have you with her, not to go running off to your brother. She wanted to know she could count on you. You do realize she has no idea where you two stand now? Have you even talked about having children? No. I’m sure you haven’t. Does she have a ring on her finger promising that you’ll stand by her? No.”
“Rings don’t make everything magically better, Mama. Go check on the divorce rate if you don’t believe me.”
“Don’t you take that tone with your mother, Marco,” she warned. “I know very well that rings don’t make everything better, but at least it would have given her a sense of security.”
“But—”
“I wasn’t done yet. She was scared and alone, and you left her. What was your first thought when you found out the news?”
“That I was going to be a father?” That had to be the right answer.
My mother’s answering shout told me it wasn’t. “Have you spared a minute to think about the fact that she’s going to be a mother? She already is a mother. You already are a father, but you know how you feel about her. Have you even told her?”
“No,” I replied quietly, starting to see where she was going with this. “I was selfish.”
“You were,” she said decisively. “As for her telling you to leave, I'm sure that was what she wanted at that moment. But hormones are powerful things, son. So are emotions. She was surfing the biggest wave created by the perfect storm of those two things.”
My body went still. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that she’s carrying your baby. Your child. My grandchild. I won’t let you turn your back on them, and I didn’t raise you to be an absent father.”
“But she wants to stay in America.” My gaze drifted to the landscape outside. Dry heat rose from the tarmac. But other than that, Oregon really wasn’t all that bad. “My life is in Florence. I can’t stay here.”
“Your life is where your heart is, and that girl has your heart. The baby will share it with her soon.”
“What about you?”
“What about me?” she snapped. “Don’t you dare use me as an excuse. I know how a plane works. My son even owns one. I’m sure we can figure it out.”
“You want me to stay here?” I couldn't believe what I was hearing. When I’d told her I was opening offices in Rome, she’d gone on a hunger strike because she said she’d never see me again. Call me crazy, but Portland was a hell of a lot farther than Rome.
“I don’t want you to,” she said, gentler now. “But if that’s where your heart is, that’s where you have to be. I don’t want you here only to be miserable without them. I also don’t want my grandchild growing up without a father.”
“I want you to be a father,” she added. “Not just an absent memory.”
The pilot stuck his head out of the cockpit. “We need to take off, or we’re going to forfeit our slot, Mr.
