If her children are like the galaxy, filling her life with colour and meaning and wonder (and sometimes chaos, too) — then Everett is still the sun, the epicentral anchor around whom her days are centered.
After-all, Nena will soon be leaving them for university, and Cyrus – who’s become as much Everett’s son as her own – is finally every bit the successful, independent man he dreamt of being (or thought he already was) in his early twenties. Soon, it’ll be just the two of them again. Just she and Everett in their twilight years, as their children blink in and out of their daily lives like fiery-tailed comets.
“Bene, he looks like a particularly stupid deer. Hmph... We should ask Cyrus. I bet he would agree with me.” The mother stubbornly defends. So fiercely proud of her son, Vivianne is, even if she does maintain some stoicism whenever he visits, for the sake of not fanning the flames of his already healthy ego. Maybe finally healthy is a better term for it. After almost two decades of rebuilding all the brittle, broken parts of him and making up for the damage she herself had sowed in the two decades before it.
“We know precious little about him… Isn’t he a whole year older? We’ve almost never spoken to him.” Naturally, that wasn’t counting the times he’d dropped Maddalena off at home, or the small talk the boy had made earlier today while waiting for her. Everett had opened the door and engaged him rather pleasantly, while Vivianne had hung further back in the foyer, watching like a hawk. He’d spoken to Everett politely enough, and there was some admitted entertainment to be found when his eyes would dart nervously over her husband’s shoulder only to find hers staring right back.
Not that the conversation had lasted long, anyway.
No, Maddalena had made sure of that; bolting down the stairs two by two; a long-legged, hair-streaming flash, the moment she’d heard her father’s voice mixing with that of her crush. Funny, Vivianne thinks drily. For a girl who could spend ten hours getting ready, there was nothing quite like the risk of parental embarrassment to get her out the door at the impressive speed of light.
“… Maybe we shouldn’t have let her leave so fast.” She frets now. They had stared at each other in bemusement after that. After their daughter’s blushing goodbyes and the hasty slam of the front door still echoing in their ears. Half an hour later, they’re still discussing it in the kitchen. “Inoltre,” Vivianne sniffs, “If I were still Capobastone of an international syndicate, he wouldn’t have dared make such a hasty escape.”
But Everett’s laugh is a brilliant, carefree sound that never fails to monopolize her attention. Her eyes flicker back to his face, to that wide, easy grin, the amusement glinting in his green eyes and to his salt-and-pepper hair – which she thinks, entirely objectively – has never suited a man so handsomely as it does him.
Not that his good looks stop her from objecting when he defends the boy’s youth.
“Please. He’s hardly a teen, I was a full adult at his age.” Her voice drips with scorn as she watches Everett cook, and pulls fresh, if slightly crumpled leaves of parsley out from her apron to smooth lovingly on the counter next to him. “I bet I never looked so silly at eighteen,” Vivianne grumbles, more to herself than to her husband.
‘… When we were in university, I used to stare at you like a deer in the headlights when I thought you weren’t looking, and you still proposed to me.’
“More’s the pity,” Instantly, the threat of a blush begins to pool in her cheeks. Much to her chagrin, it never fails to spring at the reminder of how exactly they ended up hitched. “Look how I turned out.” The woman bites back, though it’s toothless when paired with the fact that she hasn’t made any move to step away from Everett as he abandons his cooking briefly and moves closer to her, curling his fingers around the pocket of her apron. It’s dangerous, that smile. A little deadlier every year for how it chips away at the sustained seconds of her resistance. Already, she feels her insides beginning to soften under his spell. Still, there’s something to be said about facades, even after all these years, so Vivianne lifts her arms to fold them tightly across her chest as he tugs her closer with that devilishly charming expression.
“ — E comunque, Craven. I was half out of my mind when I said it… You know that.”
“Only because Ciro hasn’t fallen hard for anyone, yet.” Everett’s nearly certain it’s coming any day, now. The last time Cyrus visited them, he’d taken him out to watch the Inter Milan match at a nearby sports bar. It was the typical sort of catch up — how’s work? did you see how the stock market is doing? how did the kitchen remodeling go? tell me about your life — save for the fact that as sly as Cyrus might sometimes be, he couldn’t hide the secretive smile on his lips whenever he received a text notification.
Never mind the faint female voice in the background when Everett initially called him to ask what time he needed to be picked up from the airport.
His son might be nearing forty, but Everett knows a brewing romance when he sees one. Somewhere between late-night calls advising on Cyrus’s new position at the head of Sloane Silver and years of patient — if sometimes painful — effort to gain his trust, Everett’s grown able to read his son nearly as well as he can read his wife.
It’s his duty as a father, after all. Cyrus might not look like him — not like Maddalena, with her father’s high cheekbones and free-spirited smile — but he couldn’t be more Everett’s own than if he had been in the hospital room the day he was born.
“Nine months older,” Everett corrects. “Same as you. Cradle robber.” He cants his head to the side as he slouches easily against the counter, green eyes crinkling at the corners. “Ma davvero, there’s nothing to worry about. Remember the marching band director? The one you met during the orchestra competition trip? In her opinion, he’s a star student. Well-behaved, hardworking.”
That Everett’s made use of old, familiar tools to sieve information from the unassuming boy is a fact he chooses to withhold until later, when Vivianne is less worked up. Charming civilians into spilling the particulars of their lives is a cakewalk compared to the sorts of secrets he’d pried from criminal lips in a past life, and given that Maddalena’s crush, like many teenagers, hasn’t thought to hide his internet footprint whatsoever, Everett’s already gathered an inordinate amount of intelligence on his family, extracurriculars, and lack of a criminal record.
Old habits die hard, and as harmless as young love may be, Everett refuses to take any chances with his only daughter. Then again, the only chances seem to be things like Nena being involved with a slacker, and not nearly the sort of situation that would require Vivianne’s capobastone experience.
“I’m glad you aren’t one, anymore. You’re formidable enough as it is, amore mio.” Everett slides his hand against her shoulder, smoothing his voice into a low, reassuring hum to settle her fretting once and for all. “Guardami. They aren’t even dating. Nena simply has some fluffy schoolgirl feelings for him, and even if he does reciprocate, there isn’t anything to worry about until something concrete happens.”
She isn’t you, he thinks gently. His sweet wife, who’s strived tirelessly to offer their daughter all the love and support she never had in her own childhood. Maybe it’s something to be grateful for rather than to playfully scorn, that the boy is eighteen and still retains remnants of his childhood. Maybe his innocence is simply this: a product of a loving family rather than a harsh life that forced him to grow up too fast.
Besides, Everett’s not so sure Vivianne was as adult as she remembers herself to be at eighteen. He has plenty of university polaroids to prove otherwise, when they were young and in love.
Not that the love has gone anywhere, nearly forty years later.
It’s more cozy and comfortable now, old amusement quirking his brow at his wife’s all-too-familiar flush. She’s adorable when she attempts to front haughtiness, all look how I turned out as if any of Everett’s admiration or adoration has faded through the years.
“I like how you turned out, dolcezza,” Everett confesses simply, tugging her closer still so he can see the flecks of slate in her bright, blue irises. She’s as lovely now as she was the day he met her, even if she’s gracefully begun to settle into her age. Brilliant eyes, more laugh lines than frown lines, a few light freckles across her cheeks from time spent out in the sun, all of them quiet marks of a wonderful life spent together.
It’s strange to think there there was a time Vivianne thought she wouldn’t live to see forty. And yet here they are against all odds — through broken engagements and bitter hatred, through five continents and sleepless nights in hospital waiting rooms. Alive, fiercely content, defiant like sunflowers stretching for the light. Alive, happily married to the love of his life.
Everett and Vivianne, in their house of simple dreams.
He presses his palms against the cool, smooth counter, one on either side of her waist, his wedding band gleaming sleepily in the warm afternoon light.
“Half out of your mind? Why, Signora Craven.” He smiles teasingly as he traps her against the counter. “Are you finally admitting you were madly in love with me?”
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