29. Santino
— ? —
Santino
The goat is wearing a bow tie.
I stare at Gerald, the same goat who has headbutted me into fence posts, water troughs, and once directly into a pile of manure that I’m convinced he’d been strategically positioning for weeks, and I wonder if this is the universe’s final test.
“He looks distinguished,” Chiara says, adjusting the tiny satin pillow strapped to Gerald’s back. The rings glint in the afternoon light, mocking me.
“He looks like he’s planning my murder.”
“Santino.” My sister straightens up, her lavender maid-of-honor dress rustling. “It’s your wedding day. The goat isn’t planning your murder.”
Gerald turns his head slowly. Fixes me with those horizontal pupils. Chews once, deliberately.
“It’s Tuesday,” I say.
Chiara’s face falls. “Oh. Oh no.”
“Yeah.”
“Well.” She pats my arm. “Try not to stand near any cliffs.”
***
The orchard has been transformed into a fever dream Mel and Hattie cooked up together, string lights wound through the apple trees, mason jars with wildflowers on every surface, hay bales arranged in rows with actual cushions because “we’re not animals, Santino, despite the livestock in attendance.
” The arch where we’ll stand is draped in white fabric and apple blossoms, and beyond it, the rows of trees stretch toward the hills where I spent two years proving I could be the man she deserved.
Two years since I drove into this town with nothing but a carry-on and a newspaper clipping and a heart in pieces.
Ordinary days that felt like miracles, fence posts and diaper blowouts and slowly, impossibly, being let back in.
I adjust my tie for the fifteenth time and catch my reflection in the window of Hattie’s farmhouse. Dark suit. Hair actually combed. The tattoo hidden under my shirt, but I feel it, the lake, her name, inked over my heart like a promise made permanent.
“You’re going to wear a hole in that silk.”
I turn.
My father stands in the doorway, his silver hair immaculate, his suit probably worth more than most of the cars in the parking area.
He looks exactly as I remember from boardrooms and cold dinners, except for the small carved wooden apple in his hands.
Leo made it in his pre-school craft class. It’s lopsided and covered in glitter.
“You came,” I say, and I hate how young my voice sounds.
Massimo’s jaw tightens. He looks down at the apple, then back at me. “Did you think I wouldn’t?”
“I thought-” I stop. What did I think? That the man who let my mother forge divorce papers would skip his son’s real wedding?
That the father who called me a disappointment for walking away from the company would refuse to watch me marry a woman with no pedigree and two children and a goat with violent tendencies?
Yes. I thought exactly that.
“The boy,” Massimo says slowly, and I brace myself. “Leo. He made this for me. Said I needed a keepsake to remember him by when I go back to Italy.”
“Dad-”
“He has my mother’s chin.” Massimo’s voice is rough. “And the girl. Juniper. She looked at me yesterday and said-” He stops. Clears his throat. “She said I was too serious and needed to practice my smile in the mirror.”
The laugh gets out of me sideways. “That sounds like Junie.”
“She’s right.” My father meets my eyes, and for the first time in my life, I see what looks almost like regret. “I’ve been too serious. With you, with Chiara, with all of it.”
I don’t know what to say. Thirty-four years of distance don’t evaporate in an orchard, no matter how many string lights are involved.
But then Massimo steps forward and does the one thing he’s never done. He puts his hand on my shoulder, squeezes once, and says: “You look like a man who knows what matters. That’s more than I could say at your age.”
My throat closes.
“She’s good for you,” he adds quietly. “The redhead. She told your mother she could take her corporate legacy and insert it into a location I won’t repeat in mixed company. In perfect Italian.”
“That’s Mel.”
“Yes.” And there it is, the corner of his mouth twitching. Almost a smile. “I can see why you chose her.”
Before I can respond, the door bangs open and Leo rockets through it like a very small, very loud cannonball. He’s wearing a tiny suit that’s already grass-stained, his dark hair sticking up in twelve directions.
“PAPà! The goose bit Aunt Chiara!”
***
General Custard, resplendent in his own miniature bow tie, has indeed bitten Chiara. She’s now chasing him through the orchard while guests scatter and someone, I think it’s Doris from the inn, shrieks that her hat is vintage, you horrible bird.
“This is going well,” Hattie observes, materializing beside me with a shotgun propped against her shoulder and a glass of whiskey in her hand. She’s wearing a purple dress suit and her silver hair is pinned up with what I’m fairly certain is an antique hair comb worth more than my truck.
“Are you officiating or intimidating?”
“Both.” She takes a sip of whiskey. “I’m ordained online and armed in person. The way God intended.”
“The shotgun isn’t loaded. Right?”
Hattie’s smile could curdle milk. “Guess you’d better make her happy.”
I want to tell her that I’ve spent two years trying to do exactly that, that I’ve fixed fences and woken up at dawn and learned how to braid a four-year-old’s hair because Junie has specific opinions about ponytails.
That I bought a house in this town not because I had to, but because for the first time in my life, I wanted to stay somewhere.
That the man who used to measure his worth in mergers now measures it in whether the twins eat their vegetables and whether Mel laughs at least once before breakfast.
But Hattie already knows all of that. She’s the one who let me stay in the orchard when I showed up with nothing but a carry-on and a broken heart. She’s the one who made me earn my place here, every fence post, every early morning, every apple picked.
“I will,” I say simply.
She nods once. Doesn’t say anything soft. Doesn’t need to.
Then: “Your goat’s eating the flower arrangements.”
I turn to see Gerald methodically working his way through a centerpiece while the woman next to him, Bree, laughing so hard she’s crying, her pig Butterbean rooting hopefully at the fallen petals, does absolutely nothing to stop him.
“GERALD!” I start running.
***
By some miracle, we make it to the altar.
The sun is starting to set, painting everything gold and pink.
The guests have settled into their hay bales.
Chiara stands to one side, slightly disheveled from her goose encounter but beaming.
Leo is bouncing on his heels next to Massimo, who has been designated as “twin wrangler” and looks simultaneously terrified and proud.
And Junie, my serious, cautious, green-eyed girl, walks down the aisle ahead of her mother with a basket of flower petals and the most solemn expression I’ve ever seen on a four-year-old.
She reaches me, looks up, and whispers: “Don’t mess up, Papà.”
“Working on it,” I whisper back.
Then the music changes, and I stop breathing.
Mel.
She’s wearing a simple white dress, no designer label, no imported lace, just a dress that makes her look exactly like herself.
Her red hair is loose, the way I love it.
Green eyes bright with tears she’ll deny later.
She’s not walking alone, Hattie has her arm, shotgun now blessedly absent, and she’s smiling at me like I’m worth crossing an orchard for.
Like I’m worth staying for.
I remember the first time I saw her, seven years ago in a Tuscan vineyard.
I was heir to everything and master of nothing.
She was a harvest worker running from a pigeon, who mistook me for a tourist and made me laugh for the first time in months.
I thought I knew what my life would look like: boardrooms and obligations and a marriage arranged for mergers.
I was wrong about everything.
She reaches me. Hattie places her hand in mine, leans in, and mutters: “Hurt her and they’ll never find the body.”
“Understood.”
Mel’s laughing as Hattie takes her place. “She threatened you, didn’t she?”
“Aggressively.”
“That’s her love language.”
“So I’ve learned.”
A pigeon chooses this exact moment to flap down onto the wedding arch directly above us. Mel goes rigid mid-laugh, her fingers clamping around mine.
I don’t even have to think about it anymore. I reach up, wave the bird off, and press a kiss to her knuckles in the same motion.
“Seven years,” I murmur, just for her. “You’d think you’d have made peace with them by now.”
“They’re the reason I have you,” she whispers back, echoing what I said to her once, in the dirt, a lifetime ago. “I should send that one a fruit basket.”
My throat closes. I nearly lose it right there, before the vows even start.
Hattie clears her throat, and the orchard goes quiet. Even Gerald stops chewing.
“Dearly beloved,” Hattie begins, her voice carrying across the rows of trees, “we’re gathered here in this orchard - because apparently churches are too conventional for these two - to witness the union - the real one, the one that counts, courthouse be damned - of Santino Bianchi and Melanie Jordan. ”
Someone whoops. It’s definitely Chiara.
“Now,” Hattie continues, “I’ve known Mel for four years.
Watched her show up in this town pregnant and broke and too stubborn to admit she needed help.
Built a life out of nothing but willpower and a truly inadvisable amount of caffeine.
Turned my dusty old orchard into a cidery that’s got people driving in from Austin - my name’s on the deed, but that empire’s hers, and don’t let the pretty dress fool you. ”
Mel squeezes my hand.
“And I’ve known this one,” Hattie jerks her thumb at me - “for two years. Watched him show up heartbroken and useless and too Italian to admit he didn’t know anything about actual farming.”
Laughter ripples through the crowd.