Sempre (Forever) (43 page)

Haven gave up on trying to go around, instead getting on the ground and scurrying between her legs to see out into the night. She could faintly make out the outline of a car with the trunk open. On the ground beside it, lying still, was a person. “It's Miss Martha!”

“Hush,” Her mama said. “You don't want them to hear.”

“Sorry, Mama.” Haven tried to whisper, but she couldn't help herself. She watched as Miss Martha was placed into the trunk, her eyes closed like she was sleeping. “Where's Miss Martha going?”

“Away from here,” Her mama answered.

“What's away from here?”

“A lot,” she said. “There's a whole world out there.”

“Is Miss Martha going out there to the world?”

She shook her head. “Miss Martha's gone to Heaven.”

“What's Heaven?”

Her mama sighed. “Heaven is the greatest place you can imagine. People don't hurt anymore when they go to Heaven. There's peace there. It’s beautiful. Everyone’s beautiful.”

Haven smiled excitedly. “Will I get to go to Heaven?”

She nodded. “Someday an angel will come to take you away.”

Suddenly the darkness erupted in blinding light. Haven shielded her eyes. She could feel the sun burning her as she ran, air hitting her sweaty skin and cooling her off. She was pretending to fly, like Miss Martha did to Heaven the night before, and slammed into something in her path.

Falling to the ground, she could barely make out the form in the blinding light. She was confused until a soft voice shattered the silence. “You’re awfully dirty, little one.”

The blindness cleared as the form knelt down to look at her. Sheer beauty, love and compassion. Up until then, Haven hadn’t seen an angel, but she was sure one had come.

*  *  *  *

Carmine rolled over and reached out, searching for Haven in the bed beside him. He didn't feel her and opened his eyes, seeing nothing but blanket where her sleeping body should’ve been.  Sitting up, he heard a shuffling as Haven walked over from the other side of the room. She slid back into the bed without a word.

He pulled her toward him. “What were you doing out of bed?”

“I couldn’t sleep.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

He sighed, too tired for guessing games. “How about I ask again, and you tell me the truth this time?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I know you pretty well by now. Something’s on your mind.”

She lay still for a moment, so motionless Carmine wondered if she’d fallen asleep.

“Now’s not the time,” she said, rolling over to face him.

“Now is the time,” he said. “What’s wrong?”

There was a flash of panic in her eyes. He could tell her mind was working fast for a way out of the conversation. He took a deep breath and brushed some wayward hair out of her face.

“
La mia bella ragazza. Non capisco
,” he said. “
Tanto gentile e tanto onesta pare la donna mia
.”

A small smile appeared on her lips. “What does that mean?”

“So kind and so honest my lady appears to be,” he said. “It's a line from Dante’s
La Vita Nova
. Poetry, I guess.”

His brow furrowed—when did
he
start quoting poetry?

“That’s sweet,” she said. “Do you know more?”

He shook his head. “I’m too tired to remember that shit.”

“We should go back to sleep.”

“No, I wanna know what’s on your mind,” he said. “I won’t flip out. All I know is wherever you are, I’m gonna be, because we belong together. We’re like two peas in a pod. Like peanut butter and jelly, or macaroni and cheese.”

He was half-asleep and probably still drunk, so he wasn’t sure if that made any sense.

“You mean like spaghetti and meatballs?”

He smirked. “See, you know what I mean. We’re like milk and cookies.”

She laughed. “Salt and pepper, or chips and dip.”

“Yeah, and it’s gotta be ripple-cut chips and French onion dip.”

“Finicky.”

“Whatever, it’s just a fact of life,” he said. “We’re like questions and answers. What good is a fucking question without an answer?”

“You’re the missing mate to my sock.”

He shook his head—only Haven would incorporate laundry into it. “I’ll be that. Socks are useless on their own, unless you only have one foot.”

“Bert and Ernie?”

“Shit, that’s a good one. You watch Sesame Street?” She smiled sheepishly, shrugging. “Well, there you go, we’re Bert and Ernie. How about Bonnie and Clyde?”

Her brow furrowed. “Who are they?”

“Don’t ask,” he muttered, pausing. “Where were we going with this again?”

She lay there, gazing at him. “I don’t remember. We should just probably get some sleep.”

Chapter 28

The room was encased in bright light when Carmine woke up. His head pounded, his eyes burning. He blinked a few times as he sat up, realizing he was once again alone.

Stretching, he popped two Tylenol to squelch the hangover before strolling out of the room. As soon as he reached the second floor, his footsteps wavered when Haven stepped into the hallway with his father. Her eyes met his the same time Vincent noticed him standing there. “Do you need laundry done, Carmine?”

He shook his head. “Why?”

“Two days in a row you’ve walked around the house with barely any clothes on.”

Carmine looked down at himself. “My, uh… goods are covered.”

“Well, I’m glad at least that much has sunk into that thick skull of yours over the years.”

He chuckled. “What, do you think you’re too young to be a grandfather?”

“As a matter of fact, yes,” he said. “I’m only forty-one, and seventeen is too young to make life decisions. But frankly, I'm just as worried about you picking up something as I am about you impregnating someone. For a while, every time you said the words, ‘what’s this?’ I feared you exposing yourself to show me something suspicious.”

Carmine laughed. “Well, thanks for the concern, but I assure you my dick's in fantastic shape.”

Vincent shook his head as he glanced at Haven. “You’re excused, child. I’m sure you have things to attend to.”

She practically bolted for the steps as Vincent turned back to Carmine. “Go get dressed.”

“Didn’t we just go through this? It’s not like I’m indecent.”

“I didn’t say you were indecent. I do hate that ink on you, though. I wish I knew which parlor you went to, so I knew who to blame for marking my teenager.”

“Yeah, well, they thought I was twenty-one. Besides, I like my tattoos. I was thinking about getting another.”

“Not until you move out of my house.”

“If you say so. You’re the boss around this motherfucker.”

“You’d do well to remember that, son,” he said. “And stop cursing so much. It sounds ugly.”

“You curse.”

“Rarely, and your mother hated it. How do you think she’d feel hearing you right now?”

“Are you seriously gonna stand there and talk to me about how my mom would feel about what I do? How about what you do?”

He ignored that. “Are you going to get dressed? You can run around the house like that but not out in public.”

“Public? Where are we going?”

“I have a free day, so I figured we could go shooting.”

He gaped at him. “Vincent DeMarco cleared his schedule to spend time with little ol’ me?”

Vincent sighed. “Go before I change my mind.”

Chuckling, Carmine headed back upstairs and threw on some clothes. He was in the bathroom brushing his teeth when Haven walked in. “Are you and Dr. DeMarco going away?”

He nodded, rinsing out his mouth. “We’re gonna go play with our guns.”

“You’ll be safe, won’t you?”

“Yeah, he’s not going to shoot me or anything,” he said. “I look too much like my mom for him to ever hurt me. I tested him a few times, and he even pointed a gun at me once, but he couldn’t pull the trigger.”

He thought that would make her feel better, but her panicked expression only grew. “He pointed a gun at you?”

“Relax, he’s probably pointed a gun at everyone at some point,” he said as he finished getting ready. “You gonna miss me,
tesoro
?”

“I always miss you when you aren’t here.”

He smiled as he put on his coat. “Give it a few more months and you’ll be tired of my ass.”

“Never.”

“Great to hear, but what’s that shit they say? Absence makes the heart grow fonder or whatever? Me leaving just means you’ll love me even more when I get back.”

*  *  *  *

The outdoor firing range was a few miles outside of town in the Swannanoa Valley near Black Mountain. It was a field about 400 yards in length, with a covered pavilion and various sized targets scattered around. They’d visited it a few times over the years but hadn’t been back since the incident with Nicholas.

Carmine had been a decent shot since he was a kid, but he had nothing on his father. Vincent’s aim was impeccable, his hands as steady as a professional marksman. He could hit a moving target at nearly 250 feet, and resting targets were even easier. His bullet ripped straight through the bull’s eye effortlessly. Carmine often wondered how many people died because of those skills, but it was a question he knew his father would never answer.

Vincent reloaded the M1 Garand after expelling all of the rounds and held it out to Carmine. “Do you want to try the rifle?”

Carmine took it and hesitated before handing his pistol to his father. Aiming, Carmine fired once and smirked when it hit the target.

“That was luck,” Vincent said, loading the pistol and firing it. He hit the farthest target, unloading all eight rounds into it.

“Fucking show off,” Carmine said, taking another shot and hitting the target again. “See, that shit wasn’t luck. That was skill.”

“You’re not so bad. Nicholas can attest to that.” Carmine rolled his eyes as his father exchanged weapons with him again. “That’s a nice gun.”

“It does what it’s made for,” Carmine said, reloading it. “It’s so easy to handle even Haven could probably do it.”

The words slipped from his lips as he squeezed the trigger. The shot completely bypassed the target.

“Something tells me she’d have better aim than that,” Vincent said. “You’ve pulled a lot of stunts, son, but I hope you’d be man enough to talk to me before you ever did something like that.”

“Of course I would.” He was lying. He would’ve done it without even telling his father.

Carmine shot once more, the atmosphere thick with unspoken words. Vincent unceremoniously fired off a few rounds before lowering his weapon and staring off into space.

“I couldn’t help it,” Carmine said, knowing he’d have to crack first.

“Couldn’t help what?”

“I think you know what,” Carmine said, the stress making his voice quiver. “It’s not like I set out for this to happen. It just… was.”

Vincent remained silent, his lack of response grating on Carmine’s nerves. “Come on, I know you have an opinion—no need to hold back. I can take it. Go ahead and tell me I’m making the biggest mistake of my life. Tell me how fucking disgusted you are that your son would go as low as to fall for a damn sla—”

He faltered, unable to finish the word.

“Whether or not you say it doesn’t change anything,” Vincent said. “It doesn’t make the girl more or less of one.”

Carmine stared at him, waiting for something more. “Is that all you have to say? I said I can take it. Tell me it’s wrong, that it’ll never work because people like us don’t belong together. Tell me she’s not good enough for me. Tell me she could never love me.”

“Is that what you want to hear?”

He narrowed his eyes. “No.”

Vincent casually glanced at his watch like he was unaffected by the conversation. “Why don’t we get some lunch?”

Carmine cocked an eyebrow. “It would be easier to kill me here.”

“Kill you? What kind of person do you take me for, son? I’m not going to hurt you.”

“Well, fuck. I thought you might be the kinda person to hurt an innocent girl. Good to know I was wrong about that shit.”

“I’m a man who makes mistakes, a man who doesn’t expect to be forgiven for them, but a man who does expect his children to be respectful,” he said sharply. “If you want to talk this out using our anger, we can, but I was hoping we could discuss it like adults.”

Carmine hesitated. “Fine.”

“Are you going to apologize for throwing that in my face?”

Carmine scoffed. “I’ll apologize for saying it when you apologize for doing it.”

Vincent and Carmine were seated as soon as they reached the restaurant and both ordered the first thing on the menu. After the waiter brought their food, Vincent turned to his son. “I want you to listen carefully, Carmine. What the two of you have going on is harmless right now, but I don’t want to see it or hear about it. You may care for the girl, but she isn’t yours. You’re probably going to hate me for saying this, but regardless of your feelings, I’m in control. The first time she neglects what I tell her, I’ll put a stop to it all.”

Carmine clenched his jaw as his anger boiled over, and Vincent held his hand up to stop the impending explosion. “I’m not going to harm her, but I’ll send her away if you force my hand. I’m not giving you my blessing, but I'm not forbidding it either. I’m smart enough to pick and choose my battles, and I have more important ones to fight right now.”

He stared at his father. “Fine. That’s fair enough.”

Vincent turned his attention to his food. “I just wonder if you understand what you’re getting yourself into.”

“Well, I’m kinda sorta hoping the asshole who owns her won’t own her forever.”

Vincent’s eyes snapped back in his direction. “That’s a nice piece of information to have, but it wasn’t what I was talking about. Why do you think I asked you to teach her how to drive, Carmine? Why I asked you to take her grocery shopping?”

“To try to break us apart.”

The answer irritated Vincent, and he dropped his fork. “Have you not been listening? You seem to think I’m a coldhearted person who gets off on toying with others. Do you honestly think your mother would’ve married me had I been that horrible?”