Coming Home (Morelli Family 6)

Winter Blues

Takes place after Resisting Mateo, but a few months before Coming Home…

“Red pepper, please.”

I flick a glance over at Meg. She’s standing at the stove, happily domestic as she takes the lead preparing dinner. I don’t argue because she’s a far better cook than I am. The aroma is already wafting over my way; I don’t know which spices she tossed in that pan, but I already want to dive in and eat my way out.

Now she holds a hand out to me expectantly for the next ingredient.

“I’m still chopping,” I tell her. To emphasize my point, I bring my knife down over the slice of crisp red pepper on the chopping board.

“Why are you so slow?” she asks dramatically.

I pause in my chopping to raise an eyebrow at her in disbelief. “Do you remember two minutes ago when you tried to juggle them? And I was like ‘you probably shouldn’t do that’ and you were like ‘Maria isn’t here to stop me.’ Remember that?”

Shaking her head dismissively, she tells me, “That sounds made up. I don’t think that happened. I mean, obviously I could juggle them if I wanted to, but you’re clearly just making excuses for how slow you are.”

I dismiss her craziness and continue chopping up the pepper. Once finished, I take them over and dump them into the pan of deliciousness. “There you go.”

“Good girl.” She gives me a little wink.

“Don’t praise me,” I complain, taking the chopping board to the sink to rinse it.

“It’s only hot if Mateo does it, huh?” she teases.

“Being Mateo does help make things hot,” I admit, nodding.

“Do you think Mateo could make juggling hot?” she asks conversationally.

“Probably. But he would never juggle. He’s not the same kind of crazy as you.”

“It’s like we’re curating all the different kinds of crazy in the world. Just between the three of us, we have a large portion of the market cornered. I wonder if the baby will be a new kind of crazy we haven’t encountered yet.”

Frowning in response, I turn off the faucet and glance over at her. “Rosalie isn’t exactly a baby anymore. And she’s unquestionably your kind of crazy. She’s a mini Meg with little bursts of Mateo. Look out, Chicago.”

Now Meg grimaces, looking at the food she’s stirring to keep from looking at me. “Whoops.”

It takes a minute to land. My mind doesn’t quite wrap itself around the implication of her words.

Then it hits me. Then her words start to make sense in a different context… in the context that she is talking about a new baby. A current pregnancy.

Somehow Meg being pregnant with Mateo’s baby feels like a thing of the past, a thing that happened before me. Even though he has no son and I understand logically he has to keep trying until he gets one… I don’t want Meg to be pregnant again. I reject that reality.

Only it doesn’t matter, because now Meg shoots me a sheepish look. “I wasn’t supposed to tell you.”

My stomach twists and sinks with the verification. I don’t want to make her feel bad, but it’s like I just had the wind knocked out of me. As if in search of physical evidence, my eyes run over her still-thin frame.

She keeps talking. “I mean, you were obviously going to find out. But Mateo wanted to tell you. Don’t know what he was waiting for, but… It just slipped out.”

I nod a bit woodenly, all twisted up in the vines of jealousy and sadness. The faintest hint of betrayal stabs me in the gut. It’s absurd and out of place; this isn’t a betrayal. I was aware of Mateo’s desire for a son. I was aware of—and I’m the one who insists on respecting—Meg’s rule that I’m not allowed to get pregnant. I know he splits time between us, and I know he hates condoms, so this was inevitable.

But it still hurts. It still stabs me in my heart of hearts and digs a new wound right down the center.

It feels like an eternity has passed, but it’s only been a minute.

“Are you okay?” Meg asks, watching me carefully.

I force myself to take a steadying breath, bracing my weight on the edge of the counter. “Yeah. Congratulations,” I offer belatedly. “That’s great news.”

I don’t sound convincing to my own ears, but she accepts it and nods, smiling. “I’m excited. This had better be a boy. I’m running dangerously into Henry and Catherine territory. Since I’m letting him have his little Anne Boleyn lovefest on the side, maybe it’ll keep me in the game, but my eggs better have my back this time.”

She jokes, but it’s barely a joke. “I’m not on the side,” I mutter.

“Oh, sure,” she says, kind of dismissively. “I didn’t mean it pejoratively.”

I’m too sick to my stomach to even respond. Anxiety thickens in my chest and makes it difficult to draw a steady breath. Everything vaguely aches. I need air.