Page 110 of The Woman in the Garage

“We could invite your mom.”

“Sure we could. She will take over and dictate what we buy, though, just a warning.”

“That’s okay.”

“And then ask you how many babies you want and when you’re going to give them to her.”

“Well, they are definitely part of the plan. But we should probably, I don’t know, paint the extra bedrooms before we stick any babies in them.”

“Probably smart,” I agreed. “And we can always remind her that we aren’t married. Yet,” I said, watching as Dasha shot me a hopeful smile.

“True. And we can drag out the wedding planning for a long time as we continue topracticemaking those babies.”

“Keep looking at me like that and I’m gonna sayFuck dinnerand drag you home to bed instead.”

But there was no time to make that decision.

The door opened. And there was my sister, Valley.

“She made ravioli,” she said, passing Dasha a glass of wine. “Apparently, it’s a ‘thing’ for you two. And I’m not at all upset that I didn’t get to meet you first. Or second. Or fifth or sixth. I meanDomgot to meet her first?” Valley asked, giving me a pointed look.

“To be fair, Dom broke into my house the night he met her first,” I told her.

“He crashed dinner tonight too,” Valley said, swinging the door wider to reveal Dom standing in a window.

“What is he doing?”

“Watching the birds at the feeder,” Valley said, lips twitching.

Beside me, Dasha was slowly relaxing. The women in our family had that ability. To make you just immediately feel like part of the fold, like you’d been there all along.

“Oh, you baked,” Valley said, looking at the pie in Dasha’s hands. “Mom’s gonna love you. Come on. Let’s go give it to her.”

With that, she was led away from me and taken into the kitchen.

“Don’t worry. Traveler is in there,” Massimo said, speaking of August’s woman. “She’ll make sure Dasha is comfortable. Whoa, little man,” Mass said, reaching down to scoop up Judah—Nino and Claire’s toddler—right before he made a grab for one of Ma’s ceramic vases. He flipped the toddler upside down, getting little squeals of glee out of him. “Oh, I know that look,” Mass said as he swung Judah side to side for a second before flipping him and setting him back on his feet. “Picturing having one of your own already?”

“One… six…” I said, getting a laugh from Mass.

“She on the same page?”

“She was an only child. She’s excited to be part of a big family. And have one herself. Eventually.”

“Yo,” Dante said. He came up, passing beers around. “I got in touch with Mark Mallick. He said he can get the yard all fixed up at Phil’s old place. And he recommended someone to fix the foundation.”

It hadn’t been a hard decision to sell Phil’s place.

It was too small for us to even think of moving into it. Besides, everything Dasha owned was now in my place. Her cutesy little mugs were in the cupboards. Her bunny lamp was in the living room. The pink couch had made it into one of the extra bedrooms.

“I mean, chances are, we will have a little girl one day. We will need somewhere to sit and read to her. It’ll be perfect,” Dasha had said as the movers carried it up the steps.

But to sell Phil’s place, we had a lot of work to outsource. We’d personally gone in to remove all of the paperwork, wanting to go through it all to make sure nothing linked back to the cocaine, shipping containers, or storage units that were all now closed.

Dasha had also taken one of those singing fish plaques back to our house, keeping it in the garage—where she claimed she would always think of her uncle most.

“Hey, look,” Dasha said, coming out of the kitchen with a small plant held between her hands like her greatest treasure. “Your mom gave me one of her spider plant babies!”

She was fucking beaming, clearly seeing the offering like a representation of my mom’s approval. And it was. My mom didn’t give her plant propagations to just anyone.

---