Rooted (The Pagano Family Book 3) (30 page)

The first years of Manny’s life had been traumatic and devoid of any love or affection—or even care at all—and her brain had not formed important capacities for social bonding and communication. She had learned later and developed coping mechanisms, but she did not naturally understand most people. “Confuse you how?” Carmen sat on another bare chair; the cold of the metal made her thighs quickly numb.

“Just my usual stuff. Trying to figure out how to read the people here and coming up with nothing. I guess I never really had to deal with death before. I think I expected more crying. I don’t know. I didn’t expect laughing. It freaked me out a little. I’m not sure how to be. I’ll probably say something wrong.”

“Yeah…grief is probably the most confusing emotion we have. Everybody expresses it differently, so I don’t think your flashcards will help.”

“I wish I’d stayed home.”

“I think Luca wants you close. He wants you safe, and he feels better when he’s with you.”

“Yeah. I know. But we were in the living room and everybody was staring at me. So I came out here.” She looked straight at Carmen for the first time. “Should you be out here? Is the baby okay in the cold?”

“She’s fine. But your fingernails are blue. Why don’t we go in? There’s a TV room down cellar—it’s probably quiet there.”

Manny nodded, and they went in and down to the cellar—which was more elaborate than most people’s houses. The TV room was empty. The television was really a movie screen and a projector, but it had cable. They turned it on and sat together watching
Friends
reruns. They didn’t talk. Carmen doubted either of them was actually watching the show, either. But it was probably the best place in the house for both of them.

~oOo~

Lorenzo Pagano was buried on a bright, cold midweek morning. The family gathered at the funeral home for a final private visitation and vigil and to follow the hearse in a procession to the funeral service at Christ the King Catholic Church. Rosa and Eli were home, as were Uncle Ben and Aunt Angie’s three daughters—Lita, Cella, and Lucie—their husbands, and their children. Carmen hadn’t seen her cousins, all of them older, in years. She was happy to reconnect, and they all made a fuss about her prominent belly.

Again, Carmen was struck by the oddity of funerals, the pleasure of reunion amidst the grief of mourning.

Visitation had occurred for two full days, and the family had been continually present. By this last morning, to those who had spent hours with it, the closed rosewood casket at one end of the room had almost become a mere piece of furniture and the gathering more of a mixer than a mourning.

But when Mr. Andolini came into the room and announced that it was time to go to the church, and people began to file out of the tall double doors, Carmen noticed that Nick and his mother walked arm in arm to the casket. Aunt Betty leaned on her son, and Nick kissed the top of her head, resting there. Caught up in the quiet sorrow of that moment, Carmen stopped and watched, unaware that she was staring.

Then Uncle Ben and Carmen’s father walked up to the casket, their faces weary, their carriage somber. They took Aunt Betty into their care and led her out of the room.

And Carmen realized that only she and Nick were left among the mourners. Mr. Andolini stood at the door, and two of his assistants were just outside. They would move the casket on its bier to the front door, where the pallbearers would take it to the hearse. The only other occupant of the room was a thick man in a black suit, black shirt, and white tie. He was familiar, but Carmen didn’t know his name. One of the Pagano Brothers’ soldiers, acting as bodyguards, she assumed. Since Uncle Lorrie had been killed, thick men seemed to be everywhere.

Nick stood staring down at the casket, his legs spread and his hands clasped in front of him. Carmen wondered if he was praying. But Mr. Andolini cleared his throat and gave her a beseeching look, and Carmen went up to the casket.

Though she knew Nick’s reputation was fearsome, she didn’t fear him. He was seven years older than she was, and he hadn’t exactly been her playtime buddy growing up, but he’d been a nice kid and had hung out with her, Carlo, and Luca more than Uncle Ben’s older girls, all of whom had been girly girls. He’d always been intense, though—the kind of kid who played every single game to win and took every challenge as a moral obligation. He hadn’t been a sore loser, not one to upend a game board in a fit, but if somebody made a tough play on him—say, hit him with a ‘Draw 4’ card in Uno—then for the rest of the game, he’d gone for them like Sherman through Atlanta.

He’d drifted off after school, when he went to work for his father and Uncle Ben. In the twenty-five years or so since, he’d been something of a shadow in the family, always at Mass, always at family gatherings, always present, but never really connected.

When she stood at his side, he didn’t acknowledge her. His eyes were open, so she wasn’t sure if he was praying, after all. He seemed to be simply staring at the place on the casket under which his father’s head lay.

“Nick?”

His head turned slightly toward her. “Hey, Carm.”

“Mr. Andolini is waiting to take him to the door. It’s time for the Mass.”

Nick looked over his shoulder. “Get out.” Without hesitation, Mr. Andolini left the room. The thick man in black, however, didn’t budge. “You, too, Jimmy. And close the door.”

Jimmy took a beat, then nodded. “Right outside, boss.” He stepped out and pulled the double doors closed.

Carmen turned back to Nick. “Boss?” In the Uncles’ world, Uncle Ben was called ‘don,’ and Uncle Lorrie was ‘boss.’ It was a title reserved for the don’s second in command.

Nick answered with nothing more than an upward twitch at the corner of his mouth.

When he continued in quiet, Carmen said, “I’ll go, too. I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

“No. You can stay.” He was staring again at the casket. Then he lifted his hands and took hold of the lid, as if he intended to open it. Carmen put her hand on his to stop him.

“Nick, don’t.”

Now he turned his head, and his intense eyes pierced hers. “They blew his face off. My ma found him lying in the yard with his face blown off.”

“I know.” The story had spread through the mourners gathered at Uncle Ben’s house on the very first night. She didn’t know who ‘they’ were, but she assumed it had to do with the attacks on the construction sites, and Norm’s murder, and what had happened to Luca, John, and Manny more than a year earlier. “You don’t want to see that.”

“Yeah, I do. Ma can’t carry that alone. And I need to see what they did. On his own lawn. In front of the house where my
mother
lives.” He tightened his grip on the casket lid. “Step away, Carm. Turn away.”

She didn’t. She stayed where she was and held her breath as Nick lifted the lid.

Uncle Lorrie was dressed in a dapper, perfectly-tailored charcoal grey suit with fine, widely-spaced pinstripes; a crisp, white silk dress shirt; and a crimson silk tie with his familiar diamond tie pin. His hands were folded at his waist; he still wore his wedding ring.

A wide swath of black satin covered his face. Nick pushed the lid up until it held on its own and then reached in and lifted the satin. Carmen couldn’t see what was under that elegant fabric, so she watched Nick’s face and saw enough. His eyes flared and glinted, and the muscle at the joint of his jaw twitched.

After a few moments of his silent, furious staring, Carmen quietly said, “Nick.”

He flinched, then restored the satin over his father’s head and closed the casket lid. “Okay,” was all he said.

~oOo~

Christ the King was packed for the funeral Mass, and virtually all of the mourners followed in the procession to the cemetery. Carmen noticed the large men in black suits who ringed the graveside service at intervals, and she also noticed others in dark suits, not so well-tailored, and knew the cops, or maybe Feds, for what they were.

For her whole life, she had not bothered much with the business of the Uncles. She knew about it, and she knew their reputation both tainted and enhanced the reputation of her own family, but she had felt comfortably sheltered from that reality, which was so unlike hers. But in the past couple of years, the branches of the family had begun to intertwine uncomfortably.

When the service was over, the Pagano family lingered at the graveside until the casket was lowered into the ground. Aunt Betty tossed a handful of dirt into the grave. Nick did the same. And then he took his mother into his arms as she finally broke down completely.

John hooked his arm through Carmen’s. “Come on, sis. Let’s head over.” They were due back at Uncle Ben and Aunt Angie’s.

The cemetery got noisy suddenly. Before Carmen could process the sound of a roaring engine and squealing tires, thunder filled the air, and John knocked her to the ground. He must have really hit her, because her ribs began to shriek with hot pain.

Another roar and squeal marked the end of the thunder. With a rush, her senses and her intellect finally converged, and she realized the thunder had been gunfire. Now the air was filled with shouts and screams and weeping.

“Oh shit. Carmen, oh shit. Hold on. Sis, you hold on.” John sounded panicked.

She didn’t know what she was holding onto. Her ribs hurt badly, and her shoulder, too—from the fall, she figured. But she thought she was mainly okay. She opened her mouth to ask if anybody had been shot.

And then her belly cramped hard, and she cried out with the bolt of pain. She looked down to see John kneeling at her side, his hands on pressing on her belly. They were red with blood. Her blood. Her dress was soaked red.

Oh, God. Teresa! “No—John, no. Don’t let…please…Theo. Where’s Theo?” The world started to tip and swirl, and she dropped her head back to the ground, exhausted.

Again John pleaded, “Hold
on
, Carmen.”

She looked up to see the worried faces of her brothers all around her. It was the last image that made any kind of sense before color became grey and then black was everything.

~ 22 ~

Eli met Theo in the main lobby of St. Gabriel’s Hospital. Theo grabbed his son by his arms. “Are they okay? Talk to me!”

“Let’s sit down.” Eli took his father’s arm and led him to a quiet nook, where four squared, leatherette armchairs faced each other around a low, round table.
 

“Eli, please. What the hell is going on?” Cell reception had sucked most of the drive, so he hadn’t heard anything more since Eli’s first call. The call had come through while he was giving an Intro to American Classics lecture, and he’d let it roll to voice mail. The message Eli had left—
Carmen’s been shot. Call me right away
—had caused Theo to drop his briefcase and papers right in the middle of the corridor in Hershey Hall.

When he called Eli back, standing there with his papers still piled around his feet, all his son had known was that she’d been shot in the belly. She was in surgery, and they were taking the baby.

Almost ten weeks early.

He’d gone back to his office to grab his coat and then he’d raced to his Cherokee and headed for Quiet Cove.

“She’s out of surgery. She was shot in the chest, I guess, and the bullet came out her belly somehow. She’s still out, but the doctor said her prognosis is good.”

“And Teresa? The baby?”

Eli dropped his head, and Theo fought back the urge to hit him. “Eli! What?!”

“She’s alive, Dad. I saw her. She’s so little and skinny, and there are tubes and wires everywhere. The doctor said the bullet hit her butt, took a gouge out. She’s alive, but she bled a lot, and she’s so little. They’re giving her blood and air and everything, but all the nurses and doctors look serious around her. I don’t know.”

Theo dropped his head into his hands. “I don’t understand what the fuck is going on.”

“You know who the Paganos are, Dad. I know you know that.”

“But not Carmen’s family, right? She said they were separate from that.”

“Yeah, that’s what Rosa said, too. I guess they always were. But they’re getting twisted up in it now. I don’t know a lot—I don’t think Rosa knows much. But I was there today, and it was like something out of a Martin Scorsese movie. It was a drive-by, same kind of thing that killed their Uncle Lorrie. Three people are dead. Six people, including Carmen, are hurt. At his funeral.”

“Seven people.”

“What?”

“Seven people were hurt. Teresa was hurt.”

“Right. Yes.”

“I need to see them.”

“Okay. Carmen is still unconscious. I guess she got pretty agitated when she came out of surgery, so they put her under again. She and the baby are on the same floor, but different wings. Teresa is in the NICU.”

“Teresa. I want to see my little girl.”

Eli stood. “Let’s go.”

~oOo~

When they got to the NICU, there was a large cluster of Paganos standing outside the viewing window. Luca saw Eli and Theo coming and made a path for them to the glass.

What Theo saw on the other side of the glass turned his fear and heartbreak into fury. “What the hell is he doing in there?”

Luca was at his side, his big hand on Theo’s shoulder. “That’s Father Michael, from our church. He’s baptizing her.”

Standing at the little clear isolette was a priest in a cassock, flanked by Carlo and Sabina. They were all covered in filmy, yellow gowns.

“What? Here? Why? Who said?”

“It has to be now, Theo.”

He turned and glared at Carmen’s brother. He was taller, but Luca was broader and brawnier. Still, Theo wanted nothing more than to punch him in the face. “
Why
?”

Luca faced him calmly. “You know why, man.”

“Because your stupid fucking religion thinks my daughter is already tainted and is damned to hell if she dies before she’s baptized.”

“Not hell. Limbo. I know you don’t believe what we do. But what harm is there? It’s just a couple of drops of water. Just a symbol.”

“It’s the symbol that’s such bullshit! That you believe that crap! That you see that tiny”—his voice broke, and he stopped and collected himself. “That you see my daughter as tainted. Look at her.” He turned back to the glass and ignored the adults standing over his daughter. Instead he focused on the tiny body inside the isolette. He recognized some of the machines. There was a tube down her throat, taped to her face—a ventilator. Another tube, filled with red, went into her leg—blood. And another, with a syringe attached to it, fed into her belly—food and meds. Little leads were affixed to her chest, arms, legs—heart monitor. A gold foil heart on her belly—he didn’t know what that was for. Her tiny chest heaved. Her eyes were closed. She had a dense mop of black hair already.

There was a diaper under her bottom and between her legs, but it hadn’t been closed. Theo could see part of a white bandage around her hip. Covering a wound left by a bullet. She’d been shot before she’d drawn her first breath.

His daughter. Teresa. Teresa Joy. Unless Carmen had taken it upon herself to change her name.

“How can she be tainted? What kind of god would turn her away?” Emotion overwhelmed him, and he leaned his head on the glass. “I need to be in there.”

Luca patted him on the back. “Yeah. Follow me.”

By the time the nurses had sanitized him and gowned him, Carlo and Sabina were heading out with the priest. Carlo tried to say something, but Theo just shouldered past. He was not in the mood to talk to people who thought they’d saved his little girl from sin she hadn’t even had a chance to live long enough to commit.

The isolette was closed; he wasn’t sure how the baptism had exactly happened, and he didn’t care. There was a nurse with her, checking machines. She smiled at Theo. “You’re Daddy, right?”

“Yes.” He stared into the box that held his child. Small and oblong, so much like a coffin it turned his stomach. “Will she be okay?”

The nurse patted his hand where it lay on top of the isolette and then gave his fingers a squeeze. “She’s a tough little cupcake. She’s fighting already. We had to give her a little something to calm her down, because she doesn’t like all the fussing we’re doing. That’s a good sign. From what I hear, it sounds like she takes after her mama that way.”

Theo wondered what Carmen had done. But he knew her fire, and he smiled. “Can I touch her?”

“I can open it for just a minute, and you’ll need to put your mask and gloves on, but after that, for a little while, it’ll be best if you put your hands in through the sides. We need to keep her away from germs all we can. She’s got enough of a fight on her little hands without having an infection to deal with, too.”

He got gloved and masked, and the nurse did, too. Then she opened the isolette, and there was his little girl. Blinking away the tears that blurred his vision of her, he reached in and pressed his index finger into the palm of her wee hand, like a little pink shell. Her fingers closed around the tip of his finger immediately and held on. He could feel her strength in her grip, and his tears fell.

“I’m sorry, Daddy. I have to close her up now.” When he didn’t—couldn’t—pull away, the nurse laid her hand gently on his arm. “It’s not the last time she’ll hold your hand.”

He nodded and pulled away. When he broke the touch, Teresa opened her eyes and stared right at him. Her eyelids were swollen, too young yet to be in use, but Theo saw the eyes beneath them.

They were blue.

When the nurse closed the isolette, he saw the ID card on the end:

WELCOME BABY GIRL!

Teresa Joy Wilde

2lbs., 13 oz.

14 in.

30+1 ges.

Mother: Carmen Pagano Rm. 217

Father: Theo Wilde

Theo smiled. His girl.

His girls.

~oOo~

The waiting room beside the NICU nurses’ station was packed with Paganos. They had already organized, setting up a schedule so that Teresa and Carmen would not be alone. Theo had noticed the large men standing apart from the group, and recognized them as bodyguards. The thought that his daughter had been shot and needed a bodyguard on her first day of life made his blood boil.

When Teresa was strong enough to come home, she was coming home to Maine with him. Her mother was, too. He had no idea how he was going to make it happen, but he was taking his girls out of this place and settling them into his snug, safe woods.

He scanned the room for Luca but didn’t find him. He went to Eli and Rosa. “I want to see Carmen.”

Rosa answered. “I don’t think she’s awake yet.”

“I don’t care. I need to see her.”

She nodded. “Okay. We’ll take you.” She took his hand, and then Eli’s, and they walked three abreast down the hall.

There was another guard outside Carmen’s room, and another in the waiting room, where still more Paganos, including Carlo Sr. and Adele, sat. Eli and Rosa left him to go into the room alone.

She was sleeping, breathing on her own, only a cannula in her nose for a little help. A heart monitor and IV stand were the only machines she seemed to be attached to, though he could see a tube in her chest that seemed to be a drain.

Her skin was pallid, seeming nearly transparent, and the skin under her eyes had a bluish tinge. But she was still gloriously beautiful. He bent over the bed and kissed her cool, dry lips. Then he sat at the side of the bed and picked her limp hand up, lacing their fingers together.

She was going to be okay; they would both be okay. And she was coming to live in Maine with him. She and their daughter. There was a way; there had to be a way. Carmen would see that it was right; after this, she would see.

She had to. He would make her see.

He sat with her in the deepening dark as afternoon became evening. Her family came in in dribs and drabs, checking in and then leaving him to be with her. Despite their breakup and the drama and their recent acrimonious legal correspondence, they all seemed to have accepted that he belonged there—and more than that, that he had first privilege to be with her and with Teresa.

It occurred to him to wonder whether Carmen had been lucid and calm enough at some point to have given the information on Teresa’s crib card, or whether someone else had done so. But he didn’t care enough to ask. Teresa was named as she should be. He was her father.

Just as he was thinking he wanted to go to the NICU again and check on her, Carmen’s hand closed around his, and he stood up. “Carmen? Are you with me, beautiful girl?”

Her dark eyes opened, and she smiled. “Theo.”

“God, my love. You scared the shit out of me.”

Her smile faded, and he knew she was becoming fully aware. “Oh, fuck. Theo. The baby—Teresa—they took her from me. It’s too early.”

“Shhh.” He brushed his fingers across her forehead. “I’ve seen her. She’s beautiful. And they say she’s feisty like her mother.”

She smiled, but Theo could see tears pooling in her eyes. “I need to see her.”

“When you’re strong enough. When you can get into a wheelchair, I’ll take you to her.”

“No. Now. I need to see her now.” She grabbed the bedrail with the hand he wasn’t holding and tried to sit up. She only got a few inches before she cried out and dropped back to the pillow, her heart monitor beginning to sing.

“Carmen, you were shot, and you had a C-section. You are not getting out of this bed today. When I see her again, I’ll take some pictures. You focus on getting strong so you can hold her.”