Deep (Pagano Family #4)(104)

After three girls in a row, Nick wasn’t sure they’d ever have a son. But his love for his daughters overwhelmed him. They were beautiful, brilliant rays of their mother’s sun.

“Well, God gave you a baby sister. And when she gets a little older, you can teach her how to be a good girl and let your mamma sleep.” He set the brush down. “Okay. Get Princesses, and let’s go to Elisa.”

She trotted over to her pink bookcase with the pink ballet shoes painted all over it and pulled out her pink copy of The Twelve Dancing Princesses. They didn’t actually need the book, Nick thought. He’d read it so many times he dreamed about their stupid secret dances. Twelve little girls defying their parents night after night. Fairy tales sucked.

Lia came over with the book tucked under her arm. She took his hand and pulled, and he came up off her bed. “You’re so strong, gattina.” She grinned, and they walked hand in hand down the hall to Elisa’s room.

He heard Carina crying behind the door to the master suite, and he stopped for a second, listening. It had been a hard week, and Beverly was exhausted. But the baby settled quickly.

“Papa! Come on!” Lia tugged on his hand.

“Okay, okay.” His eldest daughter’s door, covered in glittery stickers, was closed, and he shook his head, knowing what he’d find when he went in. He knocked and did just that.

Yep. She had artfully arranged her blankets, pillows, and stuffed animals to attempt to conceal a sizable lump on her bed. A lump with a bushy, golden tail sticking out at the end. Wagging.

“Elisabetta Pagano. You think you can fool me? Cuddles, down.”

He was a man drowning in pink and glitter, who had a golden retriever named Cuddles. That was his life now.

His perfect life.

Elisa stuck out her lip—she had that down, too. The dog stood up on the bed, casting pillows and toys to and fro, but still covered in the floral comforter. He was clearly confused, but he managed to find his way to the floor. He came over and sat at Nick’s side, looking up with shame in his eyes. There was a sparkly butterfly sticker on his snout.

“You know better, signorina. The dog does not go on the furniture.” They went around this circuit at least twice a week. Elisa kept trying new and different ways to smuggle the dog—whom she’d named; Nick had had no part in that—into bed with her.

“Please, Papa. He can keep me safe. I need him to watch my closet.”

“’Lisa is a scaredy-baby, ’Lisa is a scaredy-baby,” Lia sang. Elisa threw a pillow at her little sister.

Elisa and Lia were so-called ‘Catholic twins,’ born less than eleven months apart. From the moment Lia had the motor skills to yank a toy from Elisa’s hands, they had fought nearly endlessly.

“Enough, the both of you. Lia, you sit.” He pointed to the little, pink velvet armchair next to Elisa’s bookcase. Hearing the sharp tone in his voice, Lia did as she was told, her eyes enormous. He hated that look. The one that said Don’t be mean, Papa. It scares me. Even as he knew she was using it intentionally, manipulating him, it still skewered his heart.

He went and sat on Elisa’s bed. “There’s nothing in your closet to watch, Elisa. We talked about this. I checked it thoroughly.” At four, she was astonishingly smart—too smart for her age. She was an avid reader, and she paid attention to everything. She had his gift for seeing. It seemed like every day she picked up some random image from the television, or from overheard conversations, or somewhere, that was too much for her to understand. They made her anxious and wary. Already, they’d weathered her panics about climate change and zombies and war and child abduction—to name a key few. She was only four, but no amount of care seemed sufficient to keep her innocent; she’d pick up something from a passing stranger’s remark in the market and obsess about it for days.

This new terror of her closet had come just before Carina was born, from seeing a trailer for a horror movie on television. She’d come to tell them she couldn’t sleep, and they hadn’t known she’d been standing in the doorway until she’d started crying.

“Papa, please.” Her eyes brimmed with tears. They were blue, like her mother’s. Both girls favored Beverly, Nick thought, with her auburn hair and beautiful smile. Lia had his eyes. Carina had been born with a great shock of hair, almost black, like his. The jury was yet out on what color her eyes were.

He couldn’t withstand Elisa’s tears, or her very real fear. “You promise that he stays on the floor, and you keep your door open, so he can come and go as he pleases.”

The tears got blinked away, and she gave him a relieved little smile. “Yes, I promise. Hall light?”

“Of course. Good girl. Okay, pick your story. We have a long day tomorrow, so you both need to get to sleep.”

Elisa leaned over and picked up a book from the stack she kept by the bed. Nick sighed. A Little Princess. Everywhere he turned, there was a princess.

“Come, come, gattina.” He waved his fingers, and Lia scooted off the little chair and brought her book over. Nick sat back against the wall and tucked a daughter under each arm. He read princess stories until they fell asleep.

Then, with Lia sleeping on his shoulder, he tucked Elisa in and settled the dog at the side of her bed. He carried Lia to her room and tucked her in.

He stood in the doorway and watched the little heartbreaker curl into her ball and put her thumb in her mouth.