Total pages in book: 197
Estimated words: 199143 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 996(@200wpm)___ 797(@250wpm)___ 664(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 199143 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 996(@200wpm)___ 797(@250wpm)___ 664(@300wpm)
Still just a toddler.
And she loved him to death.
Right along with his twin brothers who at a little over a year old, were just starting to walk, and would scream if anyone tried to carry them anywhere. Which was why it took little Corrado and Chris, with their matching grins and dimples in each cheek, twice as long to cross the room to come to their mother.
Corrado had walked first.
Chris decided he had to follow along, even though he hadn’t been very interested at all walking in the first place.
Cara swiped her thumb along Marcus’s cheek, wiping away the crumbs from whatever snack he’d been eating before she pressed a soft kiss to his cheek. She didn’t linger, lest the liquid lipstick the makeup artist put on transferred, and stained his little cheek. His dark eyes watched her with a widened awe.
“Do I look pretty?” she asked.
He nodded. “Like a queen, Mama.”
Cara smiled. “Thank you.”
“Ma!”
“Mamama!”
The babbling twins finally arrived to their mother, and she took a moment to greet each of them, too. There was something painfully bittersweet about seeing all three of her boys in their little tuxes. A few years ago, she thought this day would never come.
And here they were.
She didn’t have flower girls.
Didn’t have bridesmaids.
The wedding was a production, sure.
But only those that mattered took part in the ceremony.
her husband.
His best man.
Her.
Her boys.
And her brother, who would act as her witness.
That was all Cara needed.
So what made this day worth it?
“Love you, Ma,” Marcus said.
These people she loved.
That’s what.
“Love you, baby.”
*
“You still want to do it this way?” Tommas asked at her side.
It was just them waiting behind the large oak doors leading into the church now. The song changed, and she swore the floor vibrated with the sounds of four-hundred pairs of feet standing to wait for the bride.
Cara grinned up at her brother. “Little late to change it now, isn’t it?”
“Well ... “
Her laughter rung out in the quite space. “This is how I want to do it, Tommy.”
He nodded. “That’s all that matters, then.”
Her brother always said that.
He never lied, either.
The heavy doors were pushed open by the men waiting behind it for their cue. There were a lot of things she could have took a moment to appreciate. The decorations. Her sons being allowed to freely play at the front of the altar. All of it.
Any of it.
But what she enjoyed the most was the sight of the man waiting for her at the end. In his three-piece tailored to fit tux, looking like her whole life, and a future they had already started living together before rings and vows and a piece of official paper said it was so ...
There he waited.
Smiling at her.
Cara smiled back.
And there Cara stood, hand tucked into her brother’s arm, and facing a whole church of people who perhaps some, didn’t think she was worthy to be where she was in that moment.
Not the wife of a boss.
Not wearing this dress.
Not marrying in a church of this prominence.
She thought, probably, that was one of the reasons why Gian had done this the way he did. When they talked about something smaller, he wanted to go bigger. When simple options were placed in front of them, he asked for more.
And Cara agreed.
She’d told him once, hadn’t she?
When forever was finally staring them in the face, and all the impossibilities about them finally became possible and true, she’d told him.
You’re the boss. You can do whatever you want.
And so he had.
What he wanted was her.
“Our turn,” Tommas said.
Cara nodded. “Our turn.”
Her brother walked her the twenty feet to the end of the aisle.
She walked the forty feet it took to get halfway down the church’s aisle.
And Gian met her in the middle to walk her the rest of the way.
A statement, if she ever made one.
Although, not everything needed to be said, to be.
“Love you forever, mia cara bella,” Gian told her when they reached the end of the aisle.
Yeah, she knew.
So much so, that he had to tell the whole world, too.
And wasn’t that beautiful?
The Father
Gian rested comfortably on the bench, and peered over the gravestones just a few steps up the path. He was grateful that he had paid the money to have this bench put in. While he liked the last one that was here just fine, he wanted something ... different.
Something personal.
And so, a marble bench with his grandparents’ initials carved into the back suited his purposes just fine. Sure, he imagined other people used the bench when they came to visit the graveyard, and probably with a bit of morbid curiosity about just who the initials belonged to, but he didn’t care to think about that very much.
It had special meaning to him, and that’s what mattered the most.
Or, so he was coming to learn about his life.