“I’ll stay.”
There was a knock on the door, and Carmen
peeked in. “Sabina? I have a doctor here. He’s here to help
you.”
Carlo had a sudden shock of worry about how
she’d do with a male doctor right now, but she took a breath and
then nodded, still squeezing his hand. “You stay?”
He leaned forward and kissed her knuckles.
“I stay. Hold my hand. Whatever you need.”
~oOo~
Dr. Kerr first did an examination, then took
a break before performing any procedures, because Sabina needed to
be cleaned up. Rosa and Carmen brought two tubs of warm water and
some soft towels, and then they left, and Carlo helped her get
clean. She wanted only his help, could abide only his help.
He was her only friend.
And so, he first experienced her body by
washing her blood from it. She lay passively, trembling, as he did
so. Because he needed to be gentle, because he needed to be calm,
he tried to shut his mind away from thoughts of what must have been
done to her to hurt her so.
When he was almost finished, he helped her
to sit upright. Then he washed her feet, being as careful and
gentle as he could. Carmen had not exaggerated much when she’d
called them ‘shredded’—Bina wouldn’t be walking on them again right
away. He remembered washing the sand from her wound before—had it
only been three days since then? That night seemed much farther in
the past.
He looked up to see her watching him, tears
streaming from her eyes. He set the tubs away and took her hands.
“Bina. I’m so sorry.”
“Please no,” she whispered. “You shouldn’t
be sorry.” She took a hand from his and combed it through his hair.
“Not you.”
~oOo~
When Sabina had been fully treated, Dr. Kerr
gave her an injection of morphine, and she slept deeply. Carlo was
relieved to see peace come over her beautiful face as the
medication took effect. He went out of the room to find Uncle Ben
and the doctor packed in with Carmen, John, Joey, and Rosa in
Carmen’s little living room. They were all drinking tea. Carmen
lifted her cup, a gesture to ask if he wanted one, and he shook his
head.
Uncle Ben set his cup on the low table in
front of him. “How is she?”
“Sleeping. I think she’s comfortable now.”
He nodded a thanks to the doctor, who accepted it with an incline
of his own head.
“Dennis filled me in on her condition.”
Dennis was Dr. Kerr. Carlo didn’t figure doctor-patient
confidentiality applied when Uncle Ben was involved. And, honestly,
he was okay with that. He wanted Uncle Ben to know what Auberon had
done. “That a man would do that to any woman, much less his own
wife—”
Carlo cut his uncle off. “She told me he
paid somebody to do it. While he told him what to do. He
watched.”
All eyes in the room locked on him, but at
first no one spoke. Then Uncle Ben stood. When Joey started to
stand as well, he waved him off. He buttoned a button on his suit
jacket. “Walk with me, nephew.” He came around the chair behind
which Carlo had been standing and took hold of his arm. “Let’s take
some air on Carmen’s little porch.”
They went out and stood in the dark, only
the lights through the windows illuminating the overcast night.
“I’m nullifying our arrangement,
Junior.”
“What? Uncle, no! No! Trey! And she has—she
needs—he’ll—” He was too shocked and nearly blind with anger to
land on words that would complete a sentence—or to fret that he had
crossed a line of respect. “Uncle!”
Uncle Ben put his hands up onto Carlo’s
shoulders, and Carlo fought the urge to knock him away. “Calm down,
boy. My plans for Auberon haven’t changed. I’m saying that you will
owe nothing. I don’t do this for you, now. I do this for her. And
for your son. I do this because that filth that calls itself a man
repels me. Tonight I’m thinking about my Lita. So we don’t have an
arrangement. I’m taking this on myself.”
Flooded with relief and comprehension all at
once, Carlo nodded. “Thank you, Uncle Ben.”
“No need, boy.” He pulled Carlo into an
embrace. “No need.” When he set him back, his weary eyes, shaded by
thick, white brows, narrowed. “Keep her close. Until you hear from
us, keep an eye on her and your boy. This won’t take long.”
“Yes, sir. Yes.”
~oOo~
Uncle Ben, Dr. Kerr, and Joey left after the
doctor gave instructions for Sabina’s care and a number to reach
him should she take a wrong turn. The other siblings stayed where
they were for now; a sort of siege mentality had taken over their
collective mood. Auberon had lashed out viciously at Sabina and
Carlo, and then he had simply backed away. No one thought he was
giving up. Carlo thought, and said as much to Carmen and John, that
he didn’t think Auberon had considered that he would have already
gone to Uncle Ben.
Maybe he wouldn’t expect Carlo to have gone
to the Uncles at all. If he had done his research, then he knew
that the branches of the family were separate. Maybe he was banking
on the idea that Carlo would not cross those branches and take on
all that might mean for a woman he’d met only days before.
If so, he was wrong, and Carlo looked
forward to Auberon learning the consequences of his mistakes.
Carmen stood. “I think we should all go back
to the house.” She meant the house on Caravel Road. Probably as
long as they all lived, no matter how many of their own houses
they’d owned or how long they’d lived in them, ‘the house’ would
always mean the one in which they’d grown up.
She gathered up the empty cups from around
the living room; Rosa got up and helped.
“Yeah. We should all be together, and we’re
too exposed here. This guy is obviously willing and able to do some
real damage.” John nodded and turned to Carlo. “Right?”
Sabina was sleeping, still under the
morphine. But he wanted to get back to Trey. Though he’d talked to
Luca, and to Trey, several times since he’d stood in his son’s
demolished bedroom, his gaze fused to those red words on his wall,
he needed to see him, to hold him. He turned, conflicted, and
stared at the door to Carmen’s office, where Bina was sleeping.
“She’s sleeping. And she’s so hurt.”
John patted his back. Like Carlo and Carmen,
John was dark, with black hair and olive skin. Tall and lean, too.
They took more after their mother, Teresa. The other siblings,
taking after their father, were a little shorter and slightly more
fair, with rosier skin, brown hair. All the siblings but Carlo and
Carmen had green or hazel eyes.
Less than an inch shorter than Carlo, John
was the only one in the family who could literally look him
straight in the eye. He did so now. “While she’s on the dope would
be the time to take her, then. I’ll leave my truck here and drive
your Porsche. You can hold her in the back seat. Sound good?”
“Yeah, okay. If she’ll let me touch her that
closely.” He worried that putting his hands on her while she slept
was too much of an intrusion, but John was the only other here who
could carry her, and she barely knew him.
She barely knew Carlo, for that matter. But
it was different.
“That’s why we do it now. While she’s doped
up. Come on, we’re all set.” John pushed him toward the office
door.
She was still sleeping deeply and quietly,
but when he bent down and, as carefully as he could, slid his hands
under her, leaving the soft, old quilt to cover her, she moaned.
Her brow furrowed, and she whimpered, “No more.” Then she settled
again, and Carlo cradled her to his chest and carried her out of
Carmen’s cottage, his brother and sisters right with him.
~oOo~
The house was full in a way it hadn’t been
in more than a decade. All of the siblings were home. Rosa and
Carmen were sharing their old room. Joey, who’d been sent on behalf
of the Uncles to stay with his family, was bunking again with John.
Luca had reclaimed the attic room he’d built out for himself when
he was in high school. Carlo and Trey had the rooms they’d already
been staying in—Carlo in his boyhood bedroom, Trey in his
grandmother’s tiny sewing room, which had been converted into a
room for him after he was born. Carlo had settled Sabina in the
downstairs guest room; she hadn’t woken again since he’d picked her
up from Carmen’s daybed.
And Carlo Sr. was in the best mood he’d been
in in months. It didn’t seem to matter that the whole family was
home and staying at least the night because they were suddenly in a
war with James Auberon. It might as well have been Christmas. He’d
called Mrs. D. over and they’d made sure all the beds were fresh,
and now they were both in the kitchen, Mrs. D. making a late supper
and Carlo Sr. pouring drinks.
Carlo put Trey to bed, ducking his questions
about all the commotion. On his way back to check on Sabina, he
stuck his head into the kitchen and watched his father for a
minute. He’d been right about what was going on with their father
lately. He was lonely. Though he worked every day with two of his
sons, and though none of his children had gone far from home, Carlo
Sr. came home every night to this huge old house and was alone in
it. He was getting lost in his own head.
Maybe, Carlo thought, it was time for his
father to downsize. But that thought froze him in his tracks. To
lose this house? All its memories? The essence of their mother,
which yet suffused every room? The memories still being made in it?
No. He swept that idea from his mind.
As he grappled with the wave of emotion his
thoughts had brought on, he heard a thudding crash from the guest
room. Bina. He turned and ran into the room and found her on the
floor, trying to wrap blankets around herself and force herself up
to stand on her wounded feet all at once.
“Bina!” He went to help her.
“No!” She shouted, her voice stronger than
it had been, but filled with strain and fear. She clutched the
quilt to her body. “No! Get away!”
Carlo dropped his hands and knelt by her.
Her eyes were wide and scared. “Bina, it’s okay. You’re safe.
You’re safe.”
Her eyes were a little vague and unfocused;
she was still coming off the morphine. She blinked and took a rough
breath. “Carlo? What is—where am—where is this place?”
He hadn’t thought. He’d tucked her in and
known she was safe, and he hadn’t thought that when she woke she
would have no idea where she was. He cursed his stupidity, but he
smiled in a way he hoped was encouraging.
“You’re at my house. I mean, my father’s
house. You’re safe. You’re safe.” He reached out and brushed his
fingers over her hand where it clutched the quilt to her chest.
“You’re hurt, Bina. You need to stay in bed. Can I help you?”
She remained perfectly still, staring at
him, for long seconds. Carlo could practically see her mind
whirring behind her eyes, trying to make sense of a life that had
gone senseless. He felt a sliver of understanding. His life, too,
had been shaken hard on this day, though nothing like she’d
endured.
“Bina,” he tried again. “Please let me help
you.”
She nodded, and he went to his feet and
lifted her up, feeling every one of her gasps of pain and tiny
whimpers like needles in his gut. When he got her settled again on
the bed, he brushed her hair from her sweet face, sallow now with
pain and trauma. “Can I do more for you? Get you anything?”
She reached up and took his hand. “Will you
stay? Here, with me? You stay?”
“I will.” Fully dressed, he untied the
Timberlands he’d laced up in the morning of a different life and
kicked them off. Then he lay down behind James Auberon’s wife, now
estranged, and tucked her battered body against his chest.
They neither spoke nor moved again. Carlo
lay awake for a long time after the weight of her presence and the
rhythm of her breath had told him she was sleeping. He wondered
what his life would be like in the morning.
When Beniamino Pagano took on a personal
mission, he moved quickly and with all his considerable might.
Though she did not know it at the time, Sabina was safe from
Auberon within twenty-four hours of falling into Carmen’s arms.
But a man like James Auberon did not simply
disappear.
On the second day after Carlo brought Sabina
to stay at the house on Caravel Road, he got a call from Uncle
Lorrie, instructing him to have her call her husband in as a
missing person. She was not yet healed or strong, but Auberon had
seen to it that her wounds could be hidden. The police came to the
house and interviewed her there.
The story was that she was spending a week
at their beach house alone, intending to get it prepped for the
summer. However, she’d noticed quickly that she was being followed,
and she’d let James know. He’d come to check on her and to check
out her concerns, then told her to stay with friends while he had
someone look into it. That had been, she told the police, sitting
in Carlo’s father’s living room, the last time she’d seen her
husband.
Her real physical pain, the evidence for
which was covered by yoga pants and a hoodie, and her continuing
psychological trauma as that day cycled over and over through her
head, made playing the worried wife fairly easy. The detectives
were kind to her and attentive. They took down the details she
provided about the white Escalade and told her they would keep her
posted and would do what they could to keep the media away for as
long as possible.