AN: Some of this dialogue isn't mine - it's from Sunk Cost Fallacy - so don't sue me. Again, thank you for your patience. It's been a busy spring! Happy SVU finale night... let's hope nobody we love dies/gets kicked off/breaks the law so heinously they get incarcerated for life/etc!
I can't send back the rain / but if I could I would / my love, my arms are open
"'Nother one," Luca mumbled thickly through his thumb in his mouth. He was tucked into Amanda's side in his bed, warm and pliant in his pajamas as his mother finished reading him his third story of the night. Frannie was curled up at the end of Amanda's outstretched legs, seemingly content to listen to the string of books, too.
"No way. We already read three," Amanda yawned, giving the toddler's shoulders a squeeze. The pleasant narratives had effectively made her drowsy; she could only hope they had done the same for Luca. "It's time for sleep."
Luca let out a whine of protest, his little limbs wriggling beneath his sheets.
She closed the book and set it on his nightstand before planting a kiss atop his blonde head. "Love you, Lu."
"Love you," he grumbled, giving one more dramatic flop against her side before he settled down onto his pillow.
Smiling, Amanda pulled herself off of Luca's bed and Frannie followed suit. "Sweet dreams."
Padding down the hallway, she poked her head into Jesse's room. The six-year-old was on her floor, dressing up all of her dolls and stuffed animals in various outfits and accessories with great concentration.
"Jesse, put your pajamas on soon, okay? Bedtime in an hour or so," Amanda reminded her. Her gaze narrowed on Fluffy, who was wearing a pink ribbon tied in a sloppy bow around his neck as he padded around the carpet. "What'd you do to the cat?"
"It's a necklace!" Jesse responded brightly. "Frannie wears a bandanna, so Fluffy should have something, too."
She raised her eyebrows. "Okay, but, he's a boy..."
"When's dad coming home?" the little girl asked, apparently choosing to ignore her mother's mild concern about the cat's attire.
"I dunno," Amanda answered honestly, "whenever he's done with his work. He's on the late shift tonight."
Jesse crawled across her floor to rummage through one of her baskets of toys. "Morgan in my class says that her dad goes to work every day in the morning and comes home every dinner time," she offered idly, yanking her American Girl Doll from the depths of her collection, "and that her mom doesn't have a job."
She quirked a curious eyebrow. "Oh yeah?"
Crawling back to her circle of toys, she nodded. "Yeah."
Amanda crossed her arms over her chest and remarked haughtily, "I think that's weird."
Jesse placed her doll gently among its friends, smoothing its disheveled hair out as she mumbled, "sometimes... sometimes, a little bit, I wish you and dad were like that."
Frowning, she stepped further into her daughter's room. "You know our jobs are kinda different, Jesse," Amanda reminded her.
"Uh huh." Without looking up, Jesse nodded.
Amanda sighed. She approached her oldest daughter and crouched down beside her. She reached a hand out, her fingers brushing away the little girl's hair from her face so she could study her petite features. Her eyes were the deepest shade of brown - the one thing Declan Murphy had bestowed upon his child. Taking her small chin between her fingers, Amanda turned Jesse's face toward her. "You okay, baby?"
Jesse nodded again, this time a little more convincingly. "Yes, mama." She released her doll, leaned in and put her arms around her mother instead.
Wrapping her own arms around her daughter, Amanda hugged her. She screwed her eyes shut and held on, hoping to wordlessly convey her love to Jesse with the force of her embrace. "I know it's hard sometimes, bein' different," she murmured apologetically.
"'We can do hard things.' You tell me that," Jesse said, repeating words Amanda spoke to her often.
A small smile played at Amanda's mouth as she gave Jesse another squeeze. The statement was powerful in its simplicity - we can do hard things. Amanda wanted all of her children - but especially her daughters - to know that they were capable even in moments of frustration and fear. Right now Jesse's biggest struggles were school assignments and playground drama, but one day they would be more, and Amanda strove to raise a young woman who wouldn't be derailed even when life's burdens felt impossible to bear. She felt a pang of guilt at Jesse's confession that night, however, knowing that she played a role in that blip of sadness. "We can," Amanda agreed, then pulled back to eye her daughter's face. She winked as she finished her thought, "but it's okay to complain about the hard stuff, when it really stinks."
Jesse toyed with the long blonde tendrils of Amanda's hair. "Will you ask daddy to say 'night to me when he gets home?"
She tilted her head and challenged her, "doesn't he always?"
xxx
In the quiet kitchen, Amanda pulled a package of Oreos from the cabinet and set them on the island, then twisted one cookie apart methodically. She could feel Frannie hovering at her feet curiously, her tail wagging against her calves as she waited to see if a scrap of her owner's snack would fall her way. As Amanda licked the cream out of the center of an Oreo and eyed the video baby monitor sitting on the counter, her phone buzzed in her back pocket. One hand fumbled for the device to see Sonny's name on the screen; she put it on speakerphone as to not hinder her cookie-eating. "Hey. Were your ears burnin'?" Amanda answered the call as she chewed, "Jesse was just... well, we can talk about what she said later-"
"Amanda, there's been a, I - there was an accident," Sonny's voice replied, sounding breathless and frantic on the other end of the speaker, "I hit, I couldn't stop-"
"What?" she exclaimed, caught totally off guard by his panicked disclosure. Her heart rose up into her throat as her fingers began to toy nervously with her lower lip. The Oreo in her mouth felt like cement. "Sonny, what happened? Are you okay?"
"Liv asked me to, to bring Jules Hunter to the hotel," he stammered. "At an intersection, some guy ran a stop sign and hit us and, and I tried to save her, I... I, it's bad, Amanda-"
"Where are you?" she demanded. She knew her voice sounded angry, but it was fear she felt. "I'm callin' back up and coming right now."
"Ah, the, uh, the... ah, Jesus, there's blood everywhere..." Sonny breathed shakily, his anxiety and discombobulation palpable. "The intersection of sixth, Thompson and Canal."
"I'm coming," Amanda promised him, "I'm coming now."
In a whirlwind, she made phone calls: first to Rachel, their next door neighbor, the mother of Jesse's friend Robbie. She immediately agreed to come over to stay with the three children, no questions asked, for as long as it took. Before she arrived, Amanda tried not to focus on the look of worry etched on her six-year-old's features as she fabricated some disjointed excuse about needing to return to the precinct; Jesse was much too smart to believe it. It only served to further exacerbate her guilt from earlier - did 'normal' parents have their kids enduring this sort of chaos?
Sonny was sitting on the back of ambulance by the time Amanda arrived on scene, his hunched shoulders draped with what she knew to be an itchy, standard-issue EMT blanket. His hair was disheveled, his face, hands and clothes covered in drying blood; he was missing his vest and his suit jacket. How had things changed so drastically - so terribly - in twenty-four hours? Everything was so blissfully normal the evening before, Amanda recalled. After dinner Sonny had taken Luca along to the barber with him and they had both returned home proudly displaying new haircuts. The side of my head's fuzzy! Luca kept shouting excitedly as he ran around the house, rubbing around his own ears. Frannie had chased him in dizzying circles and the little boy's laughter had bubbled up bright and breathless until he hid behind Sonny's long legs in surrender...
"Sonny!" Amanda sprinted toward him before dropping onto the back of the ambulance beside him. She set a gloved hand on his back, partly to comfort him, partly to make sure he was really alive in front of her. "Oh my God... are you alright? What the hell happened?"
Eyes wide, he breathed shakily, "I'm okay, I'm okay." He swallowed hard as he confessed, "she's dead, 'Manda. It, it happened so fast. She was bleedin' so much, she just got totally..."
She tried not to focus on the blood on his face - was it his? Was it hers? - as she squeezed her husband's shoulder. "It's alright, Sonny," she tried to reassure him gently. "You did what you could. I know you did."
"He sped off. He's gone," he continued like he hadn't heard her. "The plates, I... Jersey. They're Jersey plates."
"Alright, that's good," she nodded encouragingly, switching into detective-mode because she knew it was necessary. Her free hand pulled her phone from her coat pocket. "You remember the number?"
Sonny's brow furrowed. "5G... 5GB88V."
Her thumb dialed dispatch before she pressed her phone to her ear, her other palm never leaving Sonny's back. "I'm gonna call it in." Her eyes flickered to the scene around them as she waited for the operator to pull up information about the plate: red and blue lights flashed bright in the dark while uniformed officers worked to keep the intersection cordoned off. Amanda hadn't yet approached the mangled vehicle or the body, but admittedly she wasn't eager to - she gladly allowed the first responders to take ownership of the accident scene. She didn't need to see Jules' lifeless form beneath the black CSI sheet - even if she was nauseatingly relieved that it wasn't Sonny in her place.
Amanda shoved her phone back in her pocket one she had the information she needed. "Stolen, three days ago," she told Sonny grimly.
"I tried to save her," he croaked.
"I know you did," she soothed. "I know."
"Carisi!" Liv's voice came across the street in a shout, and when Amanda looked up, she was sprinting over to them. She skidded to a halt at Sonny's side and set a hand on his shoulder, her brown eyes wide with in shock.
"I couldn't stop, no, I couldn't stop the car," Sonny babbled frantically, "I tried..."
"Take it easy..." Amanda implored him gently. She knew that he was always eager for Liv's approval and that having to explain something of this horrible magnitude to her was probably torturous.
"Okay, just calm down," Liv added.
"He just blew through the stop sign..." he concluded weakly.
Liv looked confused. "Who did?"
"He's in the wind," Amanda told her bitterly.
"Did you see him?" Liv asked Sonny.
"He had, uh, he had a baseball cap," he replied before stammering helplessly, "I tried, I tried to, ah... I couldn't stop... I couldn't stop the bleedin'."
Heavy silence fell over the three of them. Amanda's fingers curled against the itchy fabric of the blanket around Sonny's shoulders as she chewed the inside of her cheek, determined to keep her own composure. She lifted her eyes to meet Liv's; the lieutenant shifted her gaze, indicating wordlessly that she wanted to talk to her away from Sonny. She understood: this was their case, there was work to do.
"I called in the plates," Amanda told her as they walked toward the body that laid supine on the pavement. They stopped and hovered over Jules' shrouded form. "Stolen three days ago from Short Hills."
Liv crouched down and pulled at a corner of the tarp, revealing Jules' still and bloody features. Amanda winced as Liv gasped, "oh, dear God." Liv looked up at her as she breathed, "he's responsible."
Her brows knitted together. "Nick Hunter?
"Can you think of a better way to get sole custody of your daughter?" the lieutenant asked angrily.
An icy shiver ran down Amanda's spine at the thought. She cast a tentative glance back over her shoulder at Sonny, who was still huddled on the back of the ambulance. "I need to..."
"Go. Be with Carisi," Liv sighed as she stood upright again. She tossed Amanda a set of keys, which she easily caught. "Take the squad car, I'll be here for awhile."
"Thanks." She hurried back over to Sonny, who was now grimacing as he got to his feet. "Do you wanna go and get checked out?" Amanda asked him anxiously.
He shrugged off the blanket. "No, I'm fine. I'm okay," he insisted, which was somewhat difficult to believe spoken by a man covered in blood, surrounded by eager EMTs.
Amanda frowned. "Are you sure, Sonny?"
"I'm okay, Amanda," Sonny insisted, although his voice lacked any power.
She nodded, knowing better than to press him despite her lingering concern. "Liv gave me the squad car," she explained, holding up the keys. "Let's go home, huh?"
In the darkness of the squad car, Amanda navigated the familiar city streets back to their house in Astoria. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched Sonny, his head leaned against the glass of the passenger seat window, his tired gaze focused out the windshield.
"I don't want the kids seein' me like this," Sonny eventually said, breaking the silence ten minutes into the drive.
She nodded. "They should all be asleep by now. Rachel's with them."
They drove the rest of the way home without speaking. Rachel was reading at the kitchen island when they walked through the front door; she nearly fell off of her stool when she saw the state Sonny was in. She knew better than to try to engage them in a big conversation so late at night after such an ordeal, but when Sonny headed upstairs, Amanda told her what had happened - mostly because she didn't want her neighbor thinking her husband often came home covered in blood. After thanking Rachel profusely for the favor, Amanda went up to the second floor to find Sonny.
She nudged open the bedroom door. Sonny stood in the center of the room, pulling at his tie. He began to gingerly undo the buttons of his shirt so he could take a shower, shaking off the bloody fabric until it was balled up in his soiled hands. He cast a glance around the space, unsure of where to put it.
"I'll put this stuff in the wash," Amanda suggested quickly, reaching out to him.
He shook his head, grimacing as if the mere thought of preserving the clothing was too much to bear. "Just toss it. Throw it all away."
Taking the shirt and tie from him, Amanda nodded slowly. "Okay."
Amanda looked down at the bloodied garments in her hands: both were from Sonny's beloved tailor in Staten Island. For a moment she contemplated throwing them in the washer anyway, but knowing Sonny, even clean they would stay shoved at the back of the closet forever now that they were associated with such a terrible night. So instead she went back downstairs into the kitchen, found a trash bag, stuffed them inside and tossed them into the garbage outside of their house.
She scrubbed her palms with scalding hot water and soap at the kitchen sink, taking care to work suds beneath her fingernails and to wash up her wrists and forearms. Then she looked around the kitchen and the living room: they were both a mess. Sometimes she felt like a bad mother because more often than not, she didn't feel compelled to organize things. The house was always clean, but in a chaotic kind of way. That night she was fueled by an anxious kind of energy, so she harnessed it and moved around the spaces, tidying it all up. When everything was in its rightful spot, Amanda found herself sighing in front of the liquor cabinet. She grabbed a fresh bottle of whiskey and cracked open the top before she poured the amber liquid into two ice-filled glasses.
Alone at the counter, she took a sip of her own drink as she allowed her mind to slow down. The upstairs shower had stopped running awhile ago; she had heard the water go off while collecting Luca's Legos up from off of the living room floor. She didn't want to hover over Sonny and overwhelm him further, but she was worried by how rattled he appeared. Sonny was undoubtedly resilient and strong, but he also possessed a special kind of sensitivity that meant he experienced situations more intensely than most. Sometimes Amanda feared that horrible incidents like these would eventually chip away at his desire to stay with NYPD. Despite not practicing, Sonny kept his attorney's registration current - he renewed it every two years - and sometimes Amanda wondered if he was quietly keeping that option open for a reason.
Looking up at the clock in the kitchen, she realized she had been downstairs for an hour. With a glass in each hand and Frannie at her feet, Amanda made her way quietly up the stairs to the second floor. As she walked down the hallway, she heard Sonny's voice coming from Luca's room and she paused outside the ajar door to listen to the conversation between father and son.
"...was just a bad dream. It wasn't real," Sonny promised gently, "there's nothing under your bed."
"You have bad dreams?" Luca's timid voice wondered.
"Every once in awhile, yeah," Sonny sighed.
"Mama?" the little boy tried.
Amanda smiled to herself.
"She does, too," Sonny told him.
"Do you get scared?" Luca mumbled.
"Everybody gets scared sometimes, buddy."
"Even if you're big and strong?"
"Even if you're big and strong," Sonny assured him. "Why don't you try and close your eyes? I'll sit here for a few more minutes, make sure that monster knows to keep outta here."
Silently, Amanda slipped down the hallway and into her own bedroom. She set down the drinks she had made on their bureau so she could get changed; her tired body was grateful once she was in old college sweatpants and one of Sonny's threadbare St. John's t-shirts. She tied her blonde hair up into a sloppy knot at the top of her head seconds before the door creaked open.
"Luca's absolutely convinced something lives under his bed," Sonny grumbled, appearing weary as he shut the door behind himself and dragged himself further into the room. "Ever since Jesse played hide n' seek with him and hid under there and grabbed his legs when he came lookin' for her..."
"If he's not anxious about one thing, it's something else..." Amanda murmured, shaking her head in dismay. She picked up the tumbler filled with whiskey from the dresser and held it out to him. "Here. I made it a double." Her gaze flickered to Sonny's hands, which were visibly trembling as he reached for the glass. Frowning, she took a step closer to him. "Sonny... baby, it's alright," she consoled him softly, fingers curling around his wrist in an attempt to steady him. "You're alright."
Sonny's Adam's apple bobbed in his throat as he swallowed. He shut his eyes and shook his head, as if he was trying to clear it, then opened his eyes to look at her again. "Ruby. Ruby Hunter," he whispered, sinking down onto the edge of their bed. He took a long, slow drink of his whiskey, wincing at the burn - or maybe at what was on his mind. "I just kept thinkin', 'I can't allow this kid to be left with, with her, her piece a shit father..." he continued huskily, slowly, "'she needs her mother... her mother needs her...' and now..." He peered up at Amanda solemnly as he trailed off.
Amanda felt his sadness like it was her own; her heart felt like it was being torn from her chest. Abandoning her whiskey, she scurried over to him and sunk down beside him. She reached an arm around him and rubbed a few slow circles between his shoulder blades and set her other hand atop his thigh. "C'mere. I know, I know," she whispered, "you did everything you could."
"What if I didn't, though?" Sonny challenged her miserably, head hung. "I'm not an EMT, I'm not... I only had my jacket-"
"Sonny, that other SUV was on a mission," Amanda interrupted. "Jules... she didn't stand a chance." She squeezed his leg as she added, "you're lucky you weren't killed, too." Her voice caught her throat at the end of her sentence and the quiver of obvious emotion took her by surprise. It was as if she had only just allowed herself to realize how close she had come to losing him.
He was silent for a minute, his gaze focused intently on their bedroom carpet. "I just keep seein' her face," he eventually admitted softly. "She was alive when I got to her, 'Manda. Her eyes were open, she held onto me for a minute..." He turned his head and met her eyes as he asked gloomily, "how am I supposed to live with this?"
She searched Sonny's weary features and saw how hopeless he looked. She felt a lump rise in her throat again as she frowned. While she was sick with the idea that it was likely mere centimeters that saved Sonny from his own death, he felt guilty that he had survived. "What's the alternative?" she whispered meekly.
He nodded slowly as he replied bitterly, "'it is what it is,' right?"
Amanda winced at his cynicism; she hated when it so closely resembled her own.
xxx
September sunlight came streaming through gauzy curtains covering their bedroom windows. Amanda scrunched up her features and blinked her eyes in response to the intrusion before her surroundings slid into focus: laying on her side in bed, she could see Sonny on his back beside her. His chest was rising and falling slowly with the ease of sleep, one arm flung over his eyes, the other outstretched lazily to fill the space between them. The gold of his wedding band glinted in the warm light he was bathed in. With her cheek resting on her upper arm, Amanda watched him for a moment, then couldn't resist the urge to reach out her other hand and set it atop his. She expected Sonny to jerk awake at the sensation, but instead his palm shifted upwards and his fingers curled around hers in response. His other arm fell away from his face and he turned his head to look over at her. A lazy smile formed on his lips; it was a relief for Amanda to see.
Sonny rolled over toward her, then shifted on top of her, all warm weight and long limbs as he supported his weight on his forearms on either side of her head. With his unruly hair falling in front of his bleary gaze, he dipped his lips down to kiss her forehead, then each of her closed eyelids. She smiled at the sweetness of the gesture as she felt another kiss land on the tip of her nose. She settled her hands against each of his biceps, her thumbs grazing slowly back and forth over the curve of the muscles there. She tilted her chin upward so their lips could meet before she murmured, "Sonny?"
He swept a warm palm against her forehead, moving her undoubtedly messy bangs away from her eyes. "Hm?" he yawned.
Amanda's eyes searched his face, her thumbs pausing their movement. "Are you... are you gonna be okay?" she asked him timidly. Even though she had only just woken up, the events of the night before came flooding back to Amanda immediately.
"Yeah. Yeah, I'm gonna be okay," Sonny told her quietly, nodding. After a moment of contemplative silence, he smiled down at her. "Every mornin' when I open my eyes, no matter what's happened the day before, I'm thankful you're next to me."
She couldn't help the little grin that pulled at her mouth. Weaving her arms between them, she cupped his face with her hands, the stubble along his jaw rough against her palms. "I'm always gonna be next to you," Amanda promised him, blue eyes intently focused on Sonny's.
His smile melted into a sleepy smirk. "Or under me..." His lips grazed hers again. "Or on top of me..."
"If you're lucky," she mumbled coquettishly.
Sonny relaxed his weight on top of hers, his cheek resting on Amanda's chest. One of his palms slid beneath the fabric of her shirt, lazily soothing up and down the warm skin of her side. She tangled a set of fingers in the hair at the base of his skull, her other arm stretched leisurely over her head, enjoying the way his fingertips felt against the expanse of her rib cage. For a few minutes, neither of them said anything; they simply laid there as one quiet, contemplative unit.
"I think you should take a few days off," Amanda finally suggested.
Sonny grunted.
"Really."
"Okay."
"Audrey'll be here at seven today," she reminded him. "You could get up then go back to bed."
"Maybe... maybe text her and tell her to stay home," he said. "I'll spend the day with the kids."
Amanda tilted her head in an attempt to look at Sonny's face. "You wanna?"
He nodded against her chest. "I think it'll help."
The kitchen table was covered in old newspaper, protecting the surface from five pumpkins of varying sizes. They hadn't yet been carved - first, Jesse, Luca and Amanda each had to draw their own design. Sonny was supervising - quick to let anybody know if he thought what they were sketching would actually be carve-able - and Ruby was perched in her high chair with extra-large crayons to scribble with so she wouldn't feel too left out.
"What's yours, Lu?" Sonny wondered, peering over his son's shoulder.
"A spider," Luca replied, on his knees in his seat, his tongue between his teeth as he concentrated on his drawing. A marker was squeezed inside of his small, balled-up fist as he worked. "How's it light up?"
"We're gonna cut out the design and put a candle inside," Sonny explained.
Luca doodled another leg on his spider. "Oh."
"Are you making a dog, mama?" Jesse asked Amanda.
Amanda dragged her Sharpie along the tough orange skin of her small pumpkin; she hadn't expected to become so enthusiastic about her design, but now she was planning on taking the knife away from Sonny once it was her turn so she could have complete control of the end result. "Uh huh."
"I'm just makin' a pumpkin face," Jesse told her proudly.
She looked over at her oldest daughter and raised her eyebrows, impressed by how well Jesse was able to draw on such a difficult surface. "It looks really good," Amanda praised her. "Will you make one for Ruby, too?"
Jesse nodded excitedly. "Okay!"
"Somebody's textin' you, babe," Sonny announced.
Amanda focused on her dog's tail, her eyes narrowing as she tried to make sure all of her lines connected perfectly. "Mm. My boyfriend?"
He snorted. "No such luck. It's Mia."
Heaving a dramatic sigh, she looked over at Sonny curiously. "What's it say?"
Leaning back against the island, he read from her phone: "she asked what we were up to and if it's okay if she stops by after work."
"Tell her 'sure.'" She shrugged and returned to her pumpkin.
He set her phone back down on the counter and quirked an eyebrow. "Wonder what it's about."
"Maybe she just wants to hang out," she suggested. "I don't think she's got many friends left at this point."
"She can have your pumpkin, dad! You're a bad draw-er," Jesse offered.
"Gee, thanks, Jesse," Sonny grumbled.
Amanda snickered as she capped her marker, satisfied with her work.
Jesse and Luca quickly lost interest in pumpkin carving when they discovered that neither of them were allowed to use a knife or matches. It made the process go fairly quickly: Amanda and Sonny could efficiently scoop out all of the pulp and seeds, hack away at the designs and light them up without little hands in the way. Soon the kitchen counter was glowing orange - none of the carvings were particularly recognizable given the family's poor artistic ability, but they were all enthusiastic about the display anyway. By the time Mia arrived after her shift at work, Luca and Jesse were content to draw more Halloween-themed pictures at the kitchen table by the light of their jack-o-lanterns.
"You look great," Amanda told Mia cheerfully, although if she were to be entirely honest, lately she couldn't help but notice that Mia had stopped putting much effort into her appearance. Usually the type of girl who had her hair done and clothes neat, since getting pregnant, she hid her body beneath big t-shirts and hoodies and almost always had her hair in a ponytail. Amanda couldn't figure out if it was because she didn't know what to do with her transformed body or if it was because she was depressed. No matter what, she wanted to support Mia; in a lot of ways she understood what she felt like.
Sonny adjusted Ruby on his lap as they all sat in the living room. The baby mouthed sloppily at one of the strings of his hoodie. "What's new?" he asked his niece.
"Um, I just. I've been thinkin'..." Mia began, shifting in her seat and tucking a few strands of stray brown hair behind her ears.
He leaned back into the cushions of the couch beside Amanda. "Okay..."
Mia appeared to pull in a deep breath, then exhaled her hurried statement: "I decided I'm putting the baby up for adoption."
Amanda's blue eyes widened. "That's a big decision-"
"And I want you guys to have him," Mia blurted.
Amanda felt all of the air leave her lungs; her mouth fell open in shock. Her heart began to pound with nervous excitement.
"Uh, what?" Sonny responded stupidly, sounding as dumbfounded as she felt as he scrabbled to sit up straight again.
"I know you guys are great parents," Mia explained timidly. "I've seen you with your kids and I wanna... I wanna see this baby have a good life. So.. I want you to have him. I don't want him to be with strangers."
"I, uh, Mia," Sonny stammered. He cast a nervous, sideways glance at Amanda. "I mean, me and Amanda, we gotta talk about this..."'
Mia nodded. "Okay-"
"Mama!" Jesse shrieked from the adjacent kitchen, whirling around in her seat at the table. "Luca won't give me back my marker!"
"All of the markers are the same, Jesse," Amanda managed to temporarily find her voice.
"No! That one was, was mine!" Jesse moaned. "Tell him to give it back!"
"Nuh uh," Luca whined, "it's my mark-"
"Hey, both of you, cut it out, will ya? It's a damn marker," Sonny ordered. "Some kids don't have food. How about that?" he added, unable to resist sprinkling in a bit of the Catholic Guilt he was raised with.
"See, I can't do all this," Mia admitted softly. "I can't, I can't raise a kid to be a... good human being."
"Mia, do you understand what this all would mean?" Sonny asked carefully. "I mean, we're family. This baby would be... around you all the time."
Mia nodded solemnly. "I know."
"Mamamama," Ruby babbled from Sonny's lap, reaching out for Amanda.
"Did you talk to your mother about this?" Sonny wondered quietly as he handed the baby over to Amanda.
"Yeah. She wanted me to talk to you guys, before we all talked about it together," she told her uncle. She looked over at Amanda. "Amanda, I know how my mom reacted when I first told her I was pregnant and I want you to know she's in support of this idea."
A wave of fresh embarrassment washed over Amanda, remembering that judgmental sneer on Teresa's face months ago. Avoiding Mia's eyes, she busied her hands adjusting Ruby's shirt. I'm a good mother, she thought indignantly, I could love this baby. This baby could love me. I knew I was supposed to have four children. I knew I was supposed to have another son. I knew-
"You do realize that this is like... a really big deal? This is a baby we're talkin' about. A kid. A person," Sonny reminded his niece gently. "This is a huge decision."
"I know I'm asking a lot of you guys," Mia admitted.
Amanda glanced over at Sonny to find that he was staring at her. He seemed like he was desperate for her to say something, but she couldn't seem to get any words past her tongue. She ignored her racing heart, the butterflies in her stomach, not wanting to feel the crushing weight of inevitable disappointment. She sunk her teeth into her lower lip and offered him a small shrug. "We'll have to talk about it."
