Chapter 16

ELLA

~ONE WEEK LATER~

“Cato, where are your shoes?” Leo called from the hallway.

The chaos of the school run had begun, and Leo and I had the unwieldy task of getting eight kids fed, dressed, and ready to leave the house.

“Cato!” Leo repeated.

Of course, Cato was far too busy tackling Mathias on the living room floor to reply.

“Where are his fucking shoes?” I heard Leo mumble to himself. “Jesus Christ.”

I stifled a laugh before realizing that those were shouts of pain rather than squeals of laughter coming from Mathias.

“Cato, get off your brother. You’re hurting him,” I said as I tried to juggle Zacharias and his bottle in one hand and cutting Lili’s toast in half with the other.

“Sorry,” Cato said, hugging Mathias.

“Are you all right, sweetie?” I asked as Cato wiped his tears.

“Look, Mathy,” Cato said, realizing his attempts to comfort him weren’t working. “You can borrow my dinosaur for the WHOLE week!”

He held out his favorite toy dinosaur to Mathias whose face instantly lit up.

Crisis averted.

“Mommy, I don’t want to go to school today,” Silas complained as he appeared sullen in the kitchen.

“You have to go to school, Si,” Leo replied. “We’ve had this discussion many times in the last few months.”

“I thought you loved school,” I said, rubbing his shoulder.

“Not anymore, Mama.” He groaned, climbing up onto the table and lying on it facedown. “I hate it. There are so many rules!”

“There are rules here too,” I said. “And one of them is no climbing on the kitchen table. Come on, find your bag and we’ll talk about this later.”

He dragged himself away to find his bag. Despite being a fairly trivial matter, it saddened me that I hadn’t been around to be there for him if this had been going on for months. I had been completely unaware of it.

I didn’t have much time to dwell on the subject, though, before the twins appeared in the doorway.

“Oh, girls,” I said, noticing what they were wearing. “They’re Mommy and Daddy’s clothes, aren’t they? You can’t go to school like that.”

“Why not?” Marie asked.

“Because you’ll trip on that skirt,” I said, looking at the skirt, which dragged along the floor behind her.

“And, Frannie, you can’t even see with that hood,” I added, looking at the hoodie of Leo’s she was wearing that covered her from head to toe.

At that point, Leo came back into the kitchen, looking exasperated from trying to find Cato’s shoes and set his eyes on the twins. He smiled and rolled his eyes.

“Come on, you two,” he said, picking them up, one in each arm. “It’s not fancy-dress day.”

They laughed and giggled as their dad picked them up into the air, and as far as I could hear, they didn’t object to changing.

What made Leo such a great father was his ability to make anything fun, which always led to far fewer tantrums and arguments.

Ten minutes later, six children were lined up in the hall.

One didn’t have any shoes on, one had peanut butter all over her face, another had a plastic dinosaur toy in his hand, another was brooding and frowning, and the final two were already on their second outfits of the day.

“Cato, where are your shoes?” I asked in desperation as I strapped the youngest two Lorens into the stroller.

“I don’t know, Mama,” he replied.

“Where did you take them off?” Leo asked.

“Oh yeah! I remember!” he shouted, before running out the front door.

I exchanged looks with Leo and sighed.

It rained last night.

Another ten minutes later and we were finally ready. Cato’s shoes left by the heater to dry and on his feet, his only other pair of shoes: his sandals, which due to the fact that it was cold outside, he wore with socks.

“Looking good, bambino,” Leo said as we left.

“Grazie, Papa,” he replied with delight.

“Oh shit,” I cursed as Zacharias projectile vomited all over himself from the pram and promptly began to screech. “We’re going to be late.”

I lifted Zacharias out and began rushing upstairs.

“Leo, you’ll have to take them. I’ll stay here with Lili, Zach, and Stefano,” I said.

“Are you sure you’ll be all right?” he asked.

I nodded. “Come on, Lils, you’re staying with Mama.”

“I’ll be back in twenty minutes,” he said, before herding the eldest five of the flock out and closing the door.

Since I returned, Leo hadn’t been working much to stay at home with me and make sure I wasn’t having to ever struggle with all the kids alone.

We spent more time as a family than we ever had before too, including numerous trips to the park, movie nights, and baking.

The kids were happy again and fortunately didn’t seem too damaged by the fact that I disappeared for months, and then when they thought they had me back, I went again.

Many people visited me during the times when Leo did have to do some work, including Max, my mom, Rosa, all of Leo’s brothers and sisters, and when he had earned Leo’s trust back, Luca.

I even went one day to see my dad, who was delighted to hear about his old friend José’s part in my rescue.

Everything was back to normal, and life was good. That evening as we had dinner as a family and watched the kids play afterward, I didn’t find myself thinking about Andrea once.

Well, that was until there was a thud-like knock on the door, and everything came gushing back up to the surface.