Prayer (35 page)

“Oh my God,” she whispered. “Oh, God.”

They sat on the floor together in the ransacked room, in total silence, for Katrynn had no idea how long. She wasn’t even sure what her brain had been doing in that time. The next thing she was aware of was a clear, strong, loud voice in her head. It said one word, one syllable. It said it once, and then it, and all the horror that had been whirlpooling in her mind, was silent. She had perfect clarity.

The word her mind-voice had said was NO.

“No,” she said aloud.

“What?” John asked, his voice hoarse and weak.

“No. Don’t carry this guilt. Atticus made his choices. He obviously knew exactly what Nick was capable of, and he woke the dragon anyway. You started a fight, yes, but he was right in there with you, and that fight didn’t kill him. Did you hurt him tonight?”

“I brought him to his death, Katrynn. Yeah, I’d say I hurt him.”

She disagreed. “Did you knock him out and wrestle him into a parcel van or something?”

“No. I asked him to have a drink with me and took him to Nick instead of a pub.”

“So he went willingly.”

John nodded.

“You say you owed Nick. Did you have a choice?”

“We always have a choice.”

“Would Nick have hurt you if you’d said no?”

John didn’t answer, but he didn’t need to. Katrynn loved Nick. He had been nothing but a good friend to her. She thought he was a good man in his heart, and she knew he was a good and loving husband and father. But she was under no delusions about what Don Pagano did. She’d seen all the movies, and she read the news. People did what Nick wanted because they knew he wouldn’t balk at making them regret it if they didn’t. Whoever they were.

She picked up John’s hand and wove their fingers together. “Don’t take this on, John. Atticus knew what he was doing when he wrote that story. I knew when I read it that it would get him hurt or worse. I didn’t want to be a party to it, which is why I didn’t tell anyone. But it didn’t occur to me to do anything more to try to stop it, because I guess a part of me agrees with Nick. Atticus made his bed. I’m sorry you had to be involved, but you didn’t kill him. Atticus killed himself when he put that story in the world. Suicide by mobster.”

John blew out a breath that might have been part of a laugh. “How can you be so calm about this?”

“Because I love you. I love your family—
our
family. I know you, and I know Nick, and understand the way things work. I’m not happy it went down like this, but I won’t miss Atticus Calhoun, and part of me is
glad
you’re so upset. You’re the man I know you to be. You would never hurt anyone intentionally without good cause. And you feel the things you do. What you do, what it means, matters to you. That’s the man I love. That’s the man I know will be here for me, and for our children.”

John stared at her, and she watched his eyes. She saw the calm ease into them, like a buffer over the guilt and pain. She scooted closer, rose up onto her knees, and folded him into her arms. He held her in that vise-like grip that meant he needed her.

“I love you,” he whispered against her neck.

“I know,” she answered. “I believe you.”

~oOo~

Bev came in the front door of the shop, and Katrynn excused herself from her customer and went to give her friend a hug.

“You look fantastic,” Katrynn said as they stepped back. “Seriously great.” She did—she looked fresh and healthy and happy, and she’d lost weight—a healthy loss, not a too-depressed-to-eat loss.

Bev smiled brightly. “Thanks. I feel pretty good. I swear, Ren was a Buddhist monk in a past life, because he is so completely calm. He slept ten hours last night. He’s nine weeks old! I kept going in to make sure he was breathing. Nick was about to lock me out of the nursery.”

“You deserve a Zen baby after Lia and Carina. I’m going to start calling him Zen Ren now, you know.” Katrynn gestured for Bev to follow, and they headed toward the door to the staff suite. “Greg! I’m about to get moving. Grace will be here in about forty minutes.”

“No problem. Have fun!” Greg called from somewhere in the stacks.

She and Bev went to the back. They had a few minutes before they were meeting everybody else, so they sat at the table, and Katrynn made them tea. “How’s everybody else?”

“Good. Everybody’s good. In fact, I want to talk to you about something. I want to get back into the shop a little.”

Katrynn brought their cups over and sat down. “Yeah? That’s great!”

“Nick and I had…I guess it was a fight. We don’t do that very much, and there wasn’t yelling, but he was mad. Or worried, I guess. Anyway, I needed him to calm down. Before, I needed him to take care of me. I really did. I needed to give up and let him do everything for a while. But he got used to it, and when I started feeling better, he didn’t know how to back off. My therapist says that strong men need to be managed as much as weak ones do. She didn’t say it exactly like that, but that’s what I took from it. Who Nick is, his will is so strong that if you don’t stand up and face him head-on, he rolls right over you and doesn’t even feel the bump. From the beginning of us, that’s been true. But I could stand up until recently.”

That was a wonderful explanation of Nick Pagano. Katrynn wondered what it was like for Nick to live in a world in which he was stronger than almost everyone else, more powerful than almost everyone else. How did he retain his soul?

His family. When that had taken a hit with Bev’s struggle, Katrynn could understand why he’d reacted so strongly.

She loved Nick, and she’d always wanted a love as deep and true as his for Bev, but she could never have been with someone like him.

Now, she had something, someone, better. A love as deep and true as theirs, but with a man who wouldn’t roll over her, who was instead patient enough to stand and wait for her to catch up to him.

In the weeks since Atticus Calhoun had died so ignobly, Katrynn had finally and completely settled in—to her love for John and his for her, to their little beach house, to their future. She believed in them.

John was still having trouble with what had happened—dark moods and sleepless nights—but he turned to her for solace and to talk things through. His need of her had, she thought, helped her give up the last of her insecurities. They needed each other. They were stronger together. She had found her faith in that.

Katrynn reached out and laid her hand on her friend’s arm. “I’m glad you can stand up again.”

“It feels good. It feels
so good
to be happy again. God. I didn’t even see it slipping away from me until it was almost too late.” She sniffed and cleared her throat. “Anyway. I told Nick that with Elisa in school all day, and Lia in preschool, and Brenda and Wilma working full time, I could take some time for myself. And I stood up to him until he got it. So I signed on for a yoga class, and a scrapbooking group, and I want to come in here about eight or ten hours a week. Just to feel a part of things here. I miss it so much.”

“I hope you’re not asking for permission from me, because this is your shop!”

“I know. But you’ve been so great taking care of everything, and I don’t want to mess up your rhythm too much. I have no intention of coming back even half time. I think I found a balance that’s working. I just want to be here, too.”

“I miss you being here, Bev. I think this is fantastic.”

“Good!” She finished her tea and checked her watch. “You ready to find a wedding dress?”

Lunch and wedding dress shopping with her mother and most of the Pagano women. Should be interesting. “Let’s do this thing!”

~oOo~

Regina Bridal wasn’t in Quiet Cove, but it was close enough that the Pagano women were familiar to its owners, an older Italian couple. They were both cordial and welcoming as Adele and Sabina, then Katrynn and her mother, came in, but when Bev brought up the rear, the couple all but bowed. “Donna Pagano!” said the man. “Such an honor!”

Bev smiled and shook his hand, then kissed the wife’s cheek. “Hi, Fulvio, Stella. Do you know my friend Katrynn?” She held her hand out to Katrynn, who came forward. “Katrynn, these are our friends Fulvio and Stella Bagni. Katrynn is marrying Don Pagano’s cousin John in about six weeks. I know it’s short notice, but is there anything you can do to help her find the perfect dress?”

Knowing that their timeline was not friendly for big plans, Katrynn would have been happy to find simply a nice dress. This wasn’t an off-the-rack shop, really, but none of the Pagano women would tolerate for a second the thought that Katrynn would be married in ‘some old rag,’ in Adele’s words.

Stella’s eyes widened, but her husband nodded. “For you, Donna, anything. Stella, take them back. I’ll lock up.”

“Lock up?” Katrynn repeated. “You don’t have to lock up!”

“Don’t be silly,” Stella replied. “We are yours as long as you need us. Let’s find you a dress.”

~oOo~

After a kerfuffle in which everybody but Katrynn and her mother talked over each other, gesturing wildly, the group decided that each woman would pick a dress and Katrynn would try them all on. Stella and Fulvio reminded her about a hundred times each that they could alter anything, even if it meant deconstructing the dress she liked and remaking it in her image.

She stood on a round platform in her underwear, in front of five mirrors, two tailors, and four family members, while Stella took her measurements. The women drank white wine and chatted happily.

Finishing her hip measurement, the old woman pinched her ass. “You have a lovely body, sweetie. Meat in all the right places, and soft where you should be. Don’t go starving yourself for the wedding thinking skinny is pretty. You are a vision. Like a silver screen star.”

Katrynn doubted that a round old Italian woman with dyed ebony hair and drawn-on eyebrows was a great judge of youthful beauty, but she smiled anyway.

And then it was time to try on dresses. When Stella was a bit too
hands-on
helping her into the miles of satin and lace and silk and taffeta, Bev came in to help instead.

Adele chose a dress full of ruffles and fluff, but even she agreed that Katrynn looked like a cake topper—and the cake—in it.

Sabina chose a silk sheath dress sprinkled lightly with crystals and with a sleek, cathedral-length train. Katrynn had too much tits and ass to carry it off as a sheath and not enough of either to make it va-va-voom. But it sure was pretty.

Stella brought a rack with a few dresses that she thought might be of interest, all on the current trend, she said. Katrynn, though, wasn’t all that interested in a dress too much like what everyone else was wearing. And she didn’t think she could pull off a strapless dress.

Dana wouldn’t choose a dress. She sat at the end of a white sofa, a gentle smile on her face, and sipped wine and watched the goings-on. She seemed to be enjoying herself, and she chatted easily with everyone, but she wasn’t participating. She checked her phone a lot. Katrynn knew why.

Her father was still home. Almost two months now, he’d been home. A.J. was gone, and her parents were living alone together. Katrynn knew that Dana was beginning to expect him to leave again at any time. Every time she left the house, she could come home to emptiness. Usually, he let her know he was going, but the last time, he’d left in the middle of the night, with no word at all for days.

How her mother had lived almost forty years in a life like that, Katrynn couldn’t fathom.

Bev found her dress. While it was still on the form, Katrynn knew it was hers. It was plainer than any the others had brought forward. Winter white taffeta, with a smooth, wide skirt and only the barest hint of a train. An off-the-shoulder shawl collar in the same plain taffeta. The bodice was silk lace, with three-quarter sleeves.