Epilogue
Mel
Labor is profoundly undignified. I’d forgotten exactly how much.
I know this. I’ve done it before. I was in a small hospital an hour from Wisteria with Hattie glaring at the monitors, a very kind nurse named Deborah, and sheer stubborn fury to get me through seventeen hours of hell. Santino was an ocean away and didn’t know.
But apparently I forgot how loud it is. How messy. How deeply, embarrassingly human.
“You’re doing great,” Santino says for the fifteenth time, and I decide I’ll murder him as soon as I can feel my legs again.
“You-” I pant through another contraction, “-said that - fifteen - minutes - ago-”
“You were doing great then too.”
“I’m going to - shit - divorce you.”
“You’ve threatened that six times.” He doesn’t even blink. Just keeps holding my hand and letting me crush his fingers. “I’m starting to think you don’t mean it.”
The contraction peaks. I scream in Italian, words that would make Massimo blush.
“There she is,” Hattie says from the doorway, completely unfazed. “I taught her that one.”
“GET OUT.”
“Not a chance.” She’s wearing her purple dress suit again, the woman has exactly one formal outfit and deploys it for all occasions, and she’s holding a thermos of a liquid that definitely isn’t hospital-approved.
“I was here when my Rose had her boy, and I’ll be here for this one. Family tradition.”
“You’re not - actually - related - to me-”
“Close enough.” She settles into the corner chair like she owns the place. Knowing Hattie, she’s probably already convinced the hospital administrator to let her. “Carry on.”
Another contraction. I seriously consider several felonies.
“Okay, Mel.” Dr. Okonkwo looks up from between my knees with the calm demeanor of someone who has done this eight thousand times. “Next one, we push for real.”
“What have we been doing until now? Recreational screaming?”
Santino snorts. I glare at him.
“Save the murder eyes for after,” he says. “You’ve got this.”
I want to argue. I want to tell him that I don’t “got this,” that I’m thirty-three years old and exhausted and scared and there’s a human being trying to exit my body and that’s INSANE -
But then his free hand cups my face, and his pale blue eyes meet mine, and he says: “I’m here. I’m staying right here. And our daughter is going to be perfect.”
I settle.
“Fine,” I gasp. “But if you say ‘you’re doing great’ one more time, I’m naming her after the goat.”
“Gerald’s a strong name-”
“PUSH!” Dr. Okonkwo commands.
I push.
***
Harriet “Ettie” Bianchi enters the world at 3:47 a.m. on a Tuesday, screaming with the righteous fury of someone deeply annoyed to be woken up.
She weighs seven pounds, six ounces.
She has my red hair.
“Oh,” Santino breathes as the nurse places her on my chest. His voice cracks on that single syllable, and when I look up, he’s crying openly, no allergies excuse this time, just raw, unfiltered emotion pouring down his face. “Oh, Mel.”
I can’t speak. I’m too busy staring at this tiny creature, our creature, with her scrunched face and her impossibly small fingers and the shock of copper fuzz on her head.
“She looks like you,” Santino whispers.
“She looks like an angry tomato.”
“A beautiful angry tomato.” He reaches out, touches her cheek with one finger. She turns toward him instinctively, and his expression shatters and reforms into a thing that’s luminous. “Hi, piccola. I’m your papà. I’ve been waiting for you.”
Hattie appears at my shoulder. She’s been silent through the whole delivery, which might be a first.
“Harriet,” I manage. “Her name is Harriet. After-”
I can’t finish.
Hattie’s face does a thing I’ve never seen before. Her jaw tightens. Her eyes shine. For one impossible moment, the sharpest woman in three counties looks like she might actually cry.
Then she clears her throat. “Well. That’s a damn good name.”
“Hattie-”
“Shut up.” But her voice is thick. “I’m not crying. I’m having an allergic reaction.”
“To what?”
“Sentimentality.” She sniffs. “It’s a medical condition.”
Ettie makes a small sound, not quite a cry, more like an observation about the state of the world, and Hattie leans in to look at her properly.
“Red hair,” she observes. “Good. The Bianchi genes are too dominant. Someone’s got to represent the sensible side.”
“Did you just call my genes insensible?” Santino asks.
“If the shoe fits.” But Hattie’s hand reaches out, almost involuntarily, and brushes the top of Ettie’s head with a gentleness I’ve only ever seen her show the twins. “She’s got your mother’s coloring, Mel. And your stubbornness, probably. God help us all.”
My mother. Who died when I was nineteen. Who never met my children. Who would have loved them so fiercely.
“Yeah,” I whisper. “She does.”
***
The waiting room has apparently been a war zone.
Chiara bursts through the door first, still wearing her pajamas, she flew in from Italy two weeks ago and has been camping in our guest room, driving Santino insane with her “labor preparations” that included an essential oil diffuser and a playlist of what she called “empowering birth anthems.”
“Let me see let me see let me SEE-” She skids to a halt at the bedside. “Dio mio. She’s perfect. Santino, look what you made!”
“I helped,” I say dryly.
“Yes, yes, you did most of the work, but LOOK at her HAIR.” Chiara is already taking photos. “I’m sending these to everyone. Massimo is going to lose his mind. Una rossa! A redhead! The first in three generations of Bianchis!”
“Is that good?”
“It’s perfect. It means she’ll be interesting.” Chiara leans down to kiss my forehead, then the baby’s, then Santino’s cheek. “I’m so proud of you. Both of you. Tutti e tre.”
The door opens again.
Leo enters first, dragging Massimo by the hand with the confidence of a four-year-old who has never been denied anything in his life. His blue eyes are huge.
“Is that the baby?” he demands. “Is she done cooking?”
“She’s done,” Santino confirms, crouching down to his level. “Do you want to meet your sister?”
Leo approaches with uncharacteristic caution. He peers at Ettie, currently sleeping through her first family crisis, and his face scrunches.
“She’s little.”
“You were that little once.”
“No way.” Leo sounds personally offended. “I was never that little. I’ve always been big.”
Behind him, Junie hovers near Massimo’s leg. My cautious girl. My serious one.
“Junie,” I say softly. “Come see?”
She approaches the bed like she’s approaching a wild animal. Climbs up carefully, Santino helps her, and settles against my side, studying Ettie with the same grave attention she gives everything.
“She has your hair, Mama.”
“She does.”
“Is she going to be loud like Leo?”
“Hey!” Leo protests.
“Probably,” I admit. “She’s already got strong opinions.”
Junie nods slowly. Then she reaches out one small hand and touches Ettie’s fist. The baby’s fingers curl around her sister’s automatically.
Junie’s face transforms.
“She likes me,” she whispers.
“Of course she does.” Santino’s voice is rough. “You’re her big sister.”
Junie looks up at him, at her papà, the man she took two months to trust, the man who waited for her with infinite patience, and smiles.
“I’ll protect her,” she says solemnly. “Like you protect us.”
I watch Santino’s composure crack completely. He pulls Junie into a hug, hiding his face in her hair, and makes a sound that might be a laugh or might be a sob.
“Yeah, baby,” he manages. “Esattamente così.”
Massimo stands at the foot of the bed, watching his son embrace his grandchildren. His silver hair is disheveled, he must have come straight from the airport, and he’s wearing a suit that has no business within a mile of a maternity ward.
But his eyes are soft.
“A redhead,” he says quietly. “My mother would have approved.”
I meet his gaze over Santino’s shoulder. “You want to hold her?”
Massimo hesitates. This is a man who didn’t hug his children, who measured love in expectations and obligations, who’s still learning how to be a person instead of a patriarch.
Then he steps forward.
I place Ettie in his arms.
Massimo Bianchi, billionaire, former CEO, the coldest man in Italian business, looks down at his newborn granddaughter with an expression I’ve never seen on his face. Wonder. Tenderness. What looks almost like hope.
“Benvenuta, piccola Harriet,” he murmurs. “Sei già amata.”
Welcome, little Harriet. You’re already loved.
***
By the time visiting hours officially start, our hospital room looks like a florist exploded in it.
There are flowers from Bree (“Congratulations on your new tiny human! Call me when you need wine!”), from Doris at the inn (“The whole town is celebrating. I’m naming a pie after her.
”), from the Marigold ladies’ auxiliary, from the Primrose farmers’ market, from people I’ve never met who apparently just know Hattie.
General Custard has sent nothing, because he’s a goose.
Gerald has also sent nothing, but someone, I suspect Leo, has drawn a crayon portrait of him that reads “CONGRAJULAYSHUNS FROM JERALD THE GOAT” and it’s now taped to my IV stand.
Santino sits in the chair beside my bed, Ettie cradled against his chest, and I take a moment to just look at him.
Three years ago, he showed up in my orchard looking like a man who had lost everything. Rumpled clothes, haunted eyes, no plan beyond find her. He didn’t know if I’d forgive him. Didn’t know if I’d even let him speak.
He came anyway.
He stayed anyway.
And now, now he’s holding our daughter like she’s made of glass and miracles, his tattooed forearms cradling her tiny body, and I can see the lake inked over his heart where his shirt collar gaps.
Our lake. The waterfall where he first kissed me, the cave where he first told me he loved me.
The lake with my name.
“Stop staring at me,” he murmurs without looking up. “It’s creepy.”
“I’m admiring my husband. I’m allowed.”
“You’re barely conscious. You’ve been awake for thirty hours.”
“Thirty hours of triumph.” I yawn hugely. “I grew a human and then evicted her. I’m basically a superhero.”