Leo turned four on the second Saturday of November.

Vittoria wanted a party. Two hundred guests, a string quartet, a cake from Ferrara shaped like a castle.

Clara wanted something else.

"He's never going to remember a quartet," she told Rico. "But he's going to remember if two hundred strangers try to pinch his cheeks."

So they compromised—or rather, Rico listened to both women argue for twenty minutes, then quietly said, "Small. Family only. In the garden."

Vittoria gave Clara a look that could have frozen the fountain solid.

But on Saturday, she arrived with a cake. It wasn't shaped like a castle. It was round and plain and frosted white, with four blue candles and a single word piped across the top in her own careful hand: LEO.

"It's the kind Elena used to make him," she said stiffly, setting it on the table. "I asked Rosa for the recipe."

Clara looked at her in surprise.

Vittoria didn't look back. But her cheeks colored faintly.

---

The garden had been strung with paper lanterns. Evan, who had spent two weeks in the house being driven to school by a bodyguard and was beginning to find it hilarious, had blown up forty balloons and tied them to every chair. Dante wore a paper crown. Nobody dared comment on it.

Leo ran in circles on the lawn, shrieking with joy, chased by Evan pretending to be a dinoNextr.

Clara stood by the dry fountain and watched Rico watch his son.

"He's laughing," Rico said quietly. "He laughs every day now."

"I know."

"Six weeks ago he bit Dante in front of forty people."

"He's still going to bite people sometimes," Clara said. "He's four. Four-year-olds bite."

Rico laughed. It was easier now, the sound. Less rusty.

"Thank you," he said, unexpectedly.

"For what?"

"For the party. For making it small." He watched Leo trip, roll across the grass, and come up laughing. "Elena wanted small. Every year, my mother wanted a ballroom, and Elena wanted the garden. I always took my mother's side. It was easier."

"And this year?"

"This year I listened to the person who was right."

Clara glanced at him. He was still watching his son, but the corner of his mouth had lifted.

Across the lawn, Vittoria had settled into a garden chair with a glass of prosecco. She was pretending not to watch Leo. She was watching nothing else.

When Leo ran past her, she held out a breadstick without a word.

Leo stopped. Took it. Ran on.

Vittoria sipped her prosecco and looked very satisfied with herself.

"She's trying," Clara said.

"She is," Rico agreed. "It's the first time I've ever seen her try at anything. She usually just wins."

Evan roared and lunged. Leo screamed with delight and fled behind Dante's legs. Dante, crown askew, folded his arms and announced in a deep voice that this dinoNextr would have to go through him.

It was, Clara thought, the most normal afternoon she had spent in that house.

It lasted eleven more minutes.

Then the gate opened, and Nico walked in.

He was carrying an enormous gift box wrapped in red paper, and he was smiling his bright, easy smile. He kissed Vittoria. He clapped Rico on the shoulder. He winked at Clara.

"Didn't think I'd miss my favorite nephew's birthday, did you?"

Rico's smile didn't move. But Clara, standing beside him, felt his whole body change—a subtle tightening, like a wire pulled taut.

"Glad you could make it," Rico said.

"Wouldn't miss it." Nico set the box on the gift table. "Hey, Leo! Come see what Uncle Nico got you!"

Leo stopped running.

He looked at Nico from across the lawn. Then he walked—slowly, the way he walked toward the bathtub on bad nights—to Clara, and stood pressed against her legs.

"Open it later, buddy," Rico said evenly. "Let's do candles first."

---

They sang. Evan sang loudest and worst. Vittoria sang in Italian.

Rosa lit the four blue candles.

Leo stood on a chair in front of the cake, eyes enormous in the candlelight. He took a breath. Then he stopped, and turned, and looked at Rico.

"Daddy," he said. "You help."

Rico went very still.

It was the first time Clara had ever heard Leo call him that—not him, not nothing, but Daddy, clearly and on purpose.

Rico knelt beside the chair. He put one arm around his son's waist. Together, cheek to cheek, they blew.

Three candles went out. The fourth flickered stubbornly.

Leo blew again, alone. It went out.

Everyone cheered. Vittoria pressed a handkerchief to her eyes. Rosa crossed herself twice. Dante, still wearing his paper crown, cleared his throat loudly and looked at the sky.

And Rico held on to his son for a long moment, eyes closed, as though he would never let go.

---

It was after cake, when the light was fading and the lanterns had begun to glow, that Leo opened Nico's present.

Clara was helping him. She tore away the last of the red paper and lifted the lid of the box.

Inside was a toy car.

It was large and expensive—a remote-controlled model of a sleek Italian sports car, glossy and perfect, painted bright cherry red.

Leo looked at it.

And then he began to scream.

Not the screaming from the restaurant. Not the angry screaming of a tired child. It was a sound Clara had never heard from him—raw and piercing, as if the car itself had burned him. He scrambled backward off the chair, fell on the grass, kept scrambling.

"No! No! No red! No red car!"

Clara dropped to her knees beside him. Rico was there an instant later.

"Leo. Leo, look at me—"

But Leo wasn't looking at either of them.

He was looking across the lawn, past the gift table, past the lanterns, with an expression of absolute terror.

He was looking at Uncle Nico.

---