Rooted (Pagano Family #3)(49)

“Yes. Very much. Do you remember when he died?”

Carmen did. Adele had seemed devastated. She nodded.

“It felt like a whole chunk of my heart had sheared right off. I didn’t know how I was going to get through it. And I didn’t have my best friend, because your mother was gone. I had your father, and I had you kids, when you were around. My family. That’s how I got through losing Dennis. He was my first love, a great love.”

“Then how can you say you love Pop?”

Adele stood then and smoothed out her slacks. “Carmen, honey. What’s this about? Is this why you’ve been mad about the house?”

She hadn’t known Adele knew about that, but thinking about it now, she supposed her father would have told his partner. “No…it’s just…how can you have two great loves? Or even real loves?”

“It makes me sad, honey, that you got to be thirty-seven and have to ask that question. I wish you’d known the kind of love that would tell you the answer.” She came over and patted Carmen’s hand where it gripped the footboard of the bed. “The human heart has infinite capacity for love. God wants us to love freely and ecstatically. He wouldn’t be so cruel as to put a cap on how much we love.”

In Carmen’s understanding and experience, God was perfectly happy to be cruel. “So you love my father like you loved Mr. D. That’s what you’re saying.”

Adele’s eyes narrowed. “No. Of course not. Dennis and your father are different men. I am a different woman than I was when Dennis was alive—I’m different because he isn’t alive. Your father is a different man since your mother died. I know you know that. I love your father for who he is. We love each other for who we are now. It’s different, but it’s not less. Not less real, not less intense, not less happy. Different. Is there something hurting you, honey? Do you need somebody to talk to? Because I’m here.”

Carmen shook her head. She didn’t want to talk. But she wanted to cry, so when Adele tugged on her arms, she let the smaller woman pull her down and tuck her head on her shoulder. And then Carmen sobbed.





12



“Let’s get out of the house today, Dad.” Eli refilled Theo’s coffee mug, and then his own, and sat back down at the table.

Theo poked at his rancher’s breakfast pie. Something Eli had learned to cook from his grandmother, Theo’s mother, long ago. It was delicious, but Theo was having trouble getting excited about food this morning—just in general, lately. He felt like shit. Most days he felt like shit. It wasn’t even the hangover. It was just shit.

He wished he’d never met Carmen Pagano. He thought about that first night at the Café Aphrodite, which had become ‘their place’ in the weeks to follow. The boys had sent him out on a hunt, literally pushing him out the door. He was too much alone, they’d said. Getting squirrely, they’d said. Paris was the City of Lovers, they’d said. He had a once-in-a-lifetime chance here, they’d said. It was time to live for himself again, they’d said. Don’t come home until you meet someone, they’d said—a beautiful girl. Jordan had called out “Bonne chance!” from the balcony, waving a handkerchief. His son, Sarah Bernhardt reincarnated.

He’d intended to blow them off. Have a meal, enjoy some quiet, do a little people-watching. And then Carmen had walked in. So f*cking gorgeous—tall and dark, that heavy, amazing drape of near-black hair, hints of gold and red catching the lights from the globes around the room. She’d been alone, dressed casually in jeans and a sweater, a leather bag slung across her shoulders. Marc, the waiter, had greeted her as if he’d known her.

Confidence and control wafted off of her so strongly he could almost see them curling around her.

Entranced by her self-possessed beauty, he’d watched her for a long time, focusing on each feature individually—her exotic eyes, too wide to be almond-shaped, but canted just slightly up at the outside corner. The dramatic arch of her dark brows. And her mouth. Sweet Christ, her mouth. Full and lush. He now knew the taste of that mouth, the feel of it, all over his body. God, that mouth.

She’d been reading while she ate, and he’d been curious what a woman like that might be reading. That curiosity had finally gotten him out of his seat.

Infinite Jest was what she’d been reading. One of the greatest and most challenging contemporary novels in the English language. By his favorite author, David Foster Wallace. He’d gone hard while they’d bantered about it. It was then, he thought, that he’d become a hopeless case, even if he hadn’t realized it at the time.

He’d never felt guilty about loving Carmen. He still didn’t feel guilty about it—stupid, but not guilty. He’d never felt conflicted or disloyal to Maggie. They were different women—in some ways they were polar opposites. Maggie had been preternaturally calm, a spiritual, forgiving woman with a wide and indiscriminate nurturing streak. She had fostered dogs and cats, nursed wild animals back to health, offered their sofa to the boys’ friends or Theo’s students whenever they needed a place to crash. She’d gardened and made a special garden just for the deer and rabbits, to distract them from the family vegetables—which hadn’t worked, they’d just eaten from both gardens, but she’d done it all the same.

Maggie had been slight and a little mousy; her beauty had been in her sweetness and joie de vivre.