Chapter 10

TEN

“ M amamamamommymomMOMMEEEEEEEEE!”

I squinted in the sunlight streaming through my window. One day I’d invest in blackout curtains. It would be the same day I could afford an actual bedroom, or at least double-paned windows to mute the squeaky breaks of the B61 bus or better ventilation so I wouldn’t smell the exact moment Mattie’s tenant decided to cook his favorite pork sausage. Basically, when I didn’t have to spend all my extra money on things like preschool and underwear and snack packs and all the other things small children need.

Sofia yanked at my arm like it was a water pump, jumping up and down in excitement. “Guess what ? Aunt Kate said she would stay for breakfast, and she let me watch Daniel Tiger all morning, and you’ve been asleep forever, and we’re going to the park now, so get up !”

“Okay, okay, peanut. But first, Mommy needs to remember she’s human.”

Hand pressed to my temple, I forced myself out of bed while Sofia pounded back downstairs, leaving me to get dressed and find my way to the bathroom to splash water on my face. When I returned, Nonna’s dress was hanging over the back of my wardrobe door like a black ghost of last night’s fiasco. I stood before the wardrobe mirror, looking between the LBD and the pajamas covered with pizza-eating unicorns gifted from Sofia (meaning Matthew) last Christmas.

I snarled at my reflection. I’d scrubbed off my makeup so hard last night my cheeks were still red. Pillow marks streaked across the left side of my face, and my hair had frizzed up beyond belief.

I turned away, then hastily stuffed my hair into a messy bun. A shower could wait. I needed some tea.

Downstairs, I found Kate in the kitchen, already pouring me a cup.

“Oh, you saint.” I slid onto one of the counter stools as she slid the mug across the stained brown tile. “What are you still doing here?”

She shrugged. “You seemed a little worse for wear last night, and Mattie didn’t get home until God knows when. I thought it would be best if I stuck around when Sof got up.”

A glance at the microwave clock told me it was just after nine a.m. Which meant Kate had dutifully risen with my four-year-old at approximately five thirty in order to let me sleep in.

“You’re amazing,” I told her.

“I know.” She glanced back at the TV, where Sofia had plopped herself back on the sofa to watch the next episode of her beloved cartoon tiger, then leaned across the counter toward me. “All right. You going to tell me what the hell happened last night?”

I stared at my reflection in the deep brown liquid, pretending I hadn’t heard her.

Last night…hadn’t been pretty. Specifically, I hadn’t been very pretty. Not while I ran in Nonna’s wrinkled dress all the way to the Fifty-Seventh Street station. Not while I had felt lonelier than the rats gathered on the subway tracks while I waited for what seemed like hours for the F-train to rumble down the tunnel. And not while I had ruined my best black pumps jog-walking the mile across the Hamilton Heights footbridge from Carroll Gardens to Red Hook at close to two in the morning, praying I wouldn’t get mugged on my way there.

When I’d finally gotten home, Kate had popped up from the couch, half asleep in a pair of Matthew’s pajamas, informed me that Matthew had decided to stay at his friend’s uptown, then asked me blearily how the night had gone.

I’d lied, then run upstairs behind the privacy screen so I could cry alone.

But sisters know. They always know.

I sighed and stirred my tea. “I ran into Xavier.”

“Who’s—oh! You mean…” Recognition dawned on Kate’s face as she did a series of rapid takes between me and Sofia.

I nodded. “That’s right. In the middle of that stupid party. Apparently, he’s this big-time restaurant owner or something. Friends with all these rich people. He changed his last name, which is why I could never find him.”

Something twisted in my gut. Based on what I’d seen last night, he was one of those rich people.

“Holy shit.” Kate shook her head. “So, Jesus, what happened?”

I cringed. I really didn’t want to go into this. “We talked some…and then he followed me out of the party…and I sort of went back to his hotel room.”

“You what ?”

A squeak from the TV told me Sofia was now half-paying attention. “Aunt Kate, can you please be quiet? I’m trying to watch my program.”

Kate and I both bit back giggles. When she was irritated, Sofia tended to talk like Nonna.

I motioned for Kate to button her lip, then called to Sofia. “Sorry, Sof. We’ll keep it down.”

“Thank you!”

When I looked back at Kate, she was drumming her nails on the counter.

“What?” I asked.

“Don’t ‘what’ me. You know what. Give it.”

I sighed. There was no getting out of this. “Fine.”

And so, in hushed tones my daughter wouldn’t hear, I proceeded to tell her everything that happened. All about seeing Xavier at the party. The way he had followed me around the Upper West Side. About the carriage ride in the park and just how close I’d come to spending the night with him in the Plaza.

“Holy shit,” she said again once I was finished. “No wonder you were upset.”

“Yeah.” I took a long drink of my tea. Nothing was better than tea.

“So, what happens now?”

I glanced at Sofia, then back at her. “What do you mean, what happens now? Did you not hear my story? He’s a sociopath, Katie. He doesn’t believe in love , of all things.”

She shook her head and looked at Sofia for a long time. “I don’t know. I seem to remember him saying it to you…you know…back then. More than once.”

I didn’t reply. Yeah, I remembered that too. Just like I remembered the feeling of having my heart torn out of my chest.

Kate shrugged. “His best friend dies. His mom dies. His dad’s a jerk. Seems like the guy has been through a lot. That kind of trauma can take a while to come back from. We should know.”

Something squeezed deep in my chest when I remembered the look on Xavier’s face as he had told me about Lucy. Or mentioned his mother. On the outside, that wasn’t the expression of a man who couldn’t love.

So maybe it wasn’t that he couldn’t. Maybe he just wouldn’t.

But really, wasn’t that worse?

“Also, and I hate to bring this up…if he’s loaded, couldn’t you sort of use the money?”

“Oh my God, thanks! I’m not a gold digger.”

She rolled her eyes. “I didn’t say you were. But hello, you’re bringing up that one by yourself, and dude owes you five years of child support. Make the rich bastard pay up.”

I bit my lip. I couldn’t pretend the thought hadn’t occurred to me, particularly when the B61 woke me up for the third time in the night. But even then, the thought of Sofia’s face upon learning she had a dad only to have him break her heart killed any instinct to pad our savings or her college fund. It wasn’t worth it if he couldn’t be the father she really needed.

“No,” I said. “I can’t. It’s better I didn’t tell him. And it’s going to stay that way.”

This time, Kate remained silent, lips pressed together. She clearly didn’t agree, but unlike the rest of my family, she knew when not to press an argument.

Which reminded me of something else.

“One more thing. Katie, you cannot tell anyone in the family. Especially not Matthew.”

She gaped. “You can’t be serious. Frankie, you live together. He’s basically Sofia’s surrogate dad.”

“So? You know how everyone gets. Joni and Marie will gossip with everyone, Lea will come over here to tell me what to do, and Matthew is so bored and depressed right now over that woman uptown. He’d probably hunt Xavier down with his Beretta just for fun.” I sighed. “I don’t want him sticking his nose into my business. Especially when I’m not even sure what’s going on.”

Kate looked doubtful. “Still. This is huge. You can’t expect me to keep your secret indefinitely.”

“Why not?” I countered stubbornly. “I keep yours. Did I ever tell Nonna that you spent that week in Paris with your boyfriend, not on a class trip? Or have I ever told anyone about that girl you dated last year?”

Kate just scowled. Her somewhat fluid sexuality wasn’t something she was particularly open about inside our grandmother’s extremely Catholic purview. She wasn’t in the closet, per se. But like me, she wasn’t interested in inviting our nosy family into her personal life.

“Fine. Your secrets are your secrets, just like mine belong to me. But that doesn’t mean I agree with them.” Her dark eyes gleamed. “Is he a good kisser, though?”

I blew a raspberry. “Um. Yes.” Good didn’t even cover it.

“Better than Jeff Lopez in the tenth grade?”

I closed my eyes. “So much better.”

Kate just watched me with something amounting to regret. “Damn.”

I nodded. “I know.”

But before I could agree with her, the doorbell chimed through the house.

“I’LL GET IT!”

Sofia catapulted off the sofa and flew past us down the hallway.

“Nothing is more exciting to a four-year-old than answering the front door,” I told Kate. “It’s probably just Pete, the downstairs tenant. I think his rent is due tomorrow.” I pushed up from the stool. “I should probably put on something other than pajamas. Like a bra so Pete doesn’t have to stare at my headlights.”

“He’d probably love it,” Kate said.

I trudged down the hallway, calling as I went toward the front door. “Hold on, Pete. I’m still in my pjs. I’ll be right there after I grab a sweater.”

“Mommy, it’s a man!”

I frowned, suddenly alerted to the long shadow splayed over Sofia’s tiny form where she stood in the middle of the hall, looking at the door. Every hair on the back of my neck stood up.

I knew that height. The span of those shoulders. The haughty cock of that head.

“Shit,” I whispered as I grabbed a sweater off the coat rack and made a beeline for the front door.

“Mama,” Sofia called behind me, still watching the silhouette through the translucent windows. “I don’t think it’s Pete.”

It was definitely not Pete. For one, this silhouette had about eight inches on our downstairs tenant.

“Sofia, don’t ,” I snapped, much sharper than I would ever normally.

Guilt flashed through me, but she stopped just before opening the door and turned, lip quivering.

“I’m sorry, baby. Just…you shouldn’t answer the door for strangers,” I told her, more gently this time, at odds with the thump of my heart in my chest. “Please go back to the kitchen with Aunt Kate, okay?”

Her blue eyes narrowed suspiciously at me, but she nodded. “Okay.”

“Thanks, peanut.”

She shuffled down the hall.

Then thunder sounded on the other side of the door.

“Francesca!”

I didn’t move. I knew exactly who it was, but I couldn’t answer the door. It was like asking me to open a fireplace and jump right in.

“Francesca!” he shouted, followed by another thunderclap of knocks.

“Mama?” Sofia called from the kitchen.

“Stay—stay there, please,” I called back. “I’ll be right there, honey.”

Then I took a deep breath and opened the door.

Xavier stood with his fist raised, ready to launch another onslaught of knocks. He was dressed down from last night in a pair of tailored jeans and a black Smiths T-shirt that revealed a bit of a tattoo peeking up from the collar, plus an Army green puffed jacket that made him look like a street fighter. The one bit of color other than his eyes was the pair of explosive orange and blue Adidas high tops. He looked utterly gorgeous, much closer to the carefree boy I had met five years ago.

But that storm in his eyes was miles away.

“Where is he?” he demanded, looking over my shoulder.

I backed up. “What are you talking about? What are you even doing here?”

“I’m not fucking around, Francesca. Where the fuck is he?”

“Where’s who ?” I demanded.

“It. Him. He. That fucking prick you have in there—don’t fuck with me, Ces. No one runs out the way you did last night unless they have something—or some one to hide. So tell him to come out here and face me like a man.”

My jaw dropped. “Are we in the middle of a Regency novel? Did you bring pistols or swords?” I made a show of looking around him toward Van Brunt Street in one direction, toward Coffey Park in the other. “This is Brooklyn, Xavi, not Grosvenor Square. You can’t duel someone just because he’s my significant other, even if I had one, which I do not.”

“Then what’s with all the stupid excuses?” he rattled on, suddenly jumping between the balls of his feet, hands flexing open and closed like a boxer ready to take an opening jab. “You ran away last night faster than a train. I didn’t get a wink of sleep thinking about it. One minute you’ve got your tongue down my throat, the next you’re bolting for the lift like a scared fucking rabbit!”

“Keep your voice down!” I hissed. “I have neighbors.”

“Oh really . ‘Neighbors’ are we calling him? I don’t buy it. Who is he, Ces? I want to know his name before I punch his fucking face in.”

“Mama, who is that? He said a bad word!”

With the slipperiness of an eel, Sofia slid in front of me to examine the perpetrator. I might as well have been made of stone.

“Who are you? Why are you yelling at my mama?” she demanded, staring straight up at the man who suddenly looked about as inanimate as I was.

The reasons were obvious.

Xavier’s stare was fixed on the little girl whose face looked so much like his. Whose deep blue eyes tilted in the same way. Whose cheekbones were evident even under her chubby, rose-hued cheeks. Whose long nose snubbed in the same way and whose lips mirrored his scowl when she was angry.

The daughter he never knew he had.

His eyes widened as if he had seen a ghost.

I supposed in a way he had.

“Xavier,” I whispered.

The sound of his name jerked him out of his daze. It was strange to see him like that. The Xavier I knew was laser-focused to the point of suffocation. Utterly vigilant and totally single-minded.

But the stupor was short-lived, because when his eyes met mine, there was no sign of distraction, no lack of focus. Once again, his gaze was as sharp as a blade.

And I knew at that moment my secret was out.