The Soldier's Secret Child

But Nonna was whispering to Charlie, and they both laughed, and then he helped her back to her rocking chair. That was good.

Lacey went back to her cutting board, looked at the stack of veggies and reluctantly acknowledged to herself that Nonna was probably right. If she could even get a red-blooded man and an eight-year-old boy to eat stir-fry, the least she could do was put some beef in it. She rummaged through her refrigerator and found a pack of round steak, already cut into strips. Lazy woman’s meat. She drizzled oil into the wok, let it heat a minute, and then dumped in the beef strips.

“Hey, Lace.” It was Vito’s deep voice, coming from the kitchen doorway. “C’mere a minute.”

She glanced around. The rice was cooking, Nonna and Charlie were still talking quietly and the beef was barely starting to brown. She wiped her hands on a kitchen towel. “What’s up?” she asked as she crossed the kitchen toward him. “You’re not going to bite my head off again, are you?”

“No.” He beckoned her toward the front room, where they could talk without the others hearing. “Look, I’m sorry I snapped. Charlie’s been a handful and...” He trailed off and rubbed the back of his neck.

“And what?”

“And...I hate being treated like there’s something wrong with me. I’m still plenty strong.”

“I noticed.” But she remembered a similar feeling herself, after her miscarriage; people had tiptoed around her, offering to carry her groceries and help her to a seat in church. When really, she’d been just fine physically. “I’m sorry, too, then. I know how annoying it is to be treated like an invalid.”

“So we’re good?” He put an arm around her.

It was a gesture as natural as breathing to Vito as well as to the rest of his Italian family. She’d always liked that about them.

But now, something felt different about Vito’s warm arm around her shoulders. Maybe it was that he was so much bigger and brawnier than he’d been as a younger man.

Disconcerted, she hunched her shoulders and stepped away.

Some emotion flickered in his eyes and was gone, so quickly she wasn’t sure she’d seen it.

“Hi!” Charlie came out of the kitchen, smiling innocently. He sidestepped toward Nonna’s room.

“Where you headed, buddy?” Vito asked.

“Lacey, dear,” Nonna called from the kitchen. “I’d like to rest up a little before dinner.”

“I’m glad she called me.” Lacey heard herself talking a little faster than usual, heard a breathless sound in her own voice. “I try to walk with her, because I have so many area rugs and the house can be a bit of an obstacle course. But of course, she likes to be independent.” Why was she blathering like she was nervous, around Vito?