Page 4 of Reclaimed Dreams
“God, Ma. This is delicious.” Sofia closed her eyes and moaned.
“Thank you, sweetheart. I wanted to do something a little special for your father’s announcement.” She raised her glass with a secret smile for her husband of forty years.
“So, Ma, made any travel plans lately?” Sofia teased.
“You know I won’t go anywhere without your father. But I was talking to Elena the other day.” She switched her gaze to Seth as she spoke of his mother. “She was filling me in on all the details of their time in Italy. She was quite taken with all the vineyards. It sounds beautiful in the summer. We’ll see.”
Dom cleared his throat, immediately drawing the attention of everyone at the table. “I’m officially calling this family meeting to order. You all know that Jo and I have been talking about retiring for the last few years.”
Jo let her smile escape and stretch wide across her face. Here we go!
“I’m not convinced that the business is in a strong enough position for me to walk away. People come to us because of the reputation Tony and I spent our lives building. If we just leave, I worry that the work will drop off.”
“But Dad, the Valley is booming!” Frankie’s outburst was cut off with a firm slice of his hand.
“I also can’t see a clear successor to take over running the business. So I’ve decided to kill all the birds with one stone. We’re doing a TV show.”
Jo set down the wineglass she’d raised in preparation for a toast. “What do you mean a TV show?” Her voice was shrill, but she was beyond caring.
“A producer approached me a few weeks ago.”
Jo’s temper flared. “A few WEEKS? You’ve been thinking about this for weeks and didn’t see fit to discuss it with me? Does Tony know?”
Dom turned to the rest of the table, ignoring her question, shutting her out. Jo sank into a cold silence as he kept explaining the plan to their children, as if her concerns didn’t matter. She held her silence while her children jumped into the conversation with their usual chaotic zeal. Her heart held its tongue as her mind struggled to find a way to excuse this disrespect. Again. But she couldn’t.
She couldn’t make another excuse for her husband who had so clearly locked her out of the decision-making process.
It wouldn’t be until much later, after the kids had gone and the dishes had been washed and her house was quiet, that she would realize the gift of running out of excuses. It meant she’d also run out of fucks. He’d cut her out? Fine. She’d stop making her decisions with him in mind. He refused to join her? That was fine too. She’d stop waiting.
29 years ago
Nurse the baby, change her diaper, feed the toddler, clean up the mess left by the toddler, convince the toddler that peeing out in the yard was fine for dogs but not for little boys, nurse the baby again, put everyone down for naps, fold three shirts out of the laundry pile that had consumed her couch before someone started crying, pull the toddler out of the baby’s crib, wonder how the hell he’d gotten in there in the first place, soothe the baby, distract the toddler, feed everyone again.
Jo was slowly losing her mind.
Her days had been reduced to a simple loop, managing tiny dictators’ bodily functions. Eat, poop, sleep, repeat.
Jo never thought she’d long for the days of organized chaos in her classroom, but here she was. At least everyone there had been able to wipe their own butts! She rubbed her chest to erase the guilt that scrawled across her heart. How could she be anything but happy with her two beautiful children?
After their first loss, they had tried so hard for baby Gabe. It had taken a few years, and then they’d immediately started trying for another, afraid it would take just as long to get pregnant again. But it hadn’t. And now she had an infant and a toddler. How could she wish for even a second of the life she’d had before? These babies were miracles. But Jo couldn’t deny that the days of eating hot food and showering regularly looked real tempting.
Dom had been working so hard to make this year of her staying home from work possible, while still trying to save money for their company, that she felt ungrateful for complaining. Having two babies in three years had really strained their finances, and he was making so many sacrifices to give her something she suddenly wasn’t sure she wanted. The ingratitude smacked her in the face, so Jo kept her frustrations to herself.
Even Elena was constantly reminding her how lucky she was to stay home with her children. Maybe she’d feel that way too if they’d start letting her sleep through the night.
She looked up at the clock, willing it to move faster, but it stayed stubbornly pointed at three. Three more hours and a dinner to prepare before she’d get a breather.
Dom tried to help. He always scooped up the babies after he’d showered off the day. But the scant fifteen minutes of quiet she got before it was time to start the bedtime routine weren’t cutting it.
Fussy cries called her back into the nursery. Sleep-tousled blonde curls stuck out like a halo around Sofia’s head as she let her discomfort be known. Gabe slept on through her petulant tears, for which Jo was supremely grateful.
“What is it, baby girl?” Jo whispered. “Do you need your diaper changed?” She lifted Fi from the crib and gave her a quick nuzzle before laying her back on the changing table to remove the offending diaper. With one hand on Sofia’s belly, Jo reached for a fresh diaper, only to discover that the bag was empty. She managed to toe the backup pack out from under the table and open it one-handed. Well, teeth were involved, but she did it without letting go of the baby and that still counted as a win. A feral win, but a win all the same.
Flush with her success, she turned her triumphant smile back to Sofia, who was wearing a happy grin of her own….because she’d managed to pee and poop on the changing pad in the meantime.
“Oh, come on!” Jo muttered, barely managing not to swear in front of the baby, although would she really understand anyway? Still, it was better to not break that seal, or Gabe’s first sentence would have to be censored from his baby book. Switching back to her baby-soothing voice, she crooned, “Was that what woke you up?” She cleaned up everything as best she could. Sofia fussed at the cold wipes but settled once she was in a fresh and dry onesie.
Jo picked her up, hoping she’d be able to put the baby back down for the second half of her nap. On the way up to her shoulder, the real nap-stealing culprit made its appearance as Sofia let loose a deep burp and spit up all down the front of her new onesie and Jo’s shirt.
