Miracle (The Pagano Family Book 6) (34 page)

When she did, Joey got up from his place next to Tina on a sofa, and he knelt before her and took her hands.

Tina’s eyes went wide under a brow furrowed with confusion. She glanced at Manny, then back at Joey.

Manny began to speak.

“Joey asked me to read something he wrote, and he wanted everybody to hear it. It’ll be cool if everybody remembers that when I say ‘I’ or ‘me,’ that’s Joey. Otherwise this is gonna get weird fast. So here it is: Hey, baby—”

Manny stopped and said, “Told you it was gonna get weird fast,” and the whole room laughed, but Joey only smiled and kept his eyes on Tina, whose eyes were locked on his. She knew what was happening, and he knew what her answer would be, and what was going on around them—even his words said the only way he could—was just window dressing.

When the laughter died, Manny started again. “Hey, baby. I died eleven years ago. I don’t mean when I got shot. I don’t mean when my heart stopped and they had to revive me. I don’t remember any of that. There’s a lot of the time after, weeks after that day, that I don’t remember very well. But one thing I do, I guess it’s the first thing I remember from after, was not being able to understand the world around me. When I first woke up, it was like everybody was speaking a language that I’d studied a little but had forgotten most of. I had trouble figuring out what they meant, and when I did, I had trouble finding words to say something back. Not being able to breathe was bad, but not being able to use words right was what killed me. It was like waking up as a ghost in somebody else’s head and watching my life happen all around me, but without me.”

The room had gone quiet with a silence that had weight and mass, and Joey gave up a second lost in Tina’s eyes to look around at his family. He’d never said anything like this aloud before. He supposed he could have expressed himself like this—sent them all an email or something—but he never had. He’d never tried to tell them what it was like. Now they were all, almost every one of them, staring at him with shock and guilt shadowing their faces. Everyone but Nick, who simply seemed…interested.

As Manny continued to read, Joey returned to Tina’s eyes. “For more than ten years, I lived in that stranger’s head, and I hated him. He was too stupid to know there wasn’t any point in sticking around, so we just kept waking up every morning, alone and miserable, and nobody knew because nobody could understand. Nobody could see that I was dead, because that asshole looked just like me, and everybody thought he was.

“And then you showed up back in my life, and you saw me right away. It freaked me out, when we were sitting at our coffee shop the first time. Everything you did, the way you talked, the things you asked, the way you knew how to ask them so I could answer, it was like you could see into that stranger’s head and find me. I went home that night and stood at the bathroom mirror for half an hour, looking for the man you saw. Me. I didn’t find him, but for the first time in a decade, I believed he was still in there somewhere.

“That was January. This year has been so fucking intense. Now you know more about what it’s like in my head than you ever should have had to know. But watching you heal, seeing the way you fight and how much progress you make all the time, I see what fighting looks like, and I see that I didn’t die because of the bullet or the aphasia or my broken lungs. I died because I didn’t fight to live. Not until you looked inside me and found what was left of me and dragged it back into the light so I could see it, too.

“I know that the way I talk right now is probably the best I’m ever going to be able to talk, and that my lungs are probably as good as they’re ever going to be. I’ll have to sleep every night with tubes up my nose, and I’m not ever going to be able to give fancy speeches unless Manny will agree to give them for me.”

Again, Manny paused and spoke for herself. “I won’t—just so you know. Not doing this again, so this whole production better work.” This time, though there was a ripple of amusement in the room, no one laughed.

Tina was crying, letting the tears fall down her cheeks. Her fingers squeezed Joey’s, and he held on for all his life.

Manny went on reading. “But for the first time in my life—my whole life, all thirty-six years of it—I’m happy. Totally happy. I don’t feel limited by anything. I like myself. And I love you. You are a miracle, Tina. You brought a dead man back to life. I want to spend the rest of that life with you. Will you marry me?”

She nodded right away, before the words were all the way out, and Joey had her in his arms and was kissing her as Manny finished reading.

Bev had helped him plan everything, and he’d expected something different to happen now. He’d expected cheering, and the
pop
of a champagne bottle being uncorked. Instead, there was only silence. Complete silence, until little Johnny fussed in Katrynn’s arms.

He was afraid to look around and see what was wrong.

But as their kiss ended and Joey pulled back from Tina, that
pop
he’d been expecting rang out through the quiet room, and the sound broke whatever spell had held his family. The room erupted with joy.
That
was what he’d expected.

“WHERE’S THE RING?” Luca shouted above the din, and the noise dropped as people became curious. Joey turned back to Bev, who handed him two champagne glasses. He handed the one with a pink ribbon tied to its stem to Tina. The ring dangled from the satin.

Tina’s eyes went wide again as she lifted the ring on her fingertips. Those eyes locked again with Joey’s. “B-b-beautiful.”

“Needed to be…” He lost the word he’d wanted and searched for another. He found a better one. “Worthy.” He untied the ribbon and slid the ring on her trembling finger.

“Holy…look at that thing! Well done, Giuseppe!” Angelo had come up behind the sofa; now he crouched close, leaning over the back. “Show your mamma,
tesorina
.”

Holding her hand outstretched, she marveled at it herself, then stood. Joey stood, too, and stepped out of her way as she went to her mother’s chair. “Look, Mamma.”

Her mother’s left eye gleamed, and her left hand twitched. Tina took it with her own sparkling left hand and squeezed.

An arm went over Joey’s shoulders, and he turned his head to see Angie at his side. “Thanks, Joey.”

“Thanks?”

“Yeah.” With his attention on his sister and his mother, Angie said nothing more.

~ 24 ~

“I asked you if you liked it. That’s the only answer I need.”

Tina looked around the grand ballroom of the hotel in the Colonial Shore development. Pagano & Sons had built this development, and they were therefore getting a deal on the booking, but still, the pricing had all but given Tina a nosebleed.

Her father was entirely invested in planning this wedding. He’d gone with her dress shopping, and insisted she buy the dress she loved best. He wanted her flowers and her cake and the music and decorations, and everything, to be exactly what she wanted, and sometimes she thought he was more excited than she was.

She stood in this room with the gorgeous inlaid wood floor, the breathtaking view of the ocean beyond two walls of glass—walls that could ease back to let the sea air in if the weather was fine enough for it—and she wanted everything her father wanted to give her.

They were getting married in June; the weather might well be perfect. She couldn’t believe that the space was available only four months in advance. She suspected that that was a perk of being a Pagano, and she’d decided that she wouldn’t think too hard about the likelihood that they were displacing another couple on their special day.

But it was so expensive. Lifting her left hand, she gazed down at the headlight on her ring finger. Joey had given her the most beautiful ring she had ever seen. Its glory had a weight that she felt always on her hand now. It must have cost him a fortune.

Everybody wanted to shower her with money to get her married, when she didn’t need Joey or her father or anyone to spend anything to know how much they loved her.

It had taken her weeks to get used to wearing her ring, something so wildly precious—in fact and in meaning. There was a little voice in her that said she should have felt guilty, or something like that. But she didn’t. Every time her hand moved and light caught the stones, it was like Joey had touched her. She waved her fingers in the sunlight now and smiled.

Currently, however, there was the question of this luxurious space for their reception. After a moment’s reverie, she turned away from the enticement of the beach and faced her father. “Daddy. Too much.”

Her father shook his head. “No,
tesorina mia
. It’s not. You are my baby girl, and you are getting married. I’ve been planning this day since the nurse set you in my arms for the first time and your big, beautiful eyes looked up at me. There is no ‘too much.’ There’s only what you deserve, and you deserve anything your heart desires. Please let me do this for you. Give me that honor, to give you a grand wedding. Do you like the room?”

She turned around and surveyed the beautiful room once more. The light caught her ring and made rainbows in the air.

“Yes, Daddy. I…love it.”

~oOo~

Tina’s speech was improving steadily. Six months after the night of the storm, she had a ready speaking vocabulary—words she could say at will—of about two hundred words. That was a tiny number, really, a preschool child’s number, but it was enough to get her through her days with her family.

Other words, she had to concentrate to make the sounds of each syllable, and sometimes her brain failed her mid-word. But she was working with Nancy three times a week, and whenever she got frustrated, Nancy showed her her progress chart. Seeing the steady climb of that red line got her out of her head and back to work.

Nancy had broken her therapy into segments of short-term goals. Not ‘I want to be able to talk like a normal person’ but ‘I want to be able to say five more nouns by next week.’ Or ‘I want to be able to make a starting
d
sound consistently without stuttering by next month.’ It was a good strategy that offered successes all along a road that would have otherwise seemed endless.

Writing was a much slower process. She’d always taken pride in her neat, even penmanship, but now she wrote like a seven-year-old—all wavy, tentative lines and uneven sizing and spacing. Her hands did not understand how to make letters, and it was hard to take the thought that it might be years before she could sign her name like a grownup. Typing was easier, though she had to visualize each word individually before she could find the right letters, so it took her five minutes to send a one-sentence text.

But the line on the graph went steadily upward, so she kept trying. She wanted to be able to sign her name on the marriage license and have it look like her signature. And she wanted to be able to give a bride’s toast at the reception, one that didn’t provoke pity from their guests.

Those were her short-term goals, and Nancy, after a long discussion about how high those marks would be to reach, had restructured therapy to help her strive for them.

Three more months.

~oOo~

Everything was pink.

She hadn’t exactly
planned
to have a pink wedding, but there was a bridesmaid’s dress that looked so good with the dress she’d picked, and the blush pink was just so pretty, and then they needed flowers that worked with that color, and all of a sudden she had a pink wedding.

It was her favorite color. She’d always been a little embarrassed by that; it was just so
girly
and precious and clichéd, and honestly, she wanted to like something darker—and she did. She liked lots of dark colors—blood red, dark purple, cobalt blue. But pink had been her favorite color from the time she was little. It just made her feel good. Every time she looked at the photos of the flowers and the cake and the ballroom decorations she’d picked, she just felt
good
.

And Joey’s brothers and hers had all even agreed to wear pink ties and pink rosebud boutonnieres with their blue suits. Joey was wearing a white tie and a white rose.

Oh, GOD, everything was so beautiful!

Tina didn’t really have a best friend—she’d been too busy working and studying and writing to spend much time having friends, and Grace had turned out to be a bust. Joey didn’t, either. But they had family. Their wedding party was brothers and sisters: Carmen, Rosa, Sabina, and Manny as bridesmaids, with Sabina as matron of honor. And Luca, John, Angie, and Matt as groomsmen, with John as best man.

There had been some shit-giving among the Pagano boys when Joey had asked John to do the honor, and Tina had heard a story he’d never told her, about his crisis the Christmas before last, when John and Katrynn had gotten married.

Eli and Jordan, Theo’s sons, were ushers. Katrynn and Bev kept track of the kids. Theo managed the guest book. It was a full-family affair. Even Tina’s mother was there, dressed in a sparkling, pearl-grey gown, her hair dyed the walnut shade that had once been her natural hair color, and styled with pretty curls and a narrow, glittering tiara.

Tina stood just outside the door to the sanctuary, in her beautiful dress and her beautiful veil and her own beautiful tiara and watched as the Pagano women proceeded down the aisle. Her father tugged lightly on her arm, and she turned to face him.

“You are beautiful,
tesorina
. Inside and outside.”

No, she wasn’t; her hair was too short and her eye drooped and her nose was funny, and she had scars all over her face and down her throat, but two hours with a makeup artist and a hair stylist had done wonders. She smiled.

“I love you, Daddy.”

“And I you. You are my little treasure. You’re marrying a good man today.”

“I know.”

“He’ll take good care of you, and you’ll take good care of him. The way you’ve always taken good care of the people you love.”

A rush of emotion nearly overwhelmed her. When she and Joey got back from their honeymoon, she wouldn’t live at home anymore.

They’d discussed lots of options: moving into their own place, either renting an apartment or buying a house; Joey moving in with her and her parents; her moving in with him and Adele. They’d decided that they had too many people who needed them to live on their own, and then Joey had offered to move in with her and help take care of her mom.

It was her father who’d said no. He wanted her to have a chance at a life truly her own, and he’d gotten really angry at the thought that they would even consider not moving into their own place. He wanted them ‘free,’ he’d said. Over and over, he’d said that they needed to start off free. He’d offered to buy them a house.

They didn’t need his help. Neither Joey nor Tina had spent much money, and they’d both earned pretty well. So now they had a mortgage on a little Victorian cottage in the heart of Quiet Cove, close enough to their respective family homes that they could still be there to help.

The house needed some love, but Tina had lots of time until she could work again, assuming she could ever work again, so she was going to learn home improvement.

Since she was marrying into a family of construction workers, she thought she’d do okay.

The music in the sanctuary changed, and Tina’s father smiled and pulled the top tier of her long veil over her head, in the traditional way.

“It’s time for me to walk you to your new life,” he said as he hooked her arm over his.

~oOo~

Tina sat next to Joey at the head table and felt ill. Everything had been perfect so far. Their family had cheered when Joey had leaned her over his arm to kiss her at the altar, and their guests had thrown pink rose petals.

And she’d signed the marriage certificate in a signature that didn’t look like her own, but didn’t quite look like a child’s, either.

The ballroom was beautiful and sparkling and pink, and the dinner looked and smelled divine. Their friends and family—there were a
lot
of people here for a couple who had no friends—had toasted them again and again, and John’s best-man toast had had the room laughing without being obnoxious or crude.

Everything was going exactly right. Like a dream.

But John had given his toast, and now it was her turn. People were starting to rumble as they picked up conversations at their tables. She was going to lose her chance if she didn’t speak soon.

This wasn’t something that they had discussed; Joey didn’t know she was going to speak, and she was sure he didn’t plan to. But she wanted to surprise him, as he’d surprised her at Christmas.

So, with a hand that shook almost too much to hold it, she picked up her silver knife and tapped it against her champagne glass. It made a stuttering sound, and then John tapped his glass, and the room did the relay thing that happened.

Joey stared at her, agape.

When she stood, the whole room went completely quiet. Everyone was just as stunned as her new husband.

She could speak. She had words. Just not many, and the effort was a hundred times harder during stress. Like, say, for instance, now. Closing her eyes, she gathered herself and began.

“I want…to say…few…
a
few words.” She smiled. “Can’t say…much more. I found a…a…k-k-quah-
quote
th-that made me th-think. It’s by James Th-Thurber. He said, ‘Love is what you’ve been…th-through with somebody.’ Joey and I, we’ve been…th-through…stuff. Alone and together.”

Tina stopped. This was much harder than she’d thought, and she’d been prepared for a challenge. Her brain wanted to think about the people staring at her instead of the words and their sounds. The room tilted to the side, and she closed her eyes and sought balance, clenching her hands together like twined fists.

She didn’t want to fail at this. Not this.

Strong warmth covered her hands, and she opened her eyes. Joey stood at her side, his hand over hers. As their eyes locked, he smiled, and his other hand wrapped hers as well.

To him, looking at him only, she said, “It’s easier together. Hard stuff isn’t…so hard. Good stuff is…better. It all makes life. I th-think…that’s what he means. I want to go th-th-
through
all my stuff with you.”