Footsteps (8 page)

Trying not to bloody the pale wood floors or
the light, woven area rugs, Bina was limping now much more
noticeably. She hobbled to the kitchen and began opening cabinets.
And closing them. She was searching. She didn’t know where things
were in her own kitchen. This was a woman used to having a
staff.

Finally, she came out of the pantry with a
white plastic tub and waved it at Carlo, lifting her eyebrows in a
question. He nodded. “That’s perfect. Do you have first aid
supplies?”

Her look had a hint of pride, and she turned
back into the pantry and came quickly out with a small first aid
kit. She’d known where to find that.

He took the tub from her and brought it to
the sink to fill with hot water, running the stream over his wrist
to check the temperature, as he did for Trey’s baths. Looking over
his shoulder, he saw her watching, her expression now inscrutable.
“Washcloth?”

She stared at the drawers under the counter,
clearly trying to remember. When she did, she took a step forward
and opened a drawer, pulling out a white tea towel. “This will
do?”

“Yes.” Terry cloth would have been better,
but he thought he might really put her at a loss to get that
specific. “Have a seat.” He nodded toward the rustic, whitewashed
table surrounded by wooden chairs painted ocean blue.

She sat, and he squatted, setting the tub on
the floor between her feet. He moved to lift her right foot, but
she pulled away and put her foot into the tub herself, hissing very
quietly when the sole of her foot hit the hot water.

“Sorry. It’s going to sting.” Then he put
the tea towel into the water and wet it thoroughly. He wrung it
out, then eased his hand around her slim ankle. She went stiff at
his touch, and he stopped and looked up. For a moment, she simply
stared back, and he stayed quiet, waiting. Then she nodded, and he
picked up her foot and, as gently as he could, cleaned her
wound.

Her feet, like the rest of her, were lovely.
Her toenails were polished a dark, dark red, darker than the color
of dried blood. The sand had worn the edges away a little. The sole
of the foot he held was red and abraded from her long walk in the
sand and saltwater, and he dabbed gently with the cloth to clean
it. The cut, when he found it under the sand and blood, was about
an inch and a half long and fairly deep—any deeper and he would
have suggested a trip to the ER for stitches. It was still bleeding
a little, but he was able to get it pretty clean, and there didn’t
seem to be any shell left behind. Just the omnipresent sand.

He eased her foot back into the water to let
it soak, intending to rinse the towel out in the sink. Before he
stood, he lifted his head and met her eyes. She was crying. Just
tears sliding down her face, nothing more. When he looked, she
wiped them abruptly away.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t want to hurt you. Did I
hurt you?”

“No.” It was a gasp more than a sound. “No.
You did not hurt me.”

She was staring at him in a way that made
him feel…something. Something different. Something more. A
tightening in his chest. A heavy pressure in his gut. A fullness in
his cock. Jesus. He felt ulterior motives coming on. He realized
that he still had his hand around her ankle, and that his thumb was
moving back and forth, caressing her.

He let her go and stood up. “Okay. Um. Just
let it soak for a while, and the rest of the sand will loosen and
float out of the wound. Then lots of antibiotic cream and a good
bandage. You probably want to wrap your whole foot, just to make
sure the wound stays covered. Okay? I’m gonna go ahead and call my
brother. I’ll wait outside for him.”

“Wait. Carlo?” The
R
in his name
rolled when she said it. He could feel it. Right now, he felt that
a lot.

“Yeah?”

“Thank you. For…for everything.” She smiled.
He thought it was the first true, wholehearted smile he’d seen from
her. Jesus. It was a little sad, but brilliant nonetheless. Jesus.
He had to get out of here.

He returned her smile as he stepped away.
“You’re welcome. It was my pleasure. Good night, Bina.”

He left her house. She let him go without
another word.

~oOo~

“Daddy! Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy!”

Carlo pulled the pillow from his head and
found his son bouncing on his knees on the empty side of the bed.
Elsa sat at the side, her furry head bobbing up and down in time to
Trey’s bounces.

“Hey, pal.” He rolled to his back and held
his arms out, and Trey dropped full-force onto his chest. “Oof. You
get a good sleep?” He glanced at the clock. Not yet seven a.m.

“Yeah! Aunt Rosie told me FIVE STORIES!”
Trey held his hand up, his fingers splayed wide. There was still
sandy goop from last night’s s’mores between his fingers.

“Five! You must have been super-extra good
on the ride home, then.”

“Uh huh. I was! Did you catch the tail?”

Carlo blinked his sleepy eyes fully open.
“What?”

“Uncle Joey told Pop-Pop you didn’t come
home because you went to chase some tail. Did you catch it?”

Joey needed another broken nose. “No, pal. I
didn’t. Sorry I wasn’t here to put you to bed.”

“That’s okay. Aunt Rosie read me FIVE
STORIES.” Again, his sticky hand spread wide. “And Mrs. D. brought
doughnuts and beagles for breakfast. I don’t want a beagle, but
some of the doughnuts have jimmies. Can I have one with
jimmies?”

‘Mrs. D.’ was Adele Dioli, who’d lived in
the house next door for at least thirty-five years. She’d been
their mother’s best friend. Her husband had died six or seven years
ago. Since shortly thereafter, she’d spent a lot of time in the
Pagano house. She’d become sort of a de facto housekeeper, running
errands for their father, cooking meals for him, keeping track of
the actual housekeeping service. To everyone but Carlo Sr., it was
blazingly apparent that Adele wanted something more. The few times
one of the kids had tried to point it out, their father had first
brushed it off and then gotten angry. So everybody now shut up
about it and let her constant attentions become a private sibling
joke.

“We have Mass first. So how about this? We
get a quick bath and get the sticky off you. Then, if you can sit
quietly with your books at Mass, you can have a doughnut with
jimmies when we get home.”

Trey’s face got serious. “Can I have two?”
He held up two fingers.

“For two doughnuts, you will have to be
very, very good during Mass. Like a little mouse. Can you do
that?”

He nodded solemnly, making tiny squeaking
noises. Carlo laughed. God, he loved this boy.

“Good job, pal. Let’s get you in the bath,
then.”

~oOo~

Carlo didn’t attend Mass regularly in
Providence; in fact, he really didn’t at all. His faith was not
lapsed, but it wasn’t exactly emphatically active, either. Still,
being Catholic was as much a part of his identity as being
Italian-American. It was culture to him at least as much as it was
religion. And in Quiet Cove, there wasn’t even a question. Mass on
Sunday. Period. If a Pagano was in the Cove on Sunday morning, then
he or she was sitting in a pew at Christ the King by nine
o’clock.

Almost half the population of the small town
of about five thousand year-long residents was of Italian descent.
The population blossomed in the summer to more than double its
census, but far fewer of the summer people had Italian blood. The
place became positively WASPy by Memorial Day. Still, the pews at
Christ the King were SRO for all four services every Sunday
morning.

The Pagano family took up almost a whole row
near the front, both sides of the aisle: Carlo Sr., Carlo, Trey,
Carmen, John, Rosa—and, genuflecting and dropping his ass at the
end just before Mass began, Luca. Even he wasn’t rebel enough to
blow off Mass. On the other side of the aisle, Uncle Ben and Aunt
Angie—their three daughters were all grown, married, and living
away—and Aunt Betty, Uncle Lorrie, and Nick, Lorrie and Betty’s
only living son. Joey sat next to Nick. Carlo didn’t like that.
Uncle Ben and Uncle Lorrie were the Paganos most people thought
about when they heard the name. Ben, the eldest brother, was the
Don of the family; Lorrie was his right hand. Nick was coming up in
the family, a
capo
in his own right.

Of all Carlo Sr.’s kids, Joey was the only
one who’d been dazzled by the family infamy. For the others, it was
a weight they’d had to carry. But Joey wanted to live in the world
of
The Godfather
—or even
Goodfellas
or
The
Sopranos
. Those fictional worlds weren’t exactly like the real
version, but that had not dissuaded Joey. Uncle Ben, deferring to
his youngest brother’s desires for his children to stay out of that
life, had always set him away. But if Joey had moved to the other
side of the aisle, maybe something had changed.

Carlo Sr. had scowled down the row when Luca
had sat down, his motorcycle helmet on the pew next to him, but
otherwise, his focus was on the altar. Carlo turned and considered
his father’s profile. He got the impression that he was carefully
trying not to pay attention to where his youngest son had decided
to sit. Not having been home for several weeks, Carlo wasn’t sure
whether this was a new thing or not, but the sense he got was that
everyone was as surprised as he was.

He turned the other way and leaned over Trey
to Carmen. “Joey?”

She only shook her head and rolled her eyes.
A talk for another time, then. But soon. He didn’t like this
development at all.

~oOo~

His intention to grill Carmen for some
information about Joey was thwarted after Mass, when they were
milling with other parishioners on the sidewalk outside the church,
taking their turn to say a word to Father Michael. As Trey squatted
down next to him to study a beetle trundling over the concrete,
Carlo turned and came face to face with Sabina. Bina. She must have
been at Mass.

Her hair was brushed sleekly straight and
held back with a silk scarf fixed like a wide headband. She was
dressed in a pretty, brownish-pink skirt that fell below her knees
and a snug, off-white sleeveless sweater with a kind of short
turtleneck. That sweater showed nothing and everything and was
completely stunning.

He looked down at her feet and saw that she
was wearing tall, off-white boots with what he would call a high
heel. Jenny would probably have laughed at that. She’d always
preferred sky-high heels. Still did, for all he knew.

But he was surprised to see Bina here at
all, much less wearing heels. Her foot had been in not-great shape
last night. The marks on her wrists were gone, too, somehow.

“Bina. Good morning. Are you doing
better?”

“Yes. Thank you. And to you, too, good
morning. I stopped only to say, again, thank you. For helping
me.”

“It was my pleasure.” It really was. Too
much his pleasure. He’d been tortured all night by thoughts of her
soft skin in his hand. Her laugh. And that last smile as he was
leaving. His creative mind had taken those tiny details of the real
world and turned them into vivid fodder for his dream world.

Her eyes shifted from him in a way he
thought was self-conscious, and he looked behind him to see his
entire family staring dumbly at them. Nothing to do here but the
obvious, unfortunately.

“Oh. I should introduce you.
Sabina…Auberon”—it was surprisingly difficult to get that last name
out—“this is my family. My father, Carlo Sr., my sisters, Carmen
and Rosa, and my brothers John and Luca.” Bina shook hands with
everyone.

“There’s another brother around somewhere:
Joey.” He ruffled Trey’s head, and his son stood and hooked an arm
around his leg. “And this is my son, Trey. Trey, this nice lady is
Ms. Bina.” He glanced at her to make sure she didn’t mind the way
he’d introduced her. By her genuine smile, he assumed she did
not.

Bina bent at the waist to get closer to his
son. She was wearing a pendant with a rose-colored stone, and it
dangled as she leaned. “Hello, Mr. Trey. How are you?”

“I’m fine thank you. You’re pretty.” He
reached out and wrapped his little hand around her pendant. “This
is pretty, too.”

“Trey, let go, pal.” Carlo put his hand on
Trey’s arm and gently pulled him back.

“It’s not a worry, really. Thank you, Mr.
Trey. You are a very nice person.” She stood up.

“Yes I am. You’re nice, too. Do you like
doughnuts with jimmies? We have doughnuts at Pop-Pop’s for
breakfast. And beagles. I don’t like beagles but Daddy said I could
have two jimmie doughnuts if I was quiet like a mouse in Mass and I
was so now I can have two jimmie doughnuts when we go home but if
you like jimmie doughnuts I would give you one.”

She laughed. It was a beautiful sound coming
from a beautiful mouth in a beautiful face. So beautiful that for a
moment, Carlo hoped she would take Trey up on his offer and come
home with them. What the fuck was he thinking? “Trey…”

Bina put her hand up to stop him from saying
more. “That is the most wonderful thing anyone’s wanted to do for
me in a long time, Mr. Trey. I have an appointment this morning,
though, so I’m afraid I’m not able to join you for a doughnut.
Maybe some other time?”