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I nod rather than deny the fact, sure that she won’t be upset about my prior knowledge. I nod to show I’m listening because I don’t have any actual words to say; I nod to agree that Jake does believe his father is some womanizing man-whore and still despises him for it … Ironically. Whatever she took my nod to mean, I hope I covered all bases.
“Jake was already becoming more than a handful. He’d gone off the rails, with that hot blood and impulsive nature of his meeting teen hormones and then a broken heart, and Giovanni was having a very difficult time reeling him in. Jacob has always been a very big handful to deal with.” She smiles affectionately for a second, wrinkling her nose with a sigh. “He had a chip on his shoulder about trust and love, so finding out his father hurt me that way sort of sealed his fate. Jake has never trusted him since, and he’s so stubborn, like his father, that he wouldn’t listen to reason.” Sylvana looks so sad and broken that her son and husband are still at odds over something she has long forgiven.
“Maybe if he knew the finer details of the affair and knew for sure his father never did it again … or even why he did?” I offer, trying to find a way to help. Really wanting my beloved to find a way to mend bridges with his dad.
“I’ve told Jake all of this. He even knows that the women in his father’s employment are blonde and blue-eyed because I made him promise never to have another woman who resembled me close to him again. Marianne Hunter was almost like a sister in looks. Daniel takes after his father with his fair hair and blue eyes, while his mother and I are almost like twins. Giovanni has a very specific type of woman he finds attractive.” Sylvana pats my knee almost to emphasize the point with a hint of a smile.
This piece of information stuns me. I once took note of the sea of small blondes that Giovanni kept as his own personal staff and assumed he had a type. It never occurred to me that respect for his wife had prompted him to never employ any small brunettes with green eyes and Italian beauty like his wife. In his own way, Giovanni was showing his love for her, and Jake completely misunderstood it or chose to ignore it.
Stubborn ass of mine!
Jake is so publicly attentive and demonstrative that his father’s seemingly apathetic attitude must be completely abhorrent to him. Chalk and cheese with apparently absolutely no understanding of one another in the slightest.
“But you found a way through it? You learned to love him again? Surely in time, Jake can also forgive him?” I’m now so completely in awe at the inner working of Giovanni and how his head must work. The man is a total enigma.
“Yes, we’re so very much in love.” Sylvana smiles dreamily, looking very much like me at that moment. A woman devoted and completely in love with a hard-headed Carrero. “He comes home every night regardless of the time it takes to get here. We made a promise never to drift apart again. I know he’s not an easy man on the surface, but our private moments are filled with affection and love and a lot of sex.” She grins naughtily again and winks my way, part of me laughs, and another wants to cringe at the thought.
“I can only hope that one day Jake finds a way to have some sort of relationship with him; where they are now is heartbreaking.” Sylvana positively glows as she talks of her newfound relationship with her husband, but the obvious pain about her child’s connection with him is evident in her tear-filled eyes. It renders me speechless. A mother’s love torn with that of a wife’s heart.
Jake has no clue about the depth of care between his parents. I guess he probably avoided any communication on the matter purely because his stubborn mind decided his father was a villain no matter what. He would be damned to believe otherwise. If only Jake knew of the love that still runs between them and that his father still cherishes and respects Sylvana above all others. Giovanni obviously has the same capabilities of love Jake has, that same deep heart, but they display it very differently.
I sigh hopelessly and gaze at Sylvana affectionately.
“Maybe becoming a father will make Jake re-evaluate things with Giovanni.” I smile with a small offering of hope.
“Maybe.” Sylvana smiles back with a twinkle in her eye and a tiny little glint of possibility, knowing deep down it is highly unlikely.
* * *
“Like this, Tesoro.” Sylvana’s soothing voice is close to my ear as she molds my hands in the dough bowl. “Gentle and delicate, so the Gnocchi stays fluffy.” She smiles and pulls away as I continue the motion she’s shown me. I have a strange surge of emotion at her tender touch and how she brushed my hair from my face with a smile. My affection for Sylvana is unlike my affection for Margo or even Wilma. There is something more, something deeper. I feel like I can come to her with anything, even cry over Jake, and she would embrace me with those loving, deep green eyes with maternal security and love me no matter what. I know she would never pick sides between us in our silly arguments, and when he hurt me, she had been so angry with him on my behalf.
Sophie is making a mess on the large table with a lot of flour and a lot of hand flapping and energetic slapping sounds but smiling widely as Sylvana moves to calm the frantic pounding of her small delicate hands in her heavy bowl. Sylvana’s guiding touch is not rejected by the young girl either, and I smile to myself.
It’s incredible knowing that her touch, so effortlessly, seems to break through the force fields that Sophie and I have; two kindred souls who used to recoil at human contact in any form, yet here we both were.
Leila is leaning over, watching Sylvana, working through a bowl of shelled nuts with a magazine in one hand, lazing in the kitchen after showing up for lunch. It’s obvious she’s bored, mulling over something, and she hasn’t been her chatting sparkling self, but neither does she seem upset. Leila is one of those people who lets you know when she wants to talk and is very good at saying nothing at all if she doesn’t. She seems happy to watch us learn to cook Italian food and revel in the atmosphere.
It’s all so very relaxed, and I cast my mind to where I would be right now if Jake and I had never embraced what we were to each other … probably decked out in tight tailored clothing and a set of stilettos on the sixty-fifth no doubt; stressed over contract briefs or mundane issues with financing and listening to Jake going off like a boar on the phone to some incompetent person. The thought doesn’t bring me any sense of regret or loss. I don’t even feel a spark of missing the offices, just the people, which is odd. For the first five years I worked there, I made no long-term bonds with anyone in that building until Jake. He somehow infected me from the word go and changed my entire outlook on the people I worked beside.
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