Page 89 of Made in Love and Blood

“One of us might as well.”

“You’re not happy about it?”

At that question, her father’s gaze turned back on the street beyond them. Not quickly enough, though. She saw what he tried to hide with distraction and distance.

“Are you happy about it?” she asked pointedly.

“It’s not for me to happy about yet,” he eventually replied, glancing back at her then. “It’s not my body; it’s not my choice. I know you heard some things that you shouldn’t have heard about Carina, but you don’t know it all, baby. You don’t know everything. When, or if, I can be happy about it, you’ll be the first to know. Okay?”

“Yeah, okay.” She shifted in her boots and peered up at the sky overhead once more. “Did you want more kids?”

“No.”

“With Mom?”

He didn’t answer right away.

Frankie waited him out.

“We never talked about it after you came along, and you were a very pleasant surprise in our mid-thirties anyway,” he said quietly. “We didn’t get that far, I suppose. We were just wrapped up in what we had in that moment. The future didn’t factor into the equation until there wasn’t a future to have anymore.”

“Well, Carina talked to me about it—said she never wanted kids. So, if she sticks to that, then what? You’re gonna be fine if she goes and aborts it?”

Salvatore’s jaw clenched, and his next words came out tight and terse. “This is not a conversation that you and I need to have, as it’s not for you and I to make the choice. So, drop it, please.”

“You could at least answer me.”

“I already did. It’s her body; it’s her choice.”

“But it’s your baby, too. You said it.”

“And if it was you, I would say the same thing. You don’t understand everything, Frankie. And the rest is not my story. Just like what you heard that day in the kitchen also wasn’t my story to tell. That shouldn’t have happened.”

“But it did,” she muttered.

“It did,” he echoed sadly. “And apparently, I am one of the lucky people who are so rare, that they get to be medically documented because of a vasectomy failure long after the time that it should be possible to happen. Statistically speaking, I mean.”

She made a face, not bothering to hide the disgust.

Salvatore must have noticed. “We are a little late, so maybe we should get going in, hmm?”

Frankie eyed the church again, still wondering something. “Who attends church at two in the afternoon anyway?”

“Lots of people, depending on the church and location. That’s not why I’m here, or why I asked you to come today.”

“So...why did you?”

Salvatore sighed, taking the steps slowly and letting her stay in stride beside him. “I haven’t been here in a while, but when I do come, I attend the meetings.”

“Meetings?”

“A.A. That one’s not mine, though. I need N.A.”

Her confusion must have been clear.

“Narcotics Anonymous, Frankie. I’ve been an opiate addict, recovering, since you were a kid, and when I had the accident, I accepted pain management while they handled the mess of my hand. It’s been hard ever since.”

She blinked, stopping on the top step while he continued forward. It took him a few more paces before he realized she’d stopped following him altogether. In that moment, she saw her father differently than she ever had before.