Agent Darby cleared her throat. “Is there
anything else you can tell us?”
“Jenny is bipolar. She was on meds, but I
don’t know if she still is. Her manic phases never were euphoric.
She just got wound up and very easily angry. She got
hyper-obsessive about everything and really unpredictable. And
needy. Needy and jealous.” As he described her, Carlo remembered
the life he’d led with her. Since she’d left, it seemed that the
lens through which he looked back on their marriage changed and
sharpened each time he recalled any part of it. Until she’d been
medicated, and whenever she’d felt good enough that she went off
her meds to ‘try to do it on my own now,’ she’d actually been
nearly impossible to manage. All those quirks and foibles that he’d
found endearing at first—all of it was madness. He’d navigated
through a lot of landmines to love her.
And he knew that Trey was really in danger.
“When she’s up, she loses control of her anger and gets
destructive. When she’s down, she wants everything to end and gets
destructive. Either way, she’s got my kid, and she’s got a gun.
She’s already threatened to kill him. We need to stop fucking
talking and find her before she fucking does it!”
~oOo~
When the law left, Uncle Ben caught Carlo’s
eye and beckoned him with the crook of a hand. But Carlo had
something else to do first. Talking to the Feds had not calmed him
down in the slightest. If anything, he was angrier and more scared.
Now reality had set in. Trey was really gone. Jenny had him, and he
knew she knew that disappearing was the only way she could expect
to live. She was crazy, not stupid. Whether she intended to keep
Trey or whether she’d kill him, she knew she had to vanish.
His son was gone.
He turned and found Bina, sitting between
Carmen and John. Carmen was holding her hand.
When he’d come out of the Connelly meeting,
he’d had several texts and two voice mails. All the texts, two from
Bina and three from Luca, had directed him to check his voice mail.
Bina’s message had been nearly incomprehensible. She’d been
sobbing, and all he’d gotten from that had been “Trey—Joey—come
home—come now.” Luca, though, had been furiously, coldly calm and
had given him some detail. And more detail when Carlo called him
while Pete drove him home.
Luca had the story from Bina and had shared
it with Carlo, so he knew, or he had a solid image, of how it had
happened. He knew that Jenny had forced Bina to give Trey up—had
put a gun to his little boy’s head and threatened to kill him on
the spot if she hadn’t. He knew that Joey had put himself between
Jenny and Trey and Bina and tried to protect them.
He knew these things, and the rational part
of his head, the part that was an architect and a lover and a
reasonable, good person told him that Bina had had no choice. That
she had protected Trey by letting him go.
The father who’d lain awake night after
night watching his son, guarding him against the terrors of the
dark, the father who’d stood in his kitchen with his son on his
shoulder and read the note that said his mother didn’t want him,
the man who’d lifted Jenny up by her neck and promised to kill her
if she came near his child—that man only knew that Bina had opened
her arms and let Jenny have his son.
And that man was driving the bus.
Ignoring his Uncles, heedless of all the
other eyes in the room, Carlo stalked across the waiting room
toward Bina. Seeing him, she stood and took a couple of steps
toward him. He could see it in her hazel eyes—guilt and fear and
sorrow and worry and love, everything he, too, was feeling. But he
also had rage, and it was her hands that had let Trey go.
His hands got around her arms, and her fear
flared in her eyes as she understood. But she didn’t try to flee
his grip. Instead she whispered, pleading, “Carlo.”
“You let her take him.”
“Carlo, please. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.
I couldn’t—I didn’t—the gun. It was on his head.” She was sobbing
freely, her body trembling. “It was on his head and he was so
scared, and I couldn’t think how to save him but to let him go. She
was going to…she shot Joey, and she said she would shoot Trey.”
He knew all of that. He believed it all. But
he kept imagining her letting his son go. He had so much fury, and
all he could see was that. Bina giving Trey away. “You let her take
him. You let her take him.
You let her take him.
YOU LET HER
TAKE HIM.”
Suddenly all but deaf and blind with rage,
he had a vague sense of her having become somehow
blurry
,
and then Luca and John were dragging him across the room. His
vision cleared some. Bina was on the floor. Carmen was helping her
up.
Then Luca punched him in the face.
He’d shaken her so hard that her brain had
seemed to bounce in her skull and her neck shrieked with pain. When
Luca freed her, and he and John hauled Carlo back, Sabina couldn’t
keep her feet. Dizzy, sick, and distraught, she crumpled to the
floor.
Nothing that had happened to her in her life
could compare to the devastation she felt now, that she had felt
since Jenny had taken Trey out of her arms. This, she was not
strong enough to withstand. Trey’s fear when she’d pried him loose,
the way he’d looked at her over Jenny’s shoulder as she’d run to
the car, Joey lying bleeding on the ground—those moments and
everything since had been beyond her capacity, beyond even her
comprehension.
And Carlo blamed her. Of course he blamed
her. She had had charge of Trey. He had been her responsibility,
and she had pried his terrified arms from around her neck and
handed him to a woman with a gun.
There had to have been something she could
have done differently. If she’d run back to Carmen’s cottage while
she had Trey in her arms? Or if she had been more alert, perhaps
she would have noticed an opportunity to get to the scant shelter
of Joey’s Jeep? Something, anything that would have stopped
Jenny.
Carmen squatted at her side and took her
arm. “Sabina. Hon, can you get up?”
Still wracked with sobs, Sabina didn’t
answer. Carmen grabbed her chin and made her look up. The movement
made her neck ache. “Did he hurt you?”
Yes, but no more than she deserved. She
shook her head. That hurt, too.
“Okay, come on. Get off the floor.” Carmen
stood, pulling on her arm, and led her back to her feet and then
into a chair. She picked up Sabina’s hand. “He’s upset. When he can
calm down, he’ll know it’s not your fault. You did the right thing,
Sabina. You did the only thing you could do.”
“I was to keep him safe.”
“And you did. In that situation, you did the
only thing that would.”
She and Carmen had already had this talk.
She’d also had it with Luca, and Uncle Ben, and Carlo Sr. None of
them blamed her. The detectives and police officers who questioned
her, they didn’t seem to blame her, either—though the detectives
had had some pointed questions about Auberon and her association
with the Pagano family. Still, they seemed to be operating on the
premise that she might be a connection between the cases, not that
she was responsible.
But those who mattered did blame her—Trey
with his terrified eyes, reaching back for her, seeking rescue from
his own mother, and Carlo, lost in sea of rage and pain. And
herself. She blamed herself, too.
“Should I go? I should go. He doesn’t want
me here.”
Carmen dropped her hand and sat back.
“Sabina, I don’t care what he wants. I care what he needs. If you
want to be part of us, then don’t pussy out. We pull together. Are
you family or are you not?”
“Is it not his choice?”
“Not right now. He’s in no state to make
choices, clearly.” She turned to her. “If you care about Trey and
Joey, and about Carlo, you stay with the other people who do. Even
if it hurts. That’s family.”
She cared about all of them. She loved every
member of the Pagano family, felt close to every one of them, in a
way she had not been able to be close to anyone, love anyone, since
she had been a teenager.
Joey…in the furor over missing Trey, the
reason they were all meeting in the hospital was getting lost. Joey
had been shot in the chest. After Jenny had pulled away with Trey
still struggling in her arms, Sabina had forced herself to focus
and commit the license plate to memory. Then she’d dropped to her
knees at Joey’s shoulder. He’d been unconscious, his breath coming
in fading bursts. His t-shirt had already been soaked with blood,
and his perspiring skin had been far too pale. Holding his slack,
clammy hand, she’d pulled her phone out of the beach tote and
dialed 911.
When help was on the way, knowing that her
next call had to be to Carlo, Sabina had simply broken down. She’d
managed the call but not coherence. He hadn’t answered, and she
couldn’t even remember what she’d said on the message. Then,
needing more, needing somebody to help her, she’d called Luca.
He’d arrived before the ambulance. Kneeling
with her at his brother’s unconscious body, he’d pulled the story
out of her. And he had handled everything from that point. Sabina
had not been strong enough.
She was not strong enough.
But she wanted to be. She needed to be.
“Sabina.” Carmen’s voice broke through her
bitter reverie. “Are you here with us? Through it all?”
“Yes. Unless it causes for Carlo trouble. I
don’t want to hurt him more.”
“You’re not trouble, Sabina. You’re help. He
knows it. He’ll see it again. We all see it. Even Pop sees it
now.”
Watching Carlo and his brothers across the
room, Carlo with his mouth now bleeding, Luca jabbing him in the
shoulder as he talked, Sabina wondered if he would see it—if he
could ever again see her as more than the person who let an
unstable woman with a gun take his son away.
All such concerns were set aside when the
surgery doors opened and two doctors in green surgical scrubs came
out. Sabina and all the Paganos—and the man who’d come with Carlo,
who looked vaguely familiar, but whom Sabina was not sure she
knew—stood. Carlo Sr. stepped forward, and the family arrayed
itself with him, Luca and Carmen at either side of him, John a step
behind, Uncle Ben and Uncle Lorrie and their wives at his side,
Nick and Mrs. D. back from them. Sabina stayed near her chair.
Carlo, too, hung back, the vaguely familiar man with him.
Sabina couldn’t hear what was being said in
the cluster around the doctors, but she saw the reactions of the
family. The news was not good. Carlo Sr. dropped his head, and Luca
put his hand on his back. Carmen held him. The rest of the family
reacted in similar ways.
Feeling a sick sense of doom, and not sure
what to do, Sabina waited, glancing back and forth between the
cluster of family and Carlo off to the side. She wasn’t sure
whether she wanted to catch his eye or not. She feared what she
might see if she did.
As the doctors led Carlo Sr. and Carmen
through the doors, Luca broke away from the group and came to her,
his brow etched with concern, or maybe with sorrow. He rubbed her
arm, a gesture meant to calm, even reassure.
Before she faced Luca, Sabina saw the Uncles
talking to Nick. Nick nodded and left.
She looked up at the man standing before
her. “Luca?” She was afraid to ask a question directly.
“They don’t know. The bullet nicked some
artery in his chest, and he lost a lot more blood than we even
knew. His organs started to shut down.” He stared at the door
through which his father and sister had gone. “They don’t know.
They’re letting us back in recovery in pairs, because he could go
at any time. Or he could turn it around. They’re trying to get him
stable enough for the ICU. Where the fuck is Rosie?” He spun on his
heel. “John—Rosie?”
John shrugged. “I’ve left messages. Should I
just go to her dorm and grab her?”
“No. You need to be here in case…” Luca
didn’t finish. “Fuck. Fuck!”
“I can go.” The man who’d brought Carlo had
stepped forward. “I’ve got Carlo’s car, but I don’t mind going. If
you think it will help.”
Luca thought for a minute. He looked at
John, who nodded. “Yeah. If we get ahold of her in the meantime, I
don’t want her driving, anyway. So, yeah. Thanks, Pete. It’s a big
help.”
“Not a problem. What dorm?”
“Emery.”
The man—Pete, that was Carlo’s business
partner—nodded and waved a set of keys at Carlo, who nodded. Then
he left.
Luca wrapped a hand around Sabina’s arm. “Go
talk to him. It’s a lot to ask after what he just did, but he’s
calmer now, and I think you should talk to him. Can you?”
“Luca, he…I…I let Trey go. I understand his
anger.”
“You did everything right, Sabina. If
anybody fucked up, it was Joe. He was there to protect you. He
should have been prepared to do that.”
“He did protect us—he got between us, and
see what happened.”
Luca made a gesture like he was brushing
that topic away. “I’m telling you. Carlo needs you. He needs his
kid. He’s fucked up right now. What he did to you was fucked up,
but it doesn’t mean he really blames you. People think he’s the
good one, the reasonable one, and he is—but he has a trigger about
protecting his family. He goes a little Hulk smash. But he knows
it’s not your fault. Don’t let guilt fuck everything up worse than
it is.”