*Four Years Later*
*Elio*
I sat across from my parents, feeling a strange nervousness as my dad inspected the tax documents I’d brought. He had put me in charge of the business a while ago, but I wasn’t sure I would ever feel like I could live up to his expectations.
My mom smiled at me over her plate of spaghetti. She’d shown up with a bag of groceries and made the spaghetti just because she knew it was one of my favorites.
My parents traveled a lot, especially now that the houses were built, and Dad was enjoying being mostly retired. I had my own house now, and they’d given Matilde and Caterina a house next to mine and told me to keep watching out for the girl.
It was hard enough building up the company let alone play “dad” to a kid, but I kept remembering the way Tallon had talked about the death of his friend and how he’d promised to look out for Matilde and her daughter. It was a pain keeping an eye on the girl, but I felt like I owed it to Tallon.
