was going to, but then Dad grabbed him to help set up the tables.”
“Well, I’ll swap you this”—Gemma tapped the edge of a large white platter loaded with deep-fried risotto balls—“for him, if you can send the boys back in to help carry everything out. You can nail them with the mom eye and they’ll do your bidding.”
“I think you’re overestimating the power of the mom eye. Plus, you’ll get soaked.”
“I’ll love every minute of it. Hand him over. Come on, Nate, my man. You can be my plus one at lunch.” She accepted the baby from Rachel and settled him on her hip. “Now go. I’m not overestimating your power. The men will be back in here inside of three minutes, you just watch.”
Gemma’s only overestimation was in how long it would take to corral the men back inside. In under two minutes, the kitchen was filled with three rowdy brothers jockeying for who got to take which favorite family dish outside. Just as Gemma was about to pull out a whip and a chair, her fourth brother, Alessandro—Alex—her closest sibling in both age and personality, arrived.
“Hey, look who’s here!” Joe called out as Alex stepped into the room. “Find any pizza in the subway today?”
Alex sent him a slitted, sideways glare and flipped him the bird.
Gemma rolled her eyes hard enough she could have cataloged the spice rack behind her. Three of the four men were NYPD cops; the third brother, Matteo, broke with family tradition to join the FDNY. The cops in the family, especially Joe, the eldest, could be merciless to their youngest sibling. Alex was a member of the Internal Affairs Bureau, or the Rat Squad, as New York’s finest sneeringly labeled it. Thus, the pizza rat smear.
“Sei tutto idiota.” All eyes swiveled to the sole woman in the room. She might be the only female sibling, but Gemma knew how to manage her brothers. “Enough with the rat gags.” She laid one hand on the top of a covered cake stand. “Or I’m taking my torta setteveli and my cannoli home without you getting even a single taste.” Gemma knew the power of desserts in this family, and her seven-layer, sky-high, chocolate-and-hazelnut seven-veils cake was legendary. No other leverage was needed.
Groans of dissent were followed by some good-natured grumbling, but they mostly laid off Alex and even helped him with the plates he carried. As they went out the door, she heard Teo ragging on his little brother that Alex’s Hawaiian shirt—jet black with green palm trees and brilliant red-and-blue parrots in flight—was louder than their father’s favorite plaid golf pants.
They’re such children. They can pick on their little brother, but God help anyone else who does.
She organized the men and got the food to the picnic tables set up outside. All the traditional Sicilian family favorites were there: pasta alla Norma, with fresh tomatoes and eggplant; scaccia ragusana —a rolled pizza filled with various toppings; stuffed artichokes; stuffed swordfish rolls; the fried risotto balls; and Gemma’s father’s favorite, parmigiana di melanzane—eggplant parmigiana. And, of course, overflowing baskets of fresh Italian breads.
Cradling a loaded platter of antipasto in her free arm, Gemma stepped from the coolness of the house into the blazing sunshine of her father’s narrow, grassy backyard. It was bedlam around tables loaded with food as Joe’s two boys—holy smokes, had they both grown two inches since she’s seen them last?—chased their grandfather’s dog in circles, and as the men relaxed with beers in hands, or tossed a Frisbee to Mark’s daughters. Already seated at the head of the table, her father directed Rachel to rearrange certain plates, and for Joe to get his kids to the table before he ate it all without them.
With thumb and pinkie tucked between his lips, Joe gave a piercing whistle that immediately brought his boys bolting for the table, and the girls wandering over at a more sedate pace with their father and Uncle Teo. Rachel relieved Gemma of the antipasto platter so both of her hands were free to settle her nephew into his high chair. After calling their sister-in-law Alyssa over, she and Rachel sat on either side of the wide-eyed baby, leaving the rowdier men and older children clustered together.
Everyone took their seats around the sprawling tables and started passing platters, which gave Gemma a few moments to sit back and soak in the pandemonium, grateful for the opportunity to spend time with her crazy, raucous, headstrong, loving family.
It had been a family tradition for years. As first responders, everyone’s schedule was constantly unpredictable. And even with seniority, it was often hard to secure popular American holidays for family get-togethers. So they’d started celebrating August 15, the Sicilian Feast of the Assumption, as a chiseled-in-stone day when they would get together for a midday meal at the Capello homestead in Brooklyn, even when it fell on a weekday, as it did that year. This meant it wasn’t a fight for vacation days for those who were scheduled for duty that day. They were lapsed Catholics since the death of Gemma’s mother, but Ferragosto celebrations were a tradition all the way back to their roots in Siculiana, in the shadow of Mount Etna in Sicily.
Whatever the reason, it worked for them, giving them a day to connect and strengthen roots.
Gemma glanced down at the baby beside her. With the next generation filling out the ranks, that was more important than ever.
Alex nudged her other side and she looked up to find him offering her the platter of swordfish. She grinned at him and helped herself.
“So, Gemma Elena...”
Gemma looked down the table to her eldest brother, seated beside their father. “So, Giuseppe Pietro...”
“A little birdie tells me you had an interesting night on Saturday. A little off-duty work.”
Their father looked up sharply from his plate, his gaze rapidly surveying his daughter before his shoulders relaxed fractionally.
“I may have.” Teo held up one of his bottles of homemade red wine and she gave him a nod. “Absolutely. No reason not to enjoy when we’re off duty.”
“My thoughts exactly.” Teo flashed her a saucy grin and filled her wineglass nearly to the brim.
“I said ‘enjoy,’ not ‘get hammered.’” But she picked up her glass, and tapped it carefully first to Rachel’s and then Alyssa’s before drinking deeply.
“I hear you were seventeen stories up and balanced on a ledge overlooking the street without any safety gear,” Joe continued.
“I was never on the ledge.”
“I notice you’re not denying the lack of safety gear,” her father said. “Why am I only hearing about this now?” After forty years on the force, and as the Chief of Special Operations, Tony Capello made a point of staying up to date with his children’s careers.
“Because it’s not a big deal.”
“Apparently, someone thinks it is a big deal and wants to put your name up for a commendation.” Joe met her eyes from the far end of the table. “I heard the story. You spotted the woman holding her newborn baby before she was even in harm’s way. But you couldn’t physically get to her in time, so you had to talk her off the ledge. Literally. And at potential risk to yourself. She could have gone over and taken you with her.”
“There wasn’t any other way to handle it. There were only seconds to get her back.”
Joe nodded. “I know.” He raised
