Chapter Thirty – Two: Preparations
"So, do you want to get her a pet?" Vinny asked as we prepared Christmas dinner. We had kicked Cookie out of the kitchen so we could make a meal everyone could actually eat.
"I don't know." I shrugged, taking the bread out of the oven. I had never had a pet growing up, Grandfather and I were never in a place long enough to keep one and my parents didn't think it was a good idea after I had been attacked by a neighbor's dog. "If we do, I'd prefer to have a cat."
"Not a fan of dogs?"
"Not particularly." I responded, "Is getting a pet really what you want to talk about?"
He sighed, "No."
"You want to talk about kids."
"Yeah." He nodded, "How do you really feel about having more kids?"
I thought for a moment thinking about how to phrase it, and then told him, "I want more kids, but I don't know how I feel about physically having another kid. Having Olivia was difficult and I'm a little worried about putting my body through that again. If I do get pregnant, great, I'd love to have another kid; but if we're considering having multiple, I'd rather look into adoption before pregnancy." I waited a few moments for him to respond, he didn't. "Are you disappointed?"
He shook his head, "No, I had feeling there was more to it. We can look into it in a year or two."
"Is that almost done?" I asked referring to the pasta sauce.
"It's got a few more minutes, but we can start dessert in a bit."
"What is that by the way?"
"Bolognese." He responded, "We're going to pair it with the pappardelle." He nodded over to the pasta. "Any idea on what you want to do about dessert?"
"Well, we kind of have a bit of a theme going on here." I said, referring to all of the Italian food, "I have a recipe for this almond citrus cake with a chocolate glaze."
"Parrozzo?" He asked. I looked through the notebook I had used to collect recipes to find that cake, and he was right, that was it.
"Yeah." I confirmed, "Looks like I have a recipe for Vin Brulé too." I pointed to the recipe I had next to it.
He read through the recipe and then commented, "That could be good."
"And it would go well with the cake."
After preparing dinner, we sat down to dinner with Grandfather, Olivia, Cookie, Packard, and Branson. Grandfather raised his glass and gave a toast to togetherness, family, and to Milo and the others wherever they may be.
Milo's POV
"How far do you think we have left to go?" I asked Audrey curiously. We had been endlessly driving for days.
"We should be in Arizona by tomorrow." She answered, "Any idea what's going on over there?"
I shook my head, "Packard said Sweet would explain when we got there. He didn't really want to go into it over the radio."
"Fair enough." She nodded, "You never know who could be listening in."
"Same could be said about the phone." I pointed out, and then suggested, "Why don't we stop for the night? If we're really going to get there by tomorrow, we should probably get some sleep."
"Alright, when I come across a place to stop, we'll rest for the night."