Carlo turned to her. “We can go back,
Bina.”
“No, we can’t. Back is the wrong way to go.”
She took a breath and stepped forward.
Carmen came to the door to see who was
lurking around her house; when she saw them, she nodded and then
closed her door, as if she could tell just by looking at them that
they wanted to be alone. Maybe she could; these siblings seemed to
be connected in all sorts of ways.
Fighting back the newest memory by pulling
forward thoughts of sitting around the fire with the Paganos, of
watching Carlo play in the surf with Trey, of kissing him in
Carmen’s kitchen, feeling him, Sabina made it to the tideline.
The night was glorious, clear and bright,
the moon nearly full, the sea calm and rhythmic. There was an extra
bit of chill in the air, and the beach was empty on this midweek
night. They walked in quiet for a while until she felt calm again.
When they came to a cluster of large rocks, she pulled on his hand,
and he stopped and looked down at her, concerned.
“I’d like to sit.”
With a nod, he lead her to the rocks, and
they sat. Then he took her chin in his hand and turned her face to
his. “What’s going on, Bina? Something’s on your mind.”
“Yes.” With a deep breath and a squeeze of
his hand, before she could be dissuaded by his beautiful, warm eyes
on hers, she said what she had rehearsed. “It’s time that I go,
Carlo. Go away. I need to make a life for myself, and it’s very
easy to stay hiding in yours.”
His hand dropped from her chin, and he
turned and looked out over the water. “Where will you go?”
“I’m not sure. There are things still I need
to make sense of. I know little about myself.”
“Stay here. In Quiet Cove. I’ll take Trey
back to Providence.”
“No, Carlo. This is your home. I need to
make one of my own.”
“Bina, you’ve already started to make a home
here. You have friends here, now. People who care about you. People
who aren’t me. I’ll stay away. If it’s me you need to get away
from, I’ll let you be.”
“I think you don’t understand me well. It’s
us
I need to make distance from. I’m not enough of myself
now to have with you what I want.”
He turned from the water finally and looked
at her. “What do you mean?”
“I’m not strong, Carlo. I…I don’t feel even
like a full person. I don’t know how to describe…I had always to—to
adapt to him”—she hated even to say the name of her dead husband
these days—“and so I lost myself. Like I lost my language. I tried
to think in Spanish the other day. I could not. I don’t have enough
words left of my own language to make even one thought. I gave up
everything that I was to survive him. All of me, all of my
strength, to endure. And now I am not strong. I have to become
strong. I want to be with you strong.”
With a sad laugh, Carlo picked up her hand
and set it on his leg. “That is the definition of strength, you
know. To endure. I think you’re one of the strongest people I know.
To endure what you have, to have freed yourself, to be sitting
here, on this beach, with me, to know what you need and to say
it—Bina, I’m in awe of your strength.”
“I thought I was strong. But now I don’t
feel it. I must feel it in myself.”
“I understand. But Bina—don’t kick away from
the new moorings you’ve found. Stay here. Not in the house, but in
town. The money from the ring will get you started. I’ll stay away,
but keep your friends close. You deserve people in your life who
care about you, and you have that now.”
She smiled and bumped his arm lightly with
her shoulder. “You would just like your brothers to keep an eye on
me.”
“Maybe a little.” He shifted on his rocky
perch and faced her. “Bina, I know the time we’ve known each other
has been chaotic. And I understand what you’re saying now. I won’t
try to force you or even ask you to do something you’re not sure
about. But I want to be clear. I would like very much to be with
you. You say you want to be strong, to have what you want with me.
I’ll give you the time and space you want. But I want you to know
that I’m here. When you’re ready.”
“I don’t know how long that will be. You
shouldn’t bind yourself like that. I don’t want you to do
that.”
“Well, how about this. If you change your
mind, or if I feel like I need to move on, we’ll talk about that.
We’ll be honest with each other.”
She nodded, fighting back sad tears. What
she really wanted, wanted quite badly, was to curl into his arms.
Instead, she forced on a bright smile. “You are a wonderful,
wonderful man, Carlo Pagano Jr. You are my hero.”
He surprised her by flinching at that. “No,
Bina. No. I’m not. You’re your own hero. I don’t want to be that. I
just want to be a man who loves you.”
It was her turn to flinch, and her resolve
bowed under the weight of that word. She didn’t know whether he was
professing his feelings, or whether he was suggesting the
potential. Either way, she could not engage that thought and keep
her resolve. No man had ever said such a thing to her. So she
dropped her head and said nothing.
After a moment, he bent down and kissed the
top of her head. “Let’s go back. I need to pack.”
Carlo was torn from a restless sleep by
Trey’s terrified wails. His boy’s night terrors had come back, and
they were worrisome in their intensity. He rolled out of bed,
turning on the bedside lamp but still nearly tripping over Elsa,
who’d come in looking for help, and went into the living room of
their sparse suite at an extended-stay hotel.
Trey wasn’t awake yet; he was curled into a
fetal ball, crying with hopeless fear. It broke Carlo’s heart. He
leaned over the mattress of the fold-out sofa and scooped his son
into his arms. As soon as he hit Carlo’s chest, Trey woke with a
start and then nearly strangled him, his little arms encircling his
neck like slender iron bands.
“Daddy!”
“Shhh. Shhh, pal. I got you. I got you. Come
on, come sleep with me.” He was going to have to give up the idea
of Trey sleeping on his own, at least for now. There was too much
turmoil in his young life.
They’d come back to Providence almost two
weeks earlier. With the loft trashed, and Carlo, those blood-red
words etched into his eyes and brain, sure that he’d never be able
to bring his son to live there again, he’d moved them into this
crappy little suite until he could figure out a better situation.
He had no idea what his long-term finances even were like at this
point, so he couldn’t begin to look for a new place.
He’d done well for himself at Supratecture.
He’d made an excellent salary and had been moving up in the
company—hence his Porsche and the loft. He’d also had a healthy
savings account, but he’d sunk a lot of that into Pagano-Cabot. And
now that fledgling business, his dream and Peter’s, was on the
ropes. Insurance payouts hadn’t yet come for either the loft or the
office, and that pile of confetti that had been Carlo’s drafts had
lost them some prime opportunities.
Peter was pounding the pavement like a
madman, and Carlo was designing until his hands cramped, and they
had some new opportunities coming up. But the big question was
whether they could hold out long enough to get the insurance payout
and get some proposals accepted. Without the insurance money, they
were keeping things going with rubber bands and chewed gum. Carlo
was missing important tools that he couldn’t afford to replace
without that money.
In the first month after the destruction,
Carlo had been focused on Sabina and helping her get healthy and
feel safe. The attention from law enforcement and media had been
white-hot for weeks, when she was at her weakest. He’d neglected
the business, and he was paying for it now. So was Peter, and it
was taking a toll on their relationship. Peter seemed to be making
an effort to avoid him at every opportunity. Carlo understood; all
of this was his fault. All of it. He’d taken on James Auberon, and,
though Auberon had been beaten, he’d done a lot of damage on his
way down.
The greatest toll, though, since they’d left
the Cove, had been on Trey. He hated it at this place. There was
too much commotion outside the door during both day and night, and
he didn’t have his toys or anything that made him feel at home. And
Carlo, focused on work, was not paying the attention to him now
that he needed.
Natalie came over every day, working her
full schedule, and Trey was better then, but Carlo’s garrulous,
happy son was growing quiet and guarded. He was taking two naps a
day again, when before all the upheaval he’d been on his way to
abandoning naps entirely. But naptime was the only time Trey slept
peacefully. At night, he had terrors.
Now, he curled tightly against his father’s
bare chest and stuck his finger in his mouth—another thing he’d
been growing out of that had come back in earnest. Elsa, satisfied
that her charge was safe and calm, slid to the floor with a groan
and a sigh.
Carlo looked down into his son’s green eyes.
“Go back to sleep now, pal. I’ll be here to keep you safe.”
Trey took his thumb out of his mouth
mid-suck, making a wet popping sound. “I want to go home, Daddy. Or
to Pop-Pop’s house. I don’t like it here. This is a wrong
place.”
“I know, pal. But I told you. Our house got
broken when we were at Pop-Pop’s, and I need to find us another
one. It’s going to take some time.”
“Let’s go back to Pop-Pop’s, then.”
Carlo thought of Bina. He knew she wasn’t
living at the house anymore, but she’d taken his advice and stayed
in the Cove, and he couldn’t be that close to where she was, not
yet. He’d told her he’d stay away, until she was ready. If she was
ever ready. He hadn’t heard from her since the morning after their
talk on the beach, when he’d packed Trey and Elsa up and brought
them here. Almost two weeks.
“We can’t, Trey. Pop-Pop is too busy right
now. We’ll go back as soon as we can.”
Trey began to cry again, and Carlo sat up
and pulled him onto his lap, holding him as closely as he could.
“Come on, pal. We’re okay. I’ll keep you safe, and Natalie comes
over every day, and there’s the cool playground by the pool,
remember?”
“But Mommy doesn’t know this place! When she
comes home, she won’t know where we are! She’ll be sad and lonely!”
His desolate wails overtook him, and he all but threw his head into
Carlo’s chest.
Carlo’s heart had frozen at Trey’s first
plaintive exclamation. As far as he’d known, Trey had stopped
thinking about Jenny months ago. He hadn’t mentioned her, or drawn
her picture, or made any kind of indication that Jenny was in his
head or heart at all in
months
. He’d thought that Trey had
forgotten her. Now it seemed that he’d just tucked her away for
safekeeping. Stunned and saddened, he didn’t know what to say or
do, but he knew he had to say something.
“Trey, pal. Do you remember what I told you
when Mommy left?” He hadn’t had the faintest idea what to tell his
three-year-old son about his mother’s abandonment, so he’d been as
simply honest as he could.
Trey nodded, and Carlo was surprised again.
“Uh-huh. Mommy had to go away because she was sad.” He looked up at
Carlo, his eyelashes beaded with tears. “But maybe she’s happy now
and can come back.”
“I don’t think so, pal. Mommy has to stay
where her happy is, and you and I stay here, where our happy
is.”
“But my happy isn’t here. I don’t like it
here. I want to go home.”
“I know, Trey. I’m sorry. I’ll fix it. But
it’s just you and me, okay?”
“And Ms. Bina? Can Ms. Bina be in our
happy?”
Trey and Bina had become something of an
item while they were all staying at the house, and Trey was missing
her since they’d left. Carlo hoped that she wasn’t another woman
who’d come into his son’s life to disappear. But if she was, it
would be his fault, not hers.
He was surprised she’d never had children of
her own; she’d been easy and nurturing with Trey from the moment
she’d met him. Then again, he could understand not wanting James
Auberon to sire children.
“I think we should make our own happy for
now, pal. Just you and me.”
Trey thought about that for a minute and
finally nodded, his anguish easing with the speed only available to
the very young. “Can we find a house that isn’t broke?”
Maybe he could find a short-term rental.
Considering what the hotel was costing him, he thought it couldn’t
put him any deeper into the red than he was already gushing. “Yeah.
We’ll start looking tomorrow, okay?”
His eyelids finally drooping again, Trey
nodded and stuck his thumb back in his mouth.
Carlo lay awake for a long time after that,
watching his son sleep and thinking about his ex-wife. He’d been
thinking a lot about Jenny since that last night on the beach with
Bina, when she’d called him her hero—thinking about Jenny, and
Bina, and what Carmen had said, wondering if his sister was right,
wondering whether it mattered if she was. Now, he let himself think
it out. Had he rescued Jenny? Was that all it had been? Was that
why she’d left? Was the same thing at the root of his feelings for
Bina, feelings that were only intensifying during this time away
from her? Was he setting himself, and his son, up for the same kind
of devastation?