Finding Forgiveness novel Chapter 21

PART 2

One week later,

"Cato where are your shoes?" Leo called from the hallway.

The chaos of the school run had begun and Leo and I had the unwieldy task of getting eight kids fed, dressed and ready to leave the house.

"Cato!" Leo repeated.

Of course, Cato was far too busy tackling Mathias on the living room floor to reply.

"Where are his fucking shoes?" I heard Leo mumble to himself. "Jesus Christ."

I stifled a laugh before realising that those were shouts of pain rather than squeals of laughter coming from Mathias. 

"Cato, get off your brother. You're hurting him," I said as I tried to juggle Zacharias and his bottle in one hand and cutting Lili's toast in half with the other.

"Sorry," Cato said hugging Mathias.

"Are you alright, sweetie?" I asked as Cato wiped his tears. 

"Look, Mathy," Cato said realising his attempts to comfort him weren't working. "You can borrow my dinosaur for the WHOLE week!"

He held out his favourite toy dinosaur to Mathias who's face instantly lit up. 

Crisis averted.

"Mommy, I don't want to go to school today," Silas complained as he appeared sullen faced in the kitchen.

"You have to go to school, Si," Leo replied. "We've had this discussion many times in the last few months."

"I thought you loved school," I said rubbing his shoulder.

"Not anymore, Mama," he groaned climbing up onto the table and lying on it face down. "I hate it. There are so many rules!"

"There are rules here too," I said. "And one of them is no climbing on the kitchen table. Come on, find your bag and we'll talk about this later."

He dragged himself away to find his bag. Despite being a fairly trivial matter, it saddened me that I hadn't been around to be there for him if this had been going on for months. I had been completely unaware of it. 

I didn't have much time to dwell on the subject though before the twins appeared in the doorway.

"Oh girls," I said noticing what they were wearing. "They're Mommy and Daddy's clothes, aren't they? You can't go to school like that."

"Why not?" Marie asked.

"Grazie, Papa," he replied with delight.

"Oh shit," I cursed as Zacharias projectile vomited all over himself from the pram and promptly began to screech. "We're going to be late."

I lifted Zacharias out and began rushing upstairs.

"Leo, you'll have to take them. I'll stay here with Lili, Zach and Stefano," I said.

"Are you sure you'll be alright?" he asked.

I nodded, "Come on Lils, you're staying with Mama."

"I'll be back in twenty minutes," he said before herding the eldest five of the flock out and closing the door.

Since I returned, Leo hadn't been working much to stay at home with me and make sure I wasn't having to ever struggle with all the kids alone. We spent more time as a family than we ever had before too including numerous trips to the park, movie nights and baking. The kids were happy again and fortunately didn't seem too damaged by the fact that I disappeared for months and then when they thought they had me back, I went again.

Many people visited me during the times where Leo did have to do some work including Max, my Mum, Rosa, all of Leo's brothers and sisters and when he had earnt Leo's trust back, Luca. I even went one day to see my Dad who was delighted to hear about his old friend José's part in my rescue. 

Everything was back to normal and life was good. That evening as we had dinner as a family and watched the kids play afterwards, I didn't find myself thinking about Andrea once.

Well, that was until there was a thud-like knock on the door and everything came gushing back up to the surface.