Footsteps Read Online Free PDF Page B

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.
     
    Right now, he was having trouble remembering
why he’d left it.
     
    “Hey, Junior! Grab another tray of burger
meat from the cooler.”
     
    Roused from his reverie by his father’s
gruff voice, Carlo said, “Yeah, Pop,” and headed over to one of the
several giant coolers in which the prepped meat was stored. Carlo
had been right that as soon as their father had been parked in
front of the grill on the beach, his mood would improve. Until dark
today, he would do nothing but stand at the grill, drinking beer
and flipping meat. And he would be happy all the day long. He’d
talk and bicker in good nature with whomever came by to do so.
     
    At the moment, he was on his own. Carlo
brought the meat over and set it on the folding table set up near
the grill. His father nodded and took a drink of his beer. “Thanks,
son.”
     
    “You bet. Need anything else?”
     
    His father gave him a look, and Carlo girded
himself. “You see all this? What I built here—this is important.
This sustains our family. This wasn’t a mistake. It’s not a shame.
It’s an honor, to take this on.”
     
    “I know, Pop. You know I’m not ashamed of
this. I love you, and this, and the business. But I don’t love the
work. I love the work I do. I love the design, not the build. It’s
just the other side of the same coin.”
     
    “You love the office, not the job site.”
     
    Well, that wasn’t true, either. He loved the
job site, and, until he and Peter had gone out on their own, he’d
loathed the office. He’d worked for his father from the age of
fourteen until he passed his licensing exam—ten years. And he’d
loved almost all of it. But that job was about building someone
else’s vision. He wanted to be the one who saw the reality before
it was reality.
     
    “Pop. Come on. Cook the burgers. Chronicle
my failures as the family scion tonight.”
     
    Carlo Sr. chuckled. “I’m gonna die, you
know. And then what?”
     
    His father was a couple of years past sixty
and strong as a bull. Built like one, too, with the weathered,
barrel-shaped body of a man who’d lived his life working outside,
using that body as a tool. “Today? You planning on kicking today,
over the grill?”
     
    “Smartass.”
     
    “Good. I’m gonna go intervene before Trey
actually inters Elsa in the sand. I think she’d lie there and let
him do it, too.” With an affectionate slap on his father’s back,
Carlo turned and headed down the beach.
     
    Once he’d freed the dog—and, after some
lingering consideration, his brother—from their sand graves, he
took Trey and Elsa into Carmen’s cottage for a nap. Elsa was nearly
as good a nanny as Natalie was. He could leave them alone in the
house and, as long as he stayed within sight and earshot of the
cottage, he knew Trey would be safe. So he hosed his kid off in
Carmen’s shower and then tucked him in on the daybed in the little
spare room. Elsa, still dusty with sand, lay down on the floor, her
big body against the daybed.
     
    Carlo ruffled Trey’s damp hair and then
Elsa’s sandy ears. “One hour, pal. No less.” He pointed to the
old-fashioned Big Ben clock on the side table. “You stay put until
the big hand is on the one and the little hand is on the three. Got
it?”
     
    “Yes Daddy but I didn’t see a shark yet.”
The only punctuation that sentence got was a yawn at the end.
     
    “You’ve got your whole life to see a shark,
pal. One hour won’t blow your