Letters to the Baumgarters Read Free Page B

actually growled as I put some on my plate. I lost count
after a while of how many plates were passed piled with all sorts of pastas
filled with sweet prosciutto, smoky pancetta, and buttery sopressata.
    “What did I tell you about the food?” Nico asked, nudging me, his mouth
half-full. I could only whimper in response, sweet, heavenly pasta melting on
my tongue. If there was something I loved almost as much as the Italian
language, it was Italian food, and this was the best I’d ever had in nearly a
year living in Italy.
    “Nico made the lasagna,” Mama Dorotea said, smiling over at me. “And the Zeppole for dessert. Wait until you taste!”
    “You cook?” I managed, swallowing the perfect bite with a bit of wine.
    His cheeks pinked up as he shoveled another mouthful in, not responding.
    “Our Nico is the best cook in the family.” Mama Dorotea reached over and
ruffled his hair, making her son blush a deeper shade of red.
    “Mama!” he protested, waving her away.
    “It’s true,” Caprice piped up. “No one can outcook Nico.”
    “Nona Lara was better,” Nico said, gulping his own wine. “My
grandmother,” he said to me. “She’s who taught me how to cook.”
    “Nona Lara watched the children while I worked,” Mama Dorotea explained.
“She was here when they came home from school every day.”
    “We made dinner together every night,” Nico said.
    And now I had a clear picture of this family, the single, young widowed
mother, a grandmother staying home to take care of the children while she
worked. I hadn’t been in the midst of any sort of family for a long time, and
it felt good to be in the middle of the chatter, the teasing, the inside jokes
I didn’t understand but made me smile anyway. I didn’t know if it was the wine,
the food, or the people, but I was far more comfortable than I had expected to
feel surrounded by strangers. It probably should have made me nostalgic for my
own family, but my mother, although a single mother in her own right, had given
me turkey TV-dinners on Thanksgiving and always confused my birthday with her
own. It was hard to miss stuff like that.
    “Thanks for inviting me,” I whispered to Nico while the two kids argued
with their mother about getting dessert if they hadn’t finished their dinner. I
saw his mother smile at us approvingly, saw the look she exchanged with her
oldest daughter when Nico leaned in to say “You’re welcome,” into my ear.
    “Mama!” A voice called from the other room and everyone looked up.
    “They’re here!” Mama Dorotea stood, putting her napkin down on the table
and rushing toward the doorway. “They’re here! They’re here!”
    “They’re here!” The kids jumped up and followed and so did both Anna and
Caprice. Only Sal sat unmoving, shoveling in huge mouthfuls of lasagna.
    “You’d think the messiah had returned,” I murmured, making Nico snort
laughter beside me.
    “You could say that,” he replied with a smile. “You see, my sister and
her husband—”
    That was as far as he got before the whole lot of them burst into the
room, all surrounding a pretty young woman with the same dark hair, hers cut
shorter than the rest, curling around her cherubic face, her blue eyes bright
with laughter.
    “Let us take a breath!” the young woman—Giulia, I assumed—exclaimed, her
gaze falling on her brother. “Can you help me, Nico?”
    He stood, taking two strides toward his sister to take something from her
arms. It took me a moment to register what it was, and by the time Nico had
reached me, his sisters and mother following, exclaiming all around him, I felt
rooted in my chair, trapped and speechless.
    “Meet his highness, the Bianchi messiah, my sister’s son, Luka—the first
boy in the family since I was born.” Nico pulled back the blue knitted blanket
to show me the tiny face of a very newborn baby. He couldn’t have been more
than a week or two old, his little hand drawn up to his mouth, eyes screwed