Simple Faith (The Pagano Brothers Book 1)

by Susan Fanetti

  “But you fell in love with me.”

  He smiled. “Yes, I did. And I want to be with you forever.”

  “I love you. But I can’t be a mother.”

  “Because of your mom. Because of what she did.”

  “Because of what she did, and because of what that did to me. And because maybe I’m like her. I can’t be a mom, because I will kill myself if I feel the urge to hurt my own child.”

  “And that’s why you won’t. You’re not like your mom, Lara. Not at all.”

  “How do you know? You never met her. I can’t even know, because I’ve never had even a pet turtle or one of those blue fish they torture in carnival games.”

  “Betta fish.”

  “Those. I’ve never taken care of anything. I don’t even take care of myself. I can’t take care of a child.”

  “You take care of yourself, Lara. You know what you need and you find a way to have it. But let’s back up. Let me ask you this: if you thought you could be good at it, would you want to be a mom?”

  “I have no idea. It was never in my future, so I never considered the question.”

  “It’s in your future now. I don’t think there could be a better time to consider the question.”

  Lara closed her eyes. Her mind was still quiet, not even trying to find the fit of this piece. She needed more information, and there was so little available. With her eyes closed, resting against the raised bed, the pains in her body rumbling like an idling engine, she asked, “Do you want to be a dad?”

  “I don’t want to force you to have my kid.”

  That opened her eyes. “That’s not the question I asked. But—what about your religion? Isn’t abortion against the law in Catholicism?”

  “It is. But so is sex outside of marriage. And a lot of other stuff I do. I don’t follow Catholic laws any closer than I follow any other laws. I follow my heart about what’s right.”

  “Then why even consider yourself Catholic?”

  “Because Catholicism is more than a set of rules. It’s not about rules. It’s about faith.”

  She laughed a little, but it hurt her ribs. Trey and faith. Such questions were so obvious to him, so simple.

  He scooted closer and tightened his hold on her hand. “I’m telling you that if you don’t want to keep the baby, then I’ll be there with you when you end it. It’s your decision to make. I understand your worries, and I won’t try to make you do something you don’t want to do. Especially not this. It’s too important.”

  Her love for him swelled her heart and stretched her sore ribs. He couldn’t have given her a better answer. But he still hadn’t answered her first question, and that was critical information she needed before she could answer his. “The question I asked is if you want to be a father.”

  Trey turned his head and looked out the window. The sun shone for the first time in days. “I’ve been sitting here with you while you slept, thinking of nothing but you and this news. If you’d asked me that question yesterday morning, I’d probably have shrugged and said I didn’t know, and the question wasn’t important to me. When I first heard the news last night, I thought I’d be sick. I had all the thoughts you’d expect—I’m too young, I’m not ready, I don’t know if I ever want kids, our relationship is too new … and yeah, I’ll be straight—I wondered if you could handle it.”

  He turned to her then, to check her reaction. But she wasn’t offended. It was a perfectly reasonable concern, and she absolutely shared it. So she smiled and squeezed his hand. The flex of her arm reminded her that she was still restrained, and a burst of panic flared, but she breathed it back down. She wanted the restraints off, so she would have to stay calm, no matter what.

  “Here’s where I ended up: I love you. I think I’ve loved you since we sat by that old well up at the cabin, and you held mulberry leaves up and talked about nature’s love of order. I’m in awe of you. You’re brilliant and beautiful and sweet, and you’re stronger than you know. I know you’re not like your mother because you are full of love, and because you don’t want attention. You make yourself as small as you can so people won’t notice you. That’s the opposite of your mother, isn’t it?”

  Too stunned by his words to formulate thoughts of her own, she didn’t know how to answer.

  He didn’t wait to hear one, anyway. “I don’t know what kind of dad I’d be. And you’re worried what kind of mom you’d be. But I do know that I’ve got a huge family full of good role models. They’re more than that. They’re help. They almost all live within five miles of each other, and of the beach house, and they will help us. They will show us how to do it, and they will be there whenever we have need. So yes, Lara, I would like it if you had my baby. And I would like it if you would be my wife when it happens.

  “Please?”

  He grinned and stood up so he could lean over her. “I’m proposing to you, babe. I’m asking you to marry me.”

  At that exact moment, while Lara gaped at Trey, the door opened as someone knocked on it, and Dr. DeMilla—Lara’s doctor, her real primary doctor, someone she trusted, not a stranger—stepped into the room.

  “Hello, Lara. How are you feeling?” he asked.

  Chuckling quietly, Trey kissed the corner of her mouth. “Saved by the doc. We’ll pick this up later.”

  ~oOo~

  Well, now she had more information. She had a due date, in May. She had a list of risks of being underweight during pregnancy and instructions to, should she decide to stay pregnant, work to gain at least fifty pounds—which was more than a fifty-percent gain. She had confirmation of Trey’s report of her current condition: concussion, fractured ribs, contusions. Pregnant.

  And, thankfully, she was both unrestrained and had a new regimen of anxiety medication. No Thorazine, but she didn’t think she needed it. Trey had kept her calm, and she’d been so overwhelmed by developments she’d been hyperfocused on the exact thing she needed to focus on.

  She was pregnant. There was a tiny embryo inside her that would grow into a baby.

  And Trey wanted to marry her.

  When Dr. DeMilla left, and her arms and legs were gloriously free, Trey put the rail down and sat on the bed with her. He picked up her hands and held them in his.

  “What do you think? Do you want to get married and have a baby?”

  “You want me to have this baby. And become your wife. And move to Quiet Cove.”

  He nodded. “You’re three for three, yep.”

  “Trey, I can’t … it’s too much. That’s my whole life changed, since yesterday.”

  His eyes stayed locked with hers, but he didn’t reply. Like her father, or Dr. Rosen, he waited for her to work out her thoughts. But they were still so big—too big to panic, and too big to sort. She could not think. At all.

  He kissed her hands. “I’m scared, too. It’s a huge change for me, too. But I know we can do it.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “Yeah, I do. Take a leap of faith, babe. We’re surrounded by people who love us. They won’t let us fall.”

  A fresh memory that had been swallowed up in all this broke free. She’d been sitting at the diner with her dad—was it only yesterday?—having cabinets and sandwiches. She’d been talking to him about moving to Quiet Cove, and how afraid she was to do it. That one change had paralyzed her, and now it was the least of what she faced.

  Trust in Trey, her father had said. Trust in yourself. Have what you want. Take the leap. And trust in me to catch you if you fall.

  The same sentiment Trey had just spoken. Trust in Trey. Trust in herself. Trust in family. Have what she wanted.

  What did she want?

  She’d never answered the question Trey had first asked her, before Dr. DeMilla had come in. If she thought she could be a good mother, would she want to be one?

  “I understand that you need time,” Trey said.

  But Lara didn’t need time. She had her answer, and she wanted it said before her mind tried to tear it apar
t.

  “My answer is yes.”

  He flinched; she’d surprised him. “Please?”

  “Yes, if I thought I could be a good mom, I’d want to be one.”

  He went still—except she could feel a tremor in his hands around hers.

  “I don’t know if I can be a good mom. But I know I can’t do it alone. If I do this, I need your promise, your solemn promise, that you’ll stay with me.”

  A wide grin broke across that handsome face. “That’s what marriage is. A solemn vow to stay.”

  “Okay. Okay.” Oh God, was she doing this?

  “Okay what? Say it.”

  “Okay—I mean, yes. I’ll marry you. And we’ll have this baby, and you’ll help me be a good mom.”

  “Yes, I will. And you’ll help me be a good dad.”

  He slid his arms around her, trying to be careful of all her sore parts, but right now, what Lara needed more than anything was for him to hold her, to really hold her, so she raised her freed arms and wound them around his neck, even as her ribs shrieked at her in protest. Trey pulled her close, still gentle, and kissed her.

  ~oOo~

  Nick set his hand on her shoulder. “Take a minute here, before you go in. You need to stay calm.”

  “I can be calm.” Considering that she was in a hospital and wouldn’t be released for at least two days, considering that her entire life had gone topsy-turvy when that truck had hit her dad’s car, Lara thought she was positively serene. As long as she had Trey with her, she felt in control of herself. And he was right behind her, pushing the wheelchair.

  Nick repeated, “Take a minute. Ready yourself.”

  Her father had arrived at Providence General and was in the ICU. In addition to the accident, he’d been tortured and shot. Nick had already catalogued his injuries for her, and he obviously wasn’t going to let her go through the door and see him until he felt confident that she’d stay calm, so she closed her eyes and imagined them now.

  He’d been shot in the chest. He’d been bound and beaten. He’d been yanked from their wrecked car. As she pictured him in her mind, his beloved face swollen and bleeding, his beard and hair matted, his body bruised, her heart began to skitter, and she twisted her hands around the arms of the wheelchair.

  “You all set, babe?” Trey asked, his mouth at her ear, his voice full of care.

  “Is he awake?”

  “No. They sedated him for the ride here, and they expect him to be out until this evening. But he was awake in Connecticut, and they expect him to recover. The bullet missed his lungs and heart.”

  “Okay. I’m ready. I’ll be calm.”

  Nick pushed open the door, and Trey pushed her into the Intensive Care Unit.

  The ICU was designed as a circle, with the nurse’s station in the center and the rooms facing it, their front and side walls made of glass. The room doors slid open with the push of a button.

  Three nurses were at the station. One of them stepped around the desk as Trey wheeled Lara to her father’s room. “One visitor at a time, please.”

  “I need to go in with her,” Trey countered. “I’m pushing her chair.”

  “Go on,” said Nick. “I’ll be out here.” He kissed the top of Lara’s head and walked to the nurses.

  Trey pushed the button, and the glass door slid wide.

  Her father slept on a hospital bed that was more high-tech than her own. Several machines whirred, buzzed, and pumped; he was connected to them by a web of wires and tubes. Heart monitor. Oxygen. Pulse ox. Blood pressure. IV fluids and medications.

  The blankets were folded at his waist, exposing his bare chest, the grey pelt of his body hair shaved in patches to accommodate the monitor leads, as well as the large white rectangle of bandage over the left side, below his collarbone. They’d shaved his beard away, and he had a stitched wound across his left cheek. Lara had never seen her father without a beard. His face was a misshapen lump. He was black and blue and red and purple everywhere. Almost literally every inch of his skin that she could see had been hurt in some way.

  She hadn’t visualized this; she hadn’t been ready to see him like this. Her father. Her savior. Clutching his inert hand, she laid her forehead on his arm.

  Trey crouched at her side and set his hand on her knee. “He survived, and he didn’t break. His blood runs through you, too, Lara. His strength is in you. You’re more than your mom, just like I’m more than the woman who gave birth to me. And our kid will be more than we are.”

  ~ 21 ~

  Trey stayed with Lara in Providence, doing the commute, until her father was out of the hospital and able to get around on his own. Frederick then decided that, after this most recent drama, and the news that he’d be a grandfather, he, too, was ready for a change. On the last weekend of October, Trey and most of his family moved Frederick into his new house in Quiet Cove, two blocks over from Trey’s parents, and moved Lara into Trey’s beach house—which they were now buying in installments from Uncle John and Aunt Katrynn.

  Frederick was putting his house on the market. Lara hadn’t decided yet what to do with her apartment. With everything else, she’d been calm and ready to go; once she’d said yes, she’d been able to make sense of all the changes, and she rarely balked at any forward movement toward them. They’d set a date for the wedding—right after Thanksgiving—and she’d been focused and organized with moving. She had about a dozen baby books, and she studied them the way she’d studied Theo’s memoirs—like she was prepping for an exam.

  Which, he supposed, was what parenthood was. The world’s longest, hardest exam.

  All that change, she had in hand. She was even trying to eat more and gain the weight she was supposed to. But she dithered whenever she thought of selling her place—that decision was just one too many.

  Trey didn’t push her on it. He was dizzy from all the changes himself. They were getting married, she was pregnant, she was moving into his house. They were buying that house together. He was moving, too—bringing his bedroom down from the loft he loved to the master suite in the extension, so they’d be close to the baby’s room.

  The baby’s room. Lara was having his baby. He was going to be a father. Holy shit.

  That news had been greeted in his family with an array of reactions, most of them in the ‘stunned’ category: dropped jaws, round eyes, cocked eyebrows. When he’d followed up the ‘hey, I knocked up my girlfriend, cool, huh’ news with ‘and we’re getting married, like now,’ there had been a few washed-out cheeks. Misby had had to sit down. But no one had dumped any judgment on him. Even his father had taken the news with a relatively cool head. He’d asked some questions, but Trey had been prepared to fight off an angry lecture, so when his old man had just pushed him a bit to make sure he was happy about the situation—and he was, once he’d gotten his head around it—he’d called that a win. Things were getting better between them.

  “Hey. Cop a squat with me.” Luca held out a cold beer and pulled Trey from his thoughts. The truck was just about loaded up with everything Lara wanted to take from her apartment. What she was leaving behind, they’d decide what to do with later, when everything else had settled down a little.

  He took the beer and sat on the back of the truck with his uncle. Manny and Joey had gone down to the corner shop for snacks. Most of the rest of the family that was in Providence was working on the much more difficult job of loading up Frederick’s belongings. Lara was there with her father, both of them taking it easy, doing the hard work of telling people what to do.

  “Remember when I said you were nesting? How long ago was that, I’m trying to think.”

  Trey didn’t dignify that with a response. He drank his beer and let his uncle have his fun.

  “You told me to fuck off, as I remember. Remember that?”

  He remembered. Just about seven months ago. “Yep. You can still fuck off.”

  Luca laughed and slapped Trey’s back. “You and your old man. Family men from top to bottom.”
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  There was a time, not long ago, when Trey had bristled at comparisons with his father. “And you’re not? How long have you and Aunt Manny been married?” Trey knew exactly how long—they’d had the party for their twentieth anniversary in February.

  Manny and Joey were coming out of the store. Luca smiled as he watched his wife cross the street and head to the coffee shop with Joey.

  “Twenty years. And look at her. Does she look fifty to you?”

  Trey looked. Manny was little—even shorter than Lara, but not as skinny. Her hair was still dark, her bangs long, and she dressed youthfully, in snug jeans, Doc Martens, and a leather jacket. No, she didn’t look anywhere close to fifty. Luca, in his mid-fifties, looked more his age.

  A sudden spasm went through Trey, a cramp of worry. It was all moving so fast. What if he wasn’t enough to handle this life? “Is it hard?”

  “What?”

  “Loving somebody like Aunt Manny?”

  Luca turned a frown on him. “You second-guessing all this?”

  “No. I want this. But I want to do it right.”

  “I don’t think Manny and Lara are that much alike, kid. Very different personalities.”

  “But they both have needs that aren’t …”

  “Aren’t what?”

  “Normal.” He hated to say it like that, but it was true. “They were both hurt when they were little kids, and that changed who they are. Is it hard?”

  “It’s hard to be with anyone for a long time. Living with somebody else, sharing every part of your life, sometimes that’s not easy. It’s no harder with Manny than it would be with anybody else. Life is hard, but love is not. Manny is easy to love. It wasn’t so easy for her to learn to love back, but loving her came to me like riding a board—smooth and thrilling all the way.”