Rooted (The Pagano Family Book 3) (19 page)

Now, it was days from September, and he’d made almost no words of note. What he had instead was a raw heart and a drinking problem.

He looked down at the bottle of bourbon he’d picked up on his way to the apartment. He knew his drinking was a problem. If he were honest with himself, he’d known it for weeks, at least. Since the Sunday morning in Avignon. He wasn’t ready to do anything about it, though. Right now, it was self-medication, and he needed it.

One problem at a time.

He was alone with himself. Alone with his memories. Alone with the bottle. If he sat here in the apartment and did nothing but drink, he’d be dead before Halloween. He needed his words. He had to find his words.

He took the bottle to Hunter’s elaborate bar and poured a crystal glass full. At least he wasn’t drinking straight out of the bottle yet. Then he went to the table by the window with the best view of the Eiffel Tower, where his Mac had sat unopened for days—weeks, now. The only reason there wasn’t a coating of dust over the silver cover was Hunter’s maid service.

He opened it.

On the desktop was an icon for a Word file he’d titled “Maggie in Paris.” He opened that. The same five thousand crap words that had been sitting there unaltered for weeks glared back at him.

While he downed a long swallow of bourbon, he slid his finger across the glide pad and tapped the icon to open a new document.

And then he sat there, an empty expanse of white nearly filling the screen before him.

What could he say about his honeymoon with Maggie, here in this city of light, of lovers? What had it felt like to love her as completely as he had in those days, before children, before mortgages, before cancer? He couldn’t remember. He could remember the way he’d loved her at the end, the way
that
love had felt. He could see that love, like seeing a snapshot turning yellow around the edges and remembering the warmth and happiness of the captured moment. And the pain, too.

But what he felt most keenly now, what he saw in his head constantly, was his love for Carmen.  A steady presence, unless or until he drank his head dark, was the crystal-clear memory of that Sunday morning in Avignon, waking up alone but knowing with a certainty—mistaken as it was—that he was not alone, that he had Carmen. The balcony doors had been open, and he’d heard the country sounds outside. He could smell the lavender, ready for harvest. She had smelled of lavender the evening before. Even in the bath, her hair had been thick with the sharply sweet fragrance, and when he’d released her hair from its band and let it fall over her shoulders, he’d tangled his hands in it and breathed deep.

It was the perfect kind of scent for Carmen, even better than the rich spice of the perfume she’d worn. It was sweet but not flowery, sharp but not acrid, potent without demanding attention. He’d thought that night, while they rocked together, the water sloshing over the candles, that though her perfume was liquid sex, lavender would always mean love to him from that day forward.

He’d been half right. Love
lost
is what it truly meant.

Realizing that he’d set his glass down and his hands were moving over the keys, Theo stopped and looked at the screen. He’d typed three words:
Lavender in Summer
.

A title.

With a rush, he knew his words were back. He understood what it was he needed to write. Maggie was his past. She belonged in his past, and she knew it. He’d had no words because she wasn’t whispering memories in his ear any longer. She had released him.

He wasn’t writing a memoir about Maggie. That was the wrong book. He hoped Hunter wouldn’t want his grant money back, but if he did, that was a problem for later. Theo’s heart raced; words began to course through his blood and out his fingertips as they struck the keys. He knew what he needed to write.

Not the prequel to
Orchids in Autumn
. The sequel. Not the story of his youthful love of his wife, but the story of finding love again. And losing it.

~oOo~

When he closed the laptop hours later, too tired and drunk to focus his eyes or his mind any longer, he’d written nearly eight thousand new words. Keepers, he thought. They felt like keepers.

The bottle of bourbon was empty.

One problem at a time.

~ 13 ~

“Will you all stop fussing over me!” Carlo Sr. snatched the heart-shaped pillow out of Sabina’s hands and held it to his chest as Carmen helped him to his feet. “I’m not a cripple!”

When he tried to jerk his arm from Carmen’s grasp, she held tight. It wasn’t so hard to do—moving his arms moved his chest, and that still hurt him. “Pop. If you don’t take the help you need, you could end up crippled. Just chill and don’t be such a baby.”

“That’s the problem. You’re all treating me like a baby. There are too many damn women around.” Despite the grumbling, he stopped fighting her, and she led him out the kitchen door and onto the sun porch at Adele’s house. Which was his house, too, now. Carmen would never get used to that.

Elsa, Carlo and Sabina’s dog, who went back and forth between the houses at will, followed and plopped nearby with a groan. She liked to be where the people were.

Adele had gotten the chaise lounge out here set up for him, all his needs arrayed on a table at his side—his reading glasses, the latest editions of the
Quiet Cove Clarion
and the
Providence Journal
, a tall glass of decaffeinated iced tea, and his pill organizer. He held the pillow tightly to his chest, and Carmen locked her legs and helped him onto the lounge. From an iPod dock on a table next to the door, Rosa selected Holst’s
The Planets Suite
, one of his favorites. When ‘Mars’ started playing, she skipped to ‘Venus’—calmer. Carmen smiled over her shoulder at her sister.

“It sounds better on my record player,” their father groused, frowning darkly.

“Yeah, well, the rest of us don’t need it blaring all over the house so you can hear it back here. You’re stuck with digital today.” Rosa’s voice was lightly teasing. She went over and sat in a chair next to their father, her phone in her hand. Probably texting Eli. He was in Maine now, and Rosie was getting impatient being in the Cove without him.

She was going to fly the nest. Carmen could see it, and she was torn between the desire to give her a push toward freedom and the impulse to convince her to stay. Their father doted on his little princess. Right now, with all the other stresses, and his frail health, she didn’t know how he’d cope if his baby went away.

“You ready for some lunch, honey?”

Carlo Sr. turned his black look on his new wife, but then, before Carmen’s eyes, it softened, and he smiled a little. “Thanks, babe. But not right now. Could you get the afghan from the living room? The one Sabina made me?”

Adele nodded and went back into the house. As soon as the screen door closed, he turned to Carmen and Rosa. “Find a way to get me some decent food, girls. I need meat—the kind that bleeds. And gnocchi. God, I’d die to get my hands on some of that gnocchi from Conti’s—with the cheese all thick and dripping off. With a side of porterhouse.”

“Yeah, Pop. You’d die. Exactly. You can’t eat that stuff anymore. You just had quintuple bypass. And there’s scarring on your heart. You are a salad man now.”

He threw the heart pillow at her, then winced. “Without meat, bread, and cheese, I can’t live anyway.”

“Chin up, Pop.” Carmen patted his leg and went into the house. She passed Adele with the afghan. “I’ll put his lunch together.”

“Thanks, hon. There’s a grilled chicken breast in the fridge, and this morning I pulled some lettuce and cherry tomatoes from the garden. I was going to slice the chicken and a hard-boiled egg and toss it all together.”

Sounded deadly dull to Carmen, but she hadn’t recently had her chest cracked open. Not literally, anyway. “Okay. Any dressing?”

Adele shrugged. “Drizzle some balsamic over it? And a little pepper? I tried to make a dressing last night with nonfat yogurt, but he threw a fit.” She sighed and hugged the afghan. “I’m going to have to learn to cook in a new way. The poor man can’t eat lettuce for the rest of his days.”

“He’ll get used to it. It’s just going to take some time. He’s a tough old bastard, though. He’ll stop pouting.” She didn’t envy Adele for having to live with her father while he adjusted to a forced retirement caused by suddenly poor health.

While she was putting the dreary salad together, Carmen heard the mail come through the slot. She set the knife down and went to the front door. As always, she paused and looked through the sidelights. Three weeks home, and she was finally beginning to get used to seeing a black sedan or SUV everywhere she went. The Uncles had everybody covered. No Pagano went anywhere without a guard. It had happened for a few weeks in the late fall and winter, but then things had cooled off—or so they’d thought. Now, there were more guards, and Carmen wondered if it was simply becoming a new way of life.

In any case, she was getting used to it, and they were, for the most part, as unobtrusive as possible.

She took the stack of mail into the kitchen with her and finished making her father’s lunch. Adele came in as she was setting up the tray. She stood there, looking lost, and Carmen could see her positive outlook crumbling.

Sobs came on her, and Carmen gave her a hug. She wasn’t very good at hugging—they always seemed to last longer than they should—but Adele grabbed her and held on, crying into her boobs, and Carmen let her go as long as she needed.

~oOo~

That afternoon, Sabina brought Trey over straight from first grade. He was still young enough to be excited by the beginning of a new school year, and he was only finishing up his first week. He ran into the kitchen, where Carmen and Adele were washing up a large garden harvest.

“Auntie Carm! Nonna D.! Look what I made!” He was holding up a lion mask made out of a paper plate, construction paper, and marker.

“That’s great, Trey. What is that—a zebra?”

“Auntie, you’re silly! Zebras are black and white and have stripes! Lions are yellow and orange and have no stripes! See?”

Elsa came in and licked Trey’s face, thoroughly ridding him of any leftover goodness from his afternoon snack. Trey giggled and put the lion mask on her head. “Look! Elsie’s really a lion now!”

Adele took the mask and stuck it to the refrigerator door with a magnet shaped like a chocolate bar. “This is good work, Trey. Did you wear it at school?”

“Yeah! We had a zoo! I don’t want it on the fridge-ator, though. You can do that later. Where’s Pop-Pop? I want to show him. Misby said it would make him happy, and when you’re happy you feel better. I want Pop-Pop to be better.”

Adele handed him the lion again. “He’s out back, lovey. He’s going to be so happy to see what you made. C’mon, I want to see, too.” She took his hand, and they went out back, Elsa following.

“That is an amazing kid.” Carmen smiled at Sabina.

“Truly. He is one of a kind.”

“Any news on making him a brother?” After several interviews with different girls, a pregnant sixteen-year-old in Connecticut had chosen Carlo and Sabina to adopt her baby, a boy, and they had chosen her. They were covering her medical expenses now. She was from a working-class Latino family, and her parents had approved, too, despite pressure from other family members. She was due around the holidays.

A cloud passed over Sabina’s face. “The adoption process is so difficult. Even private adoption, as we do. These girls—they are conflicted. Anna is conflicted. She sends me emails about what she wants for her baby. And I understand. She is under pressure, I think, too. It’s hard to trust that all will be well when she could change her mind even while I hold the baby in my arms, even after we bring him home.” Sabina paused. “And now I am conflicted as well.”

“What do you mean? I thought you were sure you wanted this.”

“Oh, I am. We both are. But into this world? With bodyguards and fires? Is it right?”

“Fuck it, Sabina. That’s bullshit. What happened to you—that was your billionaire WASP asshole of a husband. What happened to Trey and Joey—a little blonde with a fancy private college education. The Uncles don’t corner the violence market. The world sucks—right outside our door or across the ocean. The world totally sucks. There’s no safe way to have a family. If we’re going to get bent out of shape over how dangerous the world is, then we’ll all just die out. Because there’s no end to the bad things that can happen. Every child born everywhere is born into a shitshow. At least you’ve got a guido with a gun outside holding it at bay. Do you want this baby or do you not? If you can answer that question, then fuck conflict.”

Sabina smiled. “You are a passionate woman, Carmen. About everything.”

“Yeah, I know. Gets me into trouble all the time. I’m right, though. Most of the time. Definitely now.”

“Yes, I think you are. Thank you.”

~oOo~

Two weeks later, Carmen went into her little beach cottage, which she had missed keenly while she was away. She went straight into the bathroom with her plastic shopping bag from the pharmacy.

There was no more putting it off, no more attributing anything to stress or whacked out circadian rhythms from jetlag or anything else. She was missing her second one, now. And for the past four mornings, she’d puked from morning through lunch. And her breasts hurt so badly she could barely stand to get a bra on—or off, for that matter.

She had no idea when, but she knew who.

But first, before she panicked about all that, she opened the pink and blue box. Pink and blue. Of course it was a pink and blue box.

~oOo~

Fuck.

Fuck.

Oh, sweet fuck.

What the hell was she going to do now?

~oOo~

She thought about talking to Carlo and Sabina. They were trying to adopt. But that was weird and wrong.

For a brief few minutes, she considered abortion. But no. It didn’t even matter whether or not it was a sin—she was well acquainted with all sorts of sin—and she didn’t consider it murder. She was pro-choice and had been since college. But she couldn’t make that choice. Whether it was the way the Church seemed part of her cells or something else, she couldn’t even seriously think through that option for herself. No.

She was going to be a mother.

She looked around her beloved beach house. The loft bedroom. The tiny office with its daybed. The cozy space, perfect for one person. She tried to imagine raising a child in this home she loved, and she could not.

Again, she would need to move off the path of want.

She held her phone in her hand. She’d been sitting here forever, trying to decide what to say, how to say it. There was no question that she’d tell Theo. But she had no idea how he’d take the news and what it would mean for the future. Her intent was to absolve him completely.

But what if he wasn’t satisfied with that?

Fuck.

Deciding that she couldn’t confront him on the phone just out of the blue, she finally landed on sending him a text, which she did.
Hope you’re well. We need to talk soon.
She tapped ‘send’ and stared at the screen for a long time.

Nothing happened. She checked the time and did some time-zone math. Around nine at night there. Maybe he was out.

But he’d have his phone.

She stared longer. After half an hour without a response, she sent a follow-up:
It’s important.

The next morning, when she checked her phone and saw that he still had not responded, Carmen closed that door and made sure it was shut tight.

On her own, then. That was better.

~oOo~