Rooted (Pagano Family #3)(48)

Carmen put her arms around her brother’s waist, and they held each other. “I want to see him.”

Luca set her back a little. “Okay. The nurses aren’t giving us grief about visiting hours.” He laughed bitterly. “I think the whole hospital is getting used to us being around. Seems like we’re always here lately.”

“I was thinking the same thing. I hate it.”

“Yeah. His room’s down the hall. Adele might be asleep, though.”

“I’ll be quiet. I just want to watch his chest move for a few minutes.”

“A machine’s doing that right now. You know that, right? After the surgery, they’re breathing for him.”

“Luca.” She just needed to see him.

“I know. 323, down the hall.” He kissed her cheek, and she went alone to their father’s room.

The room was dark, with only a pale light on the wall behind the bed, near all the equipment. The setup was eerily similar to that when Joey was in the hospital—ventilator, heart monitor, some kind of machine monitoring a draining tube, a couple of bags hanging on an IV stand, wires and tubes leading to the body in the bed. The body of her father, unconscious, his chest rising to the beat of the machine filling his lungs with air and then removing it.

His chest looked oddly thick, and Carmen realized it was the dressing for his surgery incision, a thick gauze pad down the center of his chest.

She stood at the end of the bed and tried to breathe.

Adele was sleeping in a chair next to the bed. She was snoring, her mouth open, and her chin resting on her chest. Her glasses, which hung on a beaded chain, were askew on her nose.

Adele Dioli had lived next door for Carmen’s whole childhood. She had been their mother’s best friend, and her husband, Dennis, and their father had spent a lot of years talking over their shared back fence, standing over each other’s grills, or mixing each other’s drinks, discussing the Red Sox or the Patriots, depending on the season.

The Diolis had been childless, but Adele had been an eager babysitter when they were growing up. All the siblings knew her well. They all liked her. She was a good woman—a busybody, but a good woman.

Dennis had died a few years after their mother, and Adele began spending more and more time in the Pagano house. Eventually, she’d sort of taken it over. Then Carlo Jr. had moved back in, and his wife, Sabina, had taken it over.

And then their father had married Adele and moved next door, into the Dioli house. He’d turned the house over to Carlo. Carmen still couldn’t make herself feel right about that. She didn’t have a choice—it was a done deal, and her father’s choice to make, but she f*cking hated it. She hated it so much.

Everybody else was happy for their father, glad he was able to move on and love again. Everybody else understood that Carlo should have the house. He was the oldest, the only one with a family. And he hadn’t been given the house, only lent it. But it drove Carmen nuts. The best she’d been able to accomplish was resignation.

She had given up f*cking everything when their mom died. She’d given up her dreams, her goals, her friends. She’d moved back into that house and been a stay-at-home mom to Joey and Rosa. Cooking their meals—she f*cking hated to cook. Taking them to and picking them up from school, and soccer, and choir practice, birthday parties and whatever. She’d taken them to the mall and argued with them over appropriate clothes. She’d gone to f*cking parent-teacher conferences. All while their father disappeared every night into his study or his bedroom and ignored them all. She’d been twenty-four years old.

Carlo had moved home, too. They’d taken the job on together. But Carlo had gone into the city every day to work. He’d come home and done the middle-class father thing, and he’d gone to soccer games and plays, to those school conferences. But his life hadn’t changed much. Only his address had changed, really.

Carmen’s whole self had changed.

Even when their father had finally mastered his grief enough to be a father again, Carmen hadn’t gotten her life back. Carlo had moved back to Providence then, focused on his career, gotten married, had a child. Had the life he wanted. Not Carmen. Even when she’d moved out of the house, she’d only moved a mile away, to the beach. She’d been the only mother Joey and Rosa had. Until Rosa had gone away to college, only four years ago, Carmen had been the woman of the house on Caravel Road.

And for Carlo to be handed that house like he was the obvious choice? That pissed her the f*ck off.

Adele snorted and stirred, opening her eyes. “Carmen?”

“Hey, Adele.”

“Oh, honey. You’re home. I’m so glad. I was so worried that…” Her voice failed her, and when she found it again, it shook badly. “Well. I’m just glad you’re home.”

“How are you?”

Adele sighed. “I’m okay. Scared. I love him so much. I’ve loved him for years. All of you. You’ve been my family as long as I’ve known you.” She patted her father’s still hand. “And he’s my big bear.”

Carmen didn’t want to explore the idea of her father being anybody’s big bear…or maybe she did. “Adele, did you love Mr. D.?

She frowned. “What do you mean?”

“You say you love Pop, and that we’ve been your family for years. But you were married for decades. Did you love Mr. D.?”