Chapter Eight: The Dinner (And Beyond)
The albóndigas dinner with her father happened on the second Thursday.
It was moved once. Because Lorenzo’s brother flew in on the first Thursday, and Lorenzo could not be in two rooms at the same time. And for the kind of conversation Lorenzo was going to have with his brother, there was only one right room and only one right day.
Isabella did not meet the brother. Not that first time.
She did not ask what the conversation was. Lorenzo came home from it at two in the morning and sat at the end of the butcher block in the kitchen and drank a glass of wine without speaking. Then another. Then set the glass down and said:
“He will be quieter now.”
“Just quieter?”
“Yes. I told him I wanted quiet, not friendship. He is giving me quiet.”
“Is it real quiet? Or is it the kind of quiet that is waiting?”
He looked up at her. Something almost like a smile.
“You’re learning quickly, Isabella.”
“I had a good teacher.”
“You had a very bad teacher. You had a week. A week with you is not a normal week.”
“No. It is not.”
He finished the second glass. Then he went up the stairs and slept in his own room at the other end of the hall. And she slept in hers.
That was, for now, still how they did it.
The civil ceremony had happened on the Tuesday. She remembered almost nothing about it except that the judge was a small, tired woman with a bad cold, and Rosa had cried a little, and Matteo had been serious the whole time. And Lorenzo had held Isabella’s hand the way a man holds the hand of a woman he has known for twenty years.
Not the way a man holds the hand of a woman he has known for eleven days.
Afterward, they had gone for lunch at a small Italian place on Taylor Street. The owner came out of the kitchen and kissed Lorenzo on both cheeks and cried a little into his apron and would not let anyone pay. Isabella had eaten a plate of pasta so good that she had, for the first time in two years, forgotten for an entire minute that she had ever been engaged to anyone.
That was the wedding.
A courthouse. A tired judge. A plate of pasta. A housekeeper crying in the back of a cab.
It was, Isabella thought afterward, probably the best wedding she could have imagined for herself.
Now it was Thursday. The second one.
She drove herself to her father’s house. Lorenzo sat beside her. He tapped his thumb on his knee. Nerves.
“He will ask about Kiara,” Isabella said.
Lorenzo went still.
“I’m sorry. But he will. He’ll ask carefully. He’ll want to hear you say you are not using me to replace her.”
“I am not.”
“I know. But he needs to hear it.”
Lorenzo nodded.
The dinner happened. Her father opened the door in a button-down shirt. No tie. But dress shoes. He had shaved.
They shook hands. Alberto’s grip was hard. Lorenzo’s was exactly as hard as it needed to be—and not more.
They ate in the small dining room. Tía Mari’s albóndigas. She kept filling Lorenzo’s bowl. She kept giving him small appraising glances.
Her father asked his questions. How old are you? Forty-two. Arrested? Twice, when I was young. What do you do for a living? He told the truth: some clean, some not.
Alberto listened. He grunted.
Then: “Kiara. Tell me about her.”
Lorenzo set down his spoon.
“She was twenty-three when I married her. She died at thirty-three. Cancer. She wanted children. We could not have them. That broke us a little. It did not break us.”
“She said near the end—Lorenzo, I’m sorry. I’m going to leave you by yourself. And I said—You are not leaving me. You are only going first.“
Alberto was quiet.
“You loved her,” he said.
“Yes.”
“You still do.”
“Yes. A person does not stop being somebody you loved because they are dead.”
“No. They do not.”
“I am not using your daughter to replace Kiara. I cannot replace Kiara. She is a room in my life that is still furnished. I walk past it sometimes. I do not live in it. I have chosen to live somewhere else. In a different room. With Isabella.”
Alberto looked at him for a long time.
He picked up his coffee. He took a sip. He set it down.
“My wife—Luz—died in a hospital also. Six years ago. A stroke. No warning. She went to the store in the morning, and in the afternoon she was gone.”
“I did not live in our house after that. I moved in with my sister. I do not have another woman. I am seventy-one years old, and I am not going to. But I understand what you said about the room. About the furniture. About living somewhere else.”
“Yes.”
“So. All right. I have heard you. I do not like it. I do not like any of what you are. But I have heard you, and I believe you.”
“That is a thing I did not know if I was going to be able to say tonight. So pass the soup. Tía Mari, more albóndigas. The man is thin.”
“I am not thin, Alberto.”
“In this house, everyone is thin until they have been fed three times.”
Isabella did not cry at the table. But she came very close.
Later, on the porch, her father put his hand on her elbow.
“Mija.“
“Yes, Papi.”
“He is not a good man.”
“I know.”
“I did not expect him to admit that as honestly as he did.”
“I didn’t either, actually.”
“A man who will tell you he is not a good man is not the worst kind of man. The worst kind is the one who thinks he is. Daniel was that kind.”
“He was many kinds. None of them good.”
“He is, you have heard—”
“I have heard. His mother is selling the summer house. His father is trying to separate his name from the Whitfields on paper. They will be fine. People like them are always fine. But that boy is not going to have the life he was promised. I will tell you honestly, mija—I am not sorry about that. I know I am not supposed to say that. But I am not sorry.”
“Neither am I.”
“Good.”
He paused.
“Thank you for tonight.”
“Don’t thank me. Come back next month.”
“I will bring him.”
“Okay. And mija.“
“Yes.”
“When you have a child—if you have a child—you bring that child to this house. You put it on my lap. I do not care what his father does for a living. That child is a Cruz. You understand?”
“Yes, Papi.”
“Go.”
She went.
She got into the car. Lorenzo did not speak for a long time. She drove out of Beverly. Onto the expressway. Past the skyline in the dark.
“Your father is a serious man,” Lorenzo said eventually.
“Yes.”
“He asked the right questions in the right order. That is a thing you cannot teach.”
“He loves you very much.”
“Yes.”
“When he said the thing about the child, I saw your face.”
“I am not pressing you. I am only saying I saw it.”
“Okay.”
“Do you want that?”
She was quiet for a long time.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I haven’t let myself want anything in two years. I don’t know what I want yet.”
“That is fair.”
“Do you want it?”
“I wanted it once with Kiara. When it did not happen, I stopped wanting it. After she died, I did not want it for a long time. Now—I do not know either. I would have to let myself find out. I have not yet.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
The car was warm. The snow was light now. Just a thin, silvery swirl in the headlights.
She drove.
He watched the road.
After a while, he put his hand on her thigh briefly, just above her knee. Then took it away because she was driving and he did not want to distract her.
It was the first time he had touched her without a reason.
She noticed.
She did not say anything.
But she noticed.
Disclaimer : This content may be created by AI for entertainment purposes. Any resemblance to real persons, events, or places is coincidental.
