Not that I noticed any of it.
I was too busy shaking to appreciate my surroundings.
“Oh my God, Marie, are you okay?”
My sister jogged over from the kitchen, where she had been feeding Lucy, the newest edition to their family, and pulled me in for a tight hug—the same kind that I would have gotten from Nonna after a scraped knee.
Frankie wasn’t Nonna. She wasn’t even one of the older Zola kids capable of being de facto parents in a pinch. But she had the same loving touch we’d all learned in that house, having to lean on each other through hard times.
I burst into the tears I’d been holding back all morning.
“Hey!” Frankie gripped me tight. “Whatever it is, it’s going to be okay.”
“I don’t—” I choked on the words. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
She kept holding me, even rocking me a little against her small shoulder. Frankie wasn’t a big person, only a few inches taller than me, but she was still more solid than anything I’d felt since seeing that note.
“I thought I could handle it. Traveling. New experiences. Lucas’s—” I cut myself off with another sob. “I’ve been trying so hard to step out, you know?”
Frankie nodded and hushed me, petting back my hair like I was one of her kids. She didn’t know much, of course. We hadn’t talked beyond a few FaceTimes for months, and she’d moved to England with Xavier more than a year ago now.
“But after what happened in the room…and then he justleftwithout saying anything. I had to get out of there. I couldn’t stay,not after—” I shook my head. “I just had tomove.So I took the train, thinking I could find my way here.”
My sister had the good sense not to ask me what the hell I was talking about. Probably because her girls were in the room with us, but also because another detail had caught her attention. “You? Went on the Tubealone?”
I nodded as I straightened and wiped my eyes. No doubt my mascara made me look like a raccoon. I still wasn’t used to wearing the stuff all the time, even though I liked the way it made me look. “I got lost. And it was loud, and there were so many signs, and none of them made sense, and everyone just knew what they were doing except me, and I couldn’t catch my breath, and?—”
“Whoa. It’s okay, Marie. You’re safe. You’re here, and you’re safe now.”
I took a second to get a good look at her. At twenty-nine, Frankie was still young, but marriage and a second child had given her a serenity and maybe some wisdom she’d never had when she was raising Sofia alone. She was wearing a matching cashmere set—the kind of expensive loungewear that somehow looked both effortless and elegant. A far cry from the T-shirts and jeans she used to wear as a third-grade teacher and single mom.
“Is Zia Marie okay?”
My six-year-old niece, Sofia, had slid off her stool at the massive marble counter and run over to me, her curly black ponytail dancing down her back.
“Hey, sweetie.” I sucked back the rest of my tears and turned to her with a plastered-on smile. “I’m fine, yeah. Sorry, I just got a little scared there.”
Sofia seemed to think about that for a moment. “Do you need another hug? I know Mama just gave you one, but I got lots more.”
My smile turned authentic. “I’ll always take a hug from one of my favorite girls.”
Her little arms wrapped around my neck, giving Frankie the space to get up and help baby Lucy, who was yammering away in her highchair near the counter and playing with Cheerios.
“You look really different,” Sofia declared in the no-nonsense way of all the Zolas and six-year-olds alike as we went to join them. “Your hair is shorter now. And I like your lipstick.”
She hadn’t grown out of her tendency to pronounce herr’s likew’s. I had been “Zia Muh-WEE” since she was able to talk, and I sort of loved it.
“Thanks, kiddo.” I smiled and touched my mouth after helping her back up onto her stool, then turned to give my other niece a silly face and a kiss on the cheek that left a red imprint on her soft skin. “Hi, muffin. I haven’t seen you since you first showed up.”
The baby—Lucy—had grown into her face since I’d come to London just after her birth. She had the same shiny black hair as her sister and dad, along with Frankie’s green eyes and delicate features. She gurgled happily when she saw me, reaching out chubby fingers to grab my earrings.
I offered a Cheerio instead, which she promptly stuffed into her mouth.
“I miss you guys,” I told Sofia. “We need you and Lucy back in New York to even out the boy-girl ratio. Right now, your cousins are running the show.”
Sofia nodded, as if the gender balance between her family and Lea’s kids was an extremely important matter. “Yeah. I actually kind of miss those bozos.”
I glanced at Frankie, who just shrugged. “She heard Mattie call them that once and never let it go.”
