The Mafia Heir's Revenge Baby novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: Yes

Gianni stayed on one knee on the gravel.

He looked at our son.

Our son looked at the sky.

"Archie," I said. "Turn out your pockets."

He sighed the sigh of a man being treated unfairly, and turned out his blazer pockets onto the picnic table.

A bobby pin.

A rock.

A tiny screwdriver from Bess's eyeglass kit.

A gold band, empty, with four little prongs bent straight up.

And, last, rolling across the table toward the edge until Bess slapped her hand down on it, a small round diamond.

Bess lifted her hand and looked at it.

"Oh, holy shit," she said.

"I wanted to see how the setting works," Archie said. "It's prongs. They fold over. It's actually very simple."

Gianni put his face in his hands, still kneeling.

His shoulders were shaking.

"It was his mother's," I said to Archie.

"I know. That's why I was careful." He pointed at the screwdriver. "I can put it back. Probably."

"I'll put it back," I said.

I sat down at the picnic table with the band and the stone and Bess's tiny screwdriver.

It took four minutes.

Archie watched every second of it, and told me twice I was doing the third prong wrong, and was right once.

When it was done, I held it out to Gianni.

He was still on one knee.

He took the ring, and then he took my hand.

"Juniper," he said. "I'm going to try this again."

"Okay."

"Marry me."

"That's not a question."

"I'm not good at questions. Your son asks all of them."

"Our son."

Something went across his face.

"Our son," he said. "Will you marry me?"

"Yes."

He put the ring on my finger.

It fit.

It was light and warm from his hand, and it fit.

Archie climbed onto the picnic table and applauded, alone, until Bess joined in, crying, with her mouth full of the fries she'd stolen.

We made the plans that night, the three of us, around my kitchen table in Boston.

A wedding at the house on Sunday, with the aunts cooking.

Gianni's name on Archie's birth certificate, in the father box, where it belonged.

Archie wanted the reader at the wedding, "for proof," and lost.

After he went to bed, I sat with my bare feet in Gianni's lap and turned the ring on my finger.

"I want another one," I said.

He looked at me.

"Another baby. No tank. No clinic. No vial with the wrong name on it."

"The regular way."

"The regular way."

He was quiet for a long moment.

"Five years he told you you couldn't," he said.

"Five years he told me a lot of things."

Three weeks later, we sat in the front row of a courtroom in Philadelphia.

Me, and Archie in his navy blazer, and behind us eleven aunts and cousins in their church clothes, taking up two full benches.

Gianni stood at the table in front with his lawyer.

The judge read it out in a flat, tired voice.

The conviction was vacated. The plea was withdrawn. The charge was dismissed.

The record was expunged.

"Mr. Corsaro," the judge said, and then looked up from his papers for the first time. "The court is sorry for the four years."

Gianni didn't say anything.

He nodded.

When he turned around, the aunts were all crying, and Archie had stood up on the bench to see.

"Is that it?" Archie said, too loud. "You're not a criminal anymore?"

The whole courtroom laughed.

"I'm not a criminal anymore," Gianni said.

"Good," Archie said. "Because you're bad at it."

Lucia was waiting in the hallway outside.

She had a rolling suitcase and a plain coat and no diamonds anywhere.

The detective from the restaurant was standing a few feet behind her.

"I gave the grand jury the rest this morning," she said to me. "Everything. They have it. I'm done."

"Where are you going?"

"My cousin's in Florida. Somewhere he doesn't know." She looked at the floor. "Somewhere nobody knows me."

Then she looked down at Archie.

He was holding Gianni's hand, studying her with polite interest.

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