Most Precious Blood

by Susan Beth Pfeffer

“Is that what you told Mama?” Val asked. “When you did whatever you felt like doing.”

  “Your mother never asked me for explanations,” Rick said. “She knew I told her only what she needed to know. The rest she was just as happy not to hear. That’s how it is with husbands and wives. You’ll learn that soon enough.”

  “You’re crazy,” Val said. “I’m never going to be like Mama. And I’m certainly never going to marry a man like you.”

  “Don’t make me hit you,” Rick said.

  “I don’t care if you do,” Val replied. “You can do whatever you want to me, and it won’t matter.”

  “Go to your room,” Rick said. “I’m calling the doctor. I think you must be very sick.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with me, Daddy,” Val said. “I’m not Mama. There’s nothing eating away at me, except disgust for you.”

  “You heard me,” Rick said. “Go to your room.”

  Val shook her head. “I don’t care what you say to me. I don’t care what you do. You can throw me out of this house, and that’s fine with me. You don’t count any more, Daddy. You stopped counting the moment I found out the truth.”

  “What truth?” Rick asked. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “You know what truth I mean,” Val said. “The truth you’ve been keeping from me for sixteen years now.” She stared at the face of the man she’d always thought of as her father, and no longer saw anger there, but pain and confusion and hopeless love. “Oh, Daddy!” she cried. “If I’m not a Castaladi, then who am I?”

  Chapter 9

  “What?”

  Val grabbed onto the bannister. “I know I’m adopted,” she said. “I found out, Daddy.”

  Rick stood absolutely still, then slowly nodded.

  “I have to learn what happened,” Val said. “It’s tearing me up, not knowing.”

  “We need to talk,” her father said. “Not here, not with you on the staircase. Let’s go into the den.”

  Val followed him into the den. Of all the dark rooms in the house, it was the darkest, with evergreens blocking all the sun from the windows. Rick automatically turned the overhead light on and, almost as automatically, closed the door. He sat down on the sofa and beckoned Val to join him, but she chose a chair instead.

  “I don’t know how to handle this,” Rick said. “I honestly thought this would never happen.”

  “I have so many questions,” Val said. “Am I your daughter?”

  Rick sighed. “Of course you are,” he replied. “I love you, I take care of you, I’m proud of you. But I’m not your father in the way you mean.”

  “So I’m not a Castaladi,” Val said. She felt some sense of relief that she wasn’t the product of an adulterous affair or even of a surrogate arrangement. “All these years, you’ve been lying to me.”

  “There are a lot of ways we can handle this,” Rick said. “You can ask questions, or I can simply tell you the story, or you can fling accusations at me. You get to pick, but choose wisely. I may never be this open again.”

  “I’m angry,” Val said.

  Rick laughed. “That’s obvious,” he replied. “Tell me, how did you find out?”

  “I was looking through Mama’s things while you were gone,” Val said. “And I found a letter she wrote me when she was dying. She wrote all about how she couldn’t have a baby, and how you brought her one as a gift.”

  “Neither one of us wanted you to know,” Rick said. “I guess being sick for so long, knowing she was going to die, it did things to her mind. I wish she’d talked to me about it. I would have told her not to write that letter.”

  “I’m glad she did,” Val said. “I have a right to know.”

  “Are you happier knowing?” her father asked. “Is your world a better place for knowing?”

  “That’s not fair,” Val said. “It’s only been a couple of days, and I’ve had a lot more questions than answers. Ask me again in twenty years.”

  “You’re right,” Rick said, strumming his fingers on the arm of the sofa. “Just understand, we only wanted to protect you.”

  “You’re always protecting me, Daddy,” Val said. “I don’t know from what though.”

  “I have enemies,” he said. “A man in my position always does. My father had them, my brother has them. Enemies don’t always check bloodlines. It’s better to be overly cautious.”

  “What are my bloodlines?” Val asked. “Do you know?”

  “Of course I know,” her father replied. “What kind of question is that? Do you think I’d take some strange child into my house, raise her as my own?”

  “I don’t know what I know anymore,” Val said. “Tell me who I am.”

  “You’re Valentina Maria Castaladi,” Rick said. “Daughter of Richard and Barbara Castaladi. Are you so determined to find out all the rest?”

  “Yes,” Val said. “I am.”

  “And what if you don’t like it?” he asked. “You’ve had a couple of days to make up a brand-new heritage for yourself. I know what girls are like. You probably think you’re the daughter of kings and queens, or your mother was a movie star, or your father some big millionaire.”

  “I haven’t thought anything,” Val said. “I’ve been too scared to think.”

  “And what were you so scared of?” Rick asked. “The truth? Me?”

  Val nodded. She yearned to cry, but knew if she did, Rick would close up, and she would never learn what she needed. So she clenched her hand into a fist until her fingernails cut into her flesh. The pain focused her. “Tell me everything,” she said. “I don’t want to be scared anymore.”

  “Everything,” Rick said. “You ask for a lot.”

  “If you don’t, I won’t be able to love you,” Val replied. “And I want to, Daddy.”

  “All right,” Rick said. “Everything. I suppose that starts when I married your mother. Our families had done business together for years. Everyone supposed I’d marry Barbara’s older sister, Ann Marie, but she died, and there was Barbara. Pretty girl, and sweet. I’d always liked her more than Ann Marie, so it all worked out fine as far as I was concerned. I was a few years older, but that was all right too. She looked up to me, and that’s what a husband wants. A wife who respects and honors him.”

  “Mama said there was some trouble,” Val declared. “That the two of you were engaged for a long time because of some trouble.”

  “She wrote that?” Rick asked. “About the trouble?”

  Val nodded.

  “It was nothing,” he said. “A little mixup concerning my poppa’s business. I was in jail for a few months before his lawyers got it taken care of. I guess it was important to Barbara though, since it meant we had to wait a while before we could be married.”

  “I thought you never went to jail,” Val said. “I’ve even bragged about it.”

  “It was years ago,” Rick said. “A mistake. I was in maybe six months before it got straightened out.”

  “Were you guilty?” Val asked.

  “You have a choice here,” Rick said. “You can ask me about my prison record, and I can explain all the details to you, or we can go on with the story of how you became my daughter. Which do you prefer?”

  “Go on,” Val said with a sigh.

  “Fine,” her father said. “I married Barbara. Big affair, lots of guests, lots of dancing. Everything she had dreamed of. We went to the Virgin Islands on our honeymoon.” He paused for a moment, and looked out the window. Val knew the only view he had was of the past. “We had a real nice time,” he finally said. “Barbara was everything I wanted in a wife. And she loved me. That was a very special time. But we came home, everybody started teasing us right away, where’s the baby, what’s a honeymoon for if not making babies. Only she wasn’t pregnant. And she didn’t get pregnant. After a while, the jokes stopped, but the questions never did. What were we waiting for? Was everything all right? This went on for years. For years we lied to ourselves, said everything was fine. Then finally
I insisted Barbara have tests. Maybe it was some little problem that could be fixed. We’d be better off knowing. Barbara knew that was true, but she was terrified of what the tests would say. But she obeyed me and saw the doctors.”

  “What did they say?” Val asked.

  “They said nothing to her,” Rick replied. “To me they said there was nothing wrong, nothing they could find. I knew what had to be done. So I saw a doctor too, and had tests run, and it wasn’t Barbara’s fault that there weren’t any babies. I was the one with the problem, and it was a problem they couldn’t fix.”

  “Mama thought it was her fault,” Val said. “Her letter never said it was yours.”

  “I never told her,” Rick declared. “She would have lost all respect for me if she knew I couldn’t father a son. She might have left me, and what would I have told people? The only one who knew was my poppa. To him I confided everything. My poppa was a great man. I was his favorite, although I wasn’t the oldest. I followed his guidance. He said Barbara must never know, that nobody should know. Barbara’s cousin Connie couldn’t bear children, and Barbara’s family was weak anyway, everyone knew that, so it was natural to assume the problem was hers. He asked me if Barbara would be happier knowing I was the reason she had no babies. Of course the answer was no. So I kept the truth from her, and it was just as well. She was sickly, the same as her sisters, and if she had left me, married some other man, just to have babies, who knows. She might have died in childbirth. My poppa said it was not for us to question the ways of God, and he was right.”

  Val tried to picture her mother, but it hurt too much. She looked at the TV set instead. There was a picture of the three of them there, taken on Val’s eleventh birthday. That was the last good time Val could remember them sharing.

  “I felt since it was my fault Barbara couldn’t have a baby, it was my responsibility to bring her one,” Rick said. “She was a good woman, and she asked for so little. I asked Poppa how I could do this, get a baby for her, and he asked his lawyers. They said we could never go through an agency, because of that jail business, and who I was. I got angry then. I wasn’t in Poppa’s business. My brother Mike, as the first born, had been taken in, and Poppa had helped me set up my construction business, which was going great. I had this big empty house, a loving wife, and a successful business, and some damnfool agency was going to deny me a baby because my name was Castaladi. A name to be proud of. I told Poppa how I felt, and he asked the lawyers what would happen if he applied a little muscle to an agency, but they said that would be a mistake, and there were other ways of getting babies and they’d look into them.”

  “Gray market,” Val said. “I know someone who was adopted that way.”

  Rick nodded. “The lawyers said it could take time, and I was impatient. There were other problems too. It was bad enough the only way I could give Barbara a child was by adoption. It couldn’t be a son. A daughter, I knew I could live with. What does a man care about a daughter? They’re for loving, for dressing pretty, for giving you grandchildren. They bear your name only until they’re married. A son would be a Castaladi. He’d expect to take over the business. I couldn’t accept that if he wasn’t my blood. With gray market, the girl might have a boy, and still expect us to adopt. Or she might change her mind, and if we put any pressure on her to live up to her end of the bargain, she might make a stink about it. And she might not be Italian, or even Catholic. It was too chancy. I wanted a baby girl as close to me as I could get. I told Poppa this, and he agreed.”

  “So what did you do?” Val asked.

  Her father laughed. “I waited,” he said. “There wasn’t much else I could do. And I had Poppa tell his people to be on the lookout for a baby girl that fit the description. But it was Poppa himself who found you. I knew when I placed my trust in him, he wouldn’t fail me. He always came through for me, and this time was no exception.”

  “How?” Val asked.

  “Papa’s grandfather had a sister,” Rick replied. “Rosa Castaladi. She married into the Primo family, had six or seven kids. The Primos were garbage, always letting people know they were part Castaladi, but never amounting to anything. Poppa mostly heard from the Primos when they needed a favor. They were never close-knit, not like the Castaladis. Some moved to Vegas, some to Chicago. One branch moved to Buffalo. That was Donny Primo. He had a wife, a few kids. His son Charley married Carmela Rinaldi. They asked Poppa to be godfather to one of their boys. Otherwise I don’t think Poppa would have even remembered they were alive. That branch of the Rinaldis frankly wasn’t much better than the Primos. It was a good match though. Carmela was healthy, gave him three sons, a couple of daughters.”

  “Am I one of those daughters?” Val asked.

  Rick raised his hand to shush her. “Charley Primo got a job like Bruno’s,” he said. “For Gino Petrolli, a very big person in upstate New York. Charley was not a real bright guy, but they figured he could drive a car and make sure everything was safe. It turned out this was a little more than Charley could handle. There was some trouble in Buffalo with the Conti family, a little bit of warfare, and Charley ended up in the line of fire along with Gino Petrolli. Unfortunately, it turned out Charley’s mother was part Conti, and he hadn’t bothered to tell anyone that. No one said he was to blame, after all he’d been killed along with Gino, but the Petrollis didn’t feel any responsibility to Carmela and the kids. Poppa was informed because of the Castaladi connection. He made a couple of phone calls to Buffalo to see what the situation was, and found out Carmela had had a baby girl a month or so before. A few more phone calls were made, to make sure the baby was healthy and normal, and then Poppa himself went to Buffalo to talk to Carmela.”

  “Did she want to give the baby up?” Val asked. It was easier to think of it as “the baby,” than to identify it as herself.

  “She had six kids,” Rick replied. “The oldest was maybe fourteen. The Primo family had no money, that part of the Rinaldis weren’t much better off. The Petrollis were offering nothing, and she didn’t dare turn to the Contis. I’m sure she loved the baby very much, but she could see that giving her up was the best for everybody. Certainly the best for the little girl. She didn’t agree right away, but Poppa made her see the light. It was all completely legal. Poppa called me at my office, told me the baby was mine if I wanted it, and I said yes, sight unseen. Poppa flew the baby down. I met him at the airport, took the baby, and drove it to my house, to give to Barbara.”

  “And that was me,” Val said.

  “You were a pretty little kid,” Rick said. “I could see you were okay, healthy and all that. And Poppa reminded me you were part Castaladi, part my blood. But I didn’t feel anything for you, not at first. Poppa did. He loved you as much, maybe more, than any of his other grandkids. And Barbara. You should have seen her face light up when I gave you to her. It was like all those years of trying and failing just vanished. She had a baby. She asked if she could name you Valentina, because you must have been born right around Valentine’s Day, and I said sure. I didn’t care. For a long time, I hated you, Val, because to have you in my house was a constant reminder of my own failure, that I would never have a son, a true heir. I asked Poppa what I should do, if I kept on hating you, and he laughed and said no one could keep hating a baby. He was right. One day you crawled to me and looked right at me with so much love in your eyes I knew it didn’t matter if you were blood or not, you were my daughter. I picked you up that day, and when you hugged me, it was electric, and from that moment on, you were truly my child.”

  “Oh, Daddy,” Val said.

  “That’s the story,” Rick said. “Of course everyone knew you were adopted, but they were all sworn to secrecy. Poppa kept it to himself that you were a Primo. They weren’t a family held in wide regard, and besides, with that business about the Contis, we both felt it was best if no one knew.”

  “My mother,” Val said. “Carmela. Do you know what became of her?”

  “She’s still in Buffalo,”
Rick replied. “She could tell you where all your brothers and sisters are, if you want to know.”

  “I need to see her, Daddy,” Val said. “I’m sorry, but I do.”

  “And when you see her, what happens then?” Rick asked. “You move in with her, become a Primo? You forget all the years you’ve lived here, all the love we’ve shared?”

  “No, of course not,” Val said, although truthfully, she had no idea what would happen. “I know you’re my father. I know Mama was my mother. But I’m not going to feel complete unless I see her. I hope you can understand that.”

  “It’s always blood,” Rick said. “That need to know exactly where you belong. I understand. I’ll call Carmela if you want, make arrangements with her so you can see her this weekend. Do you want her to come down here?”

  Val knew that was what Rick wanted, so he could at least have some control over the reunion. But she also knew there were a lot of unanswered questions she never would have the courage to ask under his roof. “No,” she said. “I think I should go to Buffalo. If I’m going to see where I came from, I should see it as it really is.”

  “All right,” Rick said. “Maybe that is better. Otherwise you might have some illusions I snatched you from a palace.”

  “I don’t think I have any illusions,” Val said. “Not anymore.”

  “We’ll go on Saturday,” Rick said. “Do you think you can hold out until then?”

  “We?” Val said.

  “We,” Rick said. “You and me.”

  “No, Daddy,” Val said. “I can’t go with you.”

  “Why not?” Rick demanded. “You think I’ve been feeding you lies? You think you’ll go up to Buffalo, meet this woman, and find out I snatched you from her breast?”

  “I don’t think that,” Val said.

  “Fine,” Rick said. “So the two of us will go together. You want some time alone with Carmela, I’ll wait in another room.”

  Val shook her head. “I won’t go with you,” she declared.

  “Then you won’t go,” Rick said.

  “And then what?” Val asked. “I’ll snipe at you, the way I have been? I’ll go out with boys you don’t approve of? I’ll give Bruno the slip, start staying out late, run away from home?” She tried to remember Jamey’s list. “Alcohol, drugs, pregnancy? Just because I’m angry?”