Carlo was seventeen years older than Rosa. She’d been only nine when their mother died, and their father had been a different man since. It would not be a stretch to say that during those first years after their mother’s death, Carlo had developed feelings for his baby sister that were more fatherly than brotherly.
“Don’t make any snap decisions, Peanut. Give yourself some time first.”
She gave him a little smile and a nod, and he handed her Trey’s pack and duffel. Then she headed toward the house, Elsa trotting behind her.
Carlo watched for a second, feeling wistful at the thought that the little imp who’d never tired of carrying home buckets full of broken shells, despite being born and raised on a beach, was a grown woman. Or nearly grown, anyway. Depending on one’s perspective.
He turned back to the hatch to see John reaching in for the last of the bags. “Thanks, man.”
“No sweat. Forewarned? He’s on a tear today.”
Carlo closed the hatch, and they followed after their family up and into the house. “What kind of tear?” Their father’s moods had become erratic lately. A ‘tear’ could be anything from a high to a low, from hilarity to fury. He wasn’t crazy, and he was certainly not dysfunctional, but he was definitely fucking moody. Carlo thought it was due to spending too much time alone. Their parents’ marriage had been stormy and far from perfect, but it had been symbiotic, each completing the other. Carlo Sr. on his own was a man missing a vital organ and feeling that loss more, not less, with each passing year, especially as their huge house emptied of their children.
Since Rosa, the youngest and last home, had gone off to Brown nearly three years ago, the moods had been markedly moodier. Their mother had been the family balance. Things were off-kilter without her. Even eleven years later.
“Maudlin. Feeling his mortality, I guess. I’d say you’re center stage today. You and Luca, if he ever shows.”
Ah, yes. The old ditty about the disappointing son who didn’t want his father’s legacy and the disappointing son the father didn’t want to leave the legacy to. As he opened the wide, heavy front door to the home he’d grown up in, Carlo laughed. At least that one came with less yelling and crying. “Let’s get him to the beach, then, and throw some raw meat in his way.”
~oOo~
The Pagano house wasn’t directly on the beach; Quiet Cove was a popular tourist destination in the summer, and Teresa, their mother, had not wanted to be so close that beachgoers would be tromping over her garden and crowding the street in front of the house. And she’d wanted a garden, not a sandpit, for a yard. So Carlo Sr. had bought her a house not quite a mile from the shore.
It meant a bit of a trek when they headed to the beach. When the kids were young, they’d walked it happily, even carrying their boards. As soon as they could drive, of course, they’d stopped trundling barefoot down and up the hill that was Caravel Road, their wetsuits folded down around their waists and their boards under their arms.
For more than thirty years, Carlo Sr. had thrown a beach party on the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend. It was a crazy weekend to throw a big party on a public beach, because there were people everywhere, but that had been part of the brilliance of it, too. What happened every year was that the entire town of Quiet Cove, its residents and its tourists, ended up partying with the Paganos, drinking beer out of cups emblazoned with the Pagano & Sons Construction logo, loading up plates at a table under a Pagano & Sons banner. It looked like the Paganos owned the beach. It cost a fortune, but he’d made it up in name recognition and goodwill. It was nice to have the Pagano name associated with something good.
That was Carlo Sr.’s family role. To be the good brother.
These days, Carmen, the eldest daughter, second-born, lived in a little house right on the beach, with a private swath of it to call her own. It was down some from the crush of the public area, and the family met there, using her house as a staging area for the big do.
This was the kind of crowd Carlo could deal with—a cookout on a beach, people in bathing suits and board shorts, wearing sunglasses and baseball caps, kids running around, the air thick with the mingling aromas of sunscreen, seawater, and cooking meat. Fuck tuxedos and shiny shoes. Standing in the middle of the beach, warm sand between his toes and a can of beer in his hand, wearing nothing but a pair of camouflage board shorts and his Oakleys, watching Trey bury John and Elsa in the sand, the world a cacophony of happy people—this was the world Carlo belonged in.