Page 50 of Claimed By My Biker Daddies

Downstairs the trattoria rattles pans.

Lidia, my boss and de facto auntie, sings with the morning radio in a voice that could scold a saint.

She’s a widow who runs her kitchen like a church: sauce on simmer, mercy on repeat.

She pays me in cash when she can, in stale baguettes and leftover veal when she can’t, and always in unasked-for advice.

When I first moved in, she handed me a knife and said,“If you can dice an onion without crying, you can stay.”I cried; she kept me anyway.

There’s a photo of her late husband, Sandro, in a paper hat taped to the fridge—him grinning like he invented gnocchi.

My boys’ pictures live beside him, clipped with a magnet shaped like a tomato.

Lidia tells anyone who’ll listen that the babies are “our best menu item.”

My phone buzzes with a grant reminder I opened at four a.m. and closed when one baby startled and the other answered.

I’ll have to finish filling it out another time.

I barrel through another diaper and set both boys by my knee and chance another glance at my stollen.

The loaves are beautiful in a way that makes my eyes sting.

The sugar crust crackles under my finger.

Orange blossom water whispers.

Rum-soaked fruit sits like small jewels.

Nonna would pinch my cheek and say I finally learned the difference between generous and greedy with raisins.

“Do not be offended,” I tell the stollen. “I will sell you for love and rent.”

Luca sneezes at the smell of nutmeg, which he has done since week two.

Gabe burps with pride and sleeps like a general after battle.

I slide quilts over both of them, patchwork I sewed from old aprons when I was too pregnant to sleep and too anxious to do anything but stitch straight lines.

A year is a long time to carry a secret and a short time to become a mother.

I did not tell the men.

I did not call when I saw the plus sign, did not text when the doctor said two heartbeats, did not send a photo of the ultrasound that made me sit on a curb and cry because two bright beans looked like the beginning of a new country.

I kept telling myself I would tell them when I was braver.

Bravery kept rescheduling.

The phone buzzes again.

Lidia texts like a person throwing a tennis ball at a wall.

You alive? Oven is being a donkey. Also vendor canceled for Ravenwell. I gave your name. Answer the phone when they call or I will come up there and beat my own door with a broom.

I blink.

The Ravenwell Holiday Food Festival is the mountain event of winter, where elite chefs trade stories with women who’ve been making caramel corn since Reagan.