Melinda Curtis - Michael's Father

Cori lifted her chin. She’d done nothing wrong. Her grandfather was the one who’d shut her out. But there were fences that needed to be mended, even if he wasn’t letting her come home to stay.

“Michael, this is your great-grandfather.” Cori bent to gently urge her son forward. “Shake his hand.”

Her pride and joy cast a glance at Luke, who smiled and nodded reassuringly. Raising his small hand solemnly, Michael hesitated, then stepped forward to meet Salvatore Messina.

Time hung on Michael’s extended arm. No one moved. No one spoke.

“Playing at royalty, are we?” Salvatore finally said brusquely, glaring at Cori. “It won’t work. He gets nothing from either me or your mother.”

Michael smashed into Cori’s leg at record speed, then pivoted behind her, little arms wrapping around her bare leg. Luke looked uncomfortable but said nothing.

“Don’t.” Cori had known seeing her grandfather would be awkward, but was shocked at his icy reception toward her, and especially toward Michael.

“Maria, what’s for dinner?” Salvatore bellowed, dismissing them as he moved to the head of the elegant table.

Luke sat to his right, leaving Cori and Michael to sit to his left. After standing indecisively for a few moments, Cori dragged out two heavy straight-back chairs and tried to settle Michael into the place farthest from her grandfather—but Michael was having none of it.

“Michael, I need you to sit in your chair.” Cori kept her voice low while trying to guide Michael’s little body into his seat, hating that her grandfather observed their struggle.

“No.” The high pitch of his young voice was adamant. He stared up at his great-grandfather with untrusting eyes, chin tucked into his chest.

Ignoring the clash over seating, Maria served lamb chops, asparagus, sweet potatoes and sourdough rolls. This seemed to be the last straw for Michael, who had wriggled halfway into Cori’s lap.

“Not that,” he wailed, his little finger pointing to the asparagus and sweet potatoes. “I want McDonald’s.”

“He’s a mama’s boy,” her grandfather noted, not bothering to look up from his meal.

Years of training at the Messina dinner table, where opinions were expressed hotly but rebuttals against her grandfather were not allowed, kept Cori silent, even as her body heated with the need to defend herself and her son. Michael’s warm presence in Cori’s lap didn’t help. Any minute now, she feared she’d break out in a sweat.

“We took you everywhere when you were a child,” Salvatore Messina continued. “You ate everything. You never hung on your mother’s skirts.”

They’d joked so much back then, she and her grandfather, each trying to put one over on the other. It was hard to believe this man, or the man in her dorm room that fateful day, was the grandfather who had doted on her during her childhood.

“He’s only four,” Luke said, receiving a cool stare from Salvatore Messina for his defense.

“I didn’t have any freedom,” Cori declared, thinking of the one thing she’d been lacking in her highly structured childhood, the one thing she’d longed for.

Her grandfather scoffed. “You had family. And you were confident of yourself.”

Had she been confident? Cori didn’t think so. She’d traveled so much until she was eighteen, she’d perfected the veneer of sophistication. Her insecurities were kept hidden behind an arsenal of good manners and a smile that eased her out of most difficulties. She’d reveled in her independence in college and started making close friends, finally telling her grandfather she couldn’t travel or help him entertain during the school year because it interfered with her studies. She’d dutifully returned for spring break, summer vacation and the holidays, finding comfort in the familiar bustle of activity, and the sense of belonging home and family offered.

And then she’d met Blake, so proudly self-sufficient, so staunchly convinced that he could make it on his own. Little had she known that Blake would be her role model in the years to come.

“But I guess we didn’t teach you any morals, since you decided to be just another unwed mother, bringing another unwanted child into the world.”

“He isn’t unwanted.” Cori strove to keep her voice calm, uncomfortably conscious of Michael on her lap.

Salvatore raised one bushy, silver brow and leaned toward Cori and her son. “You said his father didn’t want you. Maybe because he had a wife?”

Cori almost refuted his spiteful words, but caught herself. What her grandfather believed didn’t matter.

“Or maybe it was because you didn’t know who the father was.” Her grandfather flung the words at her.

Cori’s stomach sank to her toes.

“Grandpa! That’s enough.” Luke growled at Salvatore Messina.

“How dare you?” Cori managed to push the heavy chair back from the table and lift Michael from her lap and into her arms, attempting escape before her grandfather said anything worse.

“I’ll tell you how I dare.” Unrelenting, Salvatore shouted at her back. “It says unknown on that boy’s birth certificate. That means he’s a bastard. When I find out who fathered him, I’ll make sure he knows what a coward he’s been and make him pay.”

She spun on her grandfather with an outraged gasp, Michael clinging silently to her chest. “It doesn’t matter what his birth certificate says in this day and age. If you ever call him that again, you’ll be sorry.”

“Idle threat.” Everything about her grandfather was as tight as steel, from the set of his shoulders to the taut lines framing his eyes.

Cori struggled to keep her body from shaking. How could he be so horrible? How would they manage to stay in the same house together? There was only one person who could make him behave. And then, only when he wanted to behave. So Cori drew on the only defense she had left.

“I’ll tell Mama. About the choice you gave me.” Cori caught Luke’s frown and ignored him. She’d never told Mama or Luke why she hadn’t come home. Mama had attempted to talk about Michael’s father once, but Cori deftly changed the subject and Mama had never tried again. Cori hadn’t wanted to tell her mother and brother, risking them taking sides and dividing the family just as her grandfather had predicted.

Cori waited for her words to sink in before she turned away from her grandfather. She noticed his expression sag into something resembling regret. If her grandfather felt any remorse, he had a strange way of showing it.

Cori stumbled up the stairs and into her room. Completely drained, she sank onto the bed with Michael still clinging to her, his head tucked into her neck. Somewhere, in the farthest corner of Cori’s mind, she’d hoped that things had changed, that her grandfather would accept Michael without knowing who his father was. But Salvatore Messina’s feelings on the matter were clear.

She fought her tears, not even slightly appeased to know she had a bargaining chip with her grandfather—her silence.

Cori could never let her grandfather know the truth about Michael. She didn’t understand why he’d kept alive his desire to punish both Cori and Michael’s father for their unplanned pregnancy. His animosity was overwhelming. Worse, Salvatore Messina still had the power to destroy Blake, to fire him, kick him out of his home and attempt to make sure he wouldn’t find work in the wine industry again.

“He’s mean, Mommy.”

Reflexively, Cori’s hands stroked a soothing pattern on his back.

“Yes, he can be, Peanut.”

“He’s loud. He yelled about daddies.” Michael snuffled and wiped his nose on her dress. “And I don’t have one.”

This was a phrase Michael used often. Cori’s heart ached over her son’s desire for a father.