Footsteps (9 page)

“Okay but I don’t know when Mrs. D. will
bring doughnuts again. And I don’t live here all the time. Only
sometimes.” He looked up at Carlo. “Daddy, how many days do we live
here now?”

“Seven more days, pal.” He looked from his
son to Bina; her eyes were on him—in the sunlight he saw that they
were hazel—and that feeling of
something
came over him
again. He barely caught himself from taking the steps that would
close the distance between them. What was going on here?

Trey counted and then held up seven fingers;
he had to shove his books under his arm to do so. “This is seven
many. That’s a lot. Maybe we’ll have doughnuts again.”

“Please let me know if you do.” She held her
hand out to Trey, and he shook it, two sharp shakes. “It was very
nice to meet you, Mr. Trey.” She looked over to the still-gaping
family. “And all of you, as well. Please have a lovely day.
Goodbye.” She walked away, not limping at all. Carlo couldn’t tear
his eyes away.

As soon as she was safely away, his father
strode to him and grabbed his arm, pulling him away from Trey.
“
Auberon
? This is who you were with last night? Do you know
who that woman’s husband is? What the hell are you doing, boy?
Diddling another man’s wife?
That
man’s wife? Are you trying
to start a war? I expect this bullshit from Luca or Joey. Not
you.”

“I’m not
diddling
anybody, Pop. I
walked her home, and then John picked me up. End of story.” He
wrenched his arm free from the vise of his father’s hand.

“I’m not an idiot, boy. And I’m not blind.
Maybe it’s been a while since I made ‘em myself, but I know
googly-eyes when I see ‘em. If you haven’t done anything stupid
yet, good. Don’t. Stay away.”

He turned and stalked off toward the parking
lot. “Home,” he said as he passed his children. Everyone fell in
line to follow. Carlo took Trey’s hand and trailed after. As he
crossed the sidewalk toward the parking lot, he met his Uncle Ben’s
eyes.

Uncle Ben had seen it all, too.

~oOo~

Early that afternoon, he and Luca sat on a
log on the beach, their wetsuits folded around their waists and
their boards leaning against the wood-slat fence behind them. A
small, red cooler sat in the sand between them, and they’d each
pulled a beer from it.

Luca was the black sheep, the rebel. He was
also Carlo’s favorite sibling. Even though Carlo was the
responsible one, and Luca was the one always in trouble, they got
each other better than anyone else. Carlo had eventually realized
that they were the most like their father of any of the siblings,
even though they were quite different. It was as if Carlo Sr.’s
personality had been divided in half and each of his eldest sons
got one half. Carlo was the one who put his head down, who almost
always did what was expected, who took care. The provider and
family man that their father was.

Luca was the one who demanded space of his
own, who would not bow to pressure to conform. He had the kind of
strength that their father had shown when he’d stood before his
older brothers and refused to become a part of their organization.
Their father had demanded the right to live a legitimate life, and
his brothers had respected his strength and embraced him for
it.

The line between the family businesses had
grown a little blurry over the years, and was getting even blurrier
if Joey had made the choice it seemed he might have, but their
father’s accomplishment in building a business that was successful
and respected in its own right was not diminished.

Luca shared another thing with their father
that Carlo didn’t share: physicality. Carlo was tall, lean, and
long-limbed, six-foot-three, with broad shoulders and comparatively
narrow hips, Luca was built like a cage fighter—right at six feet
and massively muscled, his biceps huge and his trapezius muscles
arcing noticeably over his shoulders. He’d actually done some
boxing and competitive MMA in his twenties, but he’d blown a knee.
It had been repaired, but he hadn’t been so enamored of the sport
that he’d been willing to cripple himself for it.

Their father had the same build. In later
life, it had tended to roundness, but Luca, at thirty-three, was
all hard muscle. Despite his greater height and his own cut
physique, on which he worked with some sense of commitment, Carlo
often felt unsubstantial next to his younger brother.

That was brought home again as they sat on
the beach. As usual, all the girls who walked by saw Luca first and
smiled at him, their hips picking up a little extra sway when he
smiled back. And he always smiled back.

But this afternoon he was less welcoming of
the girls’ attention than usual. He and Carlo were talking in some
depth. They were both in their father’s doghouse now.

Carlo had first asked about Joey, but Luca
didn’t know more than Carmen had, which wasn’t much. Whatever was
going on with Joey and the Uncles was new. Carlo Sr. had grabbed
his youngest son by the collar after breakfast and pulled him into
his study. They’d still been in there when Carlo had left Trey
watching television with Rosa and John and had gone out to have a
paddle with Luca. The waves had been a little mushy, but it was
always good just to get wet.

When they came back in and settled on the
beach, they’d first talked about Luca, because Carlo had taken a
preemptive strike and put their conversation on that path. Luca and
Carlo Sr. were fighting over a job bid, it turned out. Luca thought
their father was underbidding on a big job, to the point that he
thought it could hurt them. When he’d gotten nowhere in private
discussion, he’d challenged the bid in front of the customer.

Carlo was pretty glad he’d been in
Providence for the explosion that Luca had described.

“What’s the fallout?”

Luca shrugged. “We’ll see next week. After
that scene in front of the customer, I expect we’ll lose the bid.
But I’m glad. No way we could have made it with such a close shave.
He should have seen it even without me pointing it out. He
definitely should have seen it after I did. Something’s going on
with Pop. It’s like he’s getting desperate all of a sudden. I can’t
figure it. But I need to keep some space between him and me for a
while. Much as I can.”

There wasn’t much space Luca could get. He
was chief supervisor, in charge of all the crews. He was their
father’s right hand. But now Carlo understood why he hadn’t shown
for the cookout.

“Could he be sick? He was on me yesterday
about abandoning the family legacy. He even said he was going to
die, and then where would things be.”

Luca laughed. “No way he’ll ever see that it
should be me. Fucking sucks, too. I love that damn company.”

“I know. I still say he’ll come around
eventually. If only because there’s no one else.” The idea of
either John or Joey at the helm of Pagano & Sons was a joke.
Both worked crews—or had; Carlo wasn’t sure about Joey now—and both
were good on a job site, but neither had the acumen to run the
business.

“Yeah. But nah, I don’t think he’s sick. I
see him every day. If he is, the Oscar goes to, because he’s big
and strong and tough as ever. The moods are getting to be a pain in
the ass, but he’s not irrational. Just a son of a bitch. There’s
something goin’ on, though. Somewhere.” Luca drained his beer and
opened the cooler for another, tossing a fresh to Carlo, too. “But
my shit with Pop is old news. How’d you end up bunking with me in
the shithouse? Tell me what’s up with this chick. She’s hot—wicked
rack on her.”

He guessed he’d staved this conversation off
as long as he could. “She’s just a nice woman that I met. I only
walked her home when she left the bonfire last night. Nothing’s
up—she’s married.”

“Yeah, so I hear. To that Auberon bastard.
You know Pop and I are writing a bid for him, right?”

“No. I didn’t. Pete and I are trying to get
an invite to submit on something, too. Doesn’t matter. Seriously,
Luc. Just walked the woman home.”

Luca laughed. “Big brother, you are either
an idiot or a liar. There was some hardcore eye-fucking going on
this morning. Right there in front of Pop, Trey, Father Michael and
hell, probably God himself. I mean, it’s time you got back in the
game, but maybe you don’t want to start out with a death match, you
know? That guy is every bit as ruthless as the Uncles, and you know
it. You’re sitting on the wrong side of the pews if you want to
take on James Auberon. Especially if you’re doing it to fuck his
wife.”

“Jesus, Luc! I was nice to her. End of
story. And I met her two days ago. Why is everybody so damn sure I
want to get into her pants?”

“Don’t you? Be straight.”

He hesitated for only a second, but that was
enough. Luca laughed knowingly and slapped him on the back, and
Carlo didn’t even bother to answer.

Yeah. He did want her. Or, at least, he was
interested. But she belonged to somebody else. That she belonged to
a sadistic bastard was irrelevant. She had taken a vow to
another.

His family was right; he should stay away.
In this cozy little nook of the world, staying away might not be so
easy, though. Maybe he and Trey should cut their week short and
head back to Providence.

When Sabina got back to the beach house, she
removed her boots as quickly as she could and tried to flex her
sore foot. She’d wrapped it well, covering the gauze bandage with
an elastic bandage she’d wrapped around her foot and ankle to make
sure it all stayed in place. But even the low, two-inch heels of
these boots had been a small torture.

She changed from her church clothes into a
pair of dark brown shorts, leaving her little sweater on but taking
off most of her jewelry. Then she pulled her hair up into a
ponytail and picked up her book. She’d stay on the veranda today.
Sand was not yet her friend again.

Though she’d been enjoying the book she’d
started yesterday—it was an old Ellery Queen murder mystery, which
she’d found amusingly on point when she’d selected it—she had
trouble focusing this afternoon. There were many thoughts in her
head, and they all demanded to be thought at once.

She wasn’t completely certain why she’d gone
to Mass. It hadn’t been to see Carlo, although she had felt a
frightening thrill when she’d realized he was sitting near the
front. She’d gone for the Mass itself.

She hadn’t been in more than fifteen years,
not since she’d met and immediately become serious with James. He
was nominally a Presbyterian. In reality, though, he had no
patience for religion, and he sneeringly referred to Catholics as
‘papists,’ so there’d been no chance of her continuing to practice
the religion into which she’d been born. They’d met at a time in
her life when she’d been chafing at the rigid dogma of her Church
and questioning her faith in general, so she hadn’t really minded
or even noticed the way he’d pulled her from it. He’d given her
youthful rebellion an excuse, and she’d taken it.

It was years before she’d missed it. Even
after she’d known the hell she’d chosen instead, she hadn’t really
pined for Sunday Mass or confession or communion, or any of it. And
when she had, her faith had been bound up in a knot of nostalgia
that held all the things about who she’d been and what she’d
lost—her faith, her language, the last remnants of her family. All
of it. She’d had no specific need to reconnect with the Church.

But something about talking to Carlo last
night had touched that part of her. Perhaps it was the way he’d
simply known she would be Catholic, and the way he’d expected her
thus to understand why his marriage had been annulled. And she had
understood. Divorce among Catholics was serious business, and
Catholics who divorced could not remarry in the Church. An
annulment allowed for the chance to remarry. It was the need of a
man who had hope for his future.

Sabina didn’t share that—that hope. When
she’d come out of the church this morning and had seen, again, the
white Escalade parked on the street, the same white Escalade she’d
seen when she’d gone the night before to get her Chinese take-out,
both times with a driver behind the wheel, she’d added another
piece of evidence to the growing case that her remaining days were
few. Perhaps the man in the white Escalade was the one who’d been
given the job.

James had never before had her followed, as
far as she knew. He kept tabs on her—he often called the place she
was supposed to be and made sure she was there, and he always knew
her schedule for every day in its entirety, including her meals—but
he had not gone quite so far as to put a tail on her. Still, she
was perfectly certain that the white Escalade was there because her
husband wanted it to be.

James himself had been, so far, eerily
quiet. She’d been away almost twenty-four hours, and he’d texted
her only twice. No calls at all. She’d texted when she’d arrived
yesterday, and he’d sent back
Excellent, darling. I hope you
have a good week.
No instructions, no reminders, no
information. Odd in itself. Then, this morning, as she’d been
dressing for Mass, she’d received,
Good morning, darling
.
James was not one to send romantic messages. His texts always had a
purpose. So Sabina added them to the evidence pile—building his
alibi, his story of devotion.