Then she’d turned nineteen. Her birthday was July nineteenth, right in the middle of the summer. Her parents had taken the family out to eat to celebrate. Everyone came, even her second oldest sister Arabella, Vincente’s twin, who was overdue with her first baby. Some of the Espositos had come along as well, and Sophie had nearly melted into a little puddle on the floor when Marco walked in with Stefano and Tomaso, her big brothers. He’d just gotten into town and was leaving again in the morning, he said.
He’d winked at her and wished her a happy birthday, and her evening had been complete. She could have sat and looked at him all night. But right in the middle of the meal, Arabella’s water had broken. While Belle’s husband Lionel ran for the car, the rest of the family had gotten their food in doggie bags to take to the hospital and once there, they’d simply taken over the waiting room.
Marco had come along. “So I can give Ma a personal report in the morning,” he’d said, white teeth flashing in a grin.
Sophie could still remember the stunned look on the nurse’s face when she’d opened the door to tell them Arabella had had a girl. “You can’t all be family,” she’d said, falling back a pace.
And then, her prayers had been answered....
It was nearly dawn, and everyone headed home for some sleep. To Sophie’s delight, Marco slung a friendly arm across her shoulders as they all trooped down the corridor. “You can ride with me,” he said. “Keep me company so I don’t fall asleep on the way home.”
She was too breathless, too thrilled, to reply. Marco had parked in the lot at the opposite end of the hospital and they left the others at the doors. He talked, drew her out until she relaxed, and they spoke of little things during the drive home: her college plans, his recent work with environmental geophysics in western Australia, their various siblings, most of whom were in the early years of marriage and parenting. They’d stopped at an all-night grocery and gotten sodas and talked some more. The sky was growing light and everyone else had beaten them home, from the look of all the parked cars on the street when they pulled up in front of their side-by-side homes.
He got out of the car and came around to open her door.
“Thanks for riding with me,” Marco said “Happy birthday.” Then he put a finger beneath her chin and tilted her face up to his, pressing his lips lightly to hers.
It had been intended only as a familiar, brotherly caress, she thought, with the wisdom of hindsight.
But at the first touch of his mouth on hers, she lifted her arms to his wide shoulders and gave herself to the kiss, making a small whimpering sound of delight deep in her throat. Marco froze for an instant, and a part of her registered his shock. Then his arms came around her and he pulled her hard against him, fusing their bodies together in a breath-stealing fit that made her moan again.
He caught the sound with his mouth, tracing her lips with his tongue, then opening them for the masterful invasion of his tongue. Kissing her deeply, repeatedly, he stroked his palms over the soft flesh of her back down to the upper swell of her buttocks and back up to her shoulders until she was hanging limp in his arms, surrender a foregone conclusion.
When he finally lifted his head, there was a look of utter bemusement on his face. “Whoa,” he’d said, breathing hard, and she thrilled to the feel of his hard body against hers. “I wasn’t expecting that.”
She blushed to the roots of her hair as she realized how forward she’d been, and struggled to free herself from his arms. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It wasn’t—”
But he shut her up in mid-sentence simply by kissing her again, and as before, every cell in her body had recognized him, and she responded with everything in her. When he lifted his head the second time, he said, “I didn’t say I didn’t like it, I just wasn’t expecting it. ”
He paused, and an odd look crossed his face. She got the impression he was weighing something in his mind, and then he said, “Tomorrow night. Dinner? And a movie?”
Sophie put down her book and paced to the window of her apartment, looking out into the night as if she might see him there. Altogether he’d taken her out less than two dozen times, flying in for a quick visit in between assignments.
In between times, she’d waited impatiently. He never called, never wrote. She never knew when he was coming until she heard one of her siblings mention that he’d arrived, or until she answered the door to find him standing on the other side.
It had been an unsatisfactory arrangement at best, and she’d longed for the day when he’d be ready to settle down.
But that day had never come. One evening during her senior year of college, Marco had come home. He’d taken her out and told her gently that he wouldn’t be coming to see her again, that he was too old for her, that she needed to forget him and get on with her own life.
She’d cried.
He’d comforted her.
And when he left the next day, she knew what it meant to be a woman. He’d been a wonderful lover, and she’d hoped to change his mind with the passion they shared, but in the end he’d gone just as he’d said he would.
And she’d been left behind for good.
Two
She had a horribly busy week at the clinic for indigent mothers in the Latino section of the city where she worked. And as if it needed a proper ending, in the middle of the night on Friday, Sophie received a call from a crisis management center that served the clinic’s area. One of her clients had been beaten up by her boyfriend and was in the hospital. The young woman had no family, so foster care arrangements had to be made for her two-month-old infant.
She was at the hospital until dawn completing paperwork. The infant had been checked out by a doctor and declared unharmed, but all of the usual temporary foster homes were either full to overflowing, or she couldn’t reach them.
Finally, around eight on Saturday morning, she got hold of a foster mother who worked with short-term emergency cases The woman agreed to take the baby, but she wasn’t available until Sunday morning. After a brief telephone consultation with her supervisor, Sophie received permission to keep the child overnight and take her to her foster home in the morning.
Fortunately she was prepared for such an event. This wasn’t the first time she’d kept a foster child with her for a night or two.
She got home near 10:00 a.m. and when the baby slept, so did she. Unfortunately little Ana got hungry a lot sooner than Sophie did, and the nap didn’t last nearly long enough. It was amazing how much time it took to accomplish even simple tasks with a baby around. She had to stop constantly to change a diaper, warm and feed a bottle, entertain when Ana fussed and rock her to sleep again in late afternoon.
Not that it was a hardship. She loved babies, always enjoyed helping with her numerous nieces and nephews. Especially now that there would be no babies of her own.
Then she remembered she’d promised her mother she’d come for dinner, so she called to warn her that a baby would be coming along. Edie Domenico, with thirteen grandchildren already, wasn’t fazed by the prospect. So Sophie grabbed a quick shower while the baby girl still slept and stuffed a diaper bag with all the paraphernalia an infant required. Settling Ana in the car seat she always kept for such emergencies, she made the ten-minute drive to her mother’s.
“Hi, everybody,” she called out as she entered her parents’ home, juggling the diaper bag, the baby and an extra bag of disposable diapers. She stopped to give her father’s cocker spaniel a scratch behind his long, silky ears and when he promptly dropped and rolled over, she rubbed his belly with the sole of her sneaker.
“Hello, Sophia,” her mother called. “I’m in the kitchen. Give that baby to your father and come help me roll out the pasta.”
Sophie grinned. She suspected that her assistance wasn’t as