The Widowed Don Hired a Doctor for His Son, and She Brought Two Boys Who Wore His Face novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: Her Mother's Kitchen

Ines's POV

He came at nine at night, in the rain, with a boy in his arms.

I had been at the sink with my mother, drying a stack of plates I had dried twice already.

The twins were in the bath upstairs, shouting at a plastic whale.

The truck came up the yellow street with its headlights on and stopped at the curb.

I put the towel down.

I did not go to the door.

My mother turned off the radio.

Nico came up the walk with Teo asleep against his shoulder, in his pajamas, with a blanket pulled over his head.

He had no coat.

The rain had soaked his shirt through and flattened his hair, and I saw, from the kitchen window, that he was shaking.

He did not knock.

He stood on my mother's porch under the light, in front of the green door and Saint Anthony, and waited.

My mother looked at me.

"Mija," she said.

"I'll go," I said.

I opened the door.

For a moment neither of us spoke.

He looked at me the way he had looked at the twins on the gravel.

"I've brought your son," I said finally.

"I've brought mine," he said.

It was a small joke, and it didn't land, and we both knew it.

"He asked to see Luca."

"Come in," I said.

"You're soaked."

He put Teo on my mother's sofa, under an afghan, and the boy did not wake.

My mother brought a towel and a cup of coffee and set them on the table without a word, and then she took herself upstairs to the sound of the whale.

I stood in her kitchen in the yellow light and Nico stood across the table from me, and he did not sit.

"I'm going to say it all," he said.

"All of it, in order.

"I won't ask you for anything at the end.

"If you want me to go, I'll go."

"Say it."

He said it.

He began on the chapel and the rectory, and when he reached the line in the register I laid two fingers on his mouth.

I had needed to hear it once, and the twins had already told me the rest.

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