Nailed Down: The Complete Series

  It was a threat enough for Johnny to act, and when he did, the result wasn’t pretty. One small shove set Liam off. Johnny seemed to allow the man the first swing, but the first one was all it took before Johnny blocked him, clapping him on the ear loud enough that the sound echoed around the room, and Liam grunted, covering his injury. Johnny pushed his advantage, punching into the man’s gut, sending him to the floor.

  “Johnny! Stop it right now!” I tried, only to be held back by both my uncle and Indra when I made a pointless attempt to separate the two men from spilling blood in front of my kids. “Oh God,” I said, spotting a few of them staring out of the slightly open classroom doors as Johnny and Liam fought. “Get in the classroom!” I told them, and they scattered, still peeking through the windows and the doors.

  “That…all…you…got…” Liam said, throwing a dirty punch that caught Johnny on the right side of his jaw.

  Johnny seemed tired of the tussle and blocked a second attempt before he jumped on top of Liam, pinning down both his arms before he started to slam his fists into Liam’s face over and over again.

  “God!” Indra said, hurrying out of the building and running toward Angelo, Johnny’s guard, who was leaning against the Mercedes parked outside our building.

  “You see, Samantha?” my uncle started, pointing at Johnny as Angelo charged inside and pulled the men apart. “This is all he will ever be. Nothing more than a thug. You deserve better than him.”

  Johnny turned, his knuckles bloody, the underside of his jaw cut and already bruising. He didn’t stare at me. Instead, he shot my uncle a glare, his features tight and menacing before he shook his head, looking like he needed a moment to remind himself he wasn’t supposed to throttle men of the cloth.

  “He won’t ever change—” Uncle Pat tried, but I cut him off, stepping away from him and the look on Johnny’s face as he watched me.

  Uncle Pat’s anger lingered, got tied up in what I knew looked like Johnny’s defeat. I’d seen it before. I’d put the same expression on his face a dozen times in just the past weeks alone.

  I broke away from my uncle’s grip, ignoring that frustrated look. I also ignored my uncle’s voice as he called after me, and I spared one final glance at Johnny before I left through the front door.

  “Please…take care of my kids,” I told Indra, passing her as I walked out the door. “I’ve gotta go…”

  “Yeah, Sam. Go,” she said, practically pushing me out of the building.

  I tried to forget the regret that had doubled. Now I wasn’t sure if Johnny was disappointed in me for walking away or worried that I wouldn’t come back.

  13

  Johnny

  You can’t own a woman.

  She isn’t your property.

  She isn’t your possession.

  But she can completely control you.

  It was the only answer for how consumed Sammy made me feel—half crazed, half possessed by the worry that she’d walk away and I’d never get the chance to earn her forgiveness or her love.

  I lied. She had to know about that shit by now. Why else would she bother giving a piece of shit like Liam Shane a second glance? Sammy had no idea who or what he was, and I had a sneaking suspicion him being at her center had all the hallmarks of her uncle’s interference.

  It all came down to the old man and the games he was playing with Sammy’s life. I used to think, once he was gone, the problems between us would be over. But that wasn’t true. People like the priest left marks. They left shadows that could never be erased. He was making sure the shadow he left behind would eradicate me from Sammy’s life.

  I just couldn’t let that happen.

  She was angry. I got that. She’d likely be angrier knowing I’d ditched Shane and her uncle at the center and tailed her back to her temporary offices after Indra sent the volunteers and kids home. I gave Sammy time enough to cool off. Time enough so that when I showed, she wouldn’t want to throttle me. But when I walked into the lobby, the place was empty. No Sammy. No funny Indian friend of hers always cracking jokes.

  Then I heard their voices coming from the back of the building, from the location of the small kitchen area Antonia had shown me when I’d toured the building. The first thing I could make out clearly was the clinking of glasses, then liquid pouring. Hell, it seemed we always drank when shit got rough, and shit was always rough of late.

  I stopped just before the doorway, catching Indra’s and Sammy’s reflection in a framed list of class schedules against the wall. The women sat at a small table, their feet resting on chairs opposite each other with two wineglasses and a full bottle of wine between them. Sammy had pulled up her long hair, and from her reflection, I could make out how tired she looked, how worn down she was by the day, likely by the shitstorm I’d caused in her life just from pursuing her.

  “You love him, don’t you?” Indra asked, and I held my breath, hoping that much hadn’t changed since the last time Sammy had told me she loved me.

  “I love him.” Sammy nodded, the soft, slow smile on her face easing some of the worry that made my chest tighten at her friend’s question. But then the smile fell away, and she leaned on the table, rubbing her neck like she hated admitting that out loud. “Sometimes I hate him, you know?”

  “It’s the nature of the beast. Can’t live with them…”

  “Can’t shoot them.”

  “Well,” Indra said, smiling behind her glass, “that depends on where you live.”

  Sammy nodded, lowering her shoulders, her eyes taking on a glassy, out-of-focus stare. “I just know when I’m with him, everything makes sense. I feel like…” She went quiet, her chin shaking, but she made no noise as that sheen in her eyes grew thicker and she started to cry. “I feel like…myself.”

  “And when you’re not?” Indra reached across the table, grabbing Sammy’s hand and holding it.

  Sammy took the comfort until she pulled away. “Then I remind myself of all the nights I lay in my bed knowing what it felt like when Johnny Carelli ripped your heart out.”

  I leaned back against the wall, eyes closed as I let Sammy’s words rush over me. I didn’t need to see her expression. It had played in my head a thousand times over the last ten years.

  Her crying as I told her I didn’t love her.

  “So, that doesn’t answer my question,” Indra said. “What do you want?”

  Her face red and blotchy, sniffling while she stood on that sidewalk, holding a fifty-dollar bill in her hand as I walked away with some tart on my arm.

  “I want to be happy and not have to worry if the man I love is going to come home or not.” Sammy wasn’t telling Indra anything she didn’t know about my family.

  Everyone knew who we were. It was why her uncle had always warned her away from me, she’d confessed. Friendships with a Carelli were fine. Love was not.

  “I want a family and to have lots of babies and to be with a man I never get tired of kissing.” Sammy’s voice was softer now, like the thought of a happy life filled her from the inside out. I hadn’t heard her speak that way in years. “I want that feeling to last forever.” She released a long, rough breath, and when she spoke again, that soft tone was missing from her words. “Is that too much to ask?”

  “Of course not.”

  “But I can’t stay away from him, even though I know I should. For my own sanity, I should.”

  She should. I knew that. We both did. Liam Shane had hinted at a beef today that wasn’t mine, but it belonged to Smoke’s family. My family. My blood. Shit like that would probably always touch me. It would never be far enough away from me, no matter where I went.

  Could I protect her from that? Would she ever be safe?

  “I just want to feel normal and secure,” Sammy told Indra, sounding desperate. It was what I wanted for her too. “I just want to be happy for once in my pathetic life.” She was miserable now because of me. Would she always be? “I just…want to be happy.”

  Pushing off the wall
, I walked away from the kitchen and the sting of Sammy’s words. The truth hurt worse than any lie. But sometimes, the best thing we could do caused the most pain, especially when they were the hardest sacrifices we ever had to make.

  14

  Sammy

  There were two missed calls and a text message on my cell when I finished drying my hair after a long shower. I was torn between wanting to hear Johnny’s voice and swearing off him forever.

  Each choice seemed logical.

  Each seemed ridiculous.

  Both were pointless.

  Johnny hadn’t called.

  Angelo had brought over pizzas and movie tickets for the kids and volunteers as a way of apologizing for causing a scene. He’d even sent “Mr. Carelli’s sincerest apologies” to me personally with a bottle of red and more roses, but Johnny himself had not called.

  Most of the day, I’d decided on the “swearing off him forever” option and screened my calls. The missed calls, I guessed, could be him. But as I finished brushing my hair, deciding I’d take Indra up on her offer of dinner and a movie, partially on Johnny’s dime, and I grabbed my cell, I noticed neither the calls nor text had been from Johnny. The 845 area code was Ellenville, and I immediately selected the message, spotting the camp number, and dialed it.

  Betta picked up on the second ring. “I’m okay, Mama. I promise,” she said, sounding a little stuffed up.

  “Do you have a cold?”

  “No.” She exhaled, and the sound put me on alert. That was no “exhausted kid” sigh. That was an emo, “in my feelings” sigh that my kid knew to use anytime she wanted to bend my ear.

  “What’s up, baby? Did something happen?”

  “It’s just…Connie…”

  “I’m starting to really not like this kid…”

  “Yeah, me too, Mama.” Betta cleared her throat, and I picked up the sound of a screen door shutting, as though she’d moved to a quieter location. “She’s a turd, I swear.”

  “Elizabetta, even if she is, that’s impolite.” She was quiet for a second too long, and I laughed. “Okay, why specifically is she a turd now?”

  “She told the entire camp I’m an orphan.”

  “Which is ridiculous. You have my eyes.”

  “I know,” she said, her voice rising in her excitement. “And I even showed them my locket with your picture and Granny’s and was all, ‘See, my eyes are just like my mama’s and her mama’s. And you all saw her bring me to camp, so you don’t know what you’re saying.’”

  “Good. That’s good, baby. I’m glad you stood up for yourself.”

  My chest tightened, and I had to force back the bubble of filthy words that wanted to fly out of my mouth. Lord, kids could be cruel, and the worst aspect of being a parent was that you couldn’t fight your children’s battles. You want to. You’re equipped. You could destroy those little cretins, but you have to let your kids fight for themselves. It was the worst sort of irony.

  “Yeah, well, it didn’t work all that well because Connie laughed in my face and told everybody I might have a mama, but even I didn’t know who my father was.”

  I closed my eyes, hating myself, hating Johnny, and really hating this stupid little Connie brat for being so vicious. “Oh, baby…”

  She didn’t speak, not for a long time, and I’d never felt more powerless as I did just then, listening to my nine-year-old daughter sniffle and cry on the phone, pretending she wasn’t heartbroken that I’d never told her anything remotely useful about the man who’d helped make her.

  “Mama,” she said finally, her voice cracking, each sound like a knife into my heart. “Do you think, one day soon, you can tell me…about…him? Not…everything, not if you can’t… If it’s too… Uncle Pat said…well. But maybe something…”

  “You have his smile,” I told my daughter, unable to keep the emotion out of my voice.

  “I…I do?”

  “Yeah, baby. And it’s beautiful.”

  * * *

  The rectory had once been a barn. The building was a century old; the Church had purchased it years back, and priests like my uncle had lived under its roof for generations. But, if memory served, Uncle Pat had been here the longest.

  There were mementos of his life everywhere. In the bookshelves surrounding the small den and along the fireplace. There was no television, only a small radio and a stack of papers near the front entrance to keep him abreast to world events. Bibles and religious texts were placed around on the shelves and open on the coffee table, on the small desk in his private office and atop the dining room table. But among them was evidence of his personal life too. His family—a framed picture of Betta and Uncle Pat at her first communion with her wearing the same dress I’d worn at mine. He’d confirmed us both. All three of us at the Vatican when Betta was six, getting a blessing from the Pope, something Uncle Pat had been adamant about. And above the mantel in the den, there was a large portrait of my beautiful mother, Uncle Pat’s sister, on her eighteenth birthday. Hints of our lives were everywhere, connected to the world in which he was a man of God, someone who was supposed to be pious and forgiving.

  I prayed he’d remember that when I delivered my news tonight.

  “You want wine?” he asked, setting down the book he’d been reading when I walked through the door. He still had an attitude, and I suspected he hadn’t quite forgiven me for leaving him with Indra to sort out the mess Johnny and Liam Shane had made at my center.

  “If you have an open bottle. If not, don’t bother.”

  He ignored me. I watched him, his body hunched more now than it had been even a year ago. My uncle was edging closer to seventy-five, and time and his responsibilities had accelerated his aging.

  “I can do that,” I offered, walking toward the kitchen, but Uncle Pat made a noise, dismissing me, and handed over my glass before I crossed the threshold.

  “Sit,” he said, motioning with his chin to the couch. He moved to his armchair, shifting against the thick cushion as he rested both elbows on the armrests and held his glass in his hands. “Now…” He took a sip, closing his eyes as though he wanted to enjoy the flavor of the drink as it hit his tongue. “Tell me.”

  “Elizabetta called me this afternoon.” Uncle Pat kept still, his eyes narrowing as he waited for me to continue. “She was upset because the kids at camp were teasing her…”

  “Kids can be cruel.”

  “They were teasing her because she has no father.”

  He didn’t move but watched me closely, his features frozen as if something had taken over his body and immobilized him. “And?” he finally said, setting down his glass on the side table at his left. “What did you tell her?”

  My uncle could be intimidating. He was strong. He was intelligent, and he had a vicious temper when angered. He was never cruel, not to me, but if you crossed him, disobeyed him, or worse yet, disappointed him, that temper would surface, and forgiveness wouldn’t come easily.

  As a child, that temper petrified me. I only wanted to please him, make him proud. I wanted to be the best, do the best because I craved his approval. That had left me making promises I didn’t mean, swearing myself to a destiny not meant for me. That was probably why I’d clung to Johnny so tightly. Not only because I loved him, but because he showed me a freedom I never thought could be mine.

  I wasn’t a child anymore. It was time my uncle understood that.

  “I told my daughter the truth.” Uncle Pat sat up straighter, clutching the end of the armrests, but I didn’t let him intimidate me or interrupt my explanation. “Not everything, but some of it.” Then I matched my uncle’s posture, fixing my shoulders straight, lifting my chin to watch his eyes when I finished what I had to say. “Johnny Carelli is not a perfect man, but no one is. I have loved him since I was a girl, and I have never stopped loving him.” My uncle stood, jaw clenched, top lip shaking. Still, I continued. “We made a beautiful, perfect baby together, and she deserves to know the reason she’s never known who she
is. They both may hate me for it, but I intend to tell them everything.”

  He clenched his fists into balls, squeezing them so tightly his knuckles went white. I stood, hoping he would calm, hoping he would try to see reason. He was supposed to know forgiveness and mercy. He was supposed to show compassion, but he’d never had any of those things for Johnny.

  “Uncle…”

  “When?” he said, the word coming out from behind his gritted teeth. I tilted my head, not understanding what he meant, and Uncle Pat flared his nostrils, holding his head in one hand before he clarified. “When will you tell that…that…boy about Elizabetta?”

  “Tonight, maybe? Or…tomorrow? I want to tell him first, before she gets back from camp next week.”

  He closed his eyes, his face flushing red.

  “Uncle Pat…”

  But he ignored me, lifting a hand to silence me as he stumbled away from me and toward the fireplace, resting against the mantel. He moved his attention to the portrait of my mother, muttering to himself, his pale skin redder and redder the heavier he leaned against the mantel.

  “Uncle Pat?” I tried again, my heart racing when he continued to wave me away, refusing to look at me, then he fell, his small, weak frame crumpling as he landed on all fours. “Oh God! Oh my God!” I ran to his side, feeling his skin, my breath catching when I noticed how hot he was to the touch.

  “Samantha…” he whispered, falling onto his back. He reached for me, touching my face with his scorching palm, his bright eyes fluttering before they closed and he lost consciousness.

  15

  Sammy

  There is nothing more silent than a waiting house. It comes from death and from homecomings when babies and soldiers return. It comes from reunions that are long overdue, but always, there is the quiet until the moment of arrival.