Miracle (The Pagano Family Book 6) (29 page)

I know what you’re going through is so hard. Harder than it’s ever been for me. The wall probably feels five miles high. But I’m coming over it. Or I’ll just come straight through it. I love you. I
know
you.
You are not alone
. Whatever you need, you will have it. I will be there, no matter what.

When I was having trouble after the last time I ended up in the ER, and I was thinking about giving up, you told me that you wanted your life to be with me, even if another word never passed my lips. Baby, I feel the same way. I know you. I love you. That will always be true, even if another word never passes your lips or your hands. You can’t hide from me.

There’s nothing else that matters but you and me. Forever.

I know you. I see you. I love you.

I am devoted.

J—

~ 20 ~

I know you. I see you. I love you.

I am devoted.

I know you. I see you. I love you.

I am devoted.

I know you. I see you. I love you.

I am devoted.

Many of the long texts Joey had written during their months together had seemed romantic to Tina. Simply knowing that he trusted her enough to share his thoughts with her, to let her in so deeply, had touched her, made her feel his love, made her love him more.

But this letter, which had been sitting so innocently on the round rug on the front hall floor, tumbled in with the come-ons from credit card companies, the Quiet Cove Chamber of Commerce newsletter, and the weekly circular from the hardware store that had been pushed in through the brass mail slot, this letter had Tina unraveled.

Emotion had hit her so hard she felt attacked. She sat on the floor of her room, where she’d practically collapsed, and read it over and over, especially those last lines. Mimi and Poppy climbed on her, fighting over the envelope. Absently, still reeling, she snatched it from their little teeth and claws before they could ruin it.

I know you. I see you. I love you.

I am devoted.

She needed Joey to be here, but she had no way to let him know, to ask to see him.

Almost as soon as she’d gotten home from the hospital, she’d sent him away, not allowing him to stay with her more than a few hours a day since, because she felt like an invalid with so much attention on her.

But every second he was away, she missed him, and she felt less and less like a person. She didn’t know where her balance was between her need for his love and comfort, his reassurance, and her need to regain her independence and her self-assurance.

In his letter, she might have found it. She needed his strength to help her regain her independence and self-assurance. She couldn’t do it alone. He was stronger than she now.

He always had been.

He came every day, and resisted every time she asked him to go. He would be here later; he always came over straight from work. But she needed him now. Right now. She needed him to hold her.

Because he understood. He made her not alone.

When they had first become a couple, she had thought often how frustrating and isolating it must be not to be able to express himself. She’d thought she’d seen his strength in each word he’d fought to say.

She hadn’t realized even a tenth of his true strength. Now she knew the horror of it, the way it tore deep into the psyche and destroyed everything. He hadn’t wanted her to admire him for that strength, but she couldn’t help it. Now—now she looked up to him for it, because she didn’t have it. Not alone.

Poppy curled up in the nest her crossed legs had made. In just a couple of days, the kittens had made their personalities known. Poppy was a snuggler, always seeking a warm nook. Mimi was a mischief-maker. She was always careening into things or climbing up the drapes, or stealing loose items and running off with them, and constantly trying to get her sister to follow her into trouble.

At night, when they weren’t chasing each other up the walls, they slept in a little yin-yang ball on her extra pillow.

Mimi and Poppy. Joey had named them for the first two sounds Nancy was trying to help her learn to make again. Everything he did now, even going back to work, leaving her because she’d asked, seemed oriented to her, to helping her be strong and protecting her while she wasn’t.

She folded Joey’s beautiful, breathtaking letter and slid it back into its envelope. One corner was now a bit wet and perforated by tiny kitten teeth, but that only added to its charm.

Mimi’s little face came up on the other side of the envelope, and she bit at it again. Tina pulled it from her pointed teeth.

“Mmm,” she tried. “Mmmm. Mmm. Mmmm.

She understood what was wrong. In a way, that made it worse, to know the mechanics of her failure. Every time anyone made a word, in speech or in writing, a complex string of mental processes had to happen, multitudes of little circuits firing down a long line, from impulse to concept to image, and then to the complex physiological processes of forming the image into the symbol—either spoken or written. From conception to expression. From signified to signifier to sign.

When the brain was damaged in an area governing communication, either reception or expression, or both, some of those circuits misfired or stopped firing altogether. For Joey, the malfunction occurred at the nexus between the image and the symbol, and it was a misfire. He could speak and write, but he couldn’t reliably find or offer the right word. For Tina, the malfunction occurred farther down the string, between mental and physiological. She knew the words, they were always there, but her brain had stopped sending signals to her body about how to make them. Whether it was a misfire or a total burnout remained to be seen.

She could read. That was all she had. If there had been such a thing as a keyboard with words on the keys instead of letters—all the words in the English language, not just a few key words and phrases—maybe she’d have been able to communicate. But she couldn’t even make her brain spell the words she had in her head. She simply couldn’t make them into their physical symbols.

With her so badly hurt—blind, jaw wired shut, dominant right hand immobile and the trach in—and while she’d been heavily sedated, weeks had passed before anyone had known of this trouble. Those had been the earliest weeks after the injury, the time of greatest healing and thus greatest potential. She knew that, too. That potential was lost.

She’d only had a few therapy sessions since they’d discovered her losses, and everyone was adamant that it was too early to make any projections about the possible extent she might recover expression, but Tina felt the truth. She would not completely recover, she knew.

There were times, a lot of times, when the temptation to give up overwhelmed her. She understood that about Joey, too—how much strength it took not only to prevail but simply to make oneself believe there was a fight worth having.

But she had Joey, and he understood. So there was a fight worth having.

“Mmmm. Mmmm. Mmmmeeee. Mmmeeemmmmmee.”

~oOo~

That afternoon, while she waited for Joey to come to her after work, Tina sat with her mother and watched
Rocky
, one of her mother’s favorite movies. The fall day had been warm, with a crisp breeze carrying a hint of the coming winter, and Crystal had sat her mother in her special chair near the window so she could catch the last of the season’s fresh air. Tina sat beside her, with her head on her mother’s left arm, their hands joined.

Poppy slept in a tiny curl on the afghan over her mother’s bony lap. Tina had set her mother’s curled right hand on the kitten’s warm body, and they both seemed to enjoy the contact. Mimi, who wanted to be close but could rarely stand to be cuddled, batted a wad of paper around the room.

As she watched the movie, Tina mouthed
Mimi, Mimi, Mimi
over and over again. She’d tried for ‘Poppy,’ and for ‘Mamma,’ but those sounds were still beyond her.

But it was hope. Even one sound was a step on the road.

Her father had told her mother that she’d been beaten, but not that Angie had had anything to do with it. With her left eye, on the day Tina had come home, her mother had managed to convey an entire diatribe of worry and anger and fear and love and more worry and more love. All Tina had been able to do in response was cry, and her mother had cried, too. It had been enough, somehow.

Now, every day, they spent hours together in silence, doing the same things they’d always done, but without the steady stream of Tina’s chatter. She’d come to realize that she’d talked a lot. Maybe too much. The new silence around her, especially with the loss of hearing in her left ear, made the world seem padded and continually fed an urge to jump up and down and shake her head, the way she had when she was little and had gotten pool or ocean water in her ear.

As the movie neared its end, Crystal came in. “Tina? There’s someone here to see you—it’s Mrs. Pagano.”

There were a few Mrs. Paganos: Adele, Sabina, Manny, Katrynn. Any of them might come by for a visit. Well, not Manny, probably. She wrinkled her brow, using that look as an attempt to ask which one.

Crystal, who’d made a career of working with stroke victims—so strange to think of herself like that, a ‘stroke victim’—understood. “It’s
Donna
Pagano, I mean.”

There was only one of those.

Nick’s wife had come to see her.

Tina’s mother had heard all that; her eye was bright with curiosity. Tina smiled and kissed her cheek. Then she went out with Crystal to meet her visitor.

If only she’d put on her wig. The little bit of hair she’d grown back made her look ill, and it wasn’t long enough yet to cover the scar. She wasn’t wearing makeup, either; she hadn’t had the will to figure out how to apply it to minimize the mess of her new face. And God, she was wearing ancient leggings and one of Joey’s t-shirts.

Short of getting beaten again, she didn’t think she could have looked worse when she met the most important woman in Quiet Cove.

Donna Pagano stood in the living room, studying the photographs on the mantel: her parents’ wedding photo and the three family photos that were the first for each of their children.

With her back to the entryway, and Tina incapable of uttering anything but the name
Mimi
or whatever incoherent grunt might make its way from her mouth, there were a few seconds when they were both in the room and Tina didn’t know how to make herself known. Should she touch her? Clap her hands?

While she worked on that problem, her guest turned around. Seeing her, she smiled. “Tina! Hello.”

Tina nodded, and Donna Pagano’s smile took on a tinge of pity. Tina didn’t like that.

Could she call her Bev? Joey did, of course, and since they’d been together she’d socialized with her a little—at least, they’d been at a few Pagano gatherings together. Yet Tina had always called her Donna Pagano when she came the market, and it seemed disrespectful to call her anything else.

Actually, it didn’t matter, did it? She could call her anything she liked inside her head.

“May we sit?”

Tina nodded and gestured to the chair that had been her mother’s. When Bev sat there, Tina took a seat on the nearest end of the sofa. Then, unable to ask to what she owed the ‘honor’ of the visit, she set her hands in her lap and waited.

“I heard that you’re having trouble speaking. I’m very sorry.”

Again, Tina nodded. This was what it had been like for Joey all these years, reduced to the role of a passive observer in one’s own conversations.

She wanted to know if Donna Pagano was here in her house on the orders of her husband, if this was some kind of gambit to get Angie welcomed back, just like her husband had done in the hospital.

Tina didn’t know if she cared whether Angie was in her family or not. She didn’t know if she forgave him for what had happened to her, but she was pretty sure she didn’t forgive him for the life he’d chosen to live. The things that had happened to her—it was her brother’s
job
to do that to other people.

But then, when she thought that maybe he’d done that to the men who’d broken her apart, she didn’t exactly feel sorry.

Before her sat a beautiful woman with kind eyes and a sweet smile, elegantly dressed. Bev was a nice person, a considerate woman who always spoke to everyone with interest, sincerity, and respect, as if she were unaware how intimidated the people around her were. It was difficult to think of her as the wife of Don Pagano—and equally difficult to forget that she was.