Page 234 of Lorenzo

“And,” I continue, “I have two grown sons. I would like grandchildren eventually. Preferably before I am too old to enjoy them.”

Mario keeps watching me.

I sigh. “What?”

“I am being serious.”

“So am I. Edoardo is twenty-seven. Alessio is twenty-four. Grandchildren are hardly an outrageous possibility.”

“That is not what I am asking.”

I wait.

He says nothing.

I recognize the tactic because we have both used it countless times over the years.

Unfortunately for him, I am his brother.

I know exactly what he is doing.

Unfortunately for me, he also knows I know exactly what he is doing, which means we could be here until dinner tonight.

I finally shake my head. “You are irritating.”

“So I have been told.”

“Frequently, I imagine.”

“Lorenzo.”

I let out a breath. “What exactly are you asking me?”

Mario leans back in his chair.

“Have you ever thought about having more children?”

Even knowing what was coming, the question catches me entirely unprepared.

For several seconds, I simply look at him.

It has been so long since anyone asked me something like that that I cannot remember the last time I considered an answer.

My sons are grown men.

The years when my house was full of toys, small shoes, arguments over bedtime, half-eaten meals, and boys racing through rooms they had been told repeatedly not to run through feel both impossibly distant and strangely close when I allow myself to remember them.

I look down at my hands.

“When Gemma and I got married, we always imagined a house full of children.”

Mario says nothing.

He knew that, or at least part of it. We were all younger then, when the future seemed like something that would unfold more or less the way we expected if we worked hard enough and protected what mattered.

“We never had a number,” I continue. “We simply assumed there would be several. Edoardo came, then Alessio, and we thought there would be more after him.”

I can still remember how ordinary that expectation once felt.