Chapter 10 - The Five-Minute Family
Anthony Moretti's letter contained no final conspiracy.
No hidden enemy.
No billion-dollar secret.
It contained something far more difficult for Dominic to face.
Forgiveness.
Dominic read it at the kitchen table while morning sunlight spilled across the floor.
Anthony had known his enemies were closing in.
He also knew seventeen-year-old Elena loved eighteen-year-old Dominic Valenti.
He had been afraid of that love.
Not because Dominic was cruel.
Because of the family he came from.
But Anthony had watched Dominic protect Elena.
And in his final letter, he had written that if his daughter ever found her way back to Dominic, he hoped Dominic would give her the one thing the Moretti and Valenti families had never managed to give their children.
A choice.
Dominic read the final paragraph three times.
Then he handed the letter to me.
His eyes were wet.
“I spent half my life thinking your father hated me.”
“He probably did sometimes.”
Dominic laughed quietly.
“Helpful.”
“He trusted you when it mattered.”
We married six months later.
Not in a cathedral.
Not in a ballroom filled with politicians and businessmen.
In the garden behind the Lake Forest house.
Forty-two guests.
White roses.
Autumn leaves.
Sophie wore pink because she refused white on the grounds that white was “boring.”
Marco was Dominic's best man.
He still possessed the photograph of Dominic's pink fingernails.
He threatened to display it during his speech.
Dominic threatened to fire him.
Neither threat was serious.
I walked down the aisle alone.
That mattered to me.
Nobody gave me away.
I had spent too much of my life being moved from one person to another.
This time, I walked because I chose to.
Dominic waited beneath an arch covered in white flowers.
The feared man from the stories was gone.
Or perhaps he had never existed exactly as people imagined.
Standing there was the man who burned pancakes.
The man who checked beneath Sophie's bed for monsters even though Sophie had informed him monsters were scared of him.
The man who still woke from nightmares sometimes and reached across the bed to make sure I was there.
When I reached him, he whispered, “You came.”
“Don't sound surprised.”
“I'll probably always be surprised.”
We exchanged vows.
Dominic's were short.
“I lost you twice. I won't waste the third chance.”
Mine were simpler.
“You waited until I could choose.”
I took his hands.
“I choose you.”
Then the officiant asked for the rings.
Silence.
Dominic looked at Marco.
Marco checked his pockets.
I stared.
“Dominic.”
“I gave them to Marco.”
“You absolutely did not.”
Sophie gasped.
Everyone turned.
She was standing beside us with Mr. Buttons.
Two rings hung from the rabbit's remaining ear.
“I kept them safe.”
The garden erupted in laughter.
Dominic crouched.
“Thank you.”
Sophie whispered something.
He frowned.
“What?”
“Payment.”
“For what?”
“Ring.”
Dominic closed his eyes.
Months earlier, he'd promised her one.
She remembered.
Of course she remembered.
“Tomorrow.”
“Pink.”
“Yes.”
“Sparkly.”
“Yes.”
“Big.”
“We'll negotiate.”
She kissed his cheek.
“Okay.”
We finished the ceremony.
A year later, the Anthony Moretti Foundation opened its first family shelter in Chicago.
Dominic converted several of his companies into legitimate employee-owned businesses.
I went back to school.
I had always wanted to study social work.
For the first time in my life, wanting something didn't feel selfish.
Sophie started kindergarten.
On the first day, Dominic insisted on driving her.
She wore a pink backpack with rabbit ears.
At the classroom door, she suddenly became nervous.
Dominic crouched.
“You're okay.”
“What if nobody likes me?”
“Impossible.”
“What if they do?”
He blinked.
“What?”
“What if everybody likes me and I have too many friends?”
Dominic looked at me helplessly.
I laughed.
“That's a risk we'll have to take.”
Sophie hugged us both.
Then ran inside.
Dominic stood watching through the classroom window long after every other parent had left.
“She doesn't need us standing here.”
“I know.”
“You're still standing here.”
“I know.”
I took his hand.
“We can go.”
He finally moved.
Three months later, I discovered I was pregnant.
I told Dominic after dinner.
He stared at the test.
Then at me.
Then at the test.
For perhaps the first time since Sophie had walked into that corridor, Dominic Valenti was speechless again.
“Say something.”
“We're having a baby?”
“Yes.”
His eyes filled instantly.
Then Sophie ran into the room.
“Why's Daddy crying?”
Dominic picked her up.
“You're going to be a big sister.”
She gasped.
“A baby?”
“Yes.”
“Can I name it?”
“No,” we answered simultaneously.
She frowned.
Months later, our son Anthony Dominic Valenti arrived.
Dominic cried harder than the baby.
Sophie informed every nurse that her father was “very emotional.”
Years passed.
Mr. Buttons lost his second ear.
Dominic had it repaired personally.
The mansion filled with birthday parties, scraped knees, Christmas mornings, school projects and arguments about bedtime.
There were difficult days too.
Healing was never magical.
Sometimes memories returned when I didn't want them.
Sometimes Dominic became overprotective.
Sometimes we fought.
But we learned something neither of us had been taught growing up.
Love wasn't the absence of conflict.
It was choosing to stay honest inside it.
On Sophie's seventh birthday, I found her standing in the same corridor where everything had begun.
Dominic had just returned from work.
She walked toward him.
He smiled.
“What do you want?”
Sophie raised her arms.
Dominic laughed.
“Seriously?”
“Five minutes.”
He crouched.
She hugged him.
Anthony, now two, ran over and joined them.
I leaned against the doorway.
Dominic looked at me over their heads.
Exactly as he had four years earlier.
Except there was no shock in his eyes now.
No terror.
No grief.
Only home.
“Mommy!” Sophie called. “You're missing the hug!”
I crossed the corridor.
Dominic opened one arm.
I stepped into it.
Sophie began counting.
“One... two... three...”
“You're actually timing us?” Dominic asked.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
She pulled back enough to look at him.
“Because that's how our family started.”
Dominic went quiet.
Sophie touched his cheek.
“You looked really sad back then.”
“I was.”
“And then I fixed you.”
Dominic smiled.
“You helped.”
She considered this correction.
“Mostly me.”
“Mostly you.”
I laughed.
Anthony climbed higher into Dominic's arms.
Outside the enormous windows, snow fell across Lake Forest.
Once, that house had been filled with guards, locked doors and people afraid to speak.
Now a pink bicycle lay near the staircase.
Children's drawings covered Dominic's refrigerator.
A stuffed rabbit sat at the dinner table more often than etiquette permitted.
And the man Chicago once feared most was standing in his hallway with two children hanging from his arms.
Sophie looked at me.
“Mommy?”
“Yes?”
“Did I really ask Daddy for only five minutes?”
“You did.”
She frowned.
“That wasn't enough.”
Dominic looked at me.
I understood exactly what he was thinking.
Eleven lost years.
Two stolen chances.
One child brave enough to walk toward a stranger everyone else feared.
I kissed Sophie's forehead.
“No,” I said. “Five minutes wasn't enough.”
Dominic pulled all of us closer.
“So how long do we get?” Sophie asked.
I looked at my husband.
He looked at our children.
And the answer came from the man who once believed everything he loved would eventually be taken from him.
“As long as we can.”
Sophie shook her head.
“Wrong.”
Dominic raised an eyebrow.
“What's the correct answer?”
She squeezed him tighter.
“Forever.”
For once, Dominic Valenti didn't argue.
May you like
He simply held us.
And this time, nobody counted the minutes.
