Footsteps Read Online Free PDF

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