Chapter 1

ONE

Francesca

“ M s. Zola! Ms. Zola!”

Three. Two. One.

I took a deep breath as I counted down in my mind, then turned away from the sink at the back of my classroom toward the owner of the adorable, slightly too-shrill voice behind me, bracing myself for glue-covered fingers and some kind of complaint.

“Kyle,” I said, summoning what my brother Mattie called my “too-nice teacher” voice. “Is there something you need?”

Look, it wasn’t that I didn’t like kids. I was the fourth of six Bronx-born Italian-Puerto Rican rug rats. I even had one of my own, whom I adored more than life itself.

But everyone has their limits. Seven hours a day, five days a week of sassy eight-year-olds for the last three and a half years, was apparently mine.

“Bryce tried to eat the glue, and I told him not to, but then he spilled it everywhere , and Ms. Zola, we didn’t mean to, and?—”

“Kyle,” I interrupted with a soft voice that only he could hear. The round-faced boy was clearly as worried about the other students watching as he was about getting in trouble.

As it always did in situations like these, the mix of fear, shame, and anxious hope clouding the boy’s face wiped all irritation from my mind. For a moment, I was Jane Eyre, faced with one of her many pupils. And this was just a child, after all. We were all just people, doing the best we could, even when we messed up. If the last several years had taught me anything, it was that everyone deserves a second chance.

“I am going to get some paper towels and cleaning supplies,” I said calmly. “Can you please return to your table? And don’t touch anything until I get there, all right?”

Kyle nodded happily, then scampered off to the other side of the small classroom at P.S. 058 that was my only true dominion.

When I first started graduate school to study English Literature, I hadn’t exactly expected to Google “how to clean up glue” every other week. But beggars can’t be choosers, and that’s pretty much what I was at almost twenty-four, a new mom, and in need of a job that would somehow fit my credentials of “likes books a whole lot.”

So long, Dr. Francesca Zola, PhD. Hello, Ms. Frankie Zola.

Thank God for family. Mine, in particular. Thank God for Nonna , who got up every night with me for months while I learned how to parent an infant. Thank God for Mattie, who had bought a house in Red Hook to share with me and Sofia, so we wouldn’t have to smush into my old bedroom at my grandmother’s house. I thanked God for my sister Lea, whose experience with her four kids provided enough knowledge and hand-me-downs to last the rest of my life; for Kate, who gave me a shoulder to cry on and made sure I got the occasional night out; even Marie and Joni, who, despite being selfish little brats sometimes, were good and loving aunties.

Sofia adored them all. It almost made up for the fact that she was growing up without a father.

Almost.

I was just cleaning up the final bit of glue when the bell rang, signaling the end of the school day. All twenty-seven of my charges made their mad dash for the exit while I oversaw the collections of backpacks, lunch boxes, and art to take home from their cubbies. Forty minutes later, I had cleaned up the classroom, shoved the final assignments I had to grade for the term into my messenger bag, and was off to the teacher’s lounge to check my mailbox before leaving to pick up Sofia at daycare. She really hated when I was late. And today, when we had plans to visit Santa and buy Christmas gifts, my punctuality would be more important than usual.

“Doing anything fun for the holidays?”

I looked down. I wasn’t sure what about a hand-me-down Yankees shirt and ten-year-old jeans said “check me out all day,” but apparently they did it for this guy. Adam Klein, the school’s art teacher, had been giving me that same leer almost every afternoon since I started at P.S. 058.

I turned with the same pasted-on smile I gave my students when I wanted to tear out my hair. No one ever tells teachers how much of their job is repressing their own emotions. Even around each other.

“Nothing special,” I replied politely. “Christmas with my family. Teaching at the Y. The usual.”

“You’re still teaching those cardio dance classes, right?”

I gulped, trying to avoid the way his gaze slipped to curve of my hips before returning to my eyes. What did he think he was going to see under the layers of baggy denim? I worked hard to get my butt back after Sofia, but that didn’t mean I put it on display for just anyone to see.

“That’s right,” I murmured as I paged through a few memos and kept my body language as closed as possible. No eye contact. Turned slightly away. Get the hint, dude. I’m not interested.

“I’m heading to Connecticut to see family,” Adam said, even though I had not asked him about his plans. “Nephews are crazy about me. They just love their uncle.”

His light brown eyebrows rose suggestively—suggesting what, I couldn’t say. Maybe that if small boys loved their uncle, I should too?

I shrugged. “Sounds nice.”

Adam was a nice enough guy. Reasonably good-looking too. Between the glasses, the consummate flannel shirts, and the scruffy brown hair and stubble, he was pretty much the consummate Brooklyn hipster doing good. More than one of my fellow teachers had a thing for him, though I’d only ever seen him hit on me. The one who wasn’t interested.

Adam had asked me out at least once a term since I’d started working at P.S. 058 as a Teach For America recruit. Really, he was probably the best someone like me could do. A single-mom and third-grade teacher didn’t exactly scream out “hot catch!” on the dating scene. But not once had I said yes.

The truth was, I hadn’t had a serious boyfriend in, well, ever.

No, Sofia’s dad didn’t count. A four-week affair that ended in heartbreak and an illegitimate child doesn’t count. A dashing lothario who had a secret fiancée the entire time he was making the moves on me doesn’t count.

It didn’t matter if his kisses lit my soul on fire or just thinking about his touch set the rest of me aflame. It didn’t even matter if he was the one to take my long-overdue virginity and I hadn’t managed to have a single satisfying sexual encounter in the five years since.

He. Doesn’t. Count.

“You all right there, teach?”

Adam’s voice pulled me out of the daze I always seemed to fall into whenever Xavier Sato came to mind.

I shook my head. “Sorry. Just lost in a daydream for a moment.”

“Want to tell me more about it over dinner tonight?”

And…there it was. Right on schedule.

I cocked my head to the side and affixed the craft-paste smile. It wasn’t any use pissing off a coworker. “I appreciate it, but I have the guppy to pick up.”

You would think being reminded constantly that I was a single mom and not at all interested in dating would throw the man off his scent.

But Adam just smiled jocularly and held up his coffee mug like he was toasting a glass of champagne. “Next time, then.”

I sighed as I swept the rest of my mail out of my box and turned toward the door. “Sure, we’ll see. Have a good holiday.”

“You too, honey. You too.”

I drove my brother’s car through Carroll Gardens to the daycare center about ten blocks from the school. Matthew generally took the bus to his office in downtown Brooklyn, allowing me the freedom of his car to cart Sofia around on days like these when we had a lot to do. It was one of the many ways we patched together a life of incoherent pieces to make something almost whole.

It was annoying, really, how much I’d come to depend on my brother just to survive. Five years ago, I was on track to fly myself. My older sisters had done it. My brother had done it. Carved out their own careers, their own families. And just when I was about to do it too, Sofia came along.

Suddenly, there was a lot more to pay for than just my little self, and I couldn’t ask my seventy-something-year-old grandmother to raise yet another child that wasn’t hers. Nonna had brought up all six of us after our dad died in a car crash and our mother chose the bottle over her kids. She deserved a break.

But there were bedrooms needed. Daycare. Clothes. Diapers.

The list of things I couldn’t afford as a poor grad student, then teacher, went on and on. It was either accept Matthew’s help or find Sofia’s dad. One of those things was absolutely out of the question.

“Mama!” Sofia squealed when I stepped into the daycare center. She beelined from the sensory table to launch herself around my legs.

“Hey, bean,” I greeted her with a kiss atop her head. “Good day?”

“I thought you’d never get here,” she informed me in her adorable way. She still couldn’t quite pronounce Rs correctly when she was excited. And since she was just four, that was often. “Billy Hendrix wouldn’t stop pulling my hair!”

“Well, you were also stealing his hat,” pointed out her teacher as she handed me a clipboard to sign Sofia out.

I smirked and signed. “That sounds about right.”

“That’s different,” Sofia said. “His hat was ugly. My hair was pretty!”

“Sof,” I chided. “That’s not for you to decide.”

“Don’t worry,” said her teacher. “We had a long talk about it. Didn’t we, Sofia?”

My daughter nodded, but I recognized that stubborn expression. It was the same one every other member of my family wore when they absolutely knew they were right and no one else would sway them. It would take nothing less than an act of God to convince Sofia anything other than her current logic.

I sighed. “Have a nice holiday, Dolores. We’ll see you in the new year.”

We walked out to the car and drove to the Y while Sofia babbled about her day (most of it involving Billy Hendrix, whom I suspected she liked more than she actually hated). Every now and then she would look sharply into the rearview mirror, and my heart thumped loudly in response.

Maybe I could have forgotten Xavier Sato’s face if Sofia didn’t look so much like him. She and I shared some features, of course. Her almost black hair was almost as unruly as mine. We had the same slightly bronzed skin and petite build, having both inherited Nonna’s teeny tiny bird bones.

But that was where the similarities stopped. My nose could politely be called Roman while Sofia’s was adorably button-like. My lips were curved and heart-shaped, but my daughter’s were impossibly full. I loved pinching them to make her laugh. Her wide-set, slightly upturned eyes were a deep, dark blue, whereas mine were muddy green like the rest of my family. They twinkled when she laughed and flamed when she was angry, with all the passion of the man who had given them to her.

There was no getting around it. My little girl was the spitting image of her father. Who had no clue that she existed.

I had considered telling him over the years. The email he had used was no longer valid, apparently. I’d long since blocked, then deleted his cell phone number, so that was out of the question. I’d done a few cursory internet searches, but Xavier Sato seemed to go dark on social media and everywhere else just after we met. It was almost like he had never existed at all.

I could have tried harder. But honestly, it seemed cruel. Not to him, but to his fiancée—probably his wife by now. How could you fight something like cancer when you realized your husband fathered a love child in another country? I couldn’t have cared less about Xavier’s feelings at that point. But I couldn’t do that to her. Whoever she was.

And then, as time passed, it just seemed more and more pathetic. Who shows up years after claiming to have had your baby? Xavier was rich. That much I remembered. His friends and family would call me a gold digger. And maybe that I could have taken. Sticks and stones, right?

But the idea of anyone calling Sofia names like bastard? That was out of the question.

Besides, Sofia was happy. She had a mother who loved her, aunts and an uncle who treated her like she was their own. We needed nothing more.

Or so I told myself. Most of the time.

“Mattie, we’re back!”

Three hours later, Sofia and I arrived home, her dizzy with excitement after meeting Santa Claus, me still in my worn spandex after teaching cardio hip hop hours before. I desperately needed a shower. And dinner.

The little townhouse in Red Hook wasn’t much. Twelve hundred square feet of crumbling brick that Matthew was slowly remodeling into something livable. Three small bedrooms (if you counted my blocked off area at the top of the stairs) upstairs, a kitchenette, living room, and half bath on the main floor, plus a basement apartment he rented out to help with the mortgage.

I was proud of my brother. Matthew had worked hard for a long time to have something of his own in the most expensive city in the world. And he was sharing it with us. I knew I should be grateful. And nearly every day, I was.

“Mattie, are you home?” I called as I dropped my bags in the foyer. “And by any chance, do you have dinner? We are starving.”

There was a loud thump from upstairs, followed by a series of loud footsteps trampling down the stairs.

“Ouch, shit . I mean, shoot!”

“Zio!” shouted Sofia as she dropped my hand and made a beeline for her favorite guy on the planet.

As he was tackled on the landing, Matthew obediently swept her up and twirled her around. He looked a far cry from his usual polished self in a pair of old Marine Corps issue sweatpants, a ratty T-shirt, and three days of beard growth.

“Had a nice day?” I called from the kitchen. “Or should we say good morning?”

He gave me a dirty look, and I felt bad. For the last few months, Matthew had been on forced administrative leave and subsequently had to work nights as a bartender to make ends meet. It was only six p.m., but clearly, he was just getting up.

“Did you just wake up, Zio?” Sofia demanded. “It’s almost nighttime!”

“Nighttime is my daytime, baby girl,” he informed her before putting her down.

She scampered upstairs to say hello to her toys while Matthew and I walked into the kitchen. It was cold. No food or anything. My stomach grumbled.

“Stop,” he said as I started rummaging around in the fridge. “I’ll do it. You’ve been on your feet all day. Also, you need a shower.”

“So do you,” I said. “At least I have work to blame. You just stink of cigarettes and booze. What have you been doing all day?”

He shrugged as he pulled a few plates from the cupboard. “Sleeping. Hanging around.”

“Chain smoking and drowning your sorrows with Oprah and a bottle of Jack?” I emerged from the fridge with a half a pan of ziti and things for a salad.

Matthew flinched, then took the pasta from me. “Let me warm that up. You always burn it.”

I sighed. Really, I knew better than to mention his current predicament. My brother had been walking around like a ghost for months after his involvement with Nina de Vries had cost him his job.

I didn’t know all the details since Matthew usually kept things like this close to his chest. The gist of it was that she was married to some jerk he was prosecuting, but Mattie couldn’t stay away. My brother, good guy that he was, went to his boss hat in hand and fessed up to the relationship. And promptly lost his job.

You could say it was a sore subject.

Generally, Matthew was the most level-headed person on the planet, but from the moment he met Nina, he was in another dimension.

Guilt warmed my belly. Here I was giving him shit about his current predicament, and my big brother was still taking care of me, like he’d done all my life.

“Sorry,” I mumbled. “I’m just hungry.”

“No worries.” He put the tray of pasta on the counter while he set the oven to preheat.

“I can do that,” I said, pushing him out of the way. “And I’ll set a timer so I don’t burn it. Don’t you have to leave for work soon anyway?”

Matthew shook his head. “Jamie gave me the night off. Going to a party instead.”

“A party? Really?” That sounded promising. He hadn’t been out in months except to bartend. I sort of missed the playboy version of my brother. “Whose?”

“My friends Eric and Jane. Early Christmas party.”

“The fancy ones uptown?” I didn’t bother to hide my frown.

The whole city knew who Eric and Jane de Vries were. Their wedding and family drama had been on the front page of every New York paper for more than a year.

They were also related to Nina.

“The same,” Matthew admitted as he traced a finger over a crack in the Formica. “But I should go. Jane and Eric have been good to me.”

“So good you’re out of a job, right, big brother?” I asked as I returned to the fridge for something to drink.

It was after six on a Friday. A glass of wine would be nice. But pickings were slim this close to paychecks. I sighed and pulled out the Brita.

Matthew’s face was dark when I turned around. “Nina has nothing to do with Jane and Eric.”

“She’s just his married cousin, right?”

“That’s beside the fuc—” Matthew cut himself off as he glanced up toward where Sofia had gone, then back at me. “The freaking point. She didn’t invite me. We haven’t spoken for months.”

“Since she got you fired?” I pushed, unable to help myself.

As soon as I said it, regret washed through me. None of this situation was his fault. I knew that. You couldn’t help who you fell in love with. I knew that more than most.

But that fact that it obviously hurt so much? Maybe that was our fault. I couldn’t help feeling like it every time I saw my brother coming home after a long night of bartending, I was a little bit responsible. His misery was for us, I knew. Sofia and me.

But I wasn’t stupid. He was going to this party because there was a chance she might be there, whether he wanted to admit it or not.

“I’m going,” Matthew said. “They’re my friends, and I finally have a night off. And so do you, so you’re coming too.”

I looked up in surprise from the salad I was tossing. “What? No, I’m not.”

“Yeah, you are. Kate’s on her way with a suit for me, a dress for you, and free babysitting. You’re coming.”

“It’s Friday night, and you bullied Kate into schlepping all the way to Brooklyn to play dress-up with me? She has a life, Mattie.”

“Right now, we’re more concerned about yours. Or the lack thereof.”

I frowned. “I don’t have a say in this? Who said I even want to go to a party full of snobby, rich people? I can just watch Downton Abbey for the wealth porn and turn it off when I’m sick of them.”

Matthew leaned on the counter, giving me that knowing look that sometimes made me want to smack him. “It’s either the party or I’m calling Derek to share this ziti with you. How long has it been since the Mets game?”

Now I really did scowl. The last date I’d had was over the summer when Matthew had set me up with his partner from work. Derek Kingston was…fine. Fine looking. Fine conversationalist. But an exciting afternoon to him was watching baseball and letting me make him sandwiches. Honestly, it wasn’t that different from an average day at work.

“Besides,” Matthew continued, “Eric was an English major like you. I happen to know the guy owns two first editions of W. B. Yeats’s poetry.”

I perked up. It was hard to say no to treasures like that.

“You can actually talk about iambic speedometer with him.”

“It’s iambic pentameter,” I corrected him, unable to help myself though I knew he was just jerking my chain. Matthew was a lot more well-read than he let on.

“Whatever. It’s someone else who actually likes all that English crap you’re obsessed with. I thought you’d be down.”

I could see these people now, swanning around in a big brownstone straight out of The Age of Innocence . It would be just like the books I had read in college, except in New York instead of London. Let’s see, would that make me May Welland or Ellen Olenska? Ellen had the affair with a married man, but May was the mother. I was probably closer to May, the picture of innocence, until she married and had her kid. And then dies.

I frowned. Sometimes imagining myself as my favorite characters wasn’t exactly the fresh escape I yearned for.

“Don’t you think it’s kind of weird, the way you want to pimp your sister out all the time?” I teased, trying to change the subject. “Should I come down to Envy? Maybe you can introduce me to some of the other bartenders.”

But Matthew wasn’t biting. “I’m serious. You’re twenty-seven, Frankie. Kid or no kid, you shouldn’t be living like somebody’s spinster aunt.”

I giggled. “But I am someone’s spinster aunt. I’m an unmarried teacher with three nephews and a baby niece. Make me a governess and I’m a Jane Austen character. A regular bluestocking.”

Yes, I liked that direction. Jane Fairfax did slip away with Frank Churchill in Emma , right?

Matthew was smart enough not to answer while I glanced over my shoulder at Sofia, who had snuck back downstairs, parked herself in front of the television, and already pulled up PBS cartoons. Without asking.

Smart girl.

Maybe he wants you gone.

The thought echoed through my mind before I could help it.

The truth was, Sofia and I were more of a burden than ever. Matthew would never say it, but it was true. The older she got, the more expensive her life was. And the meager raises I earned as a schoolteacher didn’t come close to covering the life I wanted to give my daughter.

I smarted. The thing about Jane Austen was that her spinsters always found love, usually in the form of a rich bachelor who falls for the plucky, well-read young woman.

Well. I had never started a relationship for financial support before, and I wasn’t about to start gold digging now. But a party full of rich, influential New Yorkers wasn’t a bad place to look for other connections. People who could help me find a different job outside of teaching. Afford a different apartment outside of Matthew’s generosity.

A different life outside of Brooklyn and P.S. 058.

“All right, big brother,” I relented. “It’s a date. Let’s go to this party and see what’s up.”