Rooted (The Pagano Family Book 3) (21 page)

~ 15 ~

Seeing Eli and Rosa for the first time in a couple of months had been exactly as awkward and unpleasant as Carmen had anticipated it would be. She wasn’t showing hugely yet, and she’d dressed to try to camouflage her belly, but she’d known that her time of dodging reality was coming to an end.

Shockingly, her family had kept her secret from Rosa, too. Carmen attributed that to the way that Rosa, since she’d gone to college four years ago, had sort of faded to the back of the family. Whether that circumstance had evolved by Rosa’s influence or the family’s, Carmen wasn’t sure. Probably a little bit of both. In any case, in this case, it had worked in her favor, and she’d gotten until the end of November to ignore key facets of her reality.

It was not her usual approach to be such a pussy, but what was happening to her was so enormous and life-altering that she hadn’t been able to make any clear decisions. The baby was due in April. She couldn’t afford another summer away from work—though her staff had done a great job covering everything while she was away, and she’d been apprised regularly of all their progress, some clients had not been thrilled to know that the woman they’d contracted with was barely even reachable while the work happened. She’d need to be able to get in front of clients in the coming season.

Worrying about that, trying to wrap her mind around the possibility that she’d have to find a new home, and simply confronting the truth that she was going to be a mother—that was all her mind could face. The little bit remaining was a raw sore from the continuing hurt of missing Theo and knowing she’d fucked up irredeemably.

There was nothing left for the thought that she’d have to face him and tell him that not only had she fucked them up, but they were now connected forever. So she’d set that thought aside and decided to wait until she had no other choice but to deal with it. She’d expected Thanksgiving to be that time, and she’d arrived at the house girded for the discussion. But then Eli and Rosa hadn’t noticed, and she thought she’d have some more time.

Everyone had converged at the house. The men were in the cellar watching the big television, and the women were in the kitchen, wearing aprons, baking pies and doing whatever prep they could the day before Thanksgiving. Eli had tried to join them in the kitchen, but Adele had swatted him with a tea towel and told him to go be with the men. He’d made a show of being run off, and everyone had laughed. Rosa had been in a great mood, and the vibe in the kitchen was merry.

And then the baby moved. Carmen had been feeling movements, little tickling flutters, for a week or so, maybe two. With the first of those flutters—she’d read online that they were called ‘quickening’—the truth of her life had hit her hard. She’d had a strange couple of days, swinging back and forth between panic and joy. Panic because now, for certain and forever, the path of want was closed to her. Now, she would never be able to think of herself first. But joy because those flutters made the baby real. There was a little person growing in her belly, making himself or herself known. Carmen had wanted a family. She’d once fantasized about meeting a handsome man in Europe and both of them wandering around the world with kids strapped to their backs.

Her family would look a little different, and it had happened in a way she hadn’t expected—except the part about meeting a handsome man in Europe—but at least it was one thing in her life she’d wanted, one thing she would have. A child.

When that child moved in the kitchen on Caravel Road on the day before Thanksgiving, he or she had not fluttered. He or she had kicked. Carmen, surprised and pleased, had, unthinking, laughed, dropping the wooden spoon in her hand to the floor with a clatter and clutching her belly.

Rosa, in the midst of a description of one of her neighbors in Brooklyn, froze and went silent. And then she’d emphatically recovered her voice. “I knew it! I knew it. Oh my GAWD, I knew it! You’ve never gotten chubby in your whole life until now. You’re knocked up!”

She ran over to Carmen and put her hands on her belly. “Oh. My. Gawd! Is it Theo’s? It’s Theo’s. Right? Does he know?” She looked around the kitchen. “Did everybody know but me?”

Carmen jerked herself away from her sister’s touch. “Rosa, I swear to God, shut up.”

“No! No way!” She looked around the room. “Everybody knew but me, didn’t they?” Now she was pouting and angry, and Carmen wanted to slap her. So like Rosa to turn this around and make it about her.

The big kitchen had been bustling with activity; now it was silent. Sabina stepped forward. “It wasn’t about you, Rosa. Carmen has needed time to decide how to tell the fath—Theo.”

Rosa’s eyes widened with dawning comprehension. “You don’t want Eli to know. This is all a big conspiracy to keep Theo from knowing he’s going to be a father…again.”

“No, Rosa. I’m not trying to keep it from him. I wanted to tell him. Dammit. You don’t understand.”

“Oh, I understand.” She untied the apron and pulled it over her head. “Bitch alert, Carm. This is the worst thing you’ve ever done! You totally suck!” She was shouting.

She started to leave the room, and Carmen knew exactly where she was going. She grabbed her arm. “Rosie, wait. I will tell him. I will. I need to figure out how to do it. Please. Rosa, please.”

“Tell who what? Rhody, you okay?” And there Eli was, in the hallway between the kitchen and the cellar door. Carmen saw Joey standing just behind him, his eyes eager, and then Carlo pulled Joey away and only Eli stood there, big and blond.

Fuck.

Rosa’s head swiveled to Eli. When she turned back to Carmen, there was malice in her eyes. “Carmen’s pregnant. It’s your dad’s.”

Carmen faced Eli and saw confusion turn to shock. “You are?”

She nodded.

“How far?”

“About five months. Eli—I’m going to tell him. I am. I promise. I need to do it my way. Please. I know I’m asking a lot, but please don’t say anything. Please.”

Eli said nothing, and the whole kitchen stayed quiet while Theo’s son and Carmen stared at each other.

Then, he made a movement that was either a nod of concession or a bow of farewell, and he spun on his heel and walked down the hall. Rosa yanked her arm free of Carmen’s grip and followed him.

Carmen had no idea what to think or expect now. But reality had moved in to stay.

~oOo~

Carmen kept herself out of the way for a while, wanting to leave but sure that her leaving in the middle of all this would only stoke the family fire hotter. So she fussed in the kitchen, and just found things to do that kept her away from Eli for about half an hour. Then she took Elsa for a quick walk.

When she came in through the back gate, the mingled sounds of laughter and her family’s typical loud voices flavored the air in the back yard. Carmen felt unready to face them, especially since they seemed to have moved on past her scandal, and going back in would only remind them. She liked it better out here, alone in the fall night, the air crisp and strongly aromatic from the smoke of wood fires burning in fireplaces all around.

Though she adored summer sports and had grown up spending virtually all of every summer in a wetsuit or just a bikini, Carmen’s favorite season was autumn. She loved everything about it: the smells, the colors—nowhere on earth was as beautiful as New England in the fall—the way the beach got so peaceful after the summer people had closed up their summer places, the suddenly lazy pace of the town, the way that she knew almost every single person she saw anywhere in town because they were all residents, and the voting population of the Cove was quite small. Even though autumn was seen as a time of ending, of dying, Carmen had always felt a crisp kind of life in the air. Autumn was the time for resting and preparing to revive. Animals packed their dens and settled in. Plants put their energies into their roots and hung on.

Most saw spring as the season of hope, but Carmen thought they got that wrong. Hope wasn’t necessary when things were turning green. Hope was for the season when the green faded. Autumn was hope.

While she was sitting on the patio in her coat, watching Elsa roll around in a pile of leaves, Sabina came outside, pulling her sweater tightly around her and sitting down in a chair near Carmen.

“I think hiding in the yard is not a very good plan, Carmen. Frostbite will happen.”

With a wry shake of her head, Carmen laughed. “I know. I’m being a pussy. Everything’s just so out of control right now.”

“You are brave and strong, Carmen. You will find your way.”

“I would like to have your faith in me. I love you, Sabina.” The baby moved again, and she put her hand on her belly.

“And I love you. He is moving again?”

“Or she, yeah. It’s been more like kicks today.”

“May I?” Sabina nodded at her belly.

“Sure. I don’t know if you’ll be able to feel yet, but sure.”

Sabina came over and sat on the settee next to Carmen. She hesitated, looking a little nervous, and then laid her hands on Carmen’s belly, spreading her fingers. Carmen lifted one of her hands and moved to the spot she’d felt the kicking.

For a few minutes, they sat just like that, not speaking, Sabina’s attention so acute it was like she was trying to hear the baby as well as feel it. But it didn’t matter whether the kicks were strong enough yet to be felt; the baby was quiet. Eventually, Sabina sighed and sat back.

“Sorry.” Carmen felt vaguely and irrationally guilty.

Sabina’s smile was sweet and loving. “Not to be sorry. I hope you’ll let me do that another time, though. I would like to feel the baby kick someday.” She blinked, and Carmen realized that Sabina was nearly overcome with emotion.

“How are things with Anna and your baby?” The baby they were set to adopt was due on New Year’s Day.

“It frustrates Carlo that I cannot think of Anna’s baby as mine. But I’m afraid. If she changes her mind, it will be hard. Her grandfather is very angry with her and her parents. She could change her mind.”

“Has she wavered at all since your agreement?”

“No. She is sad, but she hasn’t wavered. It’s a great deal of trust to give, for all of us. Trey doesn’t understand, too. He thinks a baby comes only like yours is coming.” She chuckled quietly. “He’s quite insistent that I’m not fat enough for a baby to be coming to us soon.”

“Sabina, can I ask—have you thought of having what was done to you reversed? Having one of your own?”

“Of course. Carlo and I spoke much about this. But I can’t. I have fear that…” She sighed. “It makes no sense, I know. So to explain is…difficult.”

“You don’t have to. Your choice is your own.”

“Carlo doesn’t understand, either. But then, too, he does. He accepts. To give a child a home is a good thing, yes? And to give his mother help, as well?”

“It is. It’s a very good thing.” Anna’s baby would be loved beyond all reason by a family with bountiful heaps of love to give. Carmen prayed that the girl would not change her mind.

~oOo~

Carmen got a slow start the next day. Though the evening, when Sabina had finally coaxed her back inside, had been fine, and Eli and Rosa hadn’t been overtly hostile to her—not exactly chatty, but not hostile—Carmen was overwhelmed and depressed. She’d slept badly, rehearsing over and over in her head what she should say to Theo when she could put it off no longer. Every scenario she played out had her humiliated, guilty, and alone. She couldn’t manage to get up much enthusiasm for a day with her raucous family, in the midst of which sat Theo’s son.

By ten o’clock, she’d fielded three calls—from Sabina, Adele, and Luca—wondering where she was. The Pagano family tradition had the day starting early, with brunch and the Macy’s parade. Then football the rest of the day. Thanksgiving dinner was on the table by two in the afternoon, and by six o’clock, Carlo Sr. would have
Christmas with Johnny Mathis
on the turntable and the family would be mobilized for Christmas decorating.