48. Dominic
Dominic
“Nicky! Your house is a factory!” my brother bellows from the front hall, arms wide, bow tie crooked. “A FACTORY, HANNAH. He LIVES here!”
A month after my wife tore up our annulment papers, the Bucktown house is holding more people than it has at any point in the years I’ve owned it, and the noise level has already violated three municipal codes before the pork is even out of the oven.
It was Jenna’s idea. That’s the part I keep turning over like a coin.
One day she was reinstalling her toothbrush in my bathroom—our bathroom, I’m told the deed language is being amended—and the next day she looked up from her laptop and said, “We should have everyone here. All of them. Both sides. Rip the Band-Aid off in one controlled detonation. They didn’t get an engagement party or a wedding.
So let’s host them for a weekend to make up for it. ”
I had stared at her, mesmerized by the way she color-coded the guest list in real time, and agreed to turn our sanctuary into ground zero without a second thought.
Now, I’m managing the fallout.
I step out of the kitchen, adjusting the cuffs of my maroon suit jacket. “It’s a converted textile factory, you philistine!” I bellow back, projecting my voice to cut through the sheer volume of the room.
Dustin laughs as he signs my response back to Hannah. She throws her head back, joining him.
Then she looks at me and signs, I like your jacket.
I understand her without looking at Dustin.
After the months of daily lessons, it feels like acing a surprise quiz.
Thank you. I like your dress, I sign back.
Hannah’s expression softens for half a second. Then she bursts out laughing again.
Dustin points at my hand. “No, Nicky. Your ring finger and pinkie have to stay out when you sign like. You keep folding them in.”
He demonstrates, then reproduces my cramped version with offensive accuracy.
“It wasn’t that bad.”
Hannah nods emphatically.
“Your fingers are too impatient,” Dustin tells me.
I try it again—thumb and middle finger drawing away from my chest, the other fingers extended this time.
Hannah lifts both hands in exaggerated applause, grinning.
Weeks of daily videos, after-dinner practice with Jenna, and being corrected by half my family, and I’m still a work in progress.
But Hannah signed to me, and I answered her without making Dustin carry the conversation between us.
Imperfectly, apparently.
Still counts.
I scan the room, mentally cataloging the moving pieces. It’s a beautiful, high-decibel disaster.
Even though we made it clear this would be fully catered, my parents drove in from Greenwich with enough food to survive an occupation—my father currently holds the kitchen, narrating pork to anyone who wanders too close.
Dustin and Hannah came with them, fresh off his second driving lesson, about which everyone within a nautical mile will be hearing shortly.
Ma Pemberton took the train from Queens with a Tupperware tower on her lap and a sixty-day chip in her pocket, and when I opened my front door to her for the first time as her official son-in-law, she looked me over, handed me the tower, and said, “Don’t drop the baked ziti, Cruz.
And tell your expensive caterers that if they mess with my manicotti, they’re losing a finger. ”
I had accepted the tower like it was a live nuclear core. “Yes, ma’am. Ziti secured.”
Hailey flew in for her final weekend as an East Coast resident. She moves to San Francisco on Thursday and starts at Canfield the following Monday. All three of her interviews were with Xavier Field, so she’s spent the afternoon peppering me with questions about Thomas Canning.
“Have you googled the guy?” I ask eventually, and she shakes her head.
“I don’t google people. It’s creepy. Plus, Google is just going to give me the PR pitch. I want the inside scoop from people who actually know the guy. Give me the dirty deets, brother-in-law of mine.”
I laugh. “Understood. Canning is a shark who hides behind a polite smile,” I tell her, snagging a passing caterer by the elbow to rescue two flutes of champagne.
I hand her one. “Don’t try to out-tech him, and don’t bother playing corporate politics.
Just show him the math, be brutally honest about the risks, and never apologize for being the smartest person in the room.
He respects competence above all else. You’ll have him eating out of the palm of your hand by the end of your first week. ”
Hailey grins, taking a sip of her champagne. “Brutal honesty and math. Got it. Sounds like I just need to channel my sister.”
“Exactly.” I tap my glass against hers. “Just channel Jenna.”
Speaking of my wife, I locate her near the kitchen island.
She’s a vision in a tailored emerald-green silk blouse and dark denim, her signature burgundy lipstick applied with absolute precision.
She’s currently holding a clipboard—because of course she created a run-of-show for a family dinner—but she’s laughing, and it’s a warm, open sound that hits me right in the chest, a gift I will never take for granted.
She’s standing between my verbose, apron-clad father—who is gesturing wildly with a pair of tongs to emphasize the importance of a slow sear—and Ma Pemberton, who is nodding along with a critical eye, guarding her ziti like a mob boss.
Jenna catches my eye across the room and flashes me a secret, scorching look that promises very specific, highly inefficient activities once we finally get these people out of our house.
I wink at her, my pulse doing its familiar sideways hammer.
Jenna moved in with me permanently within a week of her returning to Chicago. She gave up her apartment without a flicker of ceremony, on the official grounds that Bucktown has “better light, better company, and a bigger bathtub.” Last weekend she hung her own photos on my walls.
Our walls.
Hailey and Ma on the Queens stoop. The girls crammed into the corner booth at Lockwood.
One of me asleep on the thinking couch with grease on my jaw, which I have formally petitioned to have removed and been formally denied.
The museum of people I love has a new curator, and she hangs things at her own height now.
Everything else about Chicago remained the same.
Bennett put her straight back to work without ceremony—it turns out he never processed the resignation in the first place.
Four perfectly formatted sentences sat in his inbox for two weeks because, quote, “I don’t accept documents drafted under duress.
” She’s back at her desk running his empire like she never left.
Back in the group chats—all of them, including two I wasn’t previously aware existed.
Last Sunday, I finally took the Bonneville out with Jenna on the back. We rode north along the lake until the traffic thinned, her arms locked around my waist and her laughter disappearing into the wind.
When we rolled back into the workshop, she pulled off her helmet with her hair destroyed and her smile entirely unrepentant.
“So,” she said, resting one hand on the restored tank. “What are you going to work on now?”
“Us.”
Something soft moved across her face. “Well, that’s wonderful. Very emotionally mature of you.”
“I’m evolving.”
“However, I may have found a 1951 Vincent Black Shadow for sale. Matching numbers. I’ve already reached out to the seller, but if you’re not interested—”
“Not interested?” I stared at her. “Sweetheart, I was interested at Vincent Black Shadow.”
Her smile turned deeply pleased with itself. “I suspected you might be.”
“I may marry you again.”
“Review the provenance first.”
Of course she’d already requested the provenance.
My world is the right way up again.
The doorbell rings, a sharp chime cutting through Dustin’s booming laughter.
“I’ve got it!” I project, weaving through the obstacle course of my relatives.
I pull the heavy front door open to find Logan and Audrey on the stoop. Logan is already rolling his shoulders in a nervous tic, his eyes darting past me to assess the decibel level of the foyer. Audrey is holding a bottle of wine and beaming.
“Tell me the probability of survival,” Logan says. “Because from the sidewalk, it sounds like an unmitigated riot.”
“It’s a controlled detonation, Professor,” I say, stepping aside to let them in. “And you’re late. My mother has already asked about her invite to your wedding, and Dustin wants to know if you’ll play Mario Kart with him later.”
Logan pushes his glasses up his nose. “Of course I’ll play Mario Kart with him.”
Audrey laughs, stepping into the fray and handing me the wine. “We brought reinforcements.”
“You’re going to need them,” Jenna says, appearing at my side.
She slips her hand seamlessly into mine, her gold wedding bands cool against my skin.
She looks from Logan to Audrey. “Welcome to the casualty ward. If my mother offers you ziti, you must act like it’s the most delicious thing you’ve ever put in your mouth.
If Dominic’s father offers you pork, accept it immediately.
It genuinely is the most delicious thing you’ll ever put in your mouth. ”
“Understood,” Logan says, looking at Jenna’s clipboard with genuine respect. “Is that a schedule?”
“It’s a mitigation strategy,” Jenna corrects, deadpan.
I squeeze her hand and pull her back against my chest. She settles there easily, looking entirely at home in the crowd she assembled.
Through the gauntlet of my family and at least four open bottles of red, the rest of the players trickle in. Bennett brings Layla, who brings a cake the size of a Fiat. Serena and Caleb sweep in dressed for success and armed with enough snickerdoodles to put us all into sugar comas.
David and Nora arrive with Michaela—who’s carrying a child-sized briefcase—and Archie, who cases the room in ninety seconds and appoints himself to the kitchen.
“Whose golden retriever is this?” my dad asks, already feeding a tail-wagging Archie scraps of pork and calling him the “goodest boy in the room.”