Lahat ng Kabanata ng Second Time, Mrs. Ricciardi: Kabanata 111 - Kabanata 120

I swallowed, especially since I still had wine in my mouth and, for one second, I had to choose between swallowing it or choking to death in front of the man currently dismantling my life through pattern recognition.I chose life.Well, what else?Rafael was still standing a few steps away, waiting, and apparently the man possessed the deeply irritating ability to let silence sit there when he knew the other person was trying to escape it.I tilted my head and put on the most thoughtful expression I could manufacture in three seconds. “Maybe you married my twin from another multiverse and she accidentally wandered into ours.”He huffed, entirely unimpressed, “For once,” he said, “please be serious.”“Wow.” I put a hand to my chest. “I’m trying to explain a scientific possibility.”“The multiverse?”“Did you never learn science from Stephen Hawking?”“Ara.”There it was again.My name.I had no idea when he’d started shortening it so naturally, but every time it came out of his mouth,

“I answered you.” I let out an annoyed scoff.“No.”“Well, yes.”“You said yogurt.”“It was a metaphor.”“I don’t need a metaphor.”“Well, I’m very good at metaphors.”“I need the truth.”I laughed once, but the sound didn’t have its usual bite. “Which truth? We’ve got enough of them for a documentary series.”“Start with us.”I looked back at him, and just like that, all the teasing was gone. No humming. No comments about my ass. No smug little staircase games. Rafael 2.0 had apparently hit a system error, because the man in front of me suddenly looked dead serious.I took a slow breath through my nose, filling my lungs until I was sure my voice wouldn’t come out sounding like anything he could use to dissect me further.“Fine.”Rafael stayed quiet.“We were arranged.”Something shifted in his face, but he didn’t interrupt.“Your family and mine thought marrying us was a fantastic idea for reasons that probably sounded very reasonable if someone explained them in a boardroom with cha

This morning, the Sierra Nevada looked far too pristine for a house that had nearly become the site of a preschool criminal investigation last night.The sun still hadn’t fully risen as Rafael’s black SUV wound down the mountain road between pine trees and the last wisps of thin fog. The air outside was still cold, the windshield catching the pale gleam of the morning sky, and in the back seat, two four-year-olds were conducting a cold war with the intensity of rival superpowers.Kendra was asleep in the very back row with her hoodie covering half her face, her mouth slightly open, one hand still wrapped around an empty tumbler like it were the only evidence that she had ever attempted to function as a human being this morning.I sat in the passenger seat barefoot, both legs folded up on the seat. My iPad was open on my lap, the screen full of emails I’d downloaded before deliberately back turning off my phone.My hair was thrown into a messy knot on top of my head, my cream sweater h

My chest tightened instantly. Al didn’t sound sad at all. He just wanted to know the rules.In his world, if one plus one equaled two, and Mami was married to Rafa Lemon, and when.... he knew Rafa Lemon is actually his biological father, then obviously there had to be another label that needed to be applied correctly. He hated inconsistency almost as much as he hated Gabby touching his dinosaurs.I looked at Rafael.For the first time since the question had come out, he didn’t look amused either.His hands were still relaxed on the wheel, the SUV still moving smoothly down the mountain road, but something had changed around his mouth.“You can keep calling me Rafael,” Rafael continued. “Or Rafa Lemon, even though I still don’t understand why that name stuck.”“Because lemon trees,” Gabby said quickly.“I remember where it came from.”“Then why you say you don’t understand?”“Because I was hoping it was a phase.”“It’s branding,” she said, pitying him.I covered my mouth with the rim

For a few seconds, the only sounds inside the SUV were the engine, the tires rolling over the asphalt, and Gabby’s soft breathing from the back seat. Her crown had slipped even farther down, while Al was still hugging his whale shark, sleeping with the peaceful expression of someone who had just successfully negotiated an eight-percent settlement and a strawberry snack.I lowered my iPad from my lap. “You can’t leave someone if you don’t even know they exist, Rafael. That’s not how language works. Not even Italian, where apparently one word needs seventeen different versions depending on your mood.”He didn’t interrupt.Well, still suprised by that because the old Rafael would’ve had an answer before I finished breathing, probably one that made me want to throw something at his head and then regret it because I liked the object more.Rafael 2.0 just kept driving, letting me sit with what I'd said. And for some reason, his silence annoyed me more than anything he could've said.“I’m se