Simple Faith (The Pagano Brothers Book 1)

by Susan Fanetti

  His back was as attractive as his front. Across his shoulders, arcing in thick black letters in an Old Europe-type font, was a tattoo of the words SEMPRE FAMIGLIA.

  Family forever.

  She stared at the closed door of his room, unable to move. The headache and depression she’d woken with settled more heavily over her. The quaint idiom was literally true in her case this morning: She was out of sorts.

  ~oOo~

  That feeling only intensified when she went to the dining room, to the comfort of her puzzle, and found the work she’d done on it partially undone. The pieces were all in their sorted groups, and the area was neat and orderly, but almost half of what she’d completed was missing, and the sorted groups of pieces were bigger.

  Lara sat at the table and stared, lost. It was more than the loss of the work. It was the gap in her knowing. What had happened?

  Her focus was so complete on the question that the floor creaked and Trey came around the corner in what seemed like the very next second, but he was fully dressed, in jeans, his hiking boots, a black t-shirt, and a grey zip-up hoodie, so it must have been at least a minute or two. He stood a few feet away from the table and watched her.

  He seemed different this morning, like he was out of sorts as well.

  “Did I do this?” she asked. “In my sleep?” Normally, she wasn’t destructive.

  “Yes.”

  “I cleaned it up, too? Sorted it back?”

  “No. You tore it up. I stopped you, and cleaned it up after I put you back to bed.”

  The relief of understanding, filling in the blanks, softened her muscles, and she breathed freely. “Thank you. I’m sorry.”

  He shrugged.

  Despite her relief in understanding the state of her puzzle, there was a distance, a coolness, in Trey this morning that made her anxiety thrum quietly at the base of her spine. She was due for her meds, too.

  “Did I do something else?”

  That simple question seemed to affect him strongly. His eyes closed for several seconds, and his chest swelled with a visible breath. She had done something else, something bad.

  But he answered, “No,” and walked to the kitchen.

  “Trey?”

  He opened the refrigerator and closed it again. “There is no food in this cabin. We need to go into town and shop, and have breakfast, too. Will you eat at a restaurant? I mean, not that you eat anywhere. But is there food you’ll order at a restaurant?”

  Lara studied him. On the other side of the peninsula, he stared back. He was angry, or hurt, and it was directed at her, at something she’d done. She wanted to ask him again, to demand that he answer truthfully, but anxiety stopped her tongue. Instead, she answered the question he’d asked.

  “I can eat at restaurants. Breakfast is the easiest meal for me to eat out.”

  “Even if you don’t see them making your food?”

  “Restaurants are different. It’s home cooking I need to see, if I don’t trust the cook.”

  Again, he stared at her, before finally asking, “Do you trust me?”

  “I do. I’m sorry for whatever I did last night that made you angry.”

  Incomprehensibly, her apology hurt him, too, and his eyes closed for a few seconds again. When she did that, it was to close off new stimulation so she could focus on making sense of the information she already had, when it was coming too quickly and powerfully to manage.

  “I’m not angry, and you didn’t do anything. I just had a rough night. Didn’t sleep much.”

  Her fault as well; it must have taken him awhile to sort out her destruction last night. “Then I’m sorry for that.”

  He sighed. “Let’s go to town, okay?”

  ~oOo~

  Buckle Springs was a quaint little town with a Main Street framed with red brick buildings two and three stories high. The storefronts on the ground floor each bore a hanging wood sign, painted in bright colors with the shop name. But after a few blocks, the town charm gave way to the realities of life in West Virginia coal country, with a few streets full of weary houses and trailers.

  The market, called simply Buckle Springs IGA, abutted the tourist-pleasing part of Main Street. It was a low building all its own, but still red brick, with a gravel parking lot before it instead of sidewalk and old-timey streetlights.

  Trey drove past the market and down Main Street. He pulled onto a side street and parked. The shop on the corner, with bright windows facing both streets, was the Mountain View Diner.

  They’d barely spoken on the half-hour ride into town; Trey had focused on the driving and Lara had focused on the world around her, trying to process what she saw as it sped past the window. But now he turned to her and offered up a smile. “Hungry?”

  Lara nodded. She wasn’t, really, but she’d order and even try to eat. Trey’s mood had her feeling insecure. He was unreadable, but one thing was clear: he’d pulled away. The bond she’d thought they’d formed over the week, and had solidified sitting by the old well, was gone.

  They got out of the car and met on the sidewalk, where Trey ushered her to the diner door with a sweep of his hand. He opened the door for her but didn’t touch her.

  Lara would have liked to have felt his hand on the small of her back, as she had a few times in the cabin, when he needed to move past her, and when they were on the trail, guiding her down the path.

  She tried to get a read of this diner, to see its dimensions and contents and make sense of them, but a server, a pretty young woman about Trey’s age, greeted them right away and led them to a booth. Lara saw the girl notice and appreciate Trey’s good looks and give him a brighter smile than the one she’d turned on her. She asked if they wanted coffee. Trey said yes. Lara asked for tea instead. When she left the table, she offered Trey another smile and turned, her hips swinging as she walked away.

  Lara moved her attention to the menu and tried to study it, but focus eluded her. It was ridiculous to think of Trey as anything but a bodyguard. He wasn’t a friend, and he definitely wasn’t more than that. He didn’t need her trust beyond these few days, and he had no cause to value it as if it were a special gift. He’d had an assignment, to keep her safe, and he’d done his job. There was nothing else between them than that, and why should there be?

  He was young and strong, athletic and extroverted, and his mind worked in normal ways. She was a homebody with an assortment of mental and social disorders, almost a decade older than he, and her complicated relationship with food and consequently unimpressive physicality clearly frustrated him. He was a Mafioso who carried a gun, and she was afraid to leave the block she lived on.

  He’d told her she was beautiful, and he’d had no reason to lie, but neither was there any sound reason he would be attracted to her.

  When he closed his menu and set it aside, Lara screwed up her will and focused on choosing her order.

  The server returned with their coffee and tea. “Y’all ready to order?”

  “Lara?”

  Lara cleared her throat and set her menu aside, atop Trey’s. “May I order from the children’s menu?”

  The waitress—she was quite pretty, with dark hair pulled into ponytail done with three long braids, and long bangs that brushed past her eyebrows, a nice face with competently applied makeup, and breasts that filled a bra and shaped her snug diner t-shirt—chewed on her lip before she answered, “Yeah, I think so. They’ll prob’ly charge ya extra, though.”

  “That’s fine,” Trey answered. For the first time in the whole week, Lara realized that she didn’t have her wallet. No ID, no money or credit cards.

  “Okay, then. From the children’s menu, I’ll have the silver dollar pancakes.”

  “You want grits or hash browns?”

  “No, thank you. Just the pancakes.”

  “Dollar cakes are little, and the kid’s order is only four cakes. It comes with a side.”

  “Just the pancakes, thank you.”

  Trey was staring at her. Lara look
ed down and arranged the items on the table: salt, pepper, ketchup, sweeteners.

  “I’ll have the mountain omelet,” he ordered. “With a side of hash browns, and a buttermilk biscuit. And a glass of orange juice.”

  “You got it! I’ll get this right up.”

  When she was gone, Trey said, “I thought breakfast was easy for you to eat out.”

  It had been days since he’d fussed at her about food. Lara answered from the unstable place she’d woken in this morning. “I said it was easier. And I ordered. Food is coming. Stop nagging me about the way I eat. It’s none of your business.”

  He blinked. “Okay. Starve away.”

  No assertion this time that she was his business, that her health and safety were his responsibility. He looked up at the wall above them, which was decorated with an eclectic collection of West Virginia memorabilia.

  Lara focused on the paper placemat before her, and counted the squares in its Greek key border.

  ~oOo~

  The market was small and full of convenience foods and vacation supplies, with nothing like the wide variety of offerings a Providence supermarket boasted, but one of the very few benefits of Lara’s preference for bland, banal food was that everybody carried the things she’d eat.

  Her preference was easy to explain, and she’d explained it to Trey, which had, for a few days, stopped his commentary. When a food was bland, it was easy to tell when its taste was off. When a food was white, it was easy to tell when its color was off. She didn’t believe the world was overrun by people trying to poison her, but she’d developed a powerful aversion to strong-tasting food when she was quite young, and that aversion was insurmountable. Many therapists had tried, and all had failed. Eating at all was a source of anxiety. Eating foods she didn’t trust was impossible.

  And that was none of Trey’s business. She’d gotten this far in life without dying of starvation. She’d survived her mother’s assorted and continuous acts of gentle violence. She wasn’t going to expire in his care.

  Continuing the stilted silence that had set in between them at the cabin that morning and seemed to have become entrenched, Trey and Lara shopped almost independently, while using the same cart. He was usually the one to start a conversation, she rarely thought she had anything worth the effort of sharing aloud, but she was happy to talk with him. In the absence of his voice, she felt the lack of her own much more vividly—and awkwardly. The silence was a hulking beast between them, pushing them farther apart.

  Trey put several boxes of pasta in the little cart, and Lara added some cheese and white bread. He selected eggs and three different kinds of breakfast meat, and she got milk and butter—and a quart of buttermilk, because Trey made delicious buttermilk pancakes. He was a good cook, though she supposed she wasn’t qualified to make a compliment like that.

  From the meat section, Lara got some chicken breasts—poultry was the only meat she’d eat—and Trey chose a filet mignon. From the produce section, she picked up a head of red leaf lettuce, a bunch of celery, a few pounds of potatoes, a head of broccoli, a bundle of spinach, and a bag of carrots. For fruit, she chose a nice cantaloupe, a bunch of nearly ripe bananas, and some peaches.

  Fresh food was safe. You couldn’t put cleanser in a carrot.

  Trey stood at the cart as she set the carrots in, and for what seemed like the first time that day, he truly smiled. “You should be a vegetarian. Your tastes are a lot more normal if you just say you’re a vegetarian.”

  Still stinging from his tersely cool mood, Lara didn’t smile back. “I’m not a vegetarian. I like chicken.”

  His expression evaporated. “Okay. I want to pick up some more wine, too. And beer. I forgot beer last time. Do you want anything besides water and tea to drink? Do you like soda? Or juice?”

  “No.”

  “I don’t like soda, either. I don’t know how people can drink that swill.”

  He seemed to have set aside his sour mood and now tried to connect with her again. Since she rarely connected with anyone, and never as closely as she thought she had with Trey, and since she’d felt bitten by her mistaken trust all morning, Lara was reluctant to welcome his refreshed warmth.

  At that moment, his satellite phone rang, and they stared at each other. Lara had forgotten about its existence. As he pulled it from his jacket pocket, he drew her back, into an empty aisle, and left the cart standing where it was.

  “It’s Nick,” he said, and answered it.

  “Hello, Uncle.”

  Lara watched as Trey listened.

  “Okay. Today?” His eyes came to hers and settled there. “I will … Yes … Understood … Okay.”

  He hung up. “Well, we didn’t need to shop after all, unless you want road trip food. It’s time to go home.”

  “It’s safe?”

  “It’s safe.”

  Strangely, Lara didn’t feel as relieved and pleased as she should have. This day was very upsetting; from the time she’d woken, little of it had made sense.

  “I need to put the groceries back first.”

  He glanced at the cart and shook his head. “We don’t have time, Lara. Nick wants us home.”

  “I need to put the groceries back. I can’t leave them here in the cart if we’re not buying them.”

  Before he answered, he considered her, looking deeply into her eyes, and apparently decided the fight wasn’t worthwhile. “Okay. Let’s get to it, then.”

  ~oOo~

  In the car before he pulled out of the IGA lot, Trey called the other Pagano men who were in Buckle Springs with them. Lara listened as they made a plan to meet at a vista point outside of town in one hour. When the call was over, Trey headed back up the mountain to the cabin.

  As the car followed the snaking turns, and Trey was quiet again, Lara didn’t bother to consider the scenery. It moved too quickly past, and too many things were tumbling chaotically in her head already.

  She didn’t want to go home. That was the most surprising, unpleasant, disordered thing. This past week, she’d felt calm and content in a way entirely unfamiliar to her. Except for the forest ranger’s visit the first night, she and Trey had been alone and undisturbed for days. They’d quickly made a rhythm to their hours, and it had been comfortable. She enjoyed Trey’s company. He was intelligent, and curious. When he asked a question, he truly wanted the answer, and he listened. And he was kind.

  The few times her mind had slipped and the door to things she couldn’t face had begun to inch open, he’d been there, right there, and helped her close it again.

  But home was home. Everything she knew. Her apartment, with everything in its precise, carefully considered order. The corner at the end of her block, with the coffee shop that knew her order, and the tiny market that stocked her favorite British brand of cookies just for her, and the used bookstore. Her father, not even a mile away, in the house she’d grown up in. Had learned to walk in. Had caught up with her schooling and then blown past her peers in. Brown University, just a few blocks from her apartment, with its libraries and laboratories, with the professors who’d accepted her, who’d seen not a furtive girl too young for college but a brain too keen to be anywhere else. That was the world she knew. She’d never wanted to leave it, and she should have been desperate to get back to it.

  But she wasn’t.

  She’d been snatched from the street on her own block, outside her favorite coffee shop where they knew her order, across the street from the tiny market that stocked Crawford’s Custard Creams just for her, kitty-corner from the used bookstore. Only a mile from her father’s house, only a few blocks from her alma mater. Four houses down from her own front door.

  Lara opened her eyes and turned to Trey. He kept his eyes on the road. She wanted to say his name, to draw his notice, to ask for the help he’d readily given this week, to hide with him in a cabin in the mountains and never let the chaos of the things that had happened to her when she was last at home ever ransack her sense, not ever.

 
; But who was he to her, really? Who was she to him?

  He was too young. She was too strange. He wasn’t her savior; he was nothing more than a bodyguard. He’d kept her safe for this week. He’d done his job, and now that job was over. Now it was time to go home and face the dangerous things.

  Nick was wrong.

  It wasn’t safe.

  Not safe at all.

  ~ 9 ~

  Straight through, it was about an eight-hour drive from Buckle Springs back to Providence. On the way up, Trey had driven straight through, except for a refueling stop, because Lara had been lying unconscious in the back seat, and because he didn’t know how much danger she was in.

  On the way home, he’d thought they’d stop somewhere at about the midpoint and try to have a meal. The danger was over, Nick had solved the problem, and they could think of it as just a trip.

  But Lara began to mutter her numerical incantations about three hours into the drive.

  They hadn’t talked much to that point—or, really, for the whole day. That kiss of the night before—which he’d been one-hundred-percent conscious for and totally into—had his head in knots, and his complete inability to get even one more minute of sleep afterward had his mood all out of whack.

  She hadn’t remembered it at all.

  Of course she hadn’t. She didn’t remember anything she did sleepwalking. But fuck, he’d hated her looking at him, blank and confused, and asking if she’d done anything in particular besides taking apart a goddamn jigsaw puzzle.

  Well, yeah, Lara. Now that you mention it. You kissed the shit out of me, and I liked it way too goddamn much. Also, I kissed the shit out of you, while you were basically unconscious. So I’m some kind of big damn hero.

  She’d made it even more difficult by staring at him in the hallway, when she’d opened the door way too early, as he was moving from the bathroom after his shower to his room to get dressed, and seen him in nothing but a towel. She’d looked at him like she wanted to cover him in whipped cream and eat her way up from his toes.