Rooted (The Pagano Family Book 3)

ROOTED

The Pagano Family Series

Book THREE

Susan Fanetti

THE FREAK CIRCLE PRESS

Rooted © 2014 Susan Fanetti

All rights reserved

Susan Fanetti has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this book under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales are entirely coincidental.

ALSO BY SUSAN FANETTI

The Pagano Family Series:

(Family Saga)

Footsteps
, Book 1

Touch
, Book 2

The Signal Bend Series:

(MC Romance)

Move the Sun
, Book 1

Behold the Stars
, Book 2

Into the Storm
, Book 3

Alone on Earth
, Book 4

In Dark Woods
, Book 4.5

All the Sky
, Book 5

Show the Fire
, Book 6

Leave a Trail
, Book 7

As always, to the women of the Freak Circle Press, whose nourishing roots keep me secure and allow me to grow. I love you.

I am rooted, but I flow.

Virginia Woolf,
The Waves
 

Prologue

Carmen Pagano slammed the door of her Tundra and smoothed her charcoal grey pencil skirt over her hips. Then she checked the side mirror and decided her makeup and dark hair looked fine. Whatever. She would never be comfortable dressed like this. And now she had to walk across acres of grass in stupid high heels. She felt like a lawn aerator.

It had taken her nearly twenty minutes to find any parking at all. Her little sister Rosa’s college commencement ceremony was set to begin soon, and Carmen hated to be late. She should have taken her brother Luca up on his offer to ride with him and his wife. But Carmen liked to have her own mode of transportation. She wanted to be able to go when she was ready.

Finally, she arrived at the expanse of lawn that was set up for the ceremony, and she scanned the rows of seats for her family. Within the crush of proud families, she found a row of mostly empty seats. Luca was sitting one seat in from the outside edge.

Carmen sat next to him, breathless. “Fuck, parking is impossible. And the attendants are assholes.”

“Hey to you, too, sis.” Luca handed her a program.

She took it but didn’t look at it. “Where’s Manny?”

“We’ve had seat-saving detail for a while. She got bored and wandered off.” He shrugged. “You know how she is. She’s got her phone, so I’ll reel her in when it’s time.”

Fussing with her snug skirt and white, stiff cotton blouse, Carmen huffed. “Everybody else?” She looked down and saw that each heel on her black, ankle-strap pumps had a little clod of sod attached. Oh, screw it. She should have worn her work boots.

“Carlo and Sabina got a call from the lawyer and went off for some privacy. Pop and Adele are keeping Trey occupied. Joey and John are right there”—he indicated his brothers at the end of the row, also on seat-saving detail—“and Rosa is where she’s supposed to be, I expect: taking group selfies with all her BFFs, crying, and promising to always keep in touch. Now you’re here, and the commencement can commence. ‘Cuz, you know, they were all holding it up for you.”

“You’re a smartass.” Carmen gave him the stinkeye.

He laughed. “That’s news?”

“Nope.” She replayed what Luca had just said. “They got a call from the lawyer? Is
that
news?” Their elder brother, Carlo, and his wife, Sabina, were trying to adopt a baby. For reasons both tragic and infuriating, Sabina was unable to get pregnant.

Luca shrugged. “I don’t know. Carlo got the call, grabbed Sabina, and they went off. I guess we’ll know soon, though.”

Music began playing from somewhere Carmen couldn’t see. Luca pulled his phone and reeled Manny back to Rosa’s graduation from Brown University. A degree in political science. Little Rosie. Who’d’ve thought?

Carmen looked around and saw their family trickling back toward the seats as well. She returned her father’s wave as he came back with Carlo’s son in one hand, and Adele, their newly-minted stepmother, in the other.

Carlo and Sabina were headed back, too. Carlo finished his call as they came up to the seats. They both looked happy—anxious, but happy.

Luca stood and moved out of the seats to make way for the returning family. He turned in a circle, scanning the area for his wayward wife. Carmen scooted down to sit next to Joey, giving the youngest brother an affectionate, light punch in the arm as a greeting. He smiled, the tubes for his cannula tightening across his cheeks.

Carlo sat on her other side.

“Luca said you were talking to the lawyer.”

He nodded and smiled. “Yeah. I’ll tell you about it after.”

“Good news, though?”

He cocked his head, giving her a cautious look, but he was still smiling. “Positive news. We’ll see.”

The ceremony was beginning, so Carmen only bumped his shoulder in response.

In the middle of the invocation, Manny finally made it back, and she and Luca sat down. Carmen chuckled to herself. That girl would keep Luca on his toes forever.

~oOo~

Rosa wanted a blowout for her graduation party, and their father had complied. They were in a ballroom at a big Providence hotel. A DJ played house music for about a hundred young, aggressively hip, fresh college graduates. Some of Rosa’s family was there, too, though they had begun to disperse. The Uncles and aunts had attended the quiet family dinner before the bash, handed Rosa thick envelopes, and said their goodbyes.

Carlo and Sabina had gotten news that a pregnant woman in New Jersey wanted to meet with them as soon as possible, so they’d taken Trey and left after the graduation ceremony.

Their father and Adele had taken a room at the hotel for the night, so they could be close in case of trouble but not subjected to the horror that was Rosa’s idea of the perfect party.

Manny and Joey were having a good time, sitting at the family table making viciously cutting remarks about Rosa’s college buddies.

John and his girlfriend, Kristen, who’d shown up for the party, were making out in the back of the ballroom.

It was just Carmen and Luca on chaperone duty. Well, not chaperone,
per se
. They were sitting in the hotel lobby, the noise of the party muffled behind heavy doors. They had a bottle of Dewar’s and a couple of cut-crystal glasses. And they’d ordered some pepper biscuits from the restaurant.

The doors opened, and the roar and squeal of Rosa’s party momentarily filled the lobby. Luca sighed. “I can’t believe you’re spending three months alone with that girl. How are you going to keep her entertained? And fuck, it’s gotta cost some bank.”

Carmen’s graduation present for Rosa was the summer in Europe. They were leaving in less than a week, not due back until late August. Their siblings—and their father, for that matter—thought Carmen was nuts. But she thought it was a good idea. Rosa needed to get shaken out of her paradigm. Ivy league poli-sci degree or not, she was turning into not a great human being, the cliché of the Italian-American Princess. The kind of girl they made reality television shows about.

And no. No, no, no. No Pagano was going through life that way. She needed a new way to see the world. So Carmen had decided to show her some of the world.

To answer Luca’s concern now, Carmen shrugged. “She’s twenty-two. She doesn’t need a sitter, she needs a base. It’ll be fine. We’re staying at Izzie’s place in Paris while she’s in India for a year, and I can write the rest off—I’m touring some commercial flower growers and gardens, and getting some ideas, so I’ll be doing some work.”

She was a landscape designer. It had taken some doing to arrange her work so that she could take the entire summer—the peak season—off, but she had jobs going and people she trusted to supervise them, and she had a healthy cushion. Her tastes were not extravagant, and her work paid well; she’d always lived comfortably within her means.

Her friend Isabella had been living in Paris for more than ten years. They’d been roommates at Bryn Mawr and had had big plans about how they’d take on the world after graduation. Izzie had come much closer to reaching that goal. Carmen’s life had had something else, something smaller, in mind for her. Now Izzie and her husband were off to India on some humanitarian project for a year, and she’d offered Carmen dominion over their Paris apartment for as long as she wanted during that time.

The timing could not have been more perfect, just as Rosa was finishing college. And with the free accommodations and tax write-off, Carmen could afford this trip without pinching every penny.

She fussed with her skirt—she’d been doing that all day; she was not a woman who usually wore a skirt, and she’d spent the day constantly, uncomfortably aware of her clothes. Also, her feet were about to start a prison riot inside the toes of her stupid pumps. Huffing in frustration with her bindings, she continued her point to Luca. “She’s never been to Europe. You ever think about that? We used to go every year when Mom was alive. God, I got
bored
of Italy. And Rosa has never been. There’s something wrong with that.”

Their mother had been close with her Italian relatives, and they’d spent a few weeks every summer in Tuscany. None of the kids had managed to learn more than cursory Italian, because all of their relatives spoke English, but they had learned a lot about their history and family nonetheless. And summer in Tuscany was spectacular.

Every summer, for one week of that trip, the week their father joined them, they’d travel elsewhere in Europe. That had all stopped when Joey was about four, when their mother’s aunt died, and some kind of family shenanigans had happened in the old country.

Luca considered that, and then nodded. “Good point. But why not take her to Italy, then? Look up the cousins or something. Rosa should get some of that.”

“Rosa’s a Francophile. She knows the language. I took it, too, a long time ago. Maybe I still have some left. And like I said, I’ve got a free place in Paris and work I can do there. Plus, France is a decently central location. She wants to see the UK, too. And we’ll hit Italy for a week or so, at least.”

“Still say you’re in for a long fucking summer catering to the princess.”

“There won’t be any catering, Luc. That’s the whole point. That girl needs a new attitude, and she’s never going to get it unless she gets out of Rhode Island for a while.”

Luca turned and stared at the closed door behind which was their youngest sibling’s gala event. “Yeah, I guess. Sabina says we spoil the shit out of her, and then talk about her behind her back.”

Carmen chuckled drily. “Like we’re doing right this second. Spoiling her in there”—she pointed toward the ballroom—“and bitching about her out here.”

Her brother’s head whipped around. “Shit. Shit.” He was quiet for a moment, staring at her. “Shit. You want me to throw in for this trip?”

“No, Luc,” she laughed. “I’m all set.”