Miracle (The Pagano Family Book 6) (33 page)

Tina knelt on the carpet next to the little girl who’d been through a horror beyond comprehension and come through it. She was back on track after what those children had done to her, and she was continuing to gain strength. If they were starting physical therapy like this, they had hope that she would walk. That was a new hope.

“Hi, A—a—va. Ava. Hi.” She held her hand out, palm up, in the greeting that Ava liked, and that sweet little girl laid her own tiny hand on hers, palm to palm.

“Taaaah. Taaaah.”

Tears beset Tina again, but she let them fall. It was better to ignore them than to hold them back; Ava wouldn’t understand the facial contortions required to stop crying.

But that little girl understood tears. She patted her hand on Tina’s. “Taaaah?”

And then she took hold of Tina’s hand and brought it to Sunny. She moved their joined hands over the rabbit’s white fur. “Taaah. Taaah.”

She was offering Tina comfort with the bunny that had comforted her so much.

“You’re going to be missed,” Kirsten said quietly.

~oOo~

In Joey’s bed that night, as they were nestled together in afterglow, he smoothed his hand over her head and said, “Hard day.”

She nodded. Hours later, she still hadn’t told him that her degree was finished, that her committee had waived her defense. As the day had gone on, it had seemed less important, less momentous. Whether she had a PhD or not didn’t matter. She couldn’t use it. It was nothing but a piece of paper. An ugly polyester robe, a funny hat, and a colored satin hood that would hang ignored in her closet.

But she should at least tell him. If she could make her mouth do it.

“E-Esther said…” Fuck. There was absolutely no way she would have the words to explain this to Joey.

But she was an idiot. She didn’t need any words.

She got up and went to her bag. Then she brought back her copy of the form that her committee had signed off on, and her copy of the instructions for the hooding ceremony—the forms she’d shoved into her bag without thinking while she’d been trying to find her way out of her exchange with Grace.

She handed them both to Joey, and he turned on the bedside lamp and read them. When he looked up, his brow was furrowed. “You’re done? You got it?”

“Yeah. Can…w-walk.” Too tired to bother to find the words, she tapped the page where the date of the ceremony was. “T-t-tell…my…tell…”

D
was supposed to be one of the easiest sounds, but it eluded her when it appeared as an opening sound.

“Your dad.” He nodded. “Yeah. …Everybody. Baby, this is…awesome!”

She shrugged. “W-w-why?”

He stared hard for a few seconds, then turned and grabbed his phone from the nightstand—he was going to write his answer. While he did so, Tina took the papers back to her bag and got her phone out.

When his text made her phone buzz, she read:

You did something amazing. It’s important. You’ll be a therapist again. Or teach, or both. Whatever you want. 3 months ago, you were unconscious in a bed, covered in bandages and tubes. 6 weeks ago, you couldn’t say even 1 word. Look how far you are from there already. Think how far you’ll be in 6 more weeks or 3 more months. Don’t let what you worked so hard for go by just because you have more work to do. I’m going to make sure that everybody is there to celebrate this hooding thing with you. BTW: hooding sounds a little weird. Just sayin’.

Joey was grinning at her when she met his eyes again, and he took her phone from her, set it next to his on the nightstand, and pulled her close, tucking her naked body against his. He kissed her cheek, and in her good ear, he said, “Admire you.”

She knew that was his way of saying that he admired her, that he’d dropped the ‘I’ in his usual way, but she heard it like an instruction as well—as an admonition to admire herself, to be proud.

Pride was a thing she hadn’t felt in months. As aware as she was that her recovery was progressing, it hadn’t made her feel proud. Not until—or unless—she was fully recovered would she feel pride in it. If even then.

But he was right—this was something that she could, should, be proud of. Something that was hers, something that now couldn’t, wouldn’t, be taken away.

“Yeah,” she whispered. “Proud.”

~oOo~

Ten days before Christmas, on an afternoon threatening snow, Tina stood in a line at the back of the college church, dressed in an ugly polyester gown and a funny velvet hat with a puke-green tassel. There were about thirty people standing with her: all the people at the university being conferred with the PhDs at the end of the fall semester.

A few rows from the front of the church sat her family. Even her mother had made the journey; her special wheelchair was set up in a nook at the side of the pews. Angie sat next to her.

Every single Pagano was there as well. Even Nick and Bev and their children. She’d only been given four tickets, but somebody somewhere—probably Nick—had finagled tickets for everyone else.

Her people filled two pews to bursting.

When it was her turn, she stepped forward, and Esther met her at the center and stepped behind her. Esther was tall, so Tina stood straight as her director draped the hood over her shoulders.

The dean of the college announced, “Dr. Valentina Eugenia Corti, Department of Rehabilitative Therapies.”

Those two rows near the front erupted into cheers. Her family stood and applauded, and shouts and hoots rang out. Her brother Matt held up a hand-lettered sign on poster board: THE DOCTOR IS IN!!

The audience had been instructed to hold applause until all the conferees had been hooded, and the dean turned and gave Tina a mildly irritated look, but she just shrugged and grinned back.

That was her family, and they were proud of her. She found Joey in her crowd; he was the only one not applauding or yelling. He simply stood there, his eyes on hers, his smile wide and beautiful. After a beat, he put his fingers to his lips and sent her a kiss.

“Congratulations, Dr. Corti,” Esther said behind her. Tina turned and threw her arms around her director.

Dr. Corti. That was her. That was
hers
.

~ 23 ~

“She wears black so much—she would like something…the word is… edgy? Do you think?”

Joey stood next to Sabina, staring down through glass at rows and rows of rings that looked all the same and all wrong for Tina. Not that he had any idea what would be right for her. Jewelry was not his thing.

That was why he’d asked Sabina to come with him—and because he wouldn’t have been able to have a conversation with a salesperson about something so important and complex without humiliating himself and/or wanting to kill somebody. Sabina was stylish and sophisticated, and she paid attention to people. He could trust her to help him pick the right ring.

“These here”—she moved to another case and tapped the glass. “You think something like this?”

Joey joined her and examined the rings under the glass. These were different—some had settings in a black metal, and the stones were not diamonds. But they weren’t right, either. He shook his head.

“I see her wear not much jewelry,” Sabina mused, moving to another case. “It is gold she likes, yes? Yellow gold—like her necklace? And she wears small diamond studs in her ears, yes?

God, those small, perfect ears. A ripple of need went through him, and he coughed to cover his grunt at that ache. “Yeah.”

“But you don’t wish a simple diamond solitaire in a gold setting?” She gestured toward that first case, full of generic rings he couldn’t tell apart. The salesperson, a middle-aged man in a grey suit, stood near that case, maintaining an alert distance. They’d told him—Sabina had told him—that they weren’t yet ready for his help.

He shook his head. Too plain.

“And these”—she pointed at the case full of weird rings—“are not right as well?”

“Not edgy.” Sure, Tina wore a lot of black, and her makeup was dark. Her
appearance
might have been edgy, he guessed. But he kept thinking of her frothy pink bedroom, and her love of babies, and the cheer in her voice, the way her sentences curled upward when she got nervous or excited.

The cheer that
had been
in her voice, the way her sentences
had
curled upward, before she’d been hurt.

“She has a pink center.” That sentence had come out smoothly, without hesitation. Sadly, Sabina probably wouldn’t be able to decipher his meaning.

But she gave him a lovely smile full of comprehension. “She is sweeter than she appears. I see that, too—in her eyes. And her way with the children. And with you. The way she sees you.”

The way she saw him. Sometimes Joey thought she was the only person in the world who truly could see him. Or maybe the truth was that she was the only person in the world he’d let see him. In any case, loving her had made him see himself differently, and that had changed everything.

“Need a ring… …worthy.”

Sabina patted his arm. “And we will find it.”

~oOo~

He tapped the glass. “This one.”

The salesperson—a young woman at this shop—nodded and pulled a ring out of a display tray. She slid her props—a short, velvet-covered dowel and a tiny, thickly padded velvet pillow—over before Joey and Sabina, and she set the ring on the pillow.

This was their fifth jewelry shop. They’d had to come all the way to Providence, and Joey still hadn’t found a ring right for Tina. He’d considered dozens of rings, from traditional to ‘edgy,’ and none of them had seemed right. He’d even washed out at Tiffany’s.

He had money to spend. One of the very few benefits of being a loveless hermit for a decade was that he’d never spent any money. He had a good job in his family’s business. He could pay for the right ring. He just couldn’t find it.

But maybe this one…

Joey picked up the ring, and the salesperson started in on her shtick, pointing to the features as she described them. “This is a two-carat, cushion-cut diamond in a four-prong platinum setting, surrounded by a ring of twenty diamonds, each 1/16
th
carat, in a shared-prong setting. The crisscross band weaves platinum and eighteen-karat yellow gold, with pavé diamonds. It’s a stunning piece.” She reached into the display case and brought out another ring from a different tray. “I think it would look lovely paired with this wedding band.”

The band was a ring of tiny diamonds like those around the middle diamond on the ring he was considering.

Joey nodded, but when he did, Sabina laid a cautious hand on his arm.

“It is…many diamonds, Joey. Extravagant.” Sabina asked the salesperson, “How much?”

The salesperson said the price.

“Yes, extravagant,” Sabina confirmed. “Joey, you are sure?”

Joey didn’t care about that. He liked the ring. He could imagine it on Tina’s slender finger. He could picture it flashing facets of light as she moved her hand.

He thought of her flowered sheets and her lacy pillows, of the pretty underwear she wore beneath her dark clothes, of the brilliant light of her smile. He thought of the little collars she’d bought for Mimi and Poppy—pink leather with pink rhinestones. He thought of the floral mist of her cologne.

He thought of how fucking hard the last part of this year had been for her, all she’d gone through, all she’d suffered. He thought of how hard she was working to get better, how hard she fought against despair and fear, how much she’d already accomplished.

He thought about how much better his life was because she was in it. He thought of the love he felt for her, and the way he felt her love for him. He thought of everything he had gotten back, and all the things he now had that he’d never had before. He thought of how little the things he would never have again mattered now, because she loved him without them.

She was a miracle in his life, and she deserved a miraculous ring.

He took his wallet out.

~oOo~

For the past several years, all the Paganos had had Christmas Eve dinner, before Midnight Mass, at Nick and Bev’s. This year, Joey had asked Nick if the Cortis could join them, and then he’d explained why. Nick had readily agreed, and shaken his hand, but reminded him that his wife was the boss of all entertaining and suggested that he should get Beverly’s approval as well. Bev had obviously agreed. Joey let her in on his plan, and she clapped and hugged him and started getting busy planning the changes.

The trickier part was getting Angelo to agree. Tina’s father respected Don Pagano and was grateful for the support he gave the market. But his daughter had nearly been killed because of his son’s connection to the Pagano Brothers, and he was leery.

Joey prevailed with an impassioned plea, via text while they sat together in the kitchen, that they were all family. And then he told him why it was so important. He asked for permission. After that, Angelo agreed with no more reluctance. He cried and poured them each a glass of Amaretto to celebrate.

Even Genie was coming to Christmas Eve dinner. After Thanksgiving and Tina’s graduation, she was becoming more comfortable being out in the world.

Joey sure hoped all these excited people would keep their mouths shut.

~oOo~

He needed one more person in on his plan to make it work, because he wasn’t capable of doing the most important part on his own. So a couple of days before Christmas Eve, Joey went to Luca and Manny’s house.

They had a cute, funky cottage across the street from the beach, just on the town limit. Luca and Manny didn’t have kids and never intended to. Manny’s disorder made her not a great candidate for motherhood. Even after all her years as a Pagano, surrounded by family and children, she barely noticed the kids. Until they got to about middle-school age, she tuned them out. She was the only woman Joey had ever known who could hear a baby crying, or see a toddler fall and scrape a knee, and not react at all.

It worked out because Luca had never wanted to be a father. He liked being an uncle—hopping them up on sugar and getting them all sweaty and dirty and then sending them home with their folks.

There were no Christmas decorations on the front of their house. When Joey knocked and Manny let him in, he saw there were no decorations inside, either. No tree, no candles, no stockings. Holiday cheer eluded Manny, and Luca got all he needed at the house on Caravel Road.

Their décor was an oddly controlled riot of competing tastes—Luca liked things sparse and Manny liked things cluttered—but they’d made it work. It was like their relationship: impossible on paper but impenetrable in real life.

After letting him in, Manny turned and walked away without uttering a word beyond “Hey,” and Joey followed. They stopped in the kitchen, and Manny resumed what she’d been doing, which was unloading the dishwasher. When she pulled a butcher knife from the cutlery tray, Joey gave it a sidelong stare and was glad when it was back in its slot in the knife block.

At their core, Manny and Joey were nothing alike, and yet they clicked well. It wasn’t understanding of each other that had made them close. They’d never confided much—Joey physically couldn’t, and Manny emotionally couldn’t—but they did have an understanding. Because they hadn’t fit. They’d sat on the sidelines and seen each other there, and they’d made a real friendship. Two benchwarmers in the game of family.

“Need a favor.”

“Yeah? What?”

He took a folded sheet of paper from his pocket and held it out. As she hipped the dishwasher door closed, Manny took it.

He waited while she read it.

When she was done, she looked up at him with a droll smirk. “You are such a sap.”

“Fuck you.”

“Right back at you, bitch.”

There was no offense between them; it was how they talked to each other.

But Joey was serious about this. He’d thought about it, and he needed her—
her
—to do this. For several reasons, Manny was exactly the right person.

“Will you?”

“You know,
I’m
the one with the cool Christmas engagement story. Plagiarist.”

He knew better than to expect sentiment or praise from her. “Manny, will you?”

“Yeah, shithead. I will. You’re gonna owe me. Can I see the ring?”

~oOo~

By the time the family was eating Christmas Eve dinner, Joey thought that everybody but Tina knew what was going on—at least the intent of his plan. He’d gotten surreptitious back slaps or quick hugs from every adult member of his family.

He really hoped Tina wasn’t pretending not to know. It shouldn’t be a total shock—they’d talked a little, in the way that they could, about the future, and they’d both said often that they wanted to be together forever. But they had never made anything that resembled a plan. Hell, they hadn’t yet worked out a way to live together.

But he didn’t want her to know what was going to happen on this night, surrounded by their family, with all the rifts among them mended. Even Carlo and Trey were doing better; Trey had agreed that he would go to college.

After dinner, while the hired girls cleaned up, and Adele and Nick’s mother, Aunt Betty, got the children set up in the media room with Christmas shows, Bev ushered the adults and Trey into the living room.

They were so many that the squeeze was a bit cozy, even in Nick’s big house near Greenback Hill. When they were all settled, Manny stood up and put herself in the center of the group. Not a place she generally liked to be, but she was helping Joey out.