“I wouldn’t expect anything less after not speaking with you for a month. You can always expect the unexpected when it comes to Giovanni Gallo,” dad quips.
“We’re expecting,” Gio says, rubbing my stomach.
“You’re what?” mom asks as dad starts to teeter and passes out, but not before Gio grabs him and slaps his face a few times, bringing him right back into the moment.
Gio pulls dad into the shade and mom starts hugging me wildly.
“I can’t believe I didn’t sniff this out.” I’m beyond perplexed.
“And I can’t believe I didn’t smell that delicious gnocchi from down the beach. Let’s eat!” mom suggests, never one to miss out on Italian food.
“We’ve got tiramisù in the cooler for later, Kim,” Gio says to my mom as he fans my dad.
“I’m going to start with some of this Italian wine and then some cold-pressed olive oil over this bruschetta,” I say.
“Can you make me one too?” Gio asks me.
I plop down on the blanket, watching my mom and dad and Gio act like everything is completely normal, and my fiancé seems to pick right up on it.
“Sorry for the way we’re acting. It’s just that we all planned out every detail a couple of months ago and it worked out so it’s actually not the big reveal to us that it is to you.” He pauses. “Did we do good?”
I shake my head. If it was anyone else I’d be kicking and screaming, but Gio…? It just shows how much he really is my Daddy, taking care of everything without bothering me one bit, without causing me to worry.
“Congratulations, honey,” dad says a moment later when he’s back to himself. “As I mentioned I was not at all excited about the two of you at first, but once I thought about it it makes complete sense. Who else in this world do I trust with my little girl? Who else could give her this life?” he asks, his arms motioning in a big circle around this beautiful Sardinia seaside. “And who else could I trust to pull this all off, but him?”
“But dad? What about you and mom?”
“Well, you’ve got two babysitters right down the coast now.”
“What?”
“Taxes can be done all through the Internet. We’re living in Italy now. Early retirement, especially considering the rewards we got for finding and turning in Marroni.”
I just shake my head.
“Oh, and it’s not Tim and Kim anymore. You can just call us Stefano and Stella. That’s what it reads on our passports at least.”
“What?” I gulp, turning to Gio who just shoots me a wink.
“I love you,” he mouths.
“So yeah, no reason to call me daddy ever again. We don’t want anyone finding out.”
Gio and I choke back laughter. “You’re right, we don’t need anyone finding out who my daddy is. Those who know, know.”
“Atta girl,” dad and Gio say at the same time.
“More wine?” my mom asks.
I rip the bottle from her hands and tip it back, taking a drink straight from it before I spit it out.
“A bit of wine could help me get through this moment but then I realized what this moment is all about in the first place.”
“That’s right, Little Momma,” Gio says. “We should pick out names.”
“We don’t even know if it’s going to be a boy or a girl.”
“That’s the best part about Italian names, you just add an ‘o’ at the end for boys and an ‘a’ at the end for girls. Something like that at least.”
“You’re something,” I say, tapping him on the nose.
“And you’re everything,” he says tapping me back and then claiming my lips.
“I love you.”
“Ti amo, amore mio.”
Extended Epilogue
Giovanni
Seven years later
“Am I gonna get a spanking?” Florence, our four-year-old asks as she looks up at me with those azure eyes that are equally as piercing as her mother’s.
“We don’t spank children in this house,” I say off-the-cuff.
She brings a finger to the side of her face and squints out of one eye as if trying to solve a mystery. Our kids are so damn cute I wish there was a way to record their funny behaviors and expressions all the time.
“But if you don’t spank kids, then who do you spank?”
I swallow hard. “No one,” I answer quickly. “Now let’s get you ready for bed.”
I scoop my little girl up and carry her off to bed, Gabriella shooting me a knowing look as I go. It says ‘nice parenting’ mixed with ‘that’s not at all true’ in one expression. And she’s absolutely right.
Sardinia was a great place to live for five years, but the last two in Rome have been better…especially when I found a home for sale that had an underground catacomb that looks more like a macabre underground labyrinth, which Gabriella and I have used to set up a little adult playroom where the kids will never find us.
We can have a babysitter over and tell them we’re going for a night out on the town, only to sneak in the backyard, into the labyrinth, and have one heck of a night right under the house…and nobody has to know.
“Dad, it’s too early for bed,” our oldest Milan whines, after I finish tucking in Florence and come back for one of my two boys. It’s become a nightly ritual, scooping the kids up one by one and getting them to bed.
“Everybody’s in bed tonight at nine. We’ve got a big day tomorrow buddy.”
“Oh yeah!” he remembers, our scheduled tour of the Colosseum tomorrow. After having watched Gladiator recently he can’t wait to do his best Maximus impressions.
After I get Milan down I come back and see that Romeo, Sicily, and Siena are already gone.
“Where are the rest of our kids?”
“Bribery,”
