Rooted (The Pagano Family Book 3)

by Fanetti, Susan

  Eli shook his head. “I’ve read all the horror stories about how expensive the schools are and how you end up with your degree or diploma or whatever and all you can get is some crappy minimum wage job doing prep, if you’re even lucky enough to get in a kitchen at all. I’ve already got debt to pay off. I can’t handle more.”

  “What are you going to do, then?”

  Eli half-chuckled, just a syllable. “Today, I want to go out and do something in Paris. Get my mind off my stuff. No reason to be sad and lonely in the City of Light, right? So let’s go to the Orsay or the Pompidou or something.”

  Carmen and Rosa had been gone for a couple of weeks. Theo knew why Eli was still in Paris—to look after him. They’d argued about it; he didn’t need his kid to babysit him. He was depressed, yeah. He’d given up even the attempt to write, sure. And maybe he was sliding down the slope a little with the bourbon. But he was fifty years old—today—and he didn’t need his son to take care of him.

  “I’m not in the mood, E. And we’ve been to the Orsay twice already.”

  “New exhibit opens today. It’s your birthday, Dad. Let’s at least take a walk. Hey—we could go to that old books market in the Square Georges Brassens. And then maybe the Catacombs again. I love the Catacombs.”

  “I need to write today. You should go out by yourself.”

  “Dad.”

  Theo glared at Eli. The subtext screaming out from that single word, that single syllable, was that Theo hadn’t even opened his laptop in two weeks. He had no words.

  “Please, Dad. I need some company. I need to get my mind off missing Rosa, and you need to find something to fill your mind, too.”

  “If you really love her, you should be there, not here. She probably needs you right now.” That was becoming an old fight between them. It hurt him, too, to think of Carmen going through her worry about her father, almost losing him, alone. But she wasn’t alone. She’d always said family was the most important thing, and she was in the bosom of hers. As was Rosa.

  Really, what he wanted was for Eli to go back to the States and get off his back. Instead, he was going to spend the following week being double-teamed, he knew, because Jordan was coming back for a visit. With any luck, he’d get Eli to go home with his brother.

  Eli sighed. “She’s with her family. And her dad is getting better. She said they brought him home. And we haven’t figured out the next step yet. I don’t have an apartment in Augusta anymore, so I’m where I need to be right here. Except that I want to get outside today.”

  Theo gave up. “I’ll take a shower. Then let’s go look at old books and dead bones.”

  ~oOo~

  “Dad. When you caught the girl, you were supposed to keep her!”

  Eli swatted Jordan on the back of the head, upsetting his careful quiff. “Jordan, shit. Not everything in your head has to come out your mouth.”

  Theo laughed. Things had been easier since Jordan was back. His attitude about everything was so bulletproof that it was hard to stay glum around him. This was a boy who’d picked himself up, dusted off his vintage velvet trousers, and walked through a ring of bullies to go back to class. Routinely. A little heartbreak, a dash of pining—these were nothing to him. And he wasn’t tolerating it in his father and brother, either. He didn’t nag at Theo to shake off his gloom. He’d simply refused to accept its existence.

  In the days Jordan had been back in Paris, Theo had had hours-long stretches during which he hadn’t thought about Carmen or his writer’s block. Or bourbon, for that matter. The week was coming to an end, but he felt stronger and clearer.

  They were sitting at a sidewalk café on the Left Bank at the end of a day spent combing through the nooks and crannies of a Paris most tourists didn’t see.

  Eli was going back to the States with Jordan, and they’d all been talking about his plans—which were, for now, to go back to the house in Colson and get it open and running again in anticipation of the end of the year, when Theo would be home and back teaching. Eli was still unsure about his own job plans, and he was loath to make any until he understood something of his future with Rosa.

  The conversation had turned to Rosa and what Eli perceived as a distance growing between them. She, like her sister, was focused on her family now. She was no longer as interested in trying to work out plans with Eli.

  “She keeps hedging,” he’d said, “so I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I mean, I get it. Her dad almost died, and he’s still not doing great. She wants to focus on him. I really, really get it.”

  Theo nodded. “Of course you get it.”

  “But she has the luxury of not thinking about work yet. Her family is rich, or rich enough, anyway. I have to earn, and I can’t even think about looking for real work unless I know where we’re going to settle. Or even if she’s settling with me.”

  “Maybe this is a good thing, E. Maybe you need a breather. You two were moving fast, and if you crash, you’re going to explode.”

  Both Jordan and Eli stared at him, and he realized, after a beat, that he was talking about himself, too.

  And then Jordan had said, rolling his eyes, “Dad. When you caught the girl, you were supposed to keep her!”

  And Eli had smacked him and mussed his hair.

  Laughing, Theo replied, “I’m okay, boys. I was fine by myself before. I’ll get over this and be fine again.”

  “You weren’t fine before, Dad. That’s why we sent you off to find her in the first place. You were so not okay you creeped us out! And if you ask me, she was perfect for you. Watching you two at La Chanteuse? Be still my heart! You needed a parental advisory! There were practically fairies and stardust circling your head whenever you were with her—and I wasn’t even here for when things got really serious.”

  His chest felt squeezed and sore. “Not helping, Jordan. And I guess things never did get really serious. I was wrong about that.”

  “Pffft. It was serious. She’s just an idiot. And so are you. You know what I think? Heterosexuals are weird about love. Just OH MY GOD seriously. You find it, you have it, this miracle, and then you toss it away like it’s nothing. It’s not nothing. Love is not disposable. It’s something you fight for. It’s something you cling to even when literally every other possible choice would be easier.”

  Theo cocked his head. His kid was amazing. Even Eli was gaping at him like the Oracle had spoken. But fighting was a two-way deal. Fighting alone was just fighting oneself.

  “Tell her that, son.”

  “You need to hear it, too! You walked away? You walked away? How is that fighting? That’s the opposite of fighting!”

  He was smart, but he was young, and he’d experienced little yet of the kind of love they were talking about. “Okay, Jordan. That’ll do. It’s more complicated than you’re making it out. I can’t force a woman to love me.”

  Jordan sighed heavily and crossed his arms. “Weird, I’m telling you. You people do not get it at all.”

  ~oOo~

  Two days later, Theo let himself into Hunter Anders’ apartment. He’d accompanied his sons to the airport. They’d had an early lunch in the terminal, and he’d seen them off just before they went to the security checkpoint.

  Eli and Jordan were gone.

  And now he was alone in Paris for the first time since May. Even though he’d often been in this apartment alone, it seemed to echo now in a new way. In May, he’d been filled with a fresh vigor—more than half a year in Paris, the luxury to write without worrying about exams and essays and faculty meetings and student advising. Half a year to be nothing but a writer. It had been a nearly incomprehensible gift.

  Now, it was days from September, and he’d made almost no words of note. What he had instead was a raw heart and a drinking problem.

  He looked down at the bottle of bourbon he’d picked up on his way to the apartment. He knew his drinking was a problem. If he were honest with himself, he’d known it for weeks, at least. Since the Sunday morning in Avig
non. He wasn’t ready to do anything about it, though. Right now, it was self-medication, and he needed it.

  One problem at a time.

  He was alone with himself. Alone with his memories. Alone with the bottle. If he sat here in the apartment and did nothing but drink, he’d be dead before Halloween. He needed his words. He had to find his words.

  He took the bottle to Hunter’s elaborate bar and poured a crystal glass full. At least he wasn’t drinking straight out of the bottle yet. Then he went to the table by the window with the best view of the Eiffel Tower, where his Mac had sat unopened for days—weeks, now. The only reason there wasn’t a coating of dust over the silver cover was Hunter’s maid service.

  He opened it.

  On the desktop was an icon for a Word file he’d titled “Maggie in Paris.” He opened that. The same five thousand crap words that had been sitting there unaltered for weeks glared back at him.

  While he downed a long swallow of bourbon, he slid his finger across the glide pad and tapped the icon to open a new document.

  And then he sat there, an empty expanse of white nearly filling the screen before him.

  What could he say about his honeymoon with Maggie, here in this city of light, of lovers? What had it felt like to love her as completely as he had in those days, before children, before mortgages, before cancer? He couldn’t remember. He could remember the way he’d loved her at the end, the way that love had felt. He could see that love, like seeing a snapshot turning yellow around the edges and remembering the warmth and happiness of the captured moment. And the pain, too.

  But what he felt most keenly now, what he saw in his head constantly, was his love for Carmen. A steady presence, unless or until he drank his head dark, was the crystal-clear memory of that Sunday morning in Avignon, waking up alone but knowing with a certainty—mistaken as it was—that he was not alone, that he had Carmen. The balcony doors had been open, and he’d heard the country sounds outside. He could smell the lavender, ready for harvest. She had smelled of lavender the evening before. Even in the bath, her hair had been thick with the sharply sweet fragrance, and when he’d released her hair from its band and let it fall over her shoulders, he’d tangled his hands in it and breathed deep.

  It was the perfect kind of scent for Carmen, even better than the rich spice of the perfume she’d worn. It was sweet but not flowery, sharp but not acrid, potent without demanding attention. He’d thought that night, while they rocked together, the water sloshing over the candles, that though her perfume was liquid sex, lavender would always mean love to him from that day forward.

  He’d been half right. Love lost is what it truly meant.

  Realizing that he’d set his glass down and his hands were moving over the keys, Theo stopped and looked at the screen. He’d typed three words: Lavender in Summer.

  A title.

  With a rush, he knew his words were back. He understood what it was he needed to write. Maggie was his past. She belonged in his past, and she knew it. He’d had no words because she wasn’t whispering memories in his ear any longer. She had released him.

  He wasn’t writing a memoir about Maggie. That was the wrong book. He hoped Hunter wouldn’t want his grant money back, but if he did, that was a problem for later. Theo’s heart raced; words began to course through his blood and out his fingertips as they struck the keys. He knew what he needed to write.

  Not the prequel to Orchids in Autumn. The sequel. Not the story of his youthful love of his wife, but the story of finding love again. And losing it.

  ~oOo~

  When he closed the laptop hours later, too tired and drunk to focus his eyes or his mind any longer, he’d written nearly eight thousand new words. Keepers, he thought. They felt like keepers.

  The bottle of bourbon was empty.

  One problem at a time.

  ~ 13 ~

  “Will you all stop fussing over me!” Carlo Sr. snatched the heart-shaped pillow out of Sabina’s hands and held it to his chest as Carmen helped him to his feet. “I’m not a cripple!”

  When he tried to jerk his arm from Carmen’s grasp, she held tight. It wasn’t so hard to do—moving his arms moved his chest, and that still hurt him. “Pop. If you don’t take the help you need, you could end up crippled. Just chill and don’t be such a baby.”

  “That’s the problem. You’re all treating me like a baby. There are too many damn women around.” Despite the grumbling, he stopped fighting her, and she led him out the kitchen door and onto the sun porch at Adele’s house. Which was his house, too, now. Carmen would never get used to that.

  Elsa, Carlo and Sabina’s dog, who went back and forth between the houses at will, followed and plopped nearby with a groan. She liked to be where the people were.

  Adele had gotten the chaise lounge out here set up for him, all his needs arrayed on a table at his side—his reading glasses, the latest editions of the Quiet Cove Clarion and the Providence Journal, a tall glass of decaffeinated iced tea, and his pill organizer. He held the pillow tightly to his chest, and Carmen locked her legs and helped him onto the lounge. From an iPod dock on a table next to the door, Rosa selected Holst’s The Planets Suite, one of his favorites. When ‘Mars’ started playing, she skipped to ‘Venus’—calmer. Carmen smiled over her shoulder at her sister.

  “It sounds better on my record player,” their father groused, frowning darkly.

  “Yeah, well, the rest of us don’t need it blaring all over the house so you can hear it back here. You’re stuck with digital today.” Rosa’s voice was lightly teasing. She went over and sat in a chair next to their father, her phone in her hand. Probably texting Eli. He was in Maine now, and Rosie was getting impatient being in the Cove without him.

  She was going to fly the nest. Carmen could see it, and she was torn between the desire to give her a push toward freedom and the impulse to convince her to stay. Their father doted on his little princess. Right now, with all the other stresses, and his frail health, she didn’t know how he’d cope if his baby went away.

  “You ready for some lunch, honey?”

  Carlo Sr. turned his black look on his new wife, but then, before Carmen’s eyes, it softened, and he smiled a little. “Thanks, babe. But not right now. Could you get the afghan from the living room? The one Sabina made me?”

  Adele nodded and went back into the house. As soon as the screen door closed, he turned to Carmen and Rosa. “Find a way to get me some decent food, girls. I need meat—the kind that bleeds. And gnocchi. God, I’d die to get my hands on some of that gnocchi from Conti’s—with the cheese all thick and dripping off. With a side of porterhouse.”

  “Yeah, Pop. You’d die. Exactly. You can’t eat that stuff anymore. You just had quintuple bypass. And there’s scarring on your heart. You are a salad man now.”

  He threw the heart pillow at her, then winced. “Without meat, bread, and cheese, I can’t live anyway.”

  “Chin up, Pop.” Carmen patted his leg and went into the house. She passed Adele with the afghan. “I’ll put his lunch together.”

  “Thanks, hon. There’s a grilled chicken breast in the fridge, and this morning I pulled some lettuce and cherry tomatoes from the garden. I was going to slice the chicken and a hard-boiled egg and toss it all together.”

  Sounded deadly dull to Carmen, but she hadn’t recently had her chest cracked open. Not literally, anyway. “Okay. Any dressing?”

  Adele shrugged. “Drizzle some balsamic over it? And a little pepper? I tried to make a dressing last night with nonfat yogurt, but he threw a fit.” She sighed and hugged the afghan. “I’m going to have to learn to cook in a new way. The poor man can’t eat lettuce for the rest of his days.”

  “He’ll get used to it. It’s just going to take some time. He’s a tough old bastard, though. He’ll stop pouting.” She didn’t envy Adele for having to live with her father while he adjusted to a forced retirement caused by suddenly poor health.

  While she was putting the dreary salad toge
ther, Carmen heard the mail come through the slot. She set the knife down and went to the front door. As always, she paused and looked through the sidelights. Three weeks home, and she was finally beginning to get used to seeing a black sedan or SUV everywhere she went. The Uncles had everybody covered. No Pagano went anywhere without a guard. It had happened for a few weeks in the late fall and winter, but then things had cooled off—or so they’d thought. Now, there were more guards, and Carmen wondered if it was simply becoming a new way of life.

  In any case, she was getting used to it, and they were, for the most part, as unobtrusive as possible.

  She took the stack of mail into the kitchen with her and finished making her father’s lunch. Adele came in as she was setting up the tray. She stood there, looking lost, and Carmen could see her positive outlook crumbling.