Rooted (The Pagano Family Book 3)

by Fanetti, Susan

  There had been substantial damage to his heart, though, and he’d spent most of that day having open-heart surgery. He was now stable but still unconscious.

  Rosa pulled up short as they arrived at the entrance to the waiting room. Carmen could see that it was full of family. There were a lot of Paganos. When they came together, they filled up a room.

  “Wait.” Rosa pulled on Carmen’s hand, trying to bring her away from the door.

  “What is it, hon?”

  “I can’t. I’m not ready.”

  John stepped up and brushed his hand down Rosa’s arm. “C’mon, Cookie. It’s just family. Everybody missed you.”

  Her lip trembled. “What if…what if something happened since you came for us, though?”

  “Carlo would have called. C’mon.” Carmen changed her hold on Rosa’s hand, linking their fingers. “We’ll go in together. Family is where we need to be, hon. Family is the most important thing we have.”

  Rosa lifted sad, wet, red-rimmed eyes to her. She was exhausted. Carmen could relate. She hadn’t slept since the morning before, when she’d woken up alone in bed in Paris and lain there listening to Rosa and Eli love each other and eat Dutch babies—which, it turned out, were a kind of enormous pancake.

  “Okay.”

  Carmen held her hand, and John put his arm around her, and they went into the waiting room, where they were immediately swallowed up in family love. Everybody took their turn hugging them, both comfort and welcome home. Rosa fairly fell into Carlo’s arms, sobbing, and Carmen smiled sadly. Rosa had always had the kind of adoration for her eldest brother usually reserved for messiahs and rock stars. She watched as Carlo, whispering, “Shh, shh, shh. C’mon, Peanut, I got ya,” lifted Rosa off her feet and walked her to the only quiet corner of the room.

  Carlo, John, and Luca all had some kind of goofy food nickname for Rosa. ‘Peanut,’ or ‘Cookie,’ or ‘Shortcake.’ Joey called her ‘Grossa’; they didn’t get along much.

  Everybody called Carmen ‘Caramel,’ when they were feeling extra affectionate—which wasn’t often, thank God.

  None of the brothers had nicknames, really, except some derivation of ‘brother’ or some shortening of their actual name. During Carmen’s angry feminist years in college, she’d tried to get the family to consider why the girls got food names. But they’d all thought she and her hairy pits were hilarious. Even her mother, still alive at the time, thought she was thinking too much about words meant in affection.

  Eventually, she’d decided she agreed. She’d also started shaving again, because, hey—she liked men, and the men she was attracted to weren’t attracted to hairy women. And then she had settled in the Cove and taken her mother’s place. But she was still feminist.

  And still angry.

  She looked around and noticed a decided lack of women in the room. Only Manny, Luca’s wife, was there, sitting off by herself. She wasn’t good with crowds or with big shows of emotion, so Carmen just sent her a little smile when their eyes met. Manny was a good little chick. She worked hard to overcome the shit life had dumped on her head from the moment she’d taken her first breath.

  “Where’s Sabina? And Adele?”

  Luca answered. “Adele’s with Pop. Sabina has Trey at home. It’s the middle of the night, Carm.”

  “Oh.” She had no idea what time it was; jetlag and time zones were fucking with her circadian rhythm. “Right. Is that why the Uncles aren’t here? Because they should fucking be here.”

  “Yeah. They took Aunt Angie and Aunt Betty home. Nick is…doing what Nick does. I didn’t ask.”

  “So tell me. What the fuck is going on?”

  “There’s a lot they won’t say. It’s what John and Manny and I got caught up in, though. I’m sure of that. Somebody making a play to take the Uncles down. Somebody who plays by different rules. Or no rules.”

  “So why don’t they just crush the fucker?”

  “I don’t know, Carm. I’m not invited to sit in on their meetings. They’ve kept the family safe. It’s the business they’re going after, anyway. Pop took losing Norm hard. He blames himself, and he’s been off his game since. What happened to him was stress. But the family is safe.”

  She shook her head. They weren’t safe. “It could have been you in that fire, Luc.”

  “No. We’ve had people watching our backs. And since the fire, the Uncles have people watching the job sites, too. We’re still getting hurt, because they’re fucking with suppliers and shit, but we’ll pull through it. The Uncles never lose. They’ll figure it out.”

  She wasn’t sure she was as convinced as Luca sounded, but he’d been here all along, not gallivanting around Europe without a care in the world. Until now. “How is he?”

  Luca shrugged, but his expression was pained. “Out, still. He might have been lying there on the floor for ten minutes before I got there. We tried to work out how long between when Adele said he left for the office and when I got there. It could have been ten minutes he was lying there. He still had his coffee and his lunchbox. He barely got in the door. If he stopped breathing right away, then…Jesus, Carm.”

  Carmen put her arms around her brother’s waist, and they held each other. “I want to see him.”

  Luca set her back a little. “Okay. The nurses aren’t giving us grief about visiting hours.” He laughed bitterly. “I think the whole hospital is getting used to us being around. Seems like we’re always here lately.”

  “I was thinking the same thing. I hate it.”

  “Yeah. His room’s down the hall. Adele might be asleep, though.”

  “I’ll be quiet. I just want to watch his chest move for a few minutes.”

  “A machine’s doing that right now. You know that, right? After the surgery, they’re breathing for him.”

  “Luca.” She just needed to see him.

  “I know. 323, down the hall.” He kissed her cheek, and she went alone to their father’s room.

  The room was dark, with only a pale light on the wall behind the bed, near all the equipment. The setup was eerily similar to that when Joey was in the hospital—ventilator, heart monitor, some kind of machine monitoring a draining tube, a couple of bags hanging on an IV stand, wires and tubes leading to the body in the bed. The body of her father, unconscious, his chest rising to the beat of the machine filling his lungs with air and then removing it.

  His chest looked oddly thick, and Carmen realized it was the dressing for his surgery incision, a thick gauze pad down the center of his chest.

  She stood at the end of the bed and tried to breathe.

  Adele was sleeping in a chair next to the bed. She was snoring, her mouth open, and her chin resting on her chest. Her glasses, which hung on a beaded chain, were askew on her nose.

  Adele Dioli had lived next door for Carmen’s whole childhood. She had been their mother’s best friend, and her husband, Dennis, and their father had spent a lot of years talking over their shared back fence, standing over each other’s grills, or mixing each other’s drinks, discussing the Red Sox or the Patriots, depending on the season.

  The Diolis had been childless, but Adele had been an eager babysitter when they were growing up. All the siblings knew her well. They all liked her. She was a good woman—a busybody, but a good woman.

  Dennis had died a few years after their mother, and Adele began spending more and more time in the Pagano house. Eventually, she’d sort of taken it over. Then Carlo Jr. had moved back in, and his wife, Sabina, had taken it over.

  And then their father had married Adele and moved next door, into the Dioli house. He’d turned the house over to Carlo. Carmen still couldn’t make herself feel right about that. She didn’t have a choice—it was a done deal, and her father’s choice to make, but she fucking hated it. She hated it so much.

  Everybody else was happy for their father, glad he was able to move on and love again. Everybody else understood that Carlo should have the house. He was the oldest, the only one with a family. And
he hadn’t been given the house, only lent it. But it drove Carmen nuts. The best she’d been able to accomplish was resignation.

  She had given up fucking everything when their mom died. She’d given up her dreams, her goals, her friends. She’d moved back into that house and been a stay-at-home mom to Joey and Rosa. Cooking their meals—she fucking hated to cook. Taking them to and picking them up from school, and soccer, and choir practice, birthday parties and whatever. She’d taken them to the mall and argued with them over appropriate clothes. She’d gone to fucking parent-teacher conferences. All while their father disappeared every night into his study or his bedroom and ignored them all. She’d been twenty-four years old.

  Carlo had moved home, too. They’d taken the job on together. But Carlo had gone into the city every day to work. He’d come home and done the middle-class father thing, and he’d gone to soccer games and plays, to those school conferences. But his life hadn’t changed much. Only his address had changed, really.

  Carmen’s whole self had changed.

  Even when their father had finally mastered his grief enough to be a father again, Carmen hadn’t gotten her life back. Carlo had moved back to Providence then, focused on his career, gotten married, had a child. Had the life he wanted. Not Carmen. Even when she’d moved out of the house, she’d only moved a mile away, to the beach. She’d been the only mother Joey and Rosa had. Until Rosa had gone away to college, only four years ago, Carmen had been the woman of the house on Caravel Road.

  And for Carlo to be handed that house like he was the obvious choice? That pissed her the fuck off.

  Adele snorted and stirred, opening her eyes. “Carmen?”

  “Hey, Adele.”

  “Oh, honey. You’re home. I’m so glad. I was so worried that…” Her voice failed her, and when she found it again, it shook badly. “Well. I’m just glad you’re home.”

  “How are you?”

  Adele sighed. “I’m okay. Scared. I love him so much. I’ve loved him for years. All of you. You’ve been my family as long as I’ve known you.” She patted her father’s still hand. “And he’s my big bear.”

  Carmen didn’t want to explore the idea of her father being anybody’s big bear…or maybe she did. “Adele, did you love Mr. D.?

  She frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “You say you love Pop, and that we’ve been your family for years. But you were married for decades. Did you love Mr. D.?”

  “Yes. Very much. Do you remember when he died?”

  Carmen did. Adele had seemed devastated. She nodded.

  “It felt like a whole chunk of my heart had sheared right off. I didn’t know how I was going to get through it. And I didn’t have my best friend, because your mother was gone. I had your father, and I had you kids, when you were around. My family. That’s how I got through losing Dennis. He was my first love, a great love.”

  “Then how can you say you love Pop?”

  Adele stood then and smoothed out her slacks. “Carmen, honey. What’s this about? Is this why you’ve been mad about the house?”

  She hadn’t known Adele knew about that, but thinking about it now, she supposed her father would have told his partner. “No…it’s just…how can you have two great loves? Or even real loves?”

  “It makes me sad, honey, that you got to be thirty-seven and have to ask that question. I wish you’d known the kind of love that would tell you the answer.” She came over and patted Carmen’s hand where it gripped the footboard of the bed. “The human heart has infinite capacity for love. God wants us to love freely and ecstatically. He wouldn’t be so cruel as to put a cap on how much we love.”

  In Carmen’s understanding and experience, God was perfectly happy to be cruel. “So you love my father like you loved Mr. D. That’s what you’re saying.”

  Adele’s eyes narrowed. “No. Of course not. Dennis and your father are different men. I am a different woman than I was when Dennis was alive—I’m different because he isn’t alive. Your father is a different man since your mother died. I know you know that. I love your father for who he is. We love each other for who we are now. It’s different, but it’s not less. Not less real, not less intense, not less happy. Different. Is there something hurting you, honey? Do you need somebody to talk to? Because I’m here.”

  Carmen shook her head. She didn’t want to talk. But she wanted to cry, so when Adele tugged on her arms, she let the smaller woman pull her down and tuck her head on her shoulder. And then Carmen sobbed.

  ~ 12 ~

  “Let’s get out of the house today, Dad.” Eli refilled Theo’s coffee mug, and then his own, and sat back down at the table.

  Theo poked at his rancher’s breakfast pie. Something Eli had learned to cook from his grandmother, Theo’s mother, long ago. It was delicious, but Theo was having trouble getting excited about food this morning—just in general, lately. He felt like shit. Most days he felt like shit. It wasn’t even the hangover. It was just shit.

  He wished he’d never met Carmen Pagano. He thought about that first night at the Café Aphrodite, which had become ‘their place’ in the weeks to follow. The boys had sent him out on a hunt, literally pushing him out the door. He was too much alone, they’d said. Getting squirrely, they’d said. Paris was the City of Lovers, they’d said. He had a once-in-a-lifetime chance here, they’d said. It was time to live for himself again, they’d said. Don’t come home until you meet someone, they’d said—a beautiful girl. Jordan had called out “Bonne chance!” from the balcony, waving a handkerchief. His son, Sarah Bernhardt reincarnated.

  He’d intended to blow them off. Have a meal, enjoy some quiet, do a little people-watching. And then Carmen had walked in. So fucking gorgeous—tall and dark, that heavy, amazing drape of near-black hair, hints of gold and red catching the lights from the globes around the room. She’d been alone, dressed casually in jeans and a sweater, a leather bag slung across her shoulders. Marc, the waiter, had greeted her as if he’d known her.

  Confidence and control wafted off of her so strongly he could almost see them curling around her.

  Entranced by her self-possessed beauty, he’d watched her for a long time, focusing on each feature individually—her exotic eyes, too wide to be almond-shaped, but canted just slightly up at the outside corner. The dramatic arch of her dark brows. And her mouth. Sweet Christ, her mouth. Full and lush. He now knew the taste of that mouth, the feel of it, all over his body. God, that mouth.

  She’d been reading while she ate, and he’d been curious what a woman like that might be reading. That curiosity had finally gotten him out of his seat.

  Infinite Jest was what she’d been reading. One of the greatest and most challenging contemporary novels in the English language. By his favorite author, David Foster Wallace. He’d gone hard while they’d bantered about it. It was then, he thought, that he’d become a hopeless case, even if he hadn’t realized it at the time.

  He’d never felt guilty about loving Carmen. He still didn’t feel guilty about it—stupid, but not guilty. He’d never felt conflicted or disloyal to Maggie. They were different women—in some ways they were polar opposites. Maggie had been preternaturally calm, a spiritual, forgiving woman with a wide and indiscriminate nurturing streak. She had fostered dogs and cats, nursed wild animals back to health, offered their sofa to the boys’ friends or Theo’s students whenever they needed a place to crash. She’d gardened and made a special garden just for the deer and rabbits, to distract them from the family vegetables—which hadn’t worked, they’d just eaten from both gardens, but she’d done it all the same.

  Maggie had been slight and a little mousy; her beauty had been in her sweetness and joie de vivre.

  Carmen was tall and imposing and exotically beautiful. She was smart and savvy and sarcastic, quick to anger and quick to judgment. More likely to roll her eyes than to offer her shoulder. She was guarded and self-contained. She challenged him constantly. From the first words she’d said to him, she had challenged
him. And Theo had caught fire—not simply for her, but for his life. He loved to talk to her, to poke at her and get her ire up, to argue with her about books and ideas. And God, how he loved winning her over, finding the glorious softness, the openness and vulnerability that spiked armor was protecting.

  She’d made him want to roar in the face of life.

  He didn’t feel guilty, because he loved Carmen for entirely different reasons than he’d loved Maggie. She accessed parts of his mind and heart even he hadn’t been aware of.

  And then she’d cut those parts out of him and stomped them into dust.

  He sighed and tried to perk up. Refocusing on Eli, he gestured at the food on his plate. “You really should look into culinary school, E. This is what you love.”