All Chapters of Second Time, Mrs. Ricciardi: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

Night made my house look like a place where normal people lived again.That was a lie, obviously.A house with two four-year-olds was never truly normal. It just stopped screaming long enough for the adults to start believing they were still in control.It was almost eleven when I stepped onto the back terrace carrying a thick blanket and a glass of warm water. Kendra had gone to bed half an hour earlier after making sure Gabby’s night-light was pink, not blue, because according to Gabby, blue was “too sad for princess.” Al was asleep with the whale shark covering half his face and one leg sticking out from under the blanket, as if a few hours ago he hadn’t nearly exposed a family secret in front of his biological father while smelling like vomit and pastry.The ocean stretched out in front of the house, black except for white lines of surf that appeared for a second and disappeared again. The San Francisco night air was still cold, even with the glass wall sheltering the left side of

I woke up feeling like one side of my head was being renovated without permission.Not dramatic pain. I wasn’t dying. There was just an imaginary contractor behind my left eye tapping a tiny hammer every time I moved too quickly.Tequila.After I announced that I was never going to tell Rafael about the twins, Tara stared at me for five seconds, stood up, and went inside to find something she claimed was “strong enough to accompany denial that big.”She came back with a bottle of tequila.Arsen cut the limes.And I, a grown woman with two children, a company, and extremely stable life choices, took three shots.Maybe four.I felt around the side of the bed for my phone. The screen lit up far too brightly.6:38.I squinted at the numbers, then flipped the phone facedown on the mattress like it had just said something rude about my mother.Outside the window, San Francisco was still pale gray. Fog clung to the glass, the ocean behind the house sounded closer than usual, and the house wa

The black velvet inside framed something bright pink.A plastic crown.Gabby’s pink glitter crown.For a moment, no one spoke.“MY CROWN!” Gabby screamed so loudly the tiny hammer in my head went back to working overtime. She reached for it with both hands.“Easy,” I said.Kendra picked up the crown first and inspected it. “Oh.”“What?” I asked.She turned it toward the light.The crown was clean.No chocolate smudges from Al’s hands. No dust from the grounds at Villa Miravento. The underside, which had been slightly sticky yesterday because Gabby once tried to repair it with lip gloss, wasn’t sticky anymore either.One of the little star-shaped pieces of glitter near the edge had almost fallen off.Now it was neatly secured again.It hadn’t just been found.It had been cleaned.Repaired.Placed in a velvet box as if it weren’t a seven-dollar plastic crown from an aquarium gift shop, but a royal artifact recovered after a war.Gabby took it and immediately put it on her head. Her hair

The silence lasted three seconds.Gabby pushed the paper toward me. “Now put in bag.”I looked up from the crayon still in my hand. “No.”“You said fine.”“I said fine to writing it, not to turning my ex—” I stopped before the sentence committed suicide in front of two four-year-olds and one babysitter who was far too invested in adult business. “—turning Mami’s client into a traveling art gallery.”Gabby wrinkled her nose. “He’s Rafa Lemon.”“That name is not helping your case.”“He fixed my crown.”“We’ve already discussed this.”“So picture is payment.”I stared at her.She stared back with the serious expression of a tiny debt collector who accepted strawberries and threats of tears as currency.“Your crown was not repaired through a barter system,” I said.Gabby pointed at the words above the drawing. “It says thank you.”“I can read. I went to school.”“Then give him.”“No.”She pulled the paper back, hugged it to her chest, then lowered her face until it almost touched the tabl

I stared at him for three seconds.Then gave up.Because I had a company, two children, blood pressure, and nowhere near enough time to wrestle a six-foot-three man in front of his security team over a drawing of him wearing a hamster-sized crown.“Fine,” I said. “Keep it. But if the glitter gets all over your documents, that is not my responsibility.”“I’ll inform legal.”“Make sure they open an investigation.”“We already have a contamination protocol.”I scoffed.The corner of his mouth moved.Barely.I might have missed it if I’d blinked.Unfortunately, I didn’t.I closed my empty folder. “Dianna, give me your marked copy before I decide to end this meeting with violence.”Dianna quickly slid her folder toward me. “Of course.”We finished the meeting twenty minutes later.Residential addresses were removed from any files held by the Ricciardi office. Verification would be handled by a third party, the data deleted after thirty days, no home visits, no contact with family members,