Page 27 of Love, Untangled

He was so capable. No matter the problem, Carlo found a solution. Well, except for the barn. No matter what they tried with the barn door, Alpaca Man kept escaping the enclosure. Pen would have given up long before now, but Carlo had a stubborn streak, unwilling to admit defeat.

“Yes, he is,” Hattie said. “But that’s to be expected.” Hattie clicked her tongue and grimaced. She leaned in a little closer. “He was there—at their house—when it burned. He couldn’t get to Cora in time.”

Pen’s fingers touched her lips as she gasped. Her gaze drifted back to Carlo. He stood so tall and strong. She couldn’t imagine what those moments must have been like. To know his wife was waiting for him, needing him…

Carlo’s initial grumpiness made so much more sense. The man’s grief must be never-ending, the guilt now so obvious in his gestures, the dark look in his eyes. To try to bear that burden… No, Pen couldn’t imagine the woman who’d loved Carlo would want him to feel the weight he carried. As far as Pen was concerned, Carlo had paid enough. Sure, he’d continue to grieve—just as she grieved her nana and her father… Well, maybe not just the same, but he needed to find joy in life again.

He needed to live.

Pen pursed her lips as the desire to make him smile rolled up her spine. Carlo needed to see that he hadn’t died that day too.

Because now that she knew the story, she knew he wished he had.

Chapter 11

Carlo

That night, Carlo sat out on his front porch, enjoying the cooling temperatures and the crickets’ song. He settled his bottle of beer on the arm of the swing and pushed with his feet, creating a steady back-and-forth motion as he stared out over the rows of neat trees that were now bursting with red fruit. He closed his eyes with a tired sigh. Not even the apples or his goals soothed him tonight.

He knew he’d make Cora’s cider this year. He’d fulfill her dream. He’d worked so hard to get here, but now he needed a break. Just tonight. A moment to think…and feel.

Though part of him didn’t want to.

From the moment he saw Penelope near the pier, he hadn’t been able to get her out of his mind. Her hair shone so brightly as it brushed her neck and cheek. And her eyes…they were expressive, filled with admiration for him.

He liked that—he enjoyed meeting or exceeding her expectations. But that didn’t mean he wanted to pursue anything further. Of course he didn’t. That would make him unfaithful to Cora. And in his marriage vows, he’d promised to love her until he died.

He rose, restless, and headed back inside. Thinking about Cora, he climbed the stairs to his bedroom where he picked up the picture he usually kept on his dresser—the one of Cora and him at Crater Lake right before he’d proposed. She’d been about Pen’s age then—twenty-two. She’d been a bright-eyed viniculture student at Oregon State University, and he’d been a full-fledged firefighter and EMT. They’d met when he was called to the winery where she was an intern. One of the workers had fallen off the grape harvester.

Cora had remained calm, kneeling next to and talking softly to the man as he’d moaned in agony with an obvious broken leg. Carlo had noticed her pretty brown eyes and fiery auburn hair as soon as he arrived. He’d gotten her number and checked out her long, shapely legs when he’d come back to the winery. And he’d fallen in love with her over their third date at a kitschy café on the outskirts of Sonoma Valley.

“That seems like decades ago,” he muttered. He shook his head as he set the photo back on the dresser’s top, careful not to scratch the wood.

Though really it had only been seven years. He couldn’t believe his time with Cora had been cut so short.

“A widower before I even turned thirty. Isn’t that ironic? If either of us should have died young, you would have thought it would be me.”

Cora had worried about his job, and no matter how often Carlo told her about their safety precautions or his team, fear clouded her features whenever he went to work. He’d hated worrying her, but he’d already had five years on the squad before they’d gotten engaged, and he’d worked another four before she died.

His boss had placed him on extended-bereavement leave, then forced Carlo to come in for shifts where he sat at a desk or made meals for his coworkers instead of going to fires. That was for the best, because the first four-alarm blaze he suited up for after Cora’s death was also his last one. While he was standing in front of that building, unable to force himself to step into the inferno, he’d known he could no longer do the job—not without endangering his friends and colleagues, something he refused to do.

“I’m going to talk to someone about how I miss you, miss the rush,” he muttered, still looking at Cora. He tapped the glass once, making sure the position on his dresser was correct.

“Night, Cora.”

Carlo pressed a kiss to the tip of his finger and placed his finger against the glass covering Cora’s cheek. He shivered at the cold seeping through his skin.

* * *

The thing Carlo never understood about therapy was how much some moments hurt to talk about. He and Sue, the therapist Hattie had suggested to him years before, had worked through most of Carlo’s anger and a tiny portion of the grief he knew he’d always feel in relation to Cora’s death. But the guilt…that one still caused his insides to feel as though they were being slashed with dull knives.

He was shocked his guts didn’t actually bleed out as she pushed him on his emotions surrounding his wife’s death.

“It’s not just the guilt about not saving Cora,” he said, staring down at his linked fingers. He raised his head and forced himself to meet Sue’s warm brown stare. Her eyes reminded him a bit of Cora’s but there was more patience in Sue’s, more wisdom. “I’ve been thinking about my new neighbor, Penelope.”

Sue nodded. “And how does that make you feel? Besides guilty.”

He settled back in the chair as he struggled to untangle the emotions. “Excited. Alive. Angry. Scared. Lustful. Angry.”

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