Page 30 of Final Reckoning

Matteo kisses the back of my hand, and I’m almost awash in tears again. “Thank you,” he says.

I clear my throat. “I, um, have something else for you.”

He blinks. “You do?”

I look to Bree, who took care of wrapping it for me this morning. She brings me a small, rectangular package, and I hand it over to Matteo.

The look he gives me is one of perfect bafflement, but he takes off the paper and opens the box. And pulls out the pregnancy test.

There’s a moment of stunned silence. He stares at the test, then at me. Then he looks up and roars, “Get a priest in here. We’re getting married right now.”

“Teo,” I say, caught between laughter and tears.

“Right now, dammit!”

I scoot across my bed, then his, till I’m right up next to him. The room is in chaos, but I barely notice. “Honey. The baby doesn’t care if we’re married or not.”

The storm of emotion on his face almost undoes me. “We’re having a baby.”

“Yes. Yes, we are.”

He leans down and captures my mouth. There’s a chorus of “Eww!”s from some of the children, and “Ahhh”s from everyone else.

And right then and there, wearing a hospital gown and sitting in a hospital bed, I have the best Christmas of my life.

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