Miracle (The Pagano Family Book 6) (16 page)

Tina was right—and Gayle, and Carole, and Evan, and every-fucking-body with an opinion. Lungs that could swim were strong enough. Anxiety was his albatross.

Which meant that he was crazy—but also that maybe he could fuck Tina again someday, if he got the crazy under control.

In this moment, Tina wasn’t there, so he set that aside and nodded as an answer to Carlo, preferring to think the question was innocent, but knowing it would go somewhere dark pretty quickly.

“About anything in particular?”

Joey shrugged and sipped his soda.

“Joe. I think you know what I’m asking. I can see it on your face.”

Joey didn’t respond; he didn’t know how.

With a heavy breath, Carlo set his glass down and leaned in. “You know Trey and I are having a rough time lately. I can’t figure out what the hell I’m supposed to do that I’m not, but for the past year, he’s been in my face whenever I just try to be his father. He won’t listen. Bina says I’m pushing too hard, but fuck, Joe. I don’t know where my pal went. I end up shouting, and he shouts back, and there’s Ben, watching all that and seeing me differently. John told me a while back that Trey talked to Nick about going to that side, but I didn’t believe it was real. He’s fucking fourteen! Tonight, though, Trey told me himself. He threw it at me like a big
fuck you
.”

Carlo dropped his head into his hands and then raked them through his hair. “I told him no son of mine would work for Nick, and if he did, he’d be no son of mine. Jesus—you should’ve seen his face. I don’t think I even meant it, but I lost him tonight. Bina’s not talking to me, either, now. I feel like I’m losing control of my whole family.”

He looked up. “So please, Joey. If you know anything, tell me.
Help
me. Did he talk to you about this shit?”

Joey and Pop had had a very similar argument, once upon a time—with shouting and threats and all of it. It had been that very threat, of disownment, that had shut down the last of his reservations about joining up with the Uncles. In the end, Pop hadn’t disowned him, but he had shunned him—until Joey had been shot and nearly killed.

It wasn’t Pop’s fault that Joey had made that choice. He’d felt like an outsider in his family, and he’d wanted to belong somewhere. He’d wanted to be a Pagano. Going to the Uncles as the way to do it had been his own choice and his own fault—and it hadn’t worked. But it was his inability to connect with his family the way he’d needed to that had pushed him in that direction.

The most important word in what he needed to tell Carlo was their own name. So he closed his eyes and found the words necessary to make his meaning. “Wants…to be…Pagano.”

“Please? He
is
a Pagano!”

Joey shook his head. He didn’t know how to say it so that his brother would understand. Carlo was the oldest of them. He was smart and ambitious, and as an architect, he’d made the Pagano name mean something entirely new. He had never felt the pressure of the name because he’d never considered it anything
but
a name. He hadn’t wanted the family business, or the other family business. He was the kind of man who made his own way and never considered any other path.

If Trey wasn’t like that, if he was instead like Luca or Joey—or, to a lesser extent, John—then the name was who he
was
.

Carlo had trouble seeing outside his own view. Sabina had been a godsend in that way, as in so many other ways, because she called him on his single-mindedness and made him turn around and look. If she wasn’t getting through, then Carlo was locked in to what he wanted for Trey and couldn’t see his son for who he was.

Joey laughed. Carlo was being exactly like Pop. Those two had fought hard, too, when Carlo rejected Pagano & Sons—the legacy Pop had expected his eldest son to take. It had been years—years full of contention—before Pop had recognized that Luca had always been the son who belonged at the helm when he stepped aside.

“What’s funny?” Carlo asked, his tone hostile.

“You…Trey. Like Pop…you.” Fuck, the way he sounded. No longer Tarzan, now he was reduced to talking like one of the apes.

But Carlo got it. “Fuck you.”

Joey shrugged. He hadn’t expected Carlo to have an epiphany right there on the patio. But maybe he had a solution—Trey wanted to be a Pagano, and he’d enjoyed spending his spring break with the construction company. Carlo had grudgingly conceded to that.

“Summer…Trey…work… …” He gave up and tapped his own chest.

“I don’t want that. I want him at engineering camp this summer. And then adventure camp again.”

No words were required for Joey to convey what he thought of that idea. His brother was being a bullheaded fuck.

He finished his Coke and stood up. “’Night.”

“Joey, wait.”

“Trey…is Trey…bro.”

Carlo sagged back into his seat. Staring off into the dark yard, he muttered, “Good night.”

Dismissed, Joey headed next door. He left his glass for Carlo to take in. That was the least of the messes his big brother needed to clean up.

~ 12 ~

“Don’t put nutmeg in it. Nutmeg doesn’t belong.”

Tina rolled her eyes. “I know how to make Alfredo sauce, Daddy.”

Her father lifted an eyebrow at her pot. “You put cream in it. Obviously, you don’t. Sure not how
I
taught you. Or your mamma.”

“I like this recipe. It’s a huge pain to make it your way. Takes forever.” She grated more parmesan cheese into the simmering sauce.

“Art cannot be rushed,
tesorina
.” He nudged her aside and laid the veal cutlets on the center grill of their big range. “How’s he doing?”

The sudden change of topic didn’t surprise Tina. Her father had been worming questions about Joey into just about every conversation over the past few weeks, since Carlo Sr.’s funeral and the chaotic night afterward.

He was worried that she was getting involved with a guy who couldn’t keep up with her—and he’d said as much. Repeatedly. He didn’t want her to ‘clip her wings’ for any man.

Joey felt the same. Her brothers had opinions on her love life, too. Everybody thought he was a dead end. Nobody cared what she thought.

She loved him—and not because she felt sorry for him, or she wanted to be some kind of hero, or any of that crap. She loved him because he was funny and kind and sweet. She loved him because they saw the world in the same way. She loved him because she understood him.

“He’s good. Doing better.”

That was both a truth and a fiction. Joey’s word access was bad; no way to sugarcoat how much he’d slipped on that score. Maybe if the night shift at the hospital had seen the lesion right away…but they’d missed it. Not until his language losses persisted did anyone look again, and by then it was too late.

Things were not hopeless—he might get some access back, as he had before, and the lesion might not leave permanent damage when it fully healed—but they were certainly much harder, and Joey already worked hard every waking second of his life. He was tired, and he was disheartened.

He’d almost given up. A week earlier, as they’d finally diagnosed the lesion and the change to the presentation of his aphasia—none of that good news—he’d thrown a fit at Gayle and stormed away. Tina thanked God she’d been there. She knew him. If he’d had too much time to let that hopelessness worm its tentacles into his head, she’d have lost him—and he’d have lost himself.

She knew he’d started on this wholesale improvement kick for Carlo Sr.’s sake, not for his own. He’d wanted to ease his dying father’s mind that he’d be okay without him. When he’d started, he’d told himself he could bail and crawl back into his hole after his father’s death.

Then he and Tina had gotten together, and he’d wanted something better for himself. He’d had hope.

It was shit like this that made Tina rage at God. Torturing her lively mother in that inert body. Giving Joey hope and then yanking it away. They’d all be better off if God stopped paying attention and took up a hobby or something.

Joey was still trying; she’d caught hold of him before he’d jumped off the ledge, and she’d reeled him back, but Tina knew he thought it all temporary. He expected her to tire of his limits, of their limits, and he was only trying to have what little he thought he could for the little time he thought he could have it.

Was he doing better? Not really. But as long as he was fighting, for whatever reason he was fighting, then there was hope, and she would be there to help him see it.

She’d gone quiet, thinking about all that, and now she saw her father giving her a contemplative consideration. “You’re my good girl, Valentina. Don’t forget that you deserve to be happy, too.”

“I am happy, Daddy.”

Any reply or rebuttal he might have offered was foreclosed when the side door opened and Angie stepped in. “Hey,
famiglia
,” he said and went directly to the fridge. As he opened a bottle of beer, he turned and smiled. “What’s grub tonight? Ooh—veal.
Nice
.”

Tina didn’t want Angie here tonight. He and Joey had been friends in their teens and twenties, but not since the shooting. In fact, though she didn’t understand exactly why, there was some hostility between them, a deep vein of it that didn’t show obviously on the surface but turned every word, glance and gesture between them into a death match.

“I didn’t know you were coming for dinner.” It was a dumb thing to say; neither brother ever announced his intention to eat at home. They just showed up.

Angie gave her a look that said he was thinking the same thing. “So? What’s your damage, shrimp? Oh, shit. Is J-J-J…Joey coming over?”

“You are such an asshole, Angie.” Tina dropped the wooden spoon into the pot and turned down the heat. “Why don’t you fuck off.”

He laughed. “Language, little girl. I’ll be nice to your project, don’t worry.”

“See that you are good to our
guest
, Angelo,” was their father’s only contribution to the topic.

~oOo~

The tension that always simmered between him and Joey seemed hotter than usual at dinner—or maybe it was simply that Tina was already angry at her brother and feeling extra protective of Joey, so she was particularly sensitive to their mutual animosity.

They’d been good friends for years, in the dopey party-boy way. They’d joined the Pagano Brothers together. Angie hadn’t been involved in the shooting—that had been drama in Joey’s own family and wasn’t even related to Pagano Brothers business, as far as Tina knew. Yet they’d stopped being friends at that time.

Tina wondered if Angie had been an asshole to Joey about his disabilities back then, too. Wouldn’t surprise her; tact was not his forte. The tension between them seemed deeper than that, though.

Joey came over for dinner about once a week, and she went to his family about that often, too. So far, by simple luck, he and Angie had landed at the dinner table on the same nights only a couple of times before, and on those occasions, Matt had been there, too. Matt was a nice guy and naturally quiet; he and Joey got along well, and he served as a good buffer between Joey and Angie.

But Matt was on a date tonight, so Tina couldn’t hope for his help.

Dinner talk was stilted, as Tina jumped on every comment that came out of Angie’s mouth, trying to keep it from turning into something shitty. Everybody, including Joey, knew what she was doing, and it made everybody uncomfortable, but she couldn’t stop herself.

She was glad when the meal was over. As she stood to clear the table, her father and Joey got up to help. Angie, as usual, sat where he was and poured himself another glass of wine.

He set the bottle on the table. “Joey. Why don’t we sit a minute and…talk?”

Tina froze. She wanted to kick him for the way he’d lingered over the word ‘talk,’ as if he’d had to search for a word to describe what a conversation with Joey was like.

She turned to Joey, whose attention was entirely on Angie.

There was no way she would allow her brother, mob enforcer or not, to be a douche to her boyfriend. She tried to form the right protest, but her father stopped her with a hand on her arm. “Let’s give ‘em the room.”

Joey still hadn’t turned her way, and now he was sitting down again. Her father tugged more firmly on her arm. “Valentina, come on.”

Reluctantly, she followed. Setting the stack of plates on the counter, she turned immediately, meaning to head back to the dining room for more dishes and to monitor whatever the fuck was going on in there.

But her father stepped into her path and took her arms in his hands. “Enough,
tesorina
.” His voice was low but firm. “He’s a thirty-six-year-old, six-foot-tall man who does not need his little woman to stand before him like a shield.”

Tina went stiff with offense. “That’s not—I’m not—”

He cut her off with a jerk of his head. “You tell me he’s strong and smart despite his troubles, and I know that. I see it in him. And yet you baby him. The way you were at dinner, cutting off any kind of real talk? It’s a man’s job to protect his woman. How d’you think it makes him feel, to know that you think
you
need to protect
him
? I know how it makes him feel, because it’s all over his face. And it’s all over Angelo’s face, too. Like you’re carrying his balls around in your pocket.”

She opened her mouth to tell him that was sexist bullshit, but she knew that argument would get no traction with him—or, for that matter, with Joey. Plus, for the most part, it wasn’t bullshit. It was the same thing that Gayle had told her, without the Cro-Magnon rhetoric. She was enabling him. She was in his way.

Her mouth snapped shut. All she wanted was to be a place where he could rest, one place in his life without stress or monumental effort. A port in his storm.

Her father must have seen the comprehension play on her face, because he pulled her into a hug. “I didn’t like him very much. I held some history against him, but I do see that you’re right. He’s a better man than he was. He can stand on his own. You have a good heart, Valentina, but take my advice and step back a little.”

At the sound of the front door closing, Tina and her father broke their embrace. Angie habitually came in and out the side door, like they all did. Joey had come in through the front door. She went to the dining room, expecting to see her brother sitting smugly at the table, alone.

But it was Joey. He stood at the far corner of the room, his fists clenched.

Angie had left—through the front door. Without saying goodbye.

She went to Joey. “Are you okay?”

He nodded, but his breathing seemed strained. His tank sat on the floor next to his chair at the table.

“What happened?”

He shook his head.

From the kitchen doorway, her father said, “I got the cleanup. Why don’t you kids go on.”

“Thanks, Daddy.” She took Joey’s hand. “Let’s go up to my room.” When she tugged him toward the staircase, he resisted, and she turned to face him.

She could see hot anger simmering under his skin—that was the source of his strained respiration. He still wasn’t moving to use his cannula, and she hoped he wouldn’t push it this time as far as he had a few weeks ago.

“No,” he said. “Gonna go.”

“Please? It’s early.”

He bent and kissed her cheek. “Gonna go.” Then he shed her hand and went to pick up his tank. “Thanks…dinner…Mr. C.”

Tina’s father considered him for a moment, a stack of serving dishes in his hands. He nodded. “You have a good night, Giuseppe.”

Despite her concern and upset that Joey was simply leaving after whatever Angie had said to him, Tina smiled at her father’s use of his given name. There was no better indication that he had accepted him into the family than that. Her father called his children by their given names.

Joey was already on his way to the front door, so Tina had no choice but to follow him. When they were alone in the front hall, she grabbed his wrist. “Joey! What did Angie say?”

Again, he only shook his head, but now Tina saw that the anger in his eyes had focus. On her. She thought of what her father had said.

“Wait. We need to talk. I—I’m sorry.”

“’Night.”

He left. Tina stood on the threshold and watched him go to his Jeep. When he was inside, she saw him hook the tubing over his ears.

~oOo~

When his Jeep rounded the corner at the end of the street and his taillights disappeared, Tina closed the door. Standing in the front hall, she pulled out her phone and texted him.