Page 114 of Embracing the Change

Belatedly realizing we had a large audience, and I was a part of it, Nico glanced sheepishly at me and said, “Christ, Ma. I’m so sorry.”

“That’s all right, dearest,” I whispered.

Jamie took that as Nico’s assent, because he moved between Nico and Roland, with Darryn and Archie coming in at his sides, and he said, “You can leave right now, or we can remove you. Choose.”

Roland scowled at Jamie, then he looked between Darryn and Archie and declared, “I never liked either of you for my daughters.”

I also had not forgotten my ex could be petty.

I just wished he hadn’t said that to his sons-in-law, because it would far from ingratiate him to his daughters, and he had one who still cared, but if he crossed Darryn, she would not.

“That’s okay, seein’ as we don’t give two shits,” Archie replied.

Roland’s scowl intensified before he turned stiffly on his foot and marched out the door.

Archie followed him, and I heard the front door slam.

“You were kind of harsh, Nico,” Felice said quietly.

Oh no.

Nico whirled on his wife. “I was? You know how it was for us with him out fucking around?”

She lifted a feeble hand. “I was just saying?—”

“What?” he demanded. “What were you just saying? Or, I should ask, what would I give a shit about you saying, since you seem to have an awful lot to say about fuckin’ everything.”

“Nico,” I warned.

Nico visibly pulled it together, and said to his wife, “You have more to say, we can move it somewhere else. If you don’t, then for fuck’s sake, don’t say anything.”

She screwed her lips up angrily.

Yes, my son’s marriage was in trouble.

I didn’t want to admit it, but if forced to do so, I would have said I’d seen it coming.

It wasn’t that they were from two different worlds (she hailed from upstate, both her parents were teachers, and they’d gone barefoot to my son’s wedding too). It was just that…

Well…

He’d married his mother.

Opinionated and outspoken.

The problem was, Nico didn’t agree with her opinions, considering quite a number of them were judgments about the life he was born into, something which was out of his control.

He’d turned his back on it because he was Nico. He made his own way. He’d always wanted to be a teacher. He was a teacher. He’d never been into owning things. Now he didn’t have a lot of things. He’d always liked to earn his own money, so at sixteen, he’d gotten a weekend job in a bakery. Getting up at five in the morning to make bread and pastries, going home to his apartment on the Upper West Side, and having cash he earned to take a date to the movies.

But he’d also turned his back on it for her, living in a cramped, one-bedroom in the East Village, growing herbs on the fire escape, when he had a trust fund he’d never touched that could purchase them a property four times the size for when their family expanded.

She could make her jam and grow her herbs, but their children’s schooling would be paid for, and they’d all have closets where they could put their clothes.

“I’d like to discuss why Allegra let him come up here,” Valentina groused.

Darryn again got close to his wife, but it was me who spoke.

“She loves her father. She’s allowed, Valentina. So I’ll hear not another word about it.”

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