The Woman at the Docks - Jessica Gadziala Page 0,84

and t-shirts, with his face all scruffy, I had to admit it was nice to see him in a suit and even clean-shaven again.

"Hold on. A couple more breaths," I demanded, taking in a deep one.

"Everything is going to be fine. You've already met a few of these people," he reminded me.

"A few, yes. There's an entire football stadium in that house from the looks of this parking situation."

Lucky's mother's house was a white wash brick two-story structure with immaculately tended, sprawling gardens out front, happy white daisies brushing shoulders with black-eyed-Susans, giving way to giant white hydrangea bushes. There wasn't a single weed to be found. The long, winding driveway was scattered with no less than ten cars, and then there were the ones lined up on the street as well.

From where we were parked, I could see into the backyard, men toiling around on the wooden deck, children bobbing up and down in the built-in swimming pool.

"Okay. Let's do it. Before I lose my nerve," I told him, throwing open my door, walking around to the trunk to grab my dish.

"You're beautiful. The food you made is perfect. And they are going to love you," he assured me, pressing a kiss to the top of my hair as his hand found my lower back, guiding me up the front path.

There was no dramatic scene where the door was thrown open, and a woman wrapped me into a bear hug, gushing about how glad she was that Luca was bringing a nice girl over.

In fact, there was no greeting committee at all, letting us enter the house on our own accord.

Once inside, though, heads started turning, conversations faltered, and eventually, people started coming up, greeting us.

Within ten minutes, I learned—and forgot—more names than I had in the entire past year.

I was going to need Luca to make me a chart with pictures and names and little personality cues.

Adrian's house was one lovingly decorated over the decades. And her favorite decor was images of her children.There seemed to be childhood and adolescent pictures of her many children in every corner. There were walls of collages, mismatching frames across the mantle in the living room, single frames on the end tables, on the key table, a collage of high school senior pictures of each of them.

"Hey look who made it," Lucky called, walking into the room, arms wide, a beer in his hand. The whole thing came off almost like the man of the house. And, I guessed, since his father had been killed, that was exactly what Lucky was. The oldest son. They always, in their own ways, became the men of the houses, helping their mothers in any way they could, trying to ease the burden left on her. "You look like you need a drink," he added, coming close, giving me a smile.

"This is a little intimidating," I admitted. The various conversations were collectively so loud that I wasn't sure how anyone could hear the person standing beside them. Even from inside, you could hear the kids squealing out back in the pool, and there seemed to be a couple on the floor above jumping on a bed. On top of all of that, Frank Sinatra was crooning from a stereo somewhere that I hadn't spotted yet.

"Alright, come on. Let's get you somewhere a little calmer," he invited, throwing an arm around my shoulders, leading me away from Luca.

I really should have known what he was doing.

But I blindly followed him as he led me through the house, moving toward the back, slamming his hand drastically against a golden push plate on the swinging door, pushing it open, and ushering me into the kitchen.

"You said calmer," I hissed at him, shooting accusatory eyes up at him.

There was nothing calm about this place.

The kitchen.

The heart of the home.

This was pure and utter chaos.

Controlled chaos, but chaos nonetheless.

No fewer than eight women bustled around the oversize space—chopping, stirring, gathering items from the refrigerator.

The space itself had unexpectedly high ceilings with one massive ceiling fan spinning around under the skylights. The color was a bright and cheery shade of yellow with all white accents. There were mismatched food-printed hand towels hanging off the handle of the stove, off of one of the cabinet pulls, and out of the waistbands of several of the women.

Six of the eight were middle age or older women—the mothers of all the adults gathered in the front or in the pool out back. Two were younger,