27. Cat
— ? —
Cat
The farm looks exactly the same, and nothing like I remember.
Same white clapboard, same wraparound porch, same red roof against the summer sky. But now I see it as the place where Max rebuilt my childhood from memory. The place where we fell back together. The place where we might actually get to stay.
“Careful,” I say as Max eases out of the car. “Don’t pull your stitches.”
“I’m not going to pull my stitches.”
“You strained them the first night you were awake, trying to sit up before the nurse cleared you.”
“That was different.”
“How was that different?”
He straightens one careful inch at a time, and I hover a half-step behind him, ready to catch a two-hundred-pound don if his pride outruns his stitches.
“I was trying to see you properly.”
“You could see me fine from the pillow.”
“It was a matter of dignity.”
“It was a matter of stubbornness, and the nurse had to re-tape the whole dressing.”
“I didn’t collapse. I leaned strategically against the wall.”
“For ten minutes. While a nurse paged a doctor.”
He gives me a look suggesting I’m being unreasonable. I give him a look suggesting he can sleep in the barn if he keeps arguing.
He stops arguing.
The first days home are a careful choreography of supervision and complaint.
Max is under strict orders: rest, medication on schedule, no lifting, no strain, no sudden movements. The wound is healing well, but the doctor made it very clear that recovery isn’t a race and pushing too hard could set him back weeks.
“I feel useless,” he says from his designated spot on the couch, watching me water the plants by the window.
“You’re not useless. You’re recovering.”
“I’m sitting here like a lump while my pregnant wife does all the work.”
“The work is watering three plants. I think I can manage.”
“What about the garden? The animals? The-”
He gestures at the window like the farm is a battlefield he’s been benched from, and winces when the motion pulls at his stitches.
“Nico sent people. Everything’s handled.”
“I don’t like strangers on the property.”
“They’re not strangers, they’re your employees. And they’re outside the house, not inside it. You can supervise through the window if it makes you feel better.”
“It doesn’t.”
I cross to the couch and press a hand flat over the bandage, gentle, until he stops trying to get up.
“Then close your eyes and take a nap like the doctor ordered.”
“I don’t nap.”
“You do now. Doctor’s orders trump don’s preferences.”
He grumbles something in Italian that I’m fairly certain is unflattering, but he closes his eyes.
Four Weeks Post-Surgery
The video call with the doctor goes better than expected.
“The wound is healing beautifully,” she says, reviewing the images I sent this morning. “No signs of infection, good tissue formation, minimal scarring. You’ve been following the care instructions well.”
“He tried to lift a hay bale last week,” I say.
“It wasn’t a full hay bale. It was half a hay bale at most.”
“Max.”
“Fine. It was a full hay bale. But I put it down immediately when you started yelling.”
The doctor sighs with the patience of someone who’s treated many stubborn patients.
“Mr. Moretti, I’m going to clear you for gentle activity.
Walking, light housework, normal daily tasks.
But gentle means gentle. No heavy lifting, no strenuous exercise, nothing that makes you feel strain in your chest.”
“Define strenuous.”
“If you have to ask, it’s probably too strenuous.”
“That’s not very specific.”
“I’m being deliberately vague because I know your type. You’ll find loopholes in anything specific I say.”
“I’m wounded by that characterization.”
“You were wounded by a bullet. Don’t get wounded again by your own impatience.” She pauses. “Other recreational activities are fine, as long as you’re careful. Nothing that puts strain on the chest.”
Max’s face remains neutral. I feel heat crawling up my neck.
“Understood,” I say quickly. “Thank you, Doctor.”
“Call me if anything changes. And Mr. Moretti?”
“Yes?”
“Listen to your wife. She clearly has more sense than you do.”
The call ends. We sit in silence for a moment.
“So,” Max says. “Gentle activity.”
“Gentle activity.”
“I have some ideas about gentle activity.”
“I’m sure you do. But first, I have a surprise.”
The karaoke machine takes him completely off guard.
“What is that?”
“Karaoke machine. Found it in one of the closets during my nesting phase.”
“I don’t remember buying a karaoke machine.”
He eyes the machine from the couch like it might be a Greco plant.
“Apparently you did. Part of some entertainment system vision that never materialized.”
“I have no memory of this.”
“Doesn’t matter. It’s here now, and you’re going to use it.”
“I don’t sing,” he says flatly.
“You’re going to sing.”
“Cat, I have never in my life sung karaoke. Not once. Not ever.”
“Then tonight’s the night you start. Consider it physical therapy.”
“This is not what the doctor meant by gentle activity.”
I hold out the microphone. He looks at it like I’m offering him a live grenade.
“She said normal daily tasks. This is a normal daily task.”
“In what universe?”
“In my universe. You married into it. The microphone is right there.”
“What if I refuse?”
“Then I’ll sing, and you’ll have to listen to me butcher every song in this catalog for the next three hours.”
The threat lands exactly as intended. His mouth twitches at one corner.
“That’s blackmail.”
“It’s motivation. I have very strong feelings about ABBA and absolutely no pitch control.”
He stares at me for a long moment, clearly calculating whether my singing is worse than his dignity taking a hit. Finally, he picks up the microphone.
“One song.”
“One song is all I’m asking.”
“And you won’t record this.”
“I make no such promises.”
“Cat.”
“Fine. No recording. But I reserve the right to describe this moment in vivid detail to anyone who asks.”
“No one’s going to ask.”
“You’d be surprised. Enzo’s been very curious about your recovery. I’m sure he’d love to hear about your recreational therapy.”
He scrolls through the song list, frowning with theatrical concentration. “I don’t know any of these.”
“Pick something you recognize. Anything.”
“I recognize opera. I’m not singing opera with a karaoke machine.”
“You’re stalling.”
“I’m deliberating.” But there’s a twitch at the corner of his mouth that tells me he’s already picked something. “Fine. This one.”
He selects it before I can see what it is, and the opening notes fill the room.
“Take a Chance on Me.” ABBA. The same band I was dancing to when he first laughed at me, a lifetime ago.
“I thought you didn’t know any of these,” I say.
“I may have practiced. In the shower. Once or twice.”
And then Max starts to sing.
He is catastrophically, magnificently, historically terrible.
He’s off-key by what sounds like an entire octave. His rhythm is nonexistent. He delivers every line with the stone-faced intensity of a man reading a hostage statement, pointing at me during each chorus with the same deliberation he’d use to identify a target on a battlefield.
I’m crying by the second verse. Actually crying, tears streaming down my face, my whole body shaking with laughter I can’t control.
He keeps going. Utterly committed. Not a single hint of irony.
The song finally ends. He stands there holding the microphone, waiting.
“Well?” he says.
“That was-” I can barely breathe. “That was the worst thing I’ve ever witnessed in my entire life.”
“Thank you. I practiced in the shower.”
“When did you practice in the shower?”
“When you weren’t listening.”
“Oh my God, Max. That was genuinely horrible. Like, historically bad. I think you might have invented new ways to be off-key.”
“I’m a pioneer.”
“You’re a menace.” I wipe my eyes. “Please tell me you’re done.”
“The song is done. But I have something else to say.”
“If it’s another song, I will actually die. My heart cannot take it.”
“It’s not a song.”
He doesn’t put the microphone down. Instead, he looks at me, really looks, the way he did during those warm months before everything went cold. The way he’s been looking at me since he woke up in the hospital and saw me sitting there.
“I neglected my wife.”
The words come through the speakers, clear and amplified, filling the room.
“I locked her out. I made her feel invisible, worthless, like she didn’t matter to me. I was so focused on fighting a war she didn’t know about that I forgot to actually be present for her. To be her husband.”
I stop laughing.
“It’s the worst thing I’ve ever done. Not the violence, not the things that come with this life. The worst thing was making you feel alone in our own marriage. Making you feel like you had to run just to survive. Making you believe I was the enemy when all I wanted was to protect you.”
He’s still holding the microphone, broadcasting every word to the empty room like this is a concert and I’m the only audience that matters.
“I spent these months trying to become a man who deserves the second chance he didn’t earn.
I don’t know if I’ve managed it. I don’t know if it’s possible to make up for the damage I did.
But I want you to know that I see it now.
I take responsibility for it. Every cold dinner, every locked door, every time I walked past you like you were furniture instead of the woman I love.
I did that. Not the war, not the coup, not any external threat. Me.”
Silence. The karaoke machine hums quietly, waiting for input.
“And I will never, ever make you feel that way again. For the rest of my life, you will never have to wonder if you matter to me. You will never have to question whether I see you. Because I do. I always did. I was just too stupid and too scared to show it.”
He finally lowers the microphone.
I stand up from the couch and cross the room to him.
“Max.”
“Yeah?”
I take the microphone out of his hand and set it on the table.
“Granted.”
His whole face changes, not slowly, all at once, like someone turned on a light in a dark room.
“What?”