Deep (Pagano Family #4)(100)

He had been a baby-faced guy, his features so symmetrical he’d been almost beautiful rather than handsome. From the left profile, he still was. But he would never be classically handsome again, no matter what the doctors did.

He’d retained his goofy good humor, though—or he’d gotten it back, just as Bev had found her true self again, too. Most of her scars were on the inside. Today was a test, she thought, to know how healed she really was on the inside. Donnie, too.

Sassy Sal’s was ready to open. Tonight, Bruce was throwing an invitation-only re-opening party. She’d been at the shop trying to keep herself busy and not think about the party too much. She hadn’t been back to the diner since that night. She still had trouble walking past it. Bruce had boarded up the windows during the remodel, otherwise she wasn’t sure she’d have been able to do it.

But today, she was going in. And it looked like she’d be on Donnie’s arm.

“Well, if you’re a *, I’m a *. Nick called a while ago to say he’d be late, and I was starting to chicken out about going at all.”

“Okay, then. We’ll be pussies together and hold each other up. You ready to go?”

“Yeah. Just let me make sure Catty has food and water before I lock up.”

Catty tended to, she set the alarm and they went out the front. She locked the door, and they headed down the block.

The windows were unboarded. Bruce had paid someone to paint a retro-style holiday scene across the glass. The lights in the diner were bright and cheerful, and Bev could see retro decorations—glass balls and silver tinsel; old-fashioned cardboard Santas, elves, snowmen, and bells; a silver, rotating Christmas tree adorned with more glass balls—festooning every inch of the place. Bing Crosby Christmas carols wafted through the windows into the cold air of the street.

Donnie squeezed her arm. “You ready?”

“I’m ready. I think.”

“On three?”

She nodded.

“One…two…” He opened the door. The bell tinkled in the flat way that was so familiar, and Bev broke into tears.

Donnie stopped and let the door close again. “Hey, hey.” He pulled her close. “We don’t have to.”

“No, it’s not that.” She sniffled and got hold of herself. “The bell made me a little homesick. I’m okay.” She stepped back and smiled. “I’m okay, really.”

Bruce opened the door. He looked good. Happy. “You guys okay?”

“Yeah. We’re good.” Bev turned to Donnie. “Right?”

“Right. We’re good.” They went in.

It was good.





25



Nick sat on a wicker chair on his cousin Carlo’s flagstone patio, drinking a beer and talking with Carlo, Luca, and John. Listening, mostly. Actually, he wasn’t really doing that, either. He was sitting with his cousins while they talked. He was watching Beverly. She was pale, and she’d been cross most of the day, at least with him. With his family, she was her usual, smiling, delightful self.

The whole family had just finished helping the kids find Easter eggs in the yard. Since Little Ben was only a year and a half, and Teresa was barely one, that meant that seven-year-old Trey had been the only kid really looking. The adults had found most of them. His cousins had turned it into a big competition, which Luca had won.

This was the sort of thing Nick didn’t get. A bunch of adults running around, digging in shrubbery for plastic eggs filled with candy. Was that supposed to be fun?

He would admit, though, that the kids were pretty cute. Teresa, just beginning to toddle, waddled after her cousins, taking two steps, falling forward and showing a little bottom covered in ruffles, then standing up again and taking two more steps, never seeming to get frustrated at her slow progress. Little Ben was a terror, running full bore back and forth across the yard, his arms pinwheeling, chasing after Elsa, the dog, roaring and barreling headlong into her side. Even Trey rolled his eyes at his little brother’s antics.

Nick turned back to Beverly. She wasn’t pregnant yet. Every time she was a little run-down, he got hopeful. Nothing yet—but she’d been tired and cranky yesterday morning, then better later in the day. This morning had been the same. She’d been so shaky at Mass that she’d stepped out, and they’d had a little whispered squabble when he’d tried to go with her. Now, as the afternoon ripened, she looked rosier and not so much like she had to try to have fun.

Morning sickness?

“Dude. You with us?” Luca elbowed him.

“What? Sorry.”

They all laughed at him. Grinning broadly, Luca said, “You’re maybe the last person I’d have expected to get that look about you, coz.”

“What look?”

“The ‘she completes me’ look. Carlo gets it all the time.”

Carlo threw a stuffed mushroom at his brother, who caught it in the air and popped it into his mouth with a smirk. “And you don’t? Please. That little girl has you tied in so many knots you don’t know which way is up.”

Luca grinned and flipped Carlo off. John, the only single guy in this group, just shrugged and shook his head.

And Nick realized he wasn’t the odd man out. Not in this group. He had something in common with Luca and Carlo. He had love. A wife. A future.