Footsteps

by Susan Fanetti

  “Yes. We’re fine.” He put his hand on her face. She flinched a little, but then closed her eyes at his touch.

  “I am away? From him?”

  “You are. We’re going to keep him away. I promise. We have a doctor coming to help you.”

  “No—no…they’ll tell him.”

  “Not this doctor. It’s okay, I promise.”

  She nodded and slowly slid a hand out from under the quilt, laying it over his on her face. That blasted ring still glittered on her finger, lording over a forearm hatched with cuts, dark bruises, and welts. Jesus, what had he done to her?

  “What did he do, Bina?”

  She shook her head slightly and winced. “No. He… he paid someone. He watched. And…and…I don’t know the right word…directed?”

  Carlo wondered what it felt like to have a stroke, because he thought there was a fair chance he was on his way to one. He didn’t give a fuck that he’d only known this woman a few days. He didn’t give a fuck whether he had a ‘hero complex’ or not. Fury filled his head, and he wanted to kill for her. He wanted James Auberon to die, bloody and in pieces.

  There was a small commotion on the other side of the door; Carlo listened for a second and determined that Uncle Ben and Dr. Kerr had arrived. He intended to stand, but when he tried to lift his hand from Bina’s face, she clutched it.

  “Please, you stay.”

  He didn’t know whether Carmen was right, but he didn’t care. What he felt right now felt like love. And the pain inside him was real. So was the rage. He tamped it down and stayed calm for her.

  “I’ll stay.”

  There was a knock on the door, and Carmen peeked in. “Sabina? I have a doctor here. He’s here to help you.”

  Carlo had a sudden shock of worry about how she’d do with a male doctor right now, but she took a breath and then nodded, still squeezing his hand. “You stay?”

  He leaned forward and kissed her knuckles. “I stay. Hold my hand. Whatever you need.”

  ~oOo~

  Dr. Kerr first did an examination, then took a break before performing any procedures, because Sabina needed to be cleaned up. Rosa and Carmen brought two tubs of warm water and some soft towels, and then they left, and Carlo helped her get clean. She wanted only his help, could abide only his help.

  He was her only friend.

  And so, he first experienced her body by washing her blood from it. She lay passively, trembling, as he did so. Because he needed to be gentle, because he needed to be calm, he tried to shut his mind away from thoughts of what must have been done to her to hurt her so.

  When he was almost finished, he helped her to sit upright. Then he washed her feet, being as careful and gentle as he could. Carmen had not exaggerated much when she’d called them ‘shredded’—Bina wouldn’t be walking on them again right away. He remembered washing the sand from her wound before—had it only been three days since then? That night seemed much farther in the past.

  He looked up to see her watching him, tears streaming from her eyes. He set the tubs away and took her hands. “Bina. I’m so sorry.”

  “Please no,” she whispered. “You shouldn’t be sorry.” She took a hand from his and combed it through his hair. “Not you.”

  ~oOo~

  When Sabina had been fully treated, Dr. Kerr gave her an injection of morphine, and she slept deeply. Carlo was relieved to see peace come over her beautiful face as the medication took effect. He went out of the room to find Uncle Ben and the doctor packed in with Carmen, John, Joey, and Rosa in Carmen’s little living room. They were all drinking tea. Carmen lifted her cup, a gesture to ask if he wanted one, and he shook his head.

  Uncle Ben set his cup on the low table in front of him. “How is she?”

  “Sleeping. I think she’s comfortable now.” He nodded a thanks to the doctor, who accepted it with an incline of his own head.

  “Dennis filled me in on her condition.” Dennis was Dr. Kerr. Carlo didn’t figure doctor-patient confidentiality applied when Uncle Ben was involved. And, honestly, he was okay with that. He wanted Uncle Ben to know what Auberon had done. “That a man would do that to any woman, much less his own wife—”

  Carlo cut his uncle off. “She told me he paid somebody to do it. While he told him what to do. He watched.”

  All eyes in the room locked on him, but at first no one spoke. Then Uncle Ben stood. When Joey started to stand as well, he waved him off. He buttoned a button on his suit jacket. “Walk with me, nephew.” He came around the chair behind which Carlo had been standing and took hold of his arm. “Let’s take some air on Carmen’s little porch.”

  They went out and stood in the dark, only the lights through the windows illuminating the overcast night.

  “I’m nullifying our arrangement, Junior.”

  “What? Uncle, no! No! Trey! And she has—she needs—he’ll—” He was too shocked and nearly blind with anger to land on words that would complete a sentence—or to fret that he had crossed a line of respect. “Uncle!”

  Uncle Ben put his hands up onto Carlo’s shoulders, and Carlo fought the urge to knock him away. “Calm down, boy. My plans for Auberon haven’t changed. I’m saying that you will owe nothing. I don’t do this for you, now. I do this for her. And for your son. I do this because that filth that calls itself a man repels me. Tonight I’m thinking about my Lita. So we don’t have an arrangement. I’m taking this on myself.”

  Flooded with relief and comprehension all at once, Carlo nodded. “Thank you, Uncle Ben.”

  “No need, boy.” He pulled Carlo into an embrace. “No need.” When he set him back, his weary eyes, shaded by thick, white brows, narrowed. “Keep her close. Until you hear from us, keep an eye on her and your boy. This won’t take long.”

  “Yes, sir. Yes.”

  ~oOo~

  Uncle Ben, Dr. Kerr, and Joey left after the doctor gave instructions for Sabina’s care and a number to reach him should she take a wrong turn. The other siblings stayed where they were for now; a sort of siege mentality had taken over their collective mood. Auberon had lashed out viciously at Sabina and Carlo, and then he had simply backed away. No one thought he was giving up. Carlo thought, and said as much to Carmen and John, that he didn’t think Auberon had considered that he would have already gone to Uncle Ben.

  Maybe he wouldn’t expect Carlo to have gone to the Uncles at all. If he had done his research, then he knew that the branches of the family were separate. Maybe he was banking on the idea that Carlo would not cross those branches and take on all that might mean for a woman he’d met only days before.

  If so, he was wrong, and Carlo looked forward to Auberon learning the consequences of his mistakes.

  Carmen stood. “I think we should all go back to the house.” She meant the house on Caravel Road. Probably as long as they all lived, no matter how many of their own houses they’d owned or how long they’d lived in them, ‘the house’ would always mean the one in which they’d grown up.

  She gathered up the empty cups from around the living room; Rosa got up and helped.

  “Yeah. We should all be together, and we’re too exposed here. This guy is obviously willing and able to do some real damage.” John nodded and turned to Carlo. “Right?”

  Sabina was sleeping, still under the morphine. But he wanted to get back to Trey. Though he’d talked to Luca, and to Trey, several times since he’d stood in his son’s demolished bedroom, his gaze fused to those red words on his wall, he needed to see him, to hold him. He turned, conflicted, and stared at the door to Carmen’s office, where Bina was sleeping. “She’s sleeping. And she’s so hurt.”

  John patted his back. Like Carlo and Carmen, John was dark, with black hair and olive skin. Tall and lean, too. They took more after their mother, Teresa. The other siblings, taking after their father, were a little shorter and slightly more fair, with rosier skin, brown hair. All the siblings but Carlo and Carmen had green or hazel eyes.

  Less than an inch shorter than Carlo
, John was the only one in the family who could literally look him straight in the eye. He did so now. “While she’s on the dope would be the time to take her, then. I’ll leave my truck here and drive your Porsche. You can hold her in the back seat. Sound good?”

  “Yeah, okay. If she’ll let me touch her that closely.” He worried that putting his hands on her while she slept was too much of an intrusion, but John was the only other here who could carry her, and she barely knew him.

  She barely knew Carlo, for that matter. But it was different.

  “That’s why we do it now. While she’s doped up. Come on, we’re all set.” John pushed him toward the office door.

  She was still sleeping deeply and quietly, but when he bent down and, as carefully as he could, slid his hands under her, leaving the soft, old quilt to cover her, she moaned. Her brow furrowed, and she whimpered, “No more.” Then she settled again, and Carlo cradled her to his chest and carried her out of Carmen’s cottage, his brother and sisters right with him.

  ~oOo~

  The house was full in a way it hadn’t been in more than a decade. All of the siblings were home. Rosa and Carmen were sharing their old room. Joey, who’d been sent on behalf of the Uncles to stay with his family, was bunking again with John. Luca had reclaimed the attic room he’d built out for himself when he was in high school. Carlo and Trey had the rooms they’d already been staying in—Carlo in his boyhood bedroom, Trey in his grandmother’s tiny sewing room, which had been converted into a room for him after he was born. Carlo had settled Sabina in the downstairs guest room; she hadn’t woken again since he’d picked her up from Carmen’s daybed.

  And Carlo Sr. was in the best mood he’d been in in months. It didn’t seem to matter that the whole family was home and staying at least the night because they were suddenly in a war with James Auberon. It might as well have been Christmas. He’d called Mrs. D. over and they’d made sure all the beds were fresh, and now they were both in the kitchen, Mrs. D. making a late supper and Carlo Sr. pouring drinks.

  Carlo put Trey to bed, ducking his questions about all the commotion. On his way back to check on Sabina, he stuck his head into the kitchen and watched his father for a minute. He’d been right about what was going on with their father lately. He was lonely. Though he worked every day with two of his sons, and though none of his children had gone far from home, Carlo Sr. came home every night to this huge old house and was alone in it. He was getting lost in his own head.

  Maybe, Carlo thought, it was time for his father to downsize. But that thought froze him in his tracks. To lose this house? All its memories? The essence of their mother, which yet suffused every room? The memories still being made in it? No. He swept that idea from his mind.

  As he grappled with the wave of emotion his thoughts had brought on, he heard a thudding crash from the guest room. Bina. He turned and ran into the room and found her on the floor, trying to wrap blankets around herself and force herself up to stand on her wounded feet all at once.

  “Bina!” He went to help her.

  “No!” She shouted, her voice stronger than it had been, but filled with strain and fear. She clutched the quilt to her body. “No! Get away!”

  Carlo dropped his hands and knelt by her. Her eyes were wide and scared. “Bina, it’s okay. You’re safe. You’re safe.”

  Her eyes were a little vague and unfocused; she was still coming off the morphine. She blinked and took a rough breath. “Carlo? What is—where am—where is this place?”

  He hadn’t thought. He’d tucked her in and known she was safe, and he hadn’t thought that when she woke she would have no idea where she was. He cursed his stupidity, but he smiled in a way he hoped was encouraging.

  “You’re at my house. I mean, my father’s house. You’re safe. You’re safe.” He reached out and brushed his fingers over her hand where it clutched the quilt to her chest. “You’re hurt, Bina. You need to stay in bed. Can I help you?”

  She remained perfectly still, staring at him, for long seconds. Carlo could practically see her mind whirring behind her eyes, trying to make sense of a life that had gone senseless. He felt a sliver of understanding. His life, too, had been shaken hard on this day, though nothing like she’d endured.

  “Bina,” he tried again. “Please let me help you.”

  She nodded, and he went to his feet and lifted her up, feeling every one of her gasps of pain and tiny whimpers like needles in his gut. When he got her settled again on the bed, he brushed her hair from her sweet face, sallow now with pain and trauma. “Can I do more for you? Get you anything?”

  She reached up and took his hand. “Will you stay? Here, with me? You stay?”

  “I will.” Fully dressed, he untied the Timberlands he’d laced up in the morning of a different life and kicked them off. Then he lay down behind James Auberon’s wife, now estranged, and tucked her battered body against his chest.

  They neither spoke nor moved again. Carlo lay awake for a long time after the weight of her presence and the rhythm of her breath had told him she was sleeping. He wondered what his life would be like in the morning.

  ~ 12 ~

  When Beniamino Pagano took on a personal mission, he moved quickly and with all his considerable might. Though she did not know it at the time, Sabina was safe from Auberon within twenty-four hours of falling into Carmen’s arms.

  But a man like James Auberon did not simply disappear.

  On the second day after Carlo brought Sabina to stay at the house on Caravel Road, he got a call from Uncle Lorrie, instructing him to have her call her husband in as a missing person. She was not yet healed or strong, but Auberon had seen to it that her wounds could be hidden. The police came to the house and interviewed her there.

  The story was that she was spending a week at their beach house alone, intending to get it prepped for the summer. However, she’d noticed quickly that she was being followed, and she’d let James know. He’d come to check on her and to check out her concerns, then told her to stay with friends while he had someone look into it. That had been, she told the police, sitting in Carlo’s father’s living room, the last time she’d seen her husband.

  Her real physical pain, the evidence for which was covered by yoga pants and a hoodie, and her continuing psychological trauma as that day cycled over and over through her head, made playing the worried wife fairly easy. The detectives were kind to her and attentive. They took down the details she provided about the white Escalade and told her they would keep her posted and would do what they could to keep the media away for as long as possible.

  On the third day after Carlo brought Sabina to stay at the house on Caravel Road, James’s yacht, the Sole Proprietor, was found at anchor miles offshore. Abandoned. And the story broke wide. It took a couple of days for the vultures to learn where Sabina was, but they did, and the Paganos spent the next few days with cameras camped at the foot of their steeply inclined front lawn.

  Then Uncle Ben apparently did something, and most of the media went away—or at least gave the house a wide berth. But rumors had started flying. Auberon’s image as a philanthropist began to tarnish as people with stories about his ruthlessness felt emboldened by his disappearance to share those stories. As a new, more accurate image of the man emerged, and his disappearance continued, people began to speculate about who might have killed him, how, and why. Some of that speculation had included Sabina.

  But, at last, something about Auberon’s quirks and predilections worked in her favor. His intense need for privacy and control meant that there were few instances in which anyone had seen him treat Sabina any way other than with respect. Only Gloria knew anything of substance, and Sabina knew Gloria would never tell stories. They might all have their assumptions, but no one had a story except that night at the cab, and there was not much mileage to be had from that.