Alessandro
December 26
It’s Holly’s 21st birthday. I hate that I missed her pregnancy. Hate that she did all that alone, that I wasn’t there for her, to cut the cord. To share that beauty. I plan to get her pregnant again soon so that I can be there for it this time. And the next. I want half a dozen kids.
A baby changes things.
Obviously.
No more spending so much time in my head thinking on all my regrets. There’s no time for that when you become a parent. And I get why Mama didn’t blame me for shit. I look at him, I watch how he changes and discovers new things every day, and know in my soul that there’s nothing he could ever do that would make me regret him being alive.
I don’t see my father’s eyes on his face, and not even my eyes anymore. I see his eyes. I see intelligence, curiosity, a bit of a temper sometimes. I see him. My son.
Yes, it seems I have a little bit of a soul left. Only because of my little flower. She kept it safe for me. She was my tether and now I’ve got another one. One that she gave me. She could’ve gone on and lived her life without my shit. She could’ve easily found a thousand different men who’d step in and look after her and my son. But she wanted me.
We’re living in Spokane. We’ve already gone back twice to our place on the island. I like how I have my space there, but it’s kind of far as a vacation home. She likes it here. She also likes that she’s only a 5-hour drive or a quick flight from her sister. I’m thinking of buying us a cottage on a lake within an hour’s drive of her sister’s place.
Here, we have a nice home that she’s taken time to decorate. She volunteers, she takes care of our son. She makes me her meatballs once a week.
Rocco came and visited once. Saw Zander. It was awkward for Holly but she was friendly. She’d seen him when she got on a plane immediately after I left her. She went to Melbourne, hoping to get there at the same time as I did, but it was him I’d sent to set up her safety deposit box. She tried to beat him up in the middle of the street, demanding he tell her how to find me. He wouldn’t. He’s loyal like that.
She went on without me for a while, but I guess once she had the baby, she decided to hit that panic button. And I thank my stars every fuckin’ day that she did.
She says when he’s in school full time she wants to think about going to school to get her degree in art. She doesn’t know what she’ll do with it, but I want her to have everything she wants. I also want her to have as many more babies as her body can give me so it could be a while before all our kids are in school. I haven’t broached that topic with her yet, but I plan to soon.
I had a lot of money squirreled away. Dresden was good for his word and left me alone after taking my father in. My father is still awaiting trial and it’s gonna take a while, but it looks like he could go to Death Row. He hasn’t reached out to me. No one has. I’m hoping that I can go on and live life like I wanna do. Like I think I’m ready to do.
No one else got pulled in as a result of me ending things with the business, so that’s probably what’s kept me from getting a price put on my head. I occasionally call Marco Fuentes as he’d know if there was a price out for me and it seems that I’m being allowed to go ahead and live my life.
I bought a transportation company. I ship via land, water, and air. I’m good at it. Always was. But the stuff I move now is typical supply chain stuff. Nothing illegal. We won’t bother to talk about the fact that my company was started with money from illegal activities. I’ve tried to pay it forward, too. I’ve given a lot to charity. Lisa Ferrano, the widow of Tom Ferrano Sr., has taken a good chunk of donations from me for a charity for victims of human trafficking.
I’m living as Alexander Catelli, what mama called me when we settled in Washington. Even though people might be able to find me, I wanted to keep her name, help it carry on. I still look over my shoulder, but I’m also living life, too.
Holly calls me Alessandro, out of habit, I guess, but to everyone else I’m still Lex.
I’ve baked her birthday cupcakes. Zander is on the kitchen floor, banging a wooden spoon on a steel pot, making a racket.
I put the pink frosting on top of one of the cupcakes and taste it. And then I put a little bit on a baby cookie, then squat to give it to my son. Holly would shout me down if she saw me giving him pure sugar like that. But she’s not here to shout me down, so I smile and tell him, in Italian, to eat it.
She’s gotten feisty at times. She’s still my little flower, my girl, but she is coming into her own now that she’s no longer my prisoner.
I’m her prisoner, so she says, and I’m not allowed to ever leave again. I can live with that since life sucked without her. I won’t say it’s been a piece of cake, but I’m a work-in-progress.
Zander tastes the frosting and gives me a big smile and then tries to shove the whole thing in his mouth. It’s a baby cookie so it crumbles.
I ruffle his thick black hair and hit the button to start the dishwasher. She’ll be home soon from the art class she’s doing at the hospital for the children’s ward.
I lift him up and take him to the sink and clean his face off. He points to the bowl of frosting on the counter.
“Dat!” he demands.
I take him closer and he dips his finger in it and then puts it in his mouth and gives me a big smile. He may be a carbon copy of me, but he’s got Holly’s smile. Her dimples, too.
I kiss him on top of his head and take him outside to the front porch to wait for his mama.
Life ain’t all cupcakes and dimples and happy family time. My demons try to rear their heads more than occasionally. But between him and her, I keep finding it in me to keep on fighting them.
***
“You baked this?” she’s in shock.
“I’ve baked them every other time, too. Just not your 20th.”
“Every? What? You’re joking!”
“Yeah. Gave Maria the night off that first time. Second time, I brought the shit with me to the island from the last store before I caught that boat. I used to bake in the kitchen with Mama when we were on the run.”
“Wow. Unknown talents,” she laughs and then she tries to shove as much of it as she can in her mouth. Just like our son tried to do. I laugh.
She takes her time chewing and then washes it down with a glass of milk, “Every other time, I didn’t get to eat it. I wanted to make sure I ate this one.”
I shake my head, smiling, “There’s eleven more over there for you.” I point to the tray of them on top of the stove.
She claps her hands and then she reaches for the wrapped box in front of her and opens her gift from me. We’re heading to Portland shortly, to the restaurant Dario’s sister Luciana and her husband own, for a family party for Holly as well as to exchange Christmas gifts. We’ll be staying overnight. They wanted us there for Christmas, but Holly wanted our first Christmas as a family to be here, at our home.
I like it just us so I had no problem with that. Yeah, I’m trying with the family gettogethers. Never thought it’d be my jam, especially after the whole Jonas and Julie incident, but having Zander and watching him interact with his cousins is different; it’s cool.
“Spanish for Dummies?” she asks as she pulls the book out of the wrapping paper.
I smile big. I’ve smiled more since she hit that panic button than I have in fifteen years.
“Dummy?” she looks at me with mock irritation.
“You’ve gotta be a dummy to have gone along with me and not given up hope,” I tease and lean over and she kisses me.
“Gracias.” Her eyes are bright, like she’s about to cry. “Te amo.”
“Maybe you don’t need those lessons after all. And this one is from your son.” I pass her a small box with a pink bow on it.
She plucks the bow off and sticks it to my forehead. Zander lets out a big belly laugh at the sight of me with a bow on my head and I bust up laughing at his infectious laugher.
She opens the box and sees a key. A car key.
“A key? What did you buy Mommy?” she asks, “You did not buy mommy a car!” She claps her hands. Zander claps his, too.
“Garage,” I say and lead her outside.
We go into the garage and we see her new ride. A new Lexus SUV.
“Already loaded it up for the airport. Ready to go?”
She jumps up and down enthusiastically and kisses me. “I love it. Thank you.” And then she kisses our son, who’s in my arms, and says, “Thank you, baby boy!” He leans forward and slobbers a big kiss on her face.
I open the back door and buckle our son into his car seat.
***
It’s two weeks into January and I’ve rushed home from work, early afternoon, having forgotten some contracts. I merge with the letter carrier, who is walking up our driveway. She passes me a stack of mail. I thank her and give her a nod and go into the house.
I’m headed to the kitchen when I see Holly coming down the stairs with her index finger to her lips.
“Shh. Just got him down for his nap.”
I kiss her. “Just popped home for that file on the table.”
“Oh. It’s still there. Wa-want me to take all that?” she bites her lip and her eyes are big, eyeing the stack of letters in my hand.
I pick up on her demeanor and suspiciously start thumbing through the stack in my hand and stop on a small airmail envelope addressed to Holly Catelli from a Mrs. G. Catelli.
The fucking return address is in Cagliari, Italy. My mother’s home town.
I look at my wife and I’m pretty sure my face is red. The breakfast I ate that morning is threatening to come back up.
“I--- I was gonna tell you. I, uh… can I read it?” she pleads.
I whip it along with the rest of the mail and put my fingers to my temples.
“I’m sorry. We’ve been communicating. Me and your grandmother. She doesn’t do email. But she speaks and writes English. We’ve been discussing a visit. I sent her some pictures of Zander and maybe this has pictures of your family in it. It looks thick. I got Wesley to give me the address. He advised against me doing this behind your back. This is all me, so don’t be mad at him.”
I’m fuming. It’s taking every ounce of self-control to not grab her throat and pin her against the wall.
“She wants to know you, Alessandro. She wants to meet Zander, too. I… I thought I’d just see if they were open about meeting you and if they were, I’d let you decide. Wesley said they know a bit of what you’ve been through, how hard it has been for you. I told her how hard it’d be for you and I didn’t make promises, but … I think if you think about it… look at the letters, maybe see if there’s pictures…”
“Are you fucking joking right now?” I shout.
She winces.
I storm past her, go to the kitchen table and grab the file I forgot that morning.
“She’s saved your mom’s ashes. If you come, they’ll do a scattering with you there.”
I’m seething so bad I can’t hardly see straight. “We’ll talk tonight. Maybe.” I storm out and leave her standing there in the hallway with all the mail scattered by her feet. I have to fucking go so I don’t do something I’ll regret. So I don’t do something that further verifies that I’m still a fucking animal.
Holly
Alessandro climbs in bed with me. It’s late, after one o’clock in the morning and I hadn’t seen or heard from him since lunchtime when we had that awful scene. I didn’t want it to go that way but I should know that deceit will always come back to bite you in the butt. It always does.
Life isn’t always easy. He has bad dreams sometimes and sometimes I can see things weighing on him. But he’s a good husband and I couldn’t ask for a better Daddy for our son. He hates that he left me alone when I was pregnant.
I hit that button twenty times the day he left and he ignored it. I took the necklace off and put it in a drawer after Melbourne and seeing Rocco, who refused to tell me where he’d gone.
I almost hit it again when I realized I was late and then took a pregnancy test. But, I was angry. And I felt deserted.
I thought maybe he’d notice. Or that Dario, Zack, or Wes would tell him. They’d all said he hadn’t been in contact. Dare wanted to go find him when I revealed I was pregnant but I begged him not to. I got a little upset and decided that I could do it on my own. Fuck him. How dare he give up so easily when I’d held strong and refused to give up on him for all that time!
And then I was thinking that maybe he was having me tailed, watched. Maybe he’d get word when I got a big belly. I even contemplated cutting my hair again. And then I heard the heartbeat in the doctor’s office and I decided to be strong. For our baby. I took care of myself. I spent five months studying like a madwoman getting my high school diploma online. I finally opened that check, which was ten million dollars, which nearly made me fall over. I put it in the bank and lived off interest until a few weeks before my due date when, after a good long talk with Wes, I decided to buy the little place on the island off the coast of Tasmania.
And the whole time, I kept telling myself that maybe he was watching. Maybe he was waiting for the right time to make his approach.
I decided to have the baby in Tasmania, too. And I did. Eli and Wes and Tash were all there with me and we filmed it for Alessandro. I told him about it but he didn’t want to watch yet.
“One day, princesa. Okay? It kills me that I wasn’t there for that. I’m not ready to watch you in pain delivering our baby without me.”
And then I decided, after my son was a week and a half old, to press the panic button again. And thankfully, he came. Also, Wes had talked to Rocco and knew where he was and was prepared to go get him and drag him to me. Thankfully, it didn’t come to that.
When I went to bed tonight, I left the DVD of Zander’s birth on the kitchen table with a note.
“I want you to watch this and then I want you to think about how beautiful our family is and how much more beautiful it can be if we expand it with great grandparents for our little boy and any future children we have. I’m sorry for doing that secretly but it’s only out of love for you. Please forgive me. And if you watch this and you still don’t want to go to Italy, I won’t bring it up again. Love you.”
He came to bed a little after one o’clock and turned me into him.
“I love you,” he said.
“I love you, too. Did you get my note?”
He nodded, “yeah.”
“Did you watch it?”
He nodded again and squeezed me tight. Too tight.
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry. I wish I was there for you. And you’re right. Write back to her. Book the flights. I don’t wanna go, because it’ll hurt me, but it might help them. So, we’ll go.”
“I’m so proud of you,” I say and kiss his lips softly, “And I think it’ll help you, too.”
“I don’t deserve you,” he tells me, wiping my tears away with his thumbs.
“I know,” I said.
He laughs. “But I’m keepin’ you, anyway.”
“Good. Cuz now you’re my captive, so you have no choice. We’re stuck together. You go and try to leave me and I’ll spend every dime, every ounce of energy to hunt you down and bring you back.”
“Shit,” he grumbles.
I whack his bottom and then roll us so I can climb him. I run my hand between his legs as I kiss his jaw and then move to his mouth.
“I want another baby. I wanna be there for every minute this time,” he says.
“Okay,” I tell him.
And then he slides inside me and I wrap my arms around him and his mouth finds mine.