Goodbye.
After the chaos of the preceding day, the Russo house was quiet when Nick finally made his way downstairs late Friday morning. He was tired and feeling irritable. While he’d fallen asleep easily enough, he’d found little peace and less rest. It was those visions or dreams or whatever the hell they were. It was Faith, damn her blue eyes.
In the kitchen he found a pot of strong coffee on the stove and a note from his mother. She’d gone shopping and his father was at the restaurant, preparing for the lunch crowd. There were leftovers in the refrigerator, Dan Wilson had called, and, oh, don’t forget the rehearsal dinner this evening at eight. He tasted the coffee, grimaced and poured it down the sink, then took the makings for a turkey sandwich from the refrigerator. Instead of settling at the kitchen table, he wandered through the downstairs while he ate.
It wasn’t a fancy house by any means, and there was nothing remarkable about the style. It was two stories, painted white, with a big porch, a big yard and even bigger trees. A detached garage had once stood at the back of the lot, with big doors that opened out from the middle, but it had been torn down years ago to give his mother more room for her garden. There were flower beds close to the house and lots of grass for running and playing. It resembled most of the other houses in the neighborhood—a little bigger, maybe, and for the better part of the last thirty-some years, definitely more crowded.
The four bedrooms upstairs had meant precious little space for anyone. The girls had slept three to a room, and Nick had shared his room with Michael. It hadn’t been such a problem when his little brother was still little, but by the time Nick had reached sixteen, having a seven-year-old squirt around all the time hadn’t been fun—especially when that squirt had developed a fondness for going through Nick’s things whenever he wasn’t around. The kid had gotten quite an education before Nick left for college.
His meandering brought him to the door of the living room. The big square room was dimly lit, the bright autumn sun blocked from the lace-curtained windows until midafternoon. The area was crammed with furniture—two sofas, a love seat, four armchairs. Even with all the kids moved out, his parents still entertained a lot — family, friends, business associates, grandchildren. It would be crowded again tonight, for it was tradition, one of his nephews had informed him yesterday, that all the grandkids slept over on Friday nights, and not even Michael’s rehearsal dinner or wedding could interfere with it.
Maybe, he thought sourly, he could sleep over someplace, too. Surely Michael had a couch in that cramped apartment of his. His sisters would all have empty bedrooms ... unless they were putting up the out-of-town relatives who would begin arriving today.
Faith had two guest rooms.
The mere thought made him scowl. Using Faith’s guest room had gotten him into more trouble than he knew how to deal with. It wasn’t something to joke about.
Reluctantly, because he’d avoided it since he’d gotten home, he walked through the double-wide door and approached the wall his sisters teasingly referred to as the rogues’ gallery. Framed photographs, some more than seventy years old, filled every available inch of space. There were his father’s parents, who lived four streets over, and his mother’s parents, who had never left Italy except for rare visits to their youngest daughter. There were pictures of babies, weddings and more babies, school pictures, graduation portraits and just-for-fun snapshots.
In a row together, in matching frames, were the most recent photographs: his parents celebrating their thirty-eighth anniversary, Michael and Michelle, each of his sisters with her husband and children. He didn’t mind that there wasn’t a recent photo of himself. After all, he had no family, nothing worthy of celebrating on this wall. It didn’t make him feel a little left out, a little distant from the others. It had been his choice, after all, not to marry, not to have a family.
His choice—but, ultimately, not his fate. He just might be the first Russo to marry for any reason other than love. The first Russo to find himself not helped by the teachings of honor but trapped instead.
His mouth thinning, he studied his sisters’ families. All those kids—an even two dozen—dressed in their Sunday best for the camera, as neat and polished as their mothers’ determination could make them. Whether siblings or cousins, they all looked alike, with only minor variations thanks to their non-Russo fathers. They all had the same manners, the same attitudes, the same smiles, the same eyes. Big, dark brown eyes were the family hallmark.
And he was being haunted by the bluest eyes in Texas.
“We’re a handsome bunch, aren’t we?”
Startled, Nick looked over his shoulder to find his father standing in the doorway. “Mom left a note saying that you were at work.”
Antonio shrugged. “Maurice is putting the finishing touches on tomorrow’s cake, and he said I made him nervous, so I came home to pick up the changes to the menu that Michelle dropped off yesterday.”
“Are you doing all the food for the reception?”
“Of course,” Antonio replied in a voice that said naturally no one else could be entrusted to the job.
Of course, Nick silently echoed. For his sisters’ weddings, his mother had fussed over invitations, dresses, photographers, guests and a million other things, and his father had fussed over the cake, the food, the champagne. Michael’s wedding was a little different for their mother, at least—as mother of the groom, she got to take it easier while Michelle’s mother dealt with the lion’s share of responsibility. But his father was still in charge of the cake, the food and the champagne, and very likely making everyone down at Antonio’s nervous.
His father came to join him in front of the photos. “Look at that. A man couldn’t ask for a better family.”
“Or a bigger one,” Nick conceded.
“We’re counting on you and Mike to make it bigger.”
Nick gave him a look of feigned annoyance. “He and Michelle aren’t even married yet and you’re pushing them for more grandkids? Don’t you know that newly married couples need time to get to know each other before they bring babies into their lives?”
“I think they should know each other before they get married. Besides, Mike and Michelle have been dating all of their lives. What could they possibly not know about each other?”
Probably nothing, Nick agreed. Although he’d put much effort into avoiding it, he suspected that there was a real satisfaction in having that kind of intimacy with another person, in sharing thoughts and feelings, in facing situations where no language was needed, where a certain look could communicate everything. It could be—and probably was—very comforting.
He hadn’t felt comforted—or comfortable—in nearly forty-eight hours. It seemed like forever.
“So how about it?”
He looked questioningly at his father.
“When are you going to settle down?”
“Pop, I’ve had the same job for twelve years. I’ve lived in the same city those twelve years. I own my own place. I pay my own bills. I don’t think I can get any more settled than that.”
“What about women?”
With a grimace Nick faced the photographs again. “What about them?”
“Are you seeing anyone?”
“No,” he answered reluctantly. “Not right now.” Not seeing her...but damned if he couldn’t stop thinking about her.
“You’re thirty-four years old. Don’t you have any desire to get married? To have a son? To have a family to go home to every night instead of that empty little apartment?”
Two days ago his answer would have been an automatic no. He liked being single, liked having no responsibility for other people. He liked living alone, knowing that his condo was his to do with what he would. He liked coming in late, sleeping till noon on his days off, having the guys over for Sunday’s football games and cleaning only when he felt like it. He liked answering to no one, owing consideration to no one. He liked his life exactly the way it was, and, no, he had no desi
re to change it.
But in the last two days it had changed, and not for the better.
“People are different, Pop. You grew up always planning to get married and have kids, and I —”
His father’s burst of laughter stopped him in midsentence. “Where did you get an idea like that? I was different, too. I was never going to marry. I was going to be the first lifelong bachelor the Russo family had ever seen.” Antonio’s amusement softened into a smile. “But then I went back to Italy for a visit and I met your mother. She was a vision—the most beautiful girl in the entire world. I took one look at her and I knew. It was fate.”
Nick thought of Faith, pregnant and determined to go through it alone, and scowled. “Fate isn’t always so kind, Pop.”
Sliding his arm around Nick’s shoulders, Antonio hugged him tightly. “One day you’ll meet the right woman, and when you do, you’ll know.”
And when he did, he wondered morosely, would he already be irrevocably bound to Faith by the fragile link of a child? “Until that happens, do you and Mom plan to continue badgering me about getting married and adding to the brood?”
Antonio’s regretful sigh was as phony as Nick’s earlier annoyance. “I wish I could say the answer was no, that we would simply have faith.”
Nick tried to hide the stiffening his father’s last word sent through him. It was a sad day when a simple word like faith could bring a man such guilt and discomfort.
With another of those expressive shrugs, Antonio continued. “Sometimes fate needs a little push, you know. You might need us to give it.”
A little push. Did a secret-until-now pregnancy and the impending birth of a daughter constitute “a little push”? Was this fate’s way of forcing him into the role his parents—and probably their parents before them—had long ago planned for him?
Without waiting for a response, Antonio moved to the desk on the far wall, where he collected a handful of notes before turning toward the door. “I’d better get back to the restaurant and make sure everything is in order. Why don’t you come by this afternoon? Things get quiet after two o’clock.”
Neither accepting nor declining the invitation, Nick said goodbye, then watched his father leave. After silence settled over the house, he turned once more to the photos. There weren’t any babies, he noticed. Lucia’s last one was the youngest of them all, and she was about four now. All those kids, and he’d missed their births, their birthdays, their lives. The older kids remembered him from visit to rare visit, but to the younger ones, he was a stranger, and they were all strangers to him. He sent birthday cards and paid for gifts provided by his mother, but he didn’t really know any of them. He didn’t know what sports they played, what shows they watched on TV, who liked to read and who preferred video games or what they wanted to be when they grew up. Sometimes he couldn’t even keep straight exactly who belonged to whom. He didn’t have any real sense of having twenty-four nieces and nephews.
He bet, if they belonged to her family, Faith would know them. She would know each one’s dreams, their fears, their hopes and insecurities. Of course, it wasn’t surprising that family was so important to her, since she’d never had one. But she had one now in Amelia Rose.
He hoped that wasn’t too big a burden for that six- or seven-pound baby girl to bear.
Chapter 4
"Well? What happened?”
Faith didn’t look up from the unpacking she was doing in the storeroom, not that unloading a box of soft, woven blankets in subdued pastels required much of her attention. It was just easier—safer—than looking Wendy in the eye while she lied to her. “Nothing’s happened. I had a quiet, peaceful Thanksgiving. This morning has been busy, though. The biggest shopping day of the year, you know.”
“Did he come back?”
“Who?”
Wendy tugged the last blanket from Faith’s hands and added it to the haphazard pile on the worktable. “Has Nick Russo come to see you since Wednesday? Has he asked about the baby? Did you tell him the truth? What is he going to do about it?”
Hushing her, Faith glanced into the shop. Ten minutes ago she had escaped into the storeroom, just seconds ahead of the arrival of Miss Agnes, Miss Ethel and Miss Minny. The widows were best of friends and the Three Musketeers of the silver-haired set. They were also the nosiest, gossipiest old biddies Texas had ever seen. Nothing escaped their scrutiny and, for the past nine months, Faith had felt the ceaseless sting of their curiosity and their wagging tongues. They had spread the news of her pregnancy and her apparent abandonment by the baby’s father more efficiently than blaring headlines and trumpeting newscasts ever could have done, and not one of them had missed a chance to state her disapproval loud and clear. The last thing Faith wanted was to give them something more to gossip about.
With a sigh, she closed the door and faced Wendy. “Yes, he came back.”
“And?”
Wendy was a good friend, one of her best, Faith acknowledged, but did that mean she had to know the whole truth? Could Faith’s pride endure telling her everything? It was bad enough that every soul in town thought Amelia Rose’s father had run out on her because he didn’t love her, didn’t want her or the responsibility of a baby, but did she also have to admit, even to her best friend, that, in truth, he simply didn’t remember her? That he’d found her utterly forgettable? That, if he hadn’t been drunk, he never would have touched her?
“We talked.”
“Did you tell him?”
“He guessed.”
“What was his reaction?”
Faith picked up the empty carton the blankets had been shipped in and used a box cutter to slit the tape on both sides, then broke it down flat. She added it to the stack in the corner then, twisting the cutter in nervous circles, replied, “He doesn’t want a baby.” Her voice, meant to be flat, unemotional and uncaring, wobbled on the last word. No tears, she warned herself. So Nick didn’t want Amelia Rose. She didn’t need him.
“Well, honey, it’s a little late for him to be deciding that, isn’t it?” her friend asked, dismay that he even thought he might have a choice clear in her expression. “The time to make that decision is before you do the deed, not after. He can’t just walk away from you two because he’s decided that he doesn’t want a baby.”
“Why can’t he?” Faith demanded. “Why can’t he just go back to Houston and forget about us?”
Wendy stared at her, more than a little surprised.
Her friend knew her so well, Faith lamented. Wendy knew she was conservative, even old-fashioned. She knew that this—siagle, alone and open to gossip—was the last way in the world Faith would have chosen to have a baby and that Faith was the last person to voluntarily do something outrageous, something nonconforming. Of course Wendy expected that Faith would want the father of her baby to do what fathers were supposed to do.
Wendy would be a hundred percent right if Faith loved Nick, if he loved her. Heavens, she wasn’t so greedy. If he just liked her. If he wanted her. If he saw her as something — friend, partner, lover—other than an obligation.
“I don’t need his money,” she insisted. “Thanks to Lydia and the shop, I’m more than able to meet all of Amelia Rose’s needs. He can’t provide any sort of assistance from three hundred miles away. He can’t baby-sit if I have to work late or take care of her if I get sick. He can’t be a regular part of her life. All he can do is take her away from me on holidays, and I certainly don’t want that.”
“But he’s her father,” Wendy gently disagreed. “Don’t you think that someday she’ll want to know him? That she’ll wonder why he’s not a part of her life? What if she finds out someday that he was willing to be there—even if it was long-distance or only on holidays—but you wouldn’t let him?”
Her argument sent a shiver down Faith’s spine. She knew better than Wendy, better than anyone in her circle of friends, what it was like to grow up without a father. How would she feel if she discovered that her father had wanted her al
l along, but someone had kept him away? How much anger, how much hatred, would that create?
She couldn’t bear the idea of Amelia Rose hating her—so she would have to make sure it didn’t happen.
She just wasn’t sure how.
“Is he going to tell his family?”
The possibility brought her such longing. Legitimate or not, surely Amelia Rose would be welcomed by the Russos. They would love her the same as they loved all their other grandchildren. They would spoil her and fill her life with joy, exuberance and love. They would give her everything Faith wanted her to have and couldn’t give herself.
If Nick chose to tell them. She couldn’t venture a guess whether he would. On the one hand, he seemed to feel an obligation to their daughter, but on the other...well, he had made it clear yesterday that he hadn’t wanted her to accompany him to his parents’ house. He hadn’t wanted to be seen with her, hadn’t wanted to give anyone cause for speculation. He’d made it abundantly clear that he didn’t want a daughter. More than anything in the world, he wanted this problem to go away and leave him untouched.
Telling his parents might give Amelia Rose a family, but it wouldn’t be easy for him. They would disapprove of his actions, would probably push him to do the “right” thing. They would pressure him and probably Faith, too, and that was the last thing in the world she needed.
“I don’t know. It would be so much easier,” she said, opening another box, “if he would just go back to Houston and never tell anyone anything. He could live his life the way he wants, and I could have Amelia Rose...” Her words trailing off, she stiffened.
Wendy waited through a moment or two of silence, then prompted her. “You could have Amelia Rose...”
Faith covered her face with both hands, then, with a sigh, pulled them away. “I just caught a glimpse of how selfish I’ve become,” she said with a crooked smile. “I was going to say that I could have Amelia Rose all to myself. I wouldn’t have to share her time or her love or her life with anyone. She could be all mine.”
Discovered: Daddy Page 9