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“You married Papa in nine days,” Lupo says from across the table.

“Nine days, but I had known him twelve years first.” Diana lets that sit while she serves Sarah more pasta, and my rehearsed defense dies quietly in my lap. “You, Doctor. What do your people say about two weeks?”

My people. “My parents died when I was in medical school. A car accident. My brother lives in Hawaii, and he’ll say plenty once he stops yelling.”

Her hand comes to my wrist at the first part. She murmurs Italian too softly for me to catch and crosses herself with the ease of long practice. “Protective?”

I nod and smile.

“That is good. Brothers should be protective of their sisters. It is their job.” Her approval shows in the creases at the corners of her eyes. Not a smile, but near enough.

Honesty bought me a truce our script never would have.

“And your hospital allows you to vanish to Italy?”

“I never take vacations, so I have some time off saved up. This seemed like a good enough reason to use it.” I give Lupo a doting smile unsubtle enough for her old eyes to notice it.

“A doctor who never rests.” Her eyes flick to her son. “You match already.”

“She undersells herself,” Nick says, two seats down, without looking up from his plate. “Full ballroom for that keynote. They ran out of chairs.”

I’m surprised he joined in, but then remember to demur. “I gave one lecture. No big deal.”

“Full ballroom for your keynote,” Nick repeats, and Diana’s gaze does another slow lap of me, recalibrating. He adds, “Seems like a big deal to me.”

“Veda reads Pip’s voices right,” Sarah offers around her fork. “Papa reads Pip wrong. He does her like she’s a grown-up.”

“Papa overdoes everything,” Diana says, and her eyes come back to me with a scale behind them, still weighing. “It is his best quality and his worst one.”

“Ma,” Lupo says.

“What? Your wife is a scientist. She appreciates accurate data.” In her mouth, the word wife sounds gracious, yet also unconvinced. “Mangia. You are too thin for my son. He likes a woman with blood in her.”

“Ma.”

She huffs at that, and the dinner runs into overtime at dessert. “Will you give Sarah a brother?”

I inhale half a sip of wine. We did not rehearse that. The wine chokes me, but I try to speak. “Eh⁠—”

“A sister,” Sarah corrects.

“Ma.”

“It is a question I am allowed to ask of my daughter-in-law.” Diana pats my back until I stop coughing. The woman is entirely unrepentant but pours me more wine as compensation.

Afterward, in the sitting room, Lupo hands me a limoncello and stations himself at my shoulder. My body starts to lean into him, and I make it stop, and Diana sees both halves of that. Nothing in her expression says which half she believed.

At seven, I check my watch, excuse us both, and take Sarah up for her evening meds. While I count pills into the little cup, she watches me with a scientist’s frown of her own. “Do you like Nonna?”

“I do. Do you think she likes me?”

“She gave you the big glass. The big glass means she’s deciding.”

“Well, that’s something.”

“I like you so far, so I think she will too.”

That’s the thing about kids. Especially kids who know they are sick. They don’t mince words, most of the time. They know how short life is, and wasting it on lies makes no sense.