30. Cat
— ? —
Cat
The dress is white, but not bridal white.
Ivory, technically. Soft and flowing, designed to accommodate a belly that’s reached frankly absurd proportions. I’m thirty-seven weeks pregnant, and the baby has decided to take up residence directly on my bladder.
“Stop fidgeting,” Mamma says, adjusting the fabric at my shoulders. “You’ll wrinkle it.”
“I’m not fidgeting. I’m breathing. The baby is sitting on my lungs.”
“The baby is sitting on everything. That’s what babies do at this stage.”
“Helpful information. Thank you.”
She steps back, surveying her work with a critical eye. We’re in the upstairs bedroom, the room that used to be Nonna’s, the room my parents have occupied for the past six weeks while we planned this ceremony.
“You look beautiful,” she says finally.
“I look like a whale in expensive fabric.”
“You look like a woman about to marry the love of her life. For the second time.”
“Technically it’s a vow renewal. We’re already married.”
Mamma fusses with my veil, blinking hard, pretending the shine in her eyes is just the light.
“Technically, I don’t care. My daughter is getting married again, and I’m going to cry about it whether you like it or not.”
“Mamma-”
“Don’t ‘Mamma’ me. I’ve earned these tears.”
There’s a knock at the door. Papà’s voice comes through: “Are you decent?”
“Define decent.”
“Clothed.”
“Then yes.”
He enters slowly, his cane tapping against the floorboards. He’s wearing his best suit, the one he wore to my first wedding, pressed and perfect despite everything that has happened since. When he sees me, he has to stop and clear his throat.
“Figlia mia.”
“Don’t you start crying too. I can’t handle both of you.”
“I’m not crying. I have allergies.”
“In August?”
“Seasonal.” He crosses to me, takes my hands. “You’re sure about this? About him?”
“Papà, we’ve discussed this.”
“We’ve discussed many things. I’m asking if you’re sure.”
I think about Max. About the man who froze me out for months, who let me believe I was nothing to him. About the man who rebuilt my grandmother’s farm from memory, who took a bullet for me, who spent weeks proving, through actions, not just words, that he could be different.
“I’m sure.”
“Good.” He squeezes my hands once and lets go. “Then let’s not keep him waiting.”
The orchard is transformed.
String lights wind through the branches, casting everything in a warm golden glow. Rows of chairs line either side of a makeshift aisle, filled with people I love, Romanos on one side, Morettis on the other, both families seated together under a truce that finally looks like something more.
Like a family.
Enzo is standing at the front, serving as officiant because he insisted and nobody had the energy to argue with him. Nico is beside Max as best man, his face a mixture of joy and lingering guilt that I’ve told him repeatedly he doesn’t need to carry.
And Max.
Max is standing at the end of the aisle in a black suit, watching me approach with an expression that makes my heart stutter.
He looks. God, he looks like everything I ever wanted and thought I couldn’t have.
Like the man from those warm months, finally freed from whatever cage he’d built around himself.
Papà walks beside me, his cane tapping a steady rhythm on the grass. The aisle isn’t long, maybe twenty feet, but it feels like a journey. Like every step is taking me further from who I was and closer to who I’m becoming.
When we reach the front, Papà stops. Looks at Max.
“You asked for my blessing,” he says, loud enough for the first few rows to hear. “I gave it with conditions.”
“I remember, sir.”
“See that you honor them.”
“I will.”
Papà turns to me, kisses my forehead, and places my hand in Max’s. Then he steps back, taking his seat beside Mamma, who is already crying.
“Dearly beloved,” Enzo begins, and there’s a ripple of amusement through the crowd because Enzo being serious is always a little absurd. “We’re gathered here today to witness something I never thought I’d see, my baby sister actually happy. Voluntarily. Without sarcasm.”
“Get on with it,” I mutter.
“The bride is impatient. Noted.” He clears his throat. “Marriage is hard. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something. It requires patience, compromise, and the willingness to apologize even when you’re sure you’re right.”
“Especially when you’re sure you’re right,” Max adds.
“Exactly. Which is why we’re here, not because these two need to prove their commitment to each other, but because they want to. Because after everything they’ve been through, they’re choosing each other again. On purpose. In front of witnesses.”
He turns to Max.
“The groom has prepared his own vows.”
Max takes both my hands, and his grip is steady, but I can feel the slight tremor underneath. The don of the Moretti family, nervous about speaking in front of a crowd.
“Caterina.”
“Max.”
“Saying what I feel has always been difficult for me. You know that. You’re the writer.
You’re the one who knows how to make language do what you want it to do.
But I’m going to try, because you deserve to hear this.
You deserve to hear it in front of everyone we love, so there’s no question.
No ambiguity. No room for me to hide behind strategy or silence. ”
He takes a breath.
“I promise to tell you the truth. Always. Even when it’s hard, even when I’m scared, even when I think I’m protecting you by staying quiet.
I promise to let you in, into my thoughts, my fears, my plans.
I promise to treat you as a partner, not a chess piece.
I promise that your voice will matter as much as mine in every decision we make together. ”
“I promise to be present. Not just physically, actually present. I promise to show up for the small moments, not just the crises. I promise to have dinner with you even when work is overwhelming. I promise to talk to you even when I don’t know what to say.”
“I promise to never again make you feel invisible. To never again let you wonder if you matter to me. To never again put strategy ahead of your heart.”
His voice catches.
“I promise to spend the rest of my life being the man you saw in me before I proved you wrong. The man you’re giving a second chance to become.”
“I love you, Caterina Romano Moretti. I have loved you since the moment you looked at me across a restaurant table and told me my famous Moretti charm must have stayed in the car. I loved you through every mistake I made, and I will love you through every day I have left to make things right.”
He raises my hand to his lips.
“That’s my vow. In front of both families. In front of God and everyone we love. I’m yours, completely and for good.”
The orchard is silent. Even the crickets seem to be holding their breath.
Enzo clears his throat. “And now, if the bride would like to share her vows-”
“I would.” I take a breath. “I have something to say too.”
I didn’t write vows. I thought about it, spent hours at my laptop trying to find the right words, but everything I wrote felt inadequate. Too flowery, too formal, too much like something I would write for a character instead of something I would actually say.
So I decided to wing it.
“I wrote a hundred men before you,” I say, and my voice comes out steadier than I expected. “In my books. Heroes, villains, love interests of every kind. I plotted their arcs, planned their redemptions, decided exactly when they would realize the error of their ways.”
Max is watching me with an expression I can’t read.
“You’re the only one I couldn’t plot.”
His breath catches.
“Every time I thought I knew what you would do, you surprised me. Sometimes badly. I’m not going to pretend the bad surprises didn’t hurt. But sometimes beautifully. In ways I never could have written, because I didn’t know people could be that surprising. That stubborn. That willing to change.”
“I spent months trying to figure out your arc. Trying to decide if you were a hero or a villain, if your redemption was earned or manufactured. And then I realized I was asking the wrong question.”
“You’re not a character in my story. You’re my partner in writing it. And the only plot that matters is the one we make together.”
Silence. Then, from somewhere in the crowd, Mamma’s voice:
“That’s my girl.”
Scattered laughter breaks the tension. Max is smiling now, the whole-face version he used to ration, and his hands tighten on mine.
“I believe that’s my cue,” Enzo says. “By the power vested in me by absolutely nobody with any official authority, I now pronounce you still married. You may kiss the bride.”
Max pulls me close, carefully, because the belly makes logistics complicated, and kisses me like we’re the only two people in the orchard.
Mamma is already sobbing into Papà’s shoulder. Enzo whoops loud enough to startle the birds out of the orchard, and then everyone is on their feet, clapping and whistling, Nico’s aunt flinging handfuls of dried lavender she’s clearly been hoarding for exactly this.
The reception is chaos in the best way.
Tables scattered across the lawn, food from both families’ kitchens, wine flowing freely, and conversations happening in three languages at once. I make my way through it like a very large, very slow boat, accepting congratulations and deflecting questions about when the baby is coming.
“Any day now,” I tell Nico’s aunt for the third time. “The doctor says any day.”
“You look ready to pop.”
“Thank you. That’s exactly what every pregnant woman wants to hear at her wedding.”
Max appears at my elbow, sliding his arm around my waist. “Rescue mission. You’re needed elsewhere.”
“Where?”
“Dance floor.”
“Max, I can barely waddle. I definitely can’t dance.”
“You can sway. Swaying counts.”
It’s nearly midnight, the reception winding down, fairy lights glowing in the trees. He leads me to the center of the lawn, where someone has set up speakers and cleared a space among the tables. The guests are gathering around, phones out, ready to document whatever disaster is about to unfold.
“What song?” I ask.
“You’ll see.”
The opening notes fill the air, and I recognize them immediately.
The same song I was dancing to when he walked in on me, a lifetime ago, in that first warm month, when I went over the back of the couch and sprained my wrist. When he laughed like he’d forgotten how, and I fell in love with him without meaning to.
“You remembered.”
“I remember everything about that day.” He pulls me close, one hand on my waist, the other splayed over the bump where our daughter is doing somersaults. “You were so embarrassed.”
“I was dancing on the couch. Like an idiot.”
“You were dancing like nobody was watching. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.”
“You’re rewriting history.”
“I’m telling you what I saw.”
We sway, because he was right, swaying is all I can manage, while the music plays and our families sing along badly. Mamma is crying again. Papà is pretending not to. Enzo is doing some kind of interpretive dance move that Nico is filming for blackmail purposes.
“This is perfect,” I say.
“It is.”
“I didn’t think we’d get here. After everything.”
“Neither did I.” His hand moves in slow circles on my belly. “But here we are.”
“Waddling, but here.”
The chorus swells, and Max spins me, gently, carefully, keeping one hand on the small of my back to steady me. I’m laughing, he’s smiling, and for one perfect moment everything is exactly as it should be.
Then I feel it.
A rush of warmth. A sudden wetness spreading down my legs.
My eyes go wide.
“Max.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I think-” I look down, then back up at him, and my voice comes out strangled. “I think my water just broke.”
“What?”
“My water. It just broke. Right now. In the middle of the dance floor.”