Epilogue
Pietro
By the following summer, our kitchen reeks of garlic often enough that Ariah has stopped pretending to be surprised.
“I told you to go easy on the garlic,” Ariah says, not looking up from the design sketches spread across the island.
“I did go easy.”
“You used half a head. A recipe means one clove.”
“Garlic needs to respect my authority in this kitchen.”
“The garlic doesn’t care about your authority. And no sauce on earth needs an entire head of it.”
I add one more clove when she isn’t looking and stir it in.
Months of cooking actual meals for this family, and I’ve mastered most of the basics - pasta, simple proteins, even a decent risotto.
But restraint remains my nemesis. You’d think a man who runs a multinational company could measure garlic.
“Papa used too much garlic again,” Luca announces from the dining table, where he’s supposed to be doing his summer reading but is actually building an elaborate tower out of crayons. At six years old, he’s developed strong opinions about everything, including my cooking.
“I didn’t use too much. I was generous.”
“That’s what you said last time.”
“It was true last time too.”
“It cleared the room last time.”
“That’s the smell of generosity.”
Lucy appears in the doorway, her hair pulled back in the complicated braid she’s recently learned to do herself - badly, but she gets furious if anyone offers to help. “Mama, the computer is making a noise.”
“What kind of noise?”
“A blinky noise. The video call thing.”
Ariah sighs and sets down her pencil. “That’ll be the supplier from Milan. I need to take this.”
“Go. I’ve got dinner.”
“You’ve got too much garlic.”
“I’ve got dinner-adjacent substances. We’ll survive.”
She kisses my cheek as she passes, and I feel the warmth of it linger even after she’s disappeared down the hall to the study - her study now, the room we converted when she moved back in, where her work lives alongside mine instead of being crammed into corners.
Maison d’Emery has been thriving for over a year now.
Her name on the door, her vision driving everything, her reputation rebuilt from the ashes of what we let it become during the cold years.
She has clients on three continents and a waiting list that stretches into next spring, and watching her work - watching her be the person she was always meant to be - is one of the best parts of my life.
“Papa.” Luca has abandoned his crayon tower and materialized at my elbow. “Can I help?”
“You want to help cook?”
“I want to help not burn things.”
“That’s the same as cooking.”
“It’s not. Cooking is making food. Not burning things is preventing disasters.”
“When did you become such a philosopher?”
“What’s a philosopher?”
“Someone who thinks about things very deeply.”
“Then yes. I’m a philosopher about garlic.”
I hand him the wooden spoon and let him stir while I chop vegetables - a skill I’ve actually mastered, because it turns out knives are less complicated than heat.
We work together in companionable silence, and I think about how different this is from a year ago, two years ago, all the years when I was too busy to be here for moments like this.
“Papa?” Luca’s voice is serious.
“Yes?”
“Why did garlic have to be so difficult?”
“That’s a question philosophers have been asking for centuries.”
“Really?”
“No. But it should be.”
Lucy has drifted in from wherever she went, and now she’s hovering near the island, eyeing her mother’s sketches with the particular covetousness of a six-year-old who wants to touch everything she’s been told not to touch.
“Lucy, don’t…”
“I’m not touching. I’m looking.”
“You’re looking very closely.”
“It’s a close-looking kind of looking.”
“Is that even a sentence?”
“It’s my sentence. I made it.”
I abandon the vegetables and cross to her, gently steering her away from the priceless designs that represent weeks of Ariah’s work. “How about you set the table instead?”
“That’s boring.”
“Boring is underrated.”
“You always say that.”
“Because it’s always true.”
She sighs dramatically but starts pulling plates from the cabinet - carefully, because last month she broke a bowl and cried for twenty minutes even though we told her it was fine. Lucy feels things deeply, my daughter. She gets that from her mother.
Ariah reappears just as I’m attempting to assemble everything into something that might be called dinner if you squint. She takes one look at the stove and starts laughing.
“What?” I demand.
“Nothing. It looks… creative.”
“It looks delicious.”
“It looks like you put a lot of love into it.”
“That’s what you say when something looks terrible.”
“I know.” She kisses my cheek again. “But you tried.”
“How was Milan?”
“Complicated. There’s a materials shortage affecting everyone, and the supplier wants to renegotiate terms, and I have three custom orders due next month that all require the same gemstones that are currently stuck in someone’s warehouse.”
“Anything I can help with?”
“Not unless you can teleport sapphires.”
“I knew I should have invested in teleportation technology.”
“You should have. Very shortsighted of you.”
We sit down to eat - the four of us around the table that used to feel too big and now feels exactly right.
Luca tells us about his book, which he has definitely not read but has developed extensive opinions about based on the cover illustration.
Lucy tells us about her friend Sofia’s cat, which apparently did something remarkable involving a curtain that I don’t entirely follow but nod along to anyway.
Ariah steals vegetables off my plate because she always does, and I pretend not to notice because I always do.
This is it. This is the life I almost lost, laid out before me in all its chaotic, ordinary glory.
“The food’s not that bad,” Lucy says, in the tone of someone delivering a great compliment.
“Thank you for that ringing endorsement.”
“You’re welcome.”
“She’s lying,” Luca says. “It’s actually pretty bad.”
“Luca!”
“What? Honesty is important.”
“Where did you learn that?”
“Mama says it all the time.”
I look at Ariah, who’s clearly fighting a smile. “Is that right?”
“I may have mentioned it once or twice.”
“She says it every day,” Lucy adds helpfully. “Especially when she’s talking to suppliers.”
“That’s different. That’s business honesty.”
“Is there a different kind?”
“There’s tactful honesty, which is what we use with Papa’s cooking.”
“I’m right here,” I point out.
“I know. That’s why I’m being tactful.”
* * *
After dinner, we establish the bedtime routine that’s become as familiar as breathing - baths negotiated with minimal flooding, pajamas located after extensive searching, teeth brushed with the particular resistance that suggests our children believe dental hygiene is a personal attack.
“One story,” I tell them, settling onto Luca’s bed with Lucy squeezed in beside me. “One. Not two, not three, not ‘just a short one after the long one.’ One.”
“What if it’s a really good story?”
“Then we’ll appreciate it and go to sleep.”
“What if it’s a really really good story?”
“Then we’ll appreciate it twice as much. Still sleep.”
Ariah leans against the doorframe, watching us with an expression I’ve learned to read - contentment mixed with something softer, something that says this is what I wanted all along. I didn’t used to see that look. I didn’t used to be here to see it.
I read the story - something about a dragon who learns to share, heavy-handed but mercifully short - and by the end, Lucy’s eyes are drooping and Luca is making the particular humming sound that means he’s about three minutes from unconsciousness.
“Good night,” I whisper, kissing Lucy’s forehead and then Luca’s. “I love you.”
“Love you too, Papa,” Lucy mumbles.
“Love you,” Luca echoes, already half-asleep.
I slip out of the room and pull the door almost closed, leaving it cracked the way they like. Ariah is still in the hallway, and when I reach her, she slides her hand into mine.
“You’re good at that,” she says.
“At reading?”
“At being here.”
“I had to learn.” I squeeze her hand. “I had a good teacher.”
“Flattery.”
“Truth.”
We walk together down the hallway to the master bedroom - our bedroom, the one we’ve slowly made ours over the past year, replacing the decorations Rosaria chose with things we actually like.
The walls are a warm blue now instead of the cold gray she preferred.
There are photos of the children everywhere.
Ariah’s work in progress sits on the dresser, a half-finished bracelet she’s been designing in her spare time.
It looks like us. It feels like home.
“Long day?” I ask, watching her kick off her shoes and sink onto the edge of the bed.
“Long week. Long month.” She runs a hand through her hair. “Good, though. All of it’s been good.”
“The Milan thing will work out.”
“I know it will. It’s just… a lot.”
I sit down beside her and start rubbing her shoulders, the way I learned she likes, the way I didn’t bother learning in all the years I took her for granted. She makes a small sound of appreciation and leans back into my hands.
“You know what I was thinking today?” she says.
“That I’m incredibly handsome and talented?”
“That seven years ago, I signed merger documents thinking I was giving up my life. And instead I ended up here.”
“Is here good?”
“Here is better than anything I ever imagined.” She turns to look at me, her eyes soft in the lamplight. “I didn’t think I could have this. A husband who shows up. A career I love. Children who are happy. All of it together, at the same time.”
“You deserve all of it.”
“So do you.”
“I’m working on believing that.”
She reaches up and cups my face in her hands, studying me with the intensity she usually reserves for her designs. “You’ve changed so much.”
“Not enough.”
“Enough.” She kisses me, soft and slow. “More than enough.”