Prayer (The Pagano Family Book 5)

by Susan Fanetti

  About an hour after she’d opened the shades and unlocked the front door, while she sat on the ledge of the front window, taking down the Atticus Calhoun display, she saw Bev’s Mercedes SUV go by down Gannet. She waved as Bev headed toward the alleyway that would take her to their tiny back lot, but Bev must not have seen her. A few minutes later, she heard the back door slam open; the erratic bluster of the wind must have caught it. Then she heard it slam shut, and Bev yell, “Fuck you!”

  Katrynn got up and went to the sales desk, near the door to the staff suite. They called it the ‘staff suite,’ but it was really just a couple of tiny offices for Bev and Katrynn, a restroom, a cramped storeroom for backstock and supplies, and a slightly bigger but by no means commodious main room, with something almost like a kitchen setup, some cubbies for personal items, and a table and chairs for lunch or staff meetings.

  Since the store was empty, Katrynn went on into the back. Bev stood at the table, looking flushed and exhausted, and it was only ten o’clock in the morning. Her eyes were bloodshot and swollen. She didn’t look like she’d even brushed her hair.

  “Hey,” Katrynn said. “You okay?”

  Bev dropped her bag onto the table and shrugged out of her coat. There was some kind of stiff stain above her left boob. She looked like the clichéd cover of a funny ‘hang in there!’ greeting card.

  “A cat ran out in front of the car, and I couldn’t stop in time.”

  “Oh no!” Katrynn put her hand to her mouth, feeling the burn of tears she always felt when an animal was hurt.

  Bev saw her, and her face crumpled. “Elisa saw it land on the side of the road, and she wanted me to stop and save it, but how could I? I had all three girls in the car, and the cat was very, very dead. So Elisa was sobbing, saying over and over that I hurt the kitty, and Lia started in, too, screaming at me, and I was crying because somebody’s kitty isn’t coming home and my little girls think I’m a killer now, and Carina had to join in because of all the tears. When I dropped the girls off at preschool, Miss Michelle asked why they were so sad, and they told her that I killed a kitty. Then, when I gave Carina a goodbye hug at Betty’s, she puked all over me. So…I’m going with no, I’m not okay.”

  “Holy shit. Why did you come in?”

  Bev collapsed into a chair and let her head fall into her hands. “Because this is the only quiet place in my life. Brenda is out of town this week with her family, so I am single-parenting it today.”

  Taking a mug down from the cupboard, Katrynn poured Bev a big coffee and fixed it the way she liked. When she brought it to Bev, who took it with a forced but grateful smile, she asked, “What about Nick? Can he pick them up today, maybe?”

  Bev shook her head. “Nick was out most of the night, and this morning he said he wouldn’t be home when I got back with the girls. We’re not supposed to wait dinner for him. There’s something going on with his business.”

  “Something bad?”

  “I wouldn’t know. His business is very much don’t ask, don’t tell, where I’m concerned.”

  Katrynn nodded; she knew that. “Okay. I should get back to the front. We are dead today, so if you want quiet, you’ll find it here.”

  Just then, Bev jumped and lifted her arm from her bag. She rooted in the bag, pulled out her phone, and answered it. “Hi, Betty…oh, shit. How high?…Dammit…Are you sure?…Okay, thanks. If it goes up more, let me know right away.”

  When she set her phone down, Katrynn asked, “Carina?”

  “Yeah. She has a temperature of 99.8. Betty’s going to call if it goes up any more.”

  Bev laid her head, face down, on the table. Deciding that she would be more helpful if she let her friend have some time to herself, Katrynn went back to the front of the shop.

  She heard Bev’s phone buzz again as she closed the door.

  ~oOo~

  When twenty minutes had passed with no sign of Bev up front, Katrynn opened the backroom door and peeked in. Bev’s coat and bag were still on the table, and her phone lay on her bag. That was strange. If she’d gone to her office, she would have taken that stuff with her, and she never walked away from her phone.

  Then she heard it—crying. No, not crying. Weeping. Wailing. Katrynn went to the closed bathroom door and leaned her head against it. Bev was definitely in there, and it sounded like she was having a serious meltdown.

  She knocked on the door. “Bev?”

  No answer; the wailing continued unabated.

  She knocked harder. “Bev? Bev!”

  Nothing. Then Katrynn heard a heavy, rhythmic thumping, and the door shook a little, like someone was banging something against the wall. The image she immediately got was Bev slamming her head into the wall.

  The door was locked. Now Katrynn pounded on it. “Bev! I’m worried! Talk to me!”

  Nothing. Not even a break in the steady rhythm of that pounding.

  She knew Bev’s history—an old history, but still—she’d tried to kill herself once, when she was a teenager. She had a tattoo of feathers on the inside of her wrist, over the worst scar, and she rubbed it when she was stressed.

  Was this a similar kind of crisis? What had happened since Katrynn had gone to the front? What had that last phone call been?

  Turning, she spied Bev’s phone lying on her bag. She went to it and, feeling a faint twinge of guilt, keyed in Bev’s numerical passcode, which she knew simply from being around her all these years and seeing her key it in, without ever intentionally trying to know it.

  She checked the call list. That last call had been from The Newman School—Elisa and Lia’s preschool.

  Behind her, the thumping and wailing stopped, abruptly. Katrynn went back to the bathroom door. “Bev? Honey?”

  Nothing. The silence scared her more than anything else.

  Bev’s phone was still in her hand. She glanced down again at the calls list and saw, a couple of calls down, a single red heart: Nick.

  Feeling even guiltier, but far more worried and scared, Katrynn pressed the heart and put the phone to her ear.

  Nick answered after the first ring. “Hi, bella.”

  Bev had told her that there was some issue in Nick’s business, so he probably wasn’t having the greatest day, either. But there was so much love in his tone, so much pleasure, that, even in the midst of this crisis, the dimension of which Katrynn couldn’t fathom, she felt her stomach flutter. That was what she wanted: someone to love her so much that the mere chance to hear her voice would give him that kind of joy, no matter what was going on in his life.

  “It’s Katrynn, Nick—”

  She got no other words out. Before she could begin to explain, he cut her off, and what was in his tone now was deep, sharp worry. “What’s wrong? Where’s Beverly?”

  “At the shop. Something happened. I don’t know what. But she’s locked herself in the bathroom, and she won’t talk or come out or anything. She was crying really hard, but now she’s gone quiet. I’m sorry to call, but I’m worried and don’t know what to do.”

  “I’m there in five minutes. Close the shop and don’t leave her. Call me if there’s any change.”

  He was gone before she could say more.

  ~oOo~

  Katrynn didn’t think it had been even five minutes when Nick came through the back door with the mountain that was Sam right behind him. In Katrynn’s experience, Nick had a remarkable ability to be calm under any conditions. He didn’t burst through a door, he walked through it. He never yelled. All of his emotion was expressed through his eyes, which glittered with worry as he set Katrynn away from the bathroom door and knocked.

  “Beverly? Bella, open the door.”

  No answer.

  Without trying again, Nick took a step back. Just as Katrynn realized that he intended to kick the door in, Sam said, “Don.”

  Nick turned to Sam, nodded, and took a couple of sidewise steps toward Katrynn. Sam, in his heavy cashmere coat and leather gloves, went to the door. With one perfectly-pla
ced kick of his massive leg and his polished shoe, the door swung in, taking most of the jamb with it. Then Sam stepped out of the way, and Nick went into the bathroom.

  Katrynn followed, but stopped at the broken doorway. Her heart hurt at what she saw, and she put her hand to her chest as if that would ease it.

  Bev was curled on the floor between the toilet and the sink. There was a smear of blood on the wall, and a similar mark on Bev’s forehead—she had been beating her head against the wall.

  She seemed to be conscious but out of it. Nick crouched at her side and lifted her head. “Beverly. Beverly, look at me. I’m here. Ti amo, bella.”

  Her husband’s voice brought her around, and she started to cry again. “Oh, Nick!”

  In his custom suit, Nick sat down on the bathroom floor and pulled Bev close. “I’m here, bella. What happened? What can I do?”

  “I forgot Lia’s dance bag in the car! She couldn’t have dance class with her friends! I can’t do this! I’m a terrible mother! And I’m a murderer!”

  “Please? Beverly, what do you mean?”

  Bev was sobbing hard now and clutching handfuls of Nick’s coat. She didn’t answer him, but Katrynn knew the answer, so she said, “She hit a cat on the road today, and the girls were upset.”

  Nick glanced over his shoulder at her, and Katrynn’s heart skittered a bit at his expression—he was angry. But then it was gone, and he nodded. “Thank you, Katrynn. Leave us, please.”

  She understood that flash of anger. Of course. She was eavesdropping on a very private moment. “Oh! Oh, I’m sorry. I’ll…be out front if you need me.”

  Nick turned back to his wife. When Katrynn stepped away from the bathroom, she saw that Sam had pulled as far back as he could, out of sight of the husband and wife in crisis.

  Feeling like a vulture, Katrynn went to the front of the store.

  ~oOo~

  A few minutes later, Nick came out from the back. To keep herself busy, Katrynn had started working again on the front window display; she stood when he approached her.

  “How is she?”

  “I’m taking her home. I’ll send somebody later for her car. Close up the shop and go home.”

  He hadn’t answered her question, which was an indication that Bev was not okay—of course she wasn’t; she’d been literally banging her head against a wall. “Um, okay. But John is supposed to come by this afternoon to work more on Chris’s room.”

  Nick shot an angry glare at the closed doors of the room in question. “Stay, then. It’s up to you if you want to open for customers. Have John fix the door, too.”

  “Okay. Is there anything I can do for Bev?”

  “I’ll call you later. Don’t make plans for tonight.”

  That sounded ominous, but Katrynn simply nodded. “Okay. Tell Bev I love her.”

  At that, Nick’s expression finally softened, and he gave her a tired smile. “I will.”

  ~oOo~

  “What happened? Somebody get locked in?” John studied the damage to the door jamb.

  Katrynn didn’t know what she should or could say. John was Bev and Nick’s family, but how much would Bev want people to know about what had happened that morning? She’d cleaned up the blood, so the only evidence of Bev’s breakdown was the broken door.

  “You could say that.”

  He gave her a quizzical eyebrow. “Okay…”

  When Katrynn didn’t give him more, he shrugged and went back to his examination of the door. “The jamb broke pretty clean. I can repair it so it works fine, but it’ll look repaired. Or I can replace it, but I’ll need to make a run, so it’ll be tomorrow until it’s done. Your call.”

  Katrynn thought for a second. They needed a bathroom door, but she didn’t want it to look cheap, not even back here. “Can you do both? Make it work for now, and really fix it tomorrow?”

  “Sure.” He crouched before his toolbox and opened it. “It looks like you didn’t open at all today. That have to with this?”

  She didn’t know where to go with that question. This conversation felt like a minefield of broken confidences. “You want something to drink? Cocoa? There’s bottled water and juice in the fridge.”

  “No, thanks. There something going on?”

  Katrynn sighed. Since Nick and Bev had left, her mind had been a whirl of worry. She hadn’t heard from either one yet, and she needed somebody to talk to. She gave herself a moment to sort out a way to say something without gossiping.

  “Bev hasn’t been feeling well for a while.”

  John stopped rooting through his tools and looked up at her. “She sick?”

  “No, not that—at least, I don’t think so. She’s just overwhelmed a lot.”

  “I can imagine. Those little girls are great, but they must be a lot to keep track of.”

  “Yeah. Bev was not ready for another.”

  Now John stood up. “What? She’s pregnant?”

  Oh, shit. Had that been a secret? Bev had answered in the affirmative when Katrynn had asked, without hesitation, and they’d talked about the pregnancy freely since. Had she not told other people?

  “Um, yeah. I thought everybody knew.”

  “I didn’t.” He sighed. “Well, damn. Damn. A fourth. Yeah, I can see why she’s overwhelmed. That’s got to be scary, with the three they have still so little. With all the kids my folks had, only Carlo and Carmen are anywhere near that close.”

  “You ever want kids?” Oh God! Why had those words just come out of her mouth?

  John was taking measurements of the jamb. Now he stopped and looked dead at her. “Yeah, I do. I want the full package—wife, kids, house with a tree house in the back, like in the brochure.”

  “Brochure?”

  He smiled. “Yeah, you know. When you become an adult and they tell you how your life is supposed to go—all the things you’re supposed to want. That brochure. You didn’t get one?”

  Catching the joke, she grinned. “I guess not. Maybe that means I’m not an adult yet.”

  “If that’s true, turn back while you still can.” They both laughed, and he focused again on the door. Katrynn focused on him.

  He was dressed like he always was: jeans, work boots, and flannel shirt, this time with a black thermal under it. The coat and hoodie he’d been wearing when he’d come in were lying on the table. Katrynn found herself transfixed by his forearm—just those inches between his wrist and the band of his thermal, which he’d pushed up almost to his elbow. The sleeve of the flannel shirt was cuffed, too.

  That forearm was strong, and had just the right coverage of dark hair. The muscles flexed as he took his measurements and used a manual screwdriver to clear out the remnants of hardware.

  He caught her staring and smiled again. “What about you?”

  “Huh?”

  “You want kids?”

  Katrynn blushed hard at the question. “Um, yeah. Like I said, I never got that brochure, and I wouldn’t know a normal family if I sat on one, but yeah. I want a have a life that’s home.”

  He stopped and cocked his head. “That’s an interesting way to say it. You didn’t grow up in a normal home?”

  “Not remotely normal, but good. It was a home. Just…my parents are not like most people. I love them and they love me, but they are not normal. I’d like to make something more normal than that.”

  “Normal’s overrated.”

  “You just said you wanted the brochure.” Not to mention that, even considering Nick’s business, the Paganos were the most normal family she’d ever known.

  “Well, yeah. The wife and the kids and the house. What goes on inside doesn’t have to be normal, though. Or…how about this: normal is okay, but boring isn’t.”

  Before Katrynn could respond, there was a knock on the back door. John asked, “Are you expecting somebody?”

  “No.”

  She headed for the door, but John pushed her back, gently, and went himself. He checked the peephole. “It’s Donnie.”

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