Epilogue #2
“The server returns with a basket mounded in fries, steam curling up enticingly. He sets it down, leaves four plates, two ramekins of aioli, and disappears.
“Go on,” Elena says to Lucia, nudging the basket toward her.
Lucia studies the fries like they might bite, then reaches, drags one through the aioli, bites. Her lashes lower. “Okay,” she concedes, small and grudging. “That’s unfairly good.”
“See? Baby loves them too,” Elena says, grabbing her own fry.
I reach for one, and Lucia’s eyes follow my hands.
Her gaze holds mine. A slow breath in. Out. “You’ve hurt a lot of people.”
“Yes.”
“You hurt me.”
“Yes.” The word slaps. I don’t flinch away from it.
She nods, tiny. “I don’t forgive you,” she says, and then adds, in a voice that wavers once and steadies, “Not yet.”
“I didn’t come for forgiveness,” I say. “I came to see you. To listen. To tell you I love you, and I’m sorry I hurt you. That I disappointed you. If all you ever want from me is this, I’ll take it.”
Her eyes shine, and then, like her mother, she blinks it back into steel. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” she says.
“I won’t,” I answer.
Nick takes a measured sip of his water, then sets it down. He doesn’t speak, but I can tell they’re having their own conversation through touch. The way you do when you’ve built a private language with someone.
“How are Vito, Nico, and Caterina?” Lucia asks hesitantly.
“They ask about you,” I say.
Lucia looks down, drags another fry through the sauce slowly. “Even Caterina?” she asks in a whisper.
“Of course. She’s your sister,” I say.
“She’s not angry at me?”
“Of course. She’s your sister,” I repeat.
Lucia’s breath comes out in a laugh.
“She wrote me a furious text last month and then sent three heart emojis five minutes later,” Elena offers. “I took that to mean ‘I love you and also you’re wrong.’”
“That’s Caterina,” Lucia says, mouth tipping. “She used to leave me passive-aggressive notes on my bathroom mirror when she was angry.”
“She upgraded technologically, I guess,” Elena says cheerfully. “Still, she’s doing all right. She’s excited about the baby coming. Shockingly so.”
“She used to play with that creepy doll when she was a kid. The one with the eyes,” Lucia says. “She loved that thing.”
“Until the eyes stopped blinking and one of them stayed open all the time,” I add, remembering.
“Yeah, I was happy when she lost it.”
“She didn’t lose it. Your mamma threw it away. Said it kept her up at night.”
Lucia tips her head back and laughs. A real one. The first I’ve heard in too long.
The ache in my chest loosens a little.
Nick’s fingers graze the back of her hand; she doesn’t pull away. He glances at the fries, then at me, and I don’t read challenge there, just watchfulness that isn’t spoiling for a fight.
She nods, looks down at her glass, then back up at me with the frankness I remember from a small girl who once demanded a pony and settled for a puppy, which is probably what she wanted in the first place.
“I can stay ten more minutes,” she says. “After that, we go.”
I want to protest, but I force myself to nod and accept.
She reaches for another fry, breaks it in half, offers a piece to Nick without looking. He takes it. Their shoulders touch.
Internally, I set down a weapon I’ve been carrying for so long; I’ve gotten used to the weight. My life is still my life, but I can live with this man in my daughter’s life if it means I have a chance of repairing my relationship with her.
Elena’s hand finds my knee again, that little anchor. I look at my daughter and don’t try to fix anything, don’t try to buy anything, don’t try to argue the past.
For the length of a basket of salted potatoes in a casino bar, four people will share a table and talk about nothing important
And somehow, it feels like a start.
The elevator ride up feels longer than the one down, even though Elena spends it leaning into my side, her head tipped to my shoulder like the night finally caught up with her.
When the doors open, she yawns without hiding it, and I want to carry her the rest of the way, but she flicks my stomach with two fingers like she can read my mind.
Inside the room, she toes off her heels with small, relieved sounds that do something to me.
“Bed,” she declares, reaching for the zipper at the back of her dress. “Pillows, blanket, one thousand percent not my problem if I snore. And also—” She pauses to rub the arch of her foot. “—I’m calling down for more fries.”
“You already had half a basket,” I say.
“And?” She lifts an eyebrow, daring me. “She’s hungry. I’m hungry. We’re two separate people who both like salt.”
“Strong argument.” I’m smiling, I can feel it, and I let it live. “Order your salt.”
She pads toward the bed, stripping off earrings as she goes, jewelry leaving little bright spots on the nightstand.
The zipper sighs; the dress loosens. She talks as she moves, the words soft and a little frenetic.
“That could’ve gone so much worse,” she murmurs.
“I know this isn’t everything, I do, but Luca, she laughed.
Twice. And the fries—God, the fries helped. ”
“The fries were instrumental,” I agree.
She bends to rummage in her overnight bag for a soft T-shirt, hair spilling forward. “I’m going to wash my face and then I am turning into a weighted blanket and you can’t stop me.”
“Understood.” I cross to the suitcase at the foot of the bed.
My hands don’t shake, which surprises me; everything else does.
I flip the latches, push past shirts I stacked like a man who needed to keep his mind busy, and find the small leather case tucked in a side pocket where I’ve touched it a dozen times in the last twenty-four hours just to be sure it was still there.
Behind me, water runs; the door clicks; the room smells suddenly of her soap. I stay where I am, kneel because if I try to stand with this in my hand, I might pace a trench in the carpet. The case is small enough to disappear in my palm. The weight of it is not.
“Elena,” I say.
She turns with a towel bunched at her chest, one shoulder bare, laughter still ghosting her mouth. The sight of me drops it clean out of her hands. It puddles at her feet, abandoned.
“What are you—” she starts, and then stops, because there’s only one thing a man like me does on one knee.
I open the case.
The ring isn’t gaudy in the way I used to think mattered. It’s relatively simple: a round cut stone, set in a platinum band, with more stones on the outside; I think they call them baguettes. Understated in a way I knew Elena would like, but elegant and classy, too.
“For a long time,” I say, “I believed the only good I could do for the people I loved was to keep my distance. To be better by being elsewhere. Then you walked into my life and ruined that strategy entirely.” I let out a breath; it feels like a confession.
Her eyes go glossy. She puts one palm flat to her sternum like she’s grounding herself.
“I love you,” I tell her, because that belongs here.
“I love you when you’re making burnt offerings out of cookies, and when you’re arguing case law in my kitchen, and when I’m asleep and you’re counting my breaths.
I love you when you’re brave, and I love you when you tell me you’re scared.
I love you for insisting I hand over my monsters to the system you trust, even when I object.
I love you for making me ask instead of assuming.
I love you more and more every time that baby kicks. ”
A wet laugh breaks out of her; she swipes at a tear with the back of her wrist. “She’s definitely your daughter.”
“She’ll be ours,” I correct, and my throat gets tight on that word, ours. “Elena, will you marry me?”
She doesn’t move for a heartbeat. Two. I watch the exact second she lets the decision she already made rise to the surface. Her hand comes to her mouth, her shoulders drop, and something like relief and joy and terror pass over her face all at once.
“Yes,” she says, the first time like a breath.
I don’t move. I want the second one. “Panini,” I murmur. “Are you sure about this?”
Her smile goes crooked. “Yes,” she says again, stronger. “Yes, Luca.”
The third is a laugh tangled in a sob. “Yes.”
“May I?” I ask, and when she nods, I take her left hand, the one with the thin scar along the base of her thumb from a fight in our bedroom that should never have happened. The ring slides over her knuckle as if it’s meant to be there. It settles. She just stares at it.
“It’s… classic,” she says.
I look down and start to doubt.
“I thought that—” I shake my head. “I can get you something else. Anything else. Whatever —“
“I love it,” she says, and then she’s moving, awkward with the baby between us. We meet halfway. “I love it so much. It’s perfect. Just right.”
“Careful,” I murmur against her mouth, hands automatically bracketing her belly.
“I am,” she whispers, laughing into the kiss.
When we separate, she takes my face in both hands like she needs to hold me still.
“Ask me again,” she says.
“You already said yes,” I say, grinning.
“I know, but I like hearing it. Ask me again,” she insists.
I laugh, kiss her again, then get back on my knee. “Elena, will you—”
“Yes, yes!” she says, pressing her lips to mine. Then softer: “Yes. I love you.”
“I love you too,” I say, standing back up to pull her in my arms. “I choose you every day. Even on the days I don’t deserve you. And I know there will be a lot of them.”
She tips her forehead to mine and laughs a little, breath hitching. “I’m going to tell everyone immediately. In the morning. Tonight is for us.”
“Ten minutes,” I agree. “Then you can terrorize Caterina with photos.”
“God, look at us,” Elena says, swiping at her cheeks. She lifts her hand again, studying the ring, and the smile that takes her whole face is the kind that steals years off a man.
“Engaged,” I say, letting the word live in the room.
She tests it, soft at first. “My fiancé.”
“I like the sound of that,” I murmur. “Husband even more.”
“Future husband,” she says, and then squints at me. “Now order my celebratory fries, fiancé.”
“Yes, ma’am.” I reach for the phone, still holding her with my free arm because letting go seems like a poor life choice.
I ask room service for too many fries, two milkshakes, and whatever chocolate they can find.
When I hang up, she’s still watching me, eyes bright, thumb rubbing absent circles over her belly like she’s telling the baby the news.
“What?” I ask.
She shakes her head and smiles brightly. “Nothing. Everything.” A beat. “Let’s make it ordinary and long, Luca.”
“That’s the plan,” I say, kissing her knuckles, the new band catching a sliver of city light. “Coffee in the morning. Fries at midnight.”
“Boxed mac and cheese,” she says, solemn.
“Never,” I declare and kiss my fiancée.
THE END