Rooted (The Pagano Family Book 3) (29 page)

Theo sat at the bar, a few stools from the others. The old-salt bartender came down and swiped at the bar in front of Theo, then tossed the bar rag back over his shoulder. “What’ll ya have?”

For too many seconds, Theo just stared at him, at war with himself. He was forty-two days sober—he hadn’t had a drink since the night Carmen had left. Until today, it had finally been getting easier, even alone.

But sitting with his lawyer—listening to his dirty-play ideas, knocking away strategies to impugn Carmen, hearing what his chances were to build a relationship with his newborn child from a distance if he didn’t fight dirty—all of it made him sick and sad and desperate to empty his head. He didn’t want that fight. He didn’t want a fight at all. He wanted his family.

He really needed a drink.

“Mister? Ya here for a drink or not?”

“Yeah. Sorry. Bourbon.” He glanced at the bottles behind the bar. “Jim Beam’s fine. Neat.”

“Ayuh.” The bartender nodded, poured, and slid the glass over. “Eight.”

He took the ten Theo handed him, brought back two, and went back to his conversation.

Theo sat and stared at the drink in front of him. He bent forward and smelled it. God. His mouth watered. Hell, his
brain
watered. He practically got hard.

He needed the fucking drink.

He stared into the open mouth of the glass, down into the dark amber liquid. A beautiful color.

He needed this.

A shadow fell over the glass, and he looked up to see the bartender. The older man put a thin stack of bills on top of the two dollars in change he’d left earlier. A five and three ones. Theo looked at the ten dollars on the bar and then back at the bartender. The sour-faced man stared back.

“Lost my brother to the drink. Took his wife and boy with him, over the Garry Road bridge and onto the rocks below. There’s AA over to the Methodist Church, ‘bout half a mile down the road. Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Meet at half past.” He filled a glass with water and set it on the bar. “This’ll do ya if you’re thirsty.” Then he took the glass of bourbon, dumped it in the sink, and went back to the group at the end of the bar.

Recognizing a saving for what it was, Theo drank the water and got up. Before he left the bar, he waited and made eye contact with the bartender. He nodded, and the tough old Good Samaritan nodded back.

That AA meeting was the one Theo had attended sporadically in the past several weeks. He turned onto the road and headed to the church, where he should have pointed his Jeep in the first place.

~oOo~

Perhaps because he was still reeling a little from the lawyer and then the close call right after, Theo spoke at this meeting for the first time. He didn’t talk about Maggie at all. He talked about Carmen, about the daughter she was carrying, about what it was like to feel everything he wanted fluttering just beyond the reach of his outstretched fingers.

Afterward, though in the past he had simply left, this time he stayed for the traditional watery coffee and stale cookies.

But the coffee was good, and the cookies were—not cookies. Fresh, flaky, delicious pastries, some sweet, some savory. Wow. Impressive.

As he went for a second tapenade puff, one of the women who’d spoken at the meeting, and who seemed to speak at every meeting—he remembered her name as Joanne—stepped in next to him. “Good, huh?”

Theo smiled. “They are. You hear stories about the crappy snacks at AA. I figured it was in a rule book somewhere.”

She laughed. She was a pretty, rosy-cheeked brunette, her build sturdy but not overly stout. “It might be. But Curt is a chef, so we get spoiled.”

Curt was the meeting leader. Theo nodded appreciatively. When he stepped away from the table, Joanne followed him. “Can I ask you something? Call me nosy if I am.”

Theo’s guard went up, but he smiled. “Shoot.”

“Do you have a sponsor?”

“What?”

“I ask because I’ve seen you here before, but you don’t come anything like regular, and today was the first time I saw you talk. You had a rough night. Nobody to call, I guess?”

“Nosy.” It probably wasn’t an overly nosy question. They were at an AA meeting, for fuck’s sake. Having a sponsor was part of the deal. But he didn’t have any likely candidates for sponsor. Theo felt intruded upon and defensive. And lonely.

Joanne smiled. “Fair enough. I’ll say this and then leave you to it. You should have somebody to call. Somebody who won’t judge but’ll get you through it. Somebody who knows. I’ve been sober five years, and I never would have made it to five weeks without my sponsor.” She patted his arm. “Nice talking to you, Theo. Hope I’ll see you here again.” And then she wandered off to mingle elsewhere.

Theo dumped his second tapenade puff in the trash on his way out the door.

~ 21 ~

“How about this one?”

Carmen gave the item in question a skeptical examination. “It only has three sides.”

“It’s for co-sleeping.” Andi pointed to a sign next to the display. “Look. You put the crib up against the side of your bed, so baby’s right there with you. When she’s hungry, you just drag her over and pop a boob in.”

“I don’t want her up in the loft. Carrying her up and down that staircase probably isn’t a good idea.”

“Aren’t you going to move down to the other bedroom?”

“It’s too small. With my office stuff, it’ll barely hold the crib.”

“You’re putting her crib in your office?” Andi’s expression would have been more appropriate it Carmen had just suggested tying the baby to a surfboard and letting her sleep on the waves.

“Well, where else do you suggest I put it? The living room?”

“No, you should move your office out of there and make it a bedroom. For you and her both. Put your office stuff up in the loft.”

That was a completely impractical idea. “Getting my bed up there took scaffolding, Andi. I’m not moving it from where it is. Maybe ever.”

“You need a new house, my friend. Your house is not baby-compatible.” Andi sighed and moved on to the next nursery display in the baby superstore. The very idea of a baby superstore had flummoxed Carmen, but in the past several weeks, since Little Ben had come home and since people had started leaning on Carmen to make preparations for a baby who was still more than ten weeks away, she had become quite familiar with the layout here.

“No. I only need a crib. I can work the rest out. I can. What makes you think you know so much, anyway? You’re not a mother. You’ve never done this.” Andi took a step back, her eyes wide, and Carmen could have kicked herself. “Fuck, Andi. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.” Andi had had two miscarriages and then had given birth to a stillborn son several years ago. The trauma had ended her marriage. Coming through it had changed her from Andrea to Andromeda and had made her the spiritual soul that she now was.

“Yes, you did. You are feeling querulous and said something to shut me down. But I am a compassionate person, and I recognize that your body and mind are not entirely your own right now, so I forgive you.” She pointed to a white crib with a canopy top. “What do you think of this one?”

Happy to follow along down the safer route of discussion, Carmen said, “Too fussy. What about this?” She went to a plain maple crib, which hadn’t even been given a fake nursery as a display. It simply stood against a wall, a white bumper and sheet inside it.

Andi sighed. “Really, Carm? Don’t you want to celebrate your daughter? Give her a space befitting the miracle she is? Aren’t you excited at all?”

Carmen rubbed the swelling at her middle. She would be thirty weeks along next week. Was she excited? She had no idea. She loved the baby inside her with a ferocity that awed her. Teresa. Every time her daughter rolled or kicked—or had hiccups!—Carmen stopped what she was doing, her attention entirely consumed by the life she was creating. She talked to her. She fell asleep some nights thinking about what kind of woman she would someday be, and stayed awake others worrying about what kind of mother she herself would be.

Other nights, she fell asleep feeling lonely, aching for Theo, wondering whether she had made a mistake in leaving him. Feeling certain that she had.

But in the morning, she would remember the response his lawyer had sent, the way it had set Carmen up as the reason Teresa would grow up in a broken home, setting Theo up as the victim of a demanding and vindictive woman, and demanding fifty-percent custody, with half of Teresa’s time to be spent in Maine. From the time of her birth. He was playing hardball. Fine, then. He would get a taste of the real bitch she could be.

Was she excited? No. She was in love with her daughter, but she was sad and afraid. Everything was so fucked up. Nothing was the way it should be. In that scheme of the world, what crib she bought, whether she painted the walls in her office petal pink and moved her desk to God knew where, whether she chose cloth diapers or disposables, a Maclaren stroller or a Peg Perego, none of that really seemed to matter. She needed a place for the kid to sleep. End of story.

“I like this one.” She ran a hand over the side rail of the plain maple crib. “This one will do fine.”

~oOo~

When the crib was delivered two days later, she had decided to make one concession—she would move the desk and file cabinet out of the bedroom. She stored her dining table and chairs (she almost never had anyone over to eat, anyway, at least not inside), figuring that the two barstools at the kitchen counter would serve fine for her own needs, and she turned her dining area into an office. If Andi was right that she’d want to be closer than the loft, Carmen would sleep on the daybed until that was no longer the case.

Luca and John came over and moved her furniture, and then they built the crib, as well as a basic, matching changing table, and the gliding chair Andi had insisted was an absolute necessity. She fed them pizza and beer, and they hung around after and watched
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
with her—something they used to do when they were kids and living together at home. They all three had the entire film memorized and called out the dialogue all the way through, taking parts interchangeably. Carmen sat between her brothers, tucked under Luca’s arm and with her feet in John’s lap, and she felt better than she had for a while. When Teresa rolled and kicked, they both put hands on her belly, grinning like idiots to feel their niece dance.

This was why staying in Quiet Cove was right.

Afterward, Luca got a text from Manny, letting him know she was home from spending the day in Providence with her folks. It wasn’t long thereafter that he wanted to head home. Carmen teased him gently about being whipped, but he only grinned. He wasn’t whipped. He was in love. Manny was his home.

As he was putting on his coat, and John, recently single again and in no hurry to go, was rooting around in her refrigerator, Carmen’s phone rang. It was Adele. She answered with a smile—their father’s sixty-sixth birthday was coming up, the first since he and Adele had been married, and since his heart attack and near-death. Adele wanted to celebrate and was planning a party. Carmen expected the call to be related to those plans.

“Hey, Adele. What’s up?”

“Carmen, I need you. Your father needs you. Can you come? And your brothers. Nobody’s home next door. Carlo’s phone went to voice mail. I don’t know what to do.”

“Carlo and Sabina took the boys to see Natalie, Adele. What’s wrong?” At her words, Luca, who had been in mid-wave and on his way out the door, and John, whose head had been deep in her refrigerator, both locked on her.
It’s Pop
, she mouthed.

“Oh, honey. He’s so upset. I don’t know…I can’t…”

“Adele! Jesus motherfucking Christ! What happened?!”

“It’s Lorrie. Ben just called. Somebody shot Lorrie. Carmen…he’s dead.”

~oOo~

Carmen, Luca, and John went straight to their father, and then they took him and Adele to Uncle Ben’s house, where the family was congregating. Uncle Ben and Aunt Angie lived on the highest point of Quiet Cove, in an area officially called Quiet Bluff but known by townies as Greenback Hill, because it was where all the money went to live. All the houses on that one
cul de sac
at the top of the hill had panoramic views of the ocean, but were far enough removed from the beach not to be disturbed by the regular folk.

As usual in the evening, the house was fully lit, so that it glowed almost like a lighthouse on the top of the hill. In fact, when all five of the houses here were illuminated, the light seemed to be nearly as bright as the beacon from the actual Quiet Cove lighthouse. It couldn’t be, not really, but more than one night sailor had said that Greenback Hill was the first thing that told them they were in sight of home.

Even with the bright lights, though, on this night the house seemed somber. The long drive was full of cars and SUVs, most of them black. Mourners from the Uncles’ blood family and their other ‘family’ had all gathered together to give comfort and pay respect.

Uncle Lorrie, who lived elsewhere in town, had been shot on his front lawn, coming back from walking Aunt Betty’s two Yorkies. He enjoyed an evening walk every night after dinner. He had a guard with him, as always; the guard, Freddy, was dead, too. Aunt Betty had found them, the dogs yapping wildly, bound by their little pink leashes to the body of her husband.

Carlo and Sabina had planned to spend the night in Providence but came home, straight to Uncle Ben’s. Trey had fallen asleep shortly after he’d arrived and was now ensconced in a guestroom, oblivious to the pall in the house. Carmen called Rosa, and she and Eli, with farther to travel, would come for the funeral. Uncle Ben’s daughters and their families, who were all scattered around the country and rarely came back to Rhode Island, would be arriving for the funeral as well.

So odd, how the shrinking of a family through loss was the one thing—more even than the growing of family through weddings and births—that would draw a whole family together.

Carmen thought about calling Theo, but realized that there was no reason to tell him. He had never met Uncle Lorrie, and Carmen had no right to seek comfort from him for herself. If it was comfort that she needed. She loved Uncle Lorrie, but in a detached way, without real resonance. Her memories of him as a younger man were tinged with an edge of discomfort; she remembered bursts of temper that had ruined family gatherings. But that had changed as he aged, and for years, he’d been simply a nice old man she saw on Sundays, mostly. A nice old man with a wide, cold streak right through his heart. He had been the Pagano Brothers first enforcer, a role he’d passed down to his son, Nick.

Her distress was for her father, really, who was taking the loss hard. He sat in Aunt Angie’s little sitting room with Adele and Aunt Betty, Lorrie’s widow, cradling his sister-in-law in his arms. Aunt Betty was flaccid and silent, allowing Carlo Sr. to rock her and Adele to pat her leg. She looked like a woman who needed a good, hard cry but had been refusing herself the release. She looked like a woman soon to blow. Carmen’s father didn’t look much better. She wanted to comfort him, but he looked brittle enough to break, so when she checked in on them, she held his eyes for a moment and tried to send him her love that way. He gave her a small smile and a short nod. With that reassurance that he would be okay, she left him and looked for somewhere else to be.

After meeting his obligations as host and member—leader—of the family, Uncle Ben, looking haggard, retired to his study with Nick and various business associates. The doors closed, and the tone in the rest of the house got marginally lighter. The dangerous men had locked themselves away.

Carmen’s brothers and the less significant men of the Uncles’ business filled the living room, looking uncomfortable in Aunt Angie’s fussy, professionally-decorated taste. Carmen wanted to be there, with them, but she knew the men who were not her brothers would be silenced, if not scandalized, to have a woman in their midst. They were not enlightened souls. So she went back to the kitchen—an even more aggressively opulent room, full of carved wood and pearl grey marble. The women—wives, girlfriends, family—bustled about, doing what women were supposed to do. They prepared food, they fussed over Little Ben, and they tsked about the loss and the horror of it.

Carmen noticed that Manny was missing—that in itself wasn’t unusual. Manny wasn’t good mixing with a lot of people, and she tended to wander off. It had taken her a long time to become comfortable with the nucleus of the Pagano family. Add in the Uncles’ associates and the circumstance of violent death, and this was probably a horrible place for Manny to be. But Luca wanted her with him and safe. Feeling uncomfortable herself, Carmen went looking.

She found her in the cold, frozen back yard, sitting on the bare metal base of a patio chair, alone and bundled up in a white down coat. She didn’t seem to notice Carmen coming out.

“You okay, Manny?”

“Hmm? Oh, yeah. I just needed a minute. People confuse me.”