I look at my daughter in Matteo's arms.
She looks back with those green eyes, alert and unimpressed.
Entirely herself already.
"Welcome to the island," I tell her.
Then I cry harder, because the little person I spoke to in the dark, the one I greeted every morning with a hand on my stomach, is here. In the room. In our arms.
She is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.
My heart sings.
My omega sings louder.
JENNIFER
ONE YEAR LATER
The island is beautiful this time of year. Matteo told me that before we came, and for once he was underselling it. The water below the hill catches the morning light and scatters it back in shards of silver. Yellow flowers along the shell path breathe out a warm, honeyed scent. The herb garden has gone lush and unruly, rosemary spilling over its borders as if rules no longer apply here.
I stand at the kitchen window with a cup of coffee and my daughter, Sofia balanced on my hip.
Sofia inherited my green eyes and dark hair, which in humidity behaves with the same complete disregard for structure as mine. She also seems to have inherited, from elsewhere, the combined stubbornness of every alpha I have ever loved. At present this is focused entirely on refusing to release the dish towel she acquired during the three seconds I looked away.
She is wearing the yellow onesie Santos bought in three sizes because he said the color suited her.
He was right. It does.
We named her on the second day, when it became clear she already had opinions and needed something to sign them with.Sofia, because it works in Italian and Spanish, and because when Santos said it out loud in the medical room she turned her head toward him. Tomas called it a coincidence, but it suits her. And it’s a precious name, just like her.
"Sofia," I tell her. "The towel is not a toy."
She looks at me with those eyes and says nothing.
“Why did you take after your dads?”
Santos walks in, and then says, "She got it from you."
He grins at the pan.
At first we agreed to live on this island forever. It was a silly fantasy, and the idea lasted before Sofia was born.
Santos is happiest in the kitchen, flour on his shirt and three pans going at once, but Matteo and Tomas need offices, screens, calls, deadlines, the whole serious-person ecosystem. I don’t mind. I only care that everyone is happy, apparently it is key to a successful relationship, and so far we’re all doing great.
Every second week or so, Matteo and Tomas fly back for a few days to handle whatever business deal they have under their sleeves. They call constantly, send photos of miserable boardrooms, complain about hotels, and behave as though they have been exiled for decades rather than forty-eight hours.
Then they come home carrying far too many gifts for Sofia.
They spoil her.
To be fair, we all do.
Sofia grabs a fistful of my hair and I make the involuntary sound.
I hear the tender before I see it.
The low steady sound of the supply boat coming into the dock, which shouldn’t be happening today, because they never run on Sundays. I go back to the window with Sofia on my hip and my coffee going cold.