Page 122 of The Woman on the Jury

My brows pinched at that. “What?” I asked.

“At being the angry Italian matriarch,” she clarified. “I’ve always watched the women in this family with wonder when they got all loud and bossy. I always wanted to be like that when a situation called for it.”

“In that case,” I said, lips curving up, “you did fucking great. Almost pissed myself and I wasn’t even in trouble.”

“So, how do we punish them now?” she asked, coming close, and wrapping her arms around my lower back.

“Dunno. Does the shop need to be catalogued?” I asked, smirking.

“And put them around priceless antiques?” she asked, shaking her head.

“That’s a good point,” I agreed.

“Hey, isn’t Lorenzo working on the meat shop?” she asked. It recently had a burst pipe that caused major damage and meant it had to be shut down and gutted. “Maybe some hard manual labor with all their uncles breathing down their neck will whip them into shape.”

“They’ll hate it. It’s perfect,” I said, pulling her close.

“Tell me again they’ll grow out of it,” she demanded.

“They will. Hell, even Silvano and I worked it out.”

“And that only took, what, twenty-something years?”

“Exactly. So… we’re getting close with them,” I said. “Another four or so years.”

“I don’t think I’ll make it,” she sighed, pressing her forehead to my chest.

“Remember that time when the kids were in grade school and they both got a stomach virus the same week the dogs got into that food that upset their stomachs too?” I asked, still having some PTSD about that whole situation.

“Oh, God. That was the worst.”

“We made it through that,” I reminded her. “We can make it through this.”

“Turn it down!” one of the boys yelled as the other one put on music.

And, of course, the music got louder.

“Ugh,” she grumbled.

“I’ll get the wine,” I said, pressing a kiss to her head to turn and pour her a glass.

She was a second glass in when one of the bedroom doors opened, and out walked our eldest son, coming around the couch to sit down on the coffee table in front of us.

“I stand by the fact that what he did was wrong,” he started.

“Okay,” Halle agreed.

“But I shouldn’t have handled it in front of Mel and Lani. I’ll apologize to them. And I’m sorry for disrespecting both of you and this family,” he said.

With that, he got up, and went back to his room.

Not five minutes later, our other son came out with his own speech. Where he insisted that he’d been trying to talk up his brother to Lani, and the whole thing was a misunderstanding, but that he was sorry for disrespecting us.

“Well,” Halle said, slipping her legs over my lap, and snuggling in. “I guess we did a good job with them after all.”

“With you as their mom, there was no question about that,” I told her. “They got all their good from you,” I said. “Except for the cooking thing. Thank fuck, they got that from me.”

“Hey, I can’t be perfect,” she said, nuzzling into my neck.

The thing was, she was perfect.

And so was the life we’d built together.

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