Mark Winegardner - The Godfather returns

“He ate already,” Michael said. “He gets up early.”

Francesca wasn’t really that anxious about breakfast-after all, other than Uncle Mike, it was just Billy and three kids. Still, she apologized for the sausages, which were the best she had been able to find on short notice-she had no idea where to shop-but everyone else seemed to think they were fine. The rolls she’d found weren’t what she’d have chosen, either, but they went over all right, too. She could only blame being pregnant for the box of jelly doughnuts.

Her fretting gave her something to talk about other than Aunt Kay. She couldn’t figure out how to bring that up. The Corleones were Catholic, yet in the last few years both Aunt Connie (who’d been married to Ed Federici for less than a year before they’d split up) and Uncle Mike had gotten divorced. And there must be some reason her mother and Stan the Liquor Man had never gotten married. All that, plus Billy’s situation. It had Francesca worried. She couldn’t think of much that would be more horrible than living a continent away from your kids.

“I was sorry to hear about you and Kay,” Billy said. Blurted it out, just like that. Francesca didn’t know whether to admire him for his bluntness or slap him.

Michael answered with a rueful nod.

Francesca reached across the table and gave her uncle’s arm a squeeze in sympathy.

“I spent my whole childhood rooting for my parents to get a divorce,” Billy said. “But you and Kay didn’t-”

She kicked him under the table.

“You never know, I guess,” Billy said. “How often do you get to see Tony and Mary?”

Just like that, right in front of them. Slapping him seemed like the way to go.

“Not as often as I’d like,” Uncle Mike said. “I’m trying to rearrange some of my responsibilities with my businesses so that I’ll have more time for that.”

“Daddy has a new airplane !” Mary said. “He’s going to fly and see us all the time now.”

Tony took another jelly doughnut, though he hadn’t eaten the one that was on his plate.

“I keep a small apartment in New York for when I’m there on business,” Michael said. “I may get something bigger so that they can stay there, too, whenever I come east.”

“I still think of all of you as being in New York,” Francesca said. “It seems like you just moved to Nevada.”

“Six years,” Michael said. “Almost four in Tahoe. I kept both houses, in Vegas and Tahoe, too. They’re both bigger than I need, but for Mary and Tony they’re home. They’ve been home.”

“It’s different these days,” Billy said. “People move around a lot more. Look at us, sweetie. Three years of marriage, three addresses.”

“It’s funny,” she said, “all those years in Florida, and I still think of New York as home. I should have gone to college there, the way Kathy did. She loved being back.”

“But then we’d have never met,” Billy said.

Francesca cocked her head. He was completely sincere, crestfallen, as if he really were imagining never meeting her. It was so impossibly vulnerable, she just melted.

“The love of my life,” she said, completely sincere, too, reaching out to stroke his cheek.

“Francie and Bee-Boy sittin’ in a tree,” Mary said. “C’mon, Tony. Sing it with me.”

“Dad,” Tony said. “Tell her to cut it out.”

Michael Corleone raised his coffee cup. “To love,” he said.

It was the perfect thing to say.

The kids stopped squabbling and everyone raised a glass, and no one, Francesca thought, could have felt anything but love.

Except Billy, whose participation in the toast couldn’t have been more halfhearted.

When they left, Francesca sent a plate of food along for the bodyguard.

They stood on the white marble front steps, waving as the car pulled away. “You always say you love my family,” she said to Billy. Sonny was running in circles, arms pumping, carrying his teddy bear like a football. “So why don’t you like my uncle?”

They’d been through so much. Why not get rid of this taboo, too?

But Billy didn’t say anything. He called to Sonny to stay away from the street. Sonny wasn’t all that close to the street, actually, but Billy picked him up and went inside.

That night, after Sonny was asleep, Francesca came to bed, exhausted, to see that Billy had her side covered with file folders. He was propped up on his side, reading.

“Want me to sleep on the sofa?”

He looked up, startled, then immediately scooped up the folders and dropped them to the floor. She got into bed, and he turned off the light and started giving her a massage: unhurried, careful, lingering on her swollen feet and sore lower back. She’d come to bed with barely enough energy to close her eyes, but when he finally took her nightgown all the way off, she turned toward him, and when his tongue slid between her lips, she let out a low, hungry gasp.

“What was that?” he said.

“Shut up and love me,” she said.

For a few moments, minutes, she forgot everything she was worried about and just was.

Out of breath afterward and slick with sweat, she felt enormous again. Billy rested his tanned arm on her mountainous fish-white belly. They lay like that for a long time.

The baby started kicking, harder than ever.

“Why don’t I like your uncle, huh?” Billy asked.

“Forget it,” she said. She knew, anyway, or thought she did. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

She felt the searing pain of a contraction.

“Wow. I felt that, ” Billy said. “What a kick!”

She clenched her jaw to endure the pain. It started to ease.

“Remember when I broke my leg skydiving?” Billy said.

“Of course I do,” she said, her breathing slowing now.

“I lied. I’ve never been skydiving in my life.”

Her hips bucked with another contraction, sharper this time.

“I think this is it,” Francesca said. “I think I’m having the baby.”

That night, Francesca fell victim to her family’s grim history. Her paternal grandmother always refused to talk about it, but she’d had at least four miscarriages. Her maternal grandmother went to Mass every July 22 to mourn the one she had. Her mother and two of her aunts had suffered them, too.

Francesca’s baby, born three months prematurely, was a fighter. She lived for almost a day. She was named Carmela, after her great-grand-mother. Francesca wanted to bury her next to her as well, on the family burial plot on Long Island. Billy disagreed. He thought the baby should be buried in Florida. Circumstances-the horror of losing the baby and Billy’s all-around contrition even before that-ensured that this was a disagreement, not an argument, and that Francesca would prevail.

Michael Corleone paid for everything. Francesca knew that Billy objected, but she was pleased that he had the good sense not to insult her uncle by refusing his help. The ceremony was small and held at the cemetery, in a driving snowstorm.

Billy’s parents didn’t even come. Her own twin sister didn’t come, either-just sent a telegram from London saying she was sorry to learn the bad news. Her brother Frankie missed the spring intersquad football game for it and never complained. Her brother Chip missed his own sixteenth birthday party for it, also without a second thought. Family.

It was a traditional Italian cemetery, with pictures of the dead in cameo frames mounted on the marble monument. As Francesca left, she bent to kiss the cold images. Grandma Carmela. Grandpa Vito. Zia Angelina. Uncle Carlo. Her father, Santino Corleone. She looked into his laughing eyes and thought, See you next time, Daddy.