Chapter 39
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
BIANCA
Janine’s phone is ringing.
My rage is hot enough that the Shirties should probably gather all of the fire extinguishers in the building.
How dare she. How fucking dare she.
Giovanni has been through enough because of this woman.
I’m convinced that part of the reason he wasn’t able to film for a month was because she’d gotten into his head. She’d tricked him into thinking he’d only succeeded because he’d cos-played as someone else.
Nonsense.
Giovanni rubs my leg as the phone continues to ring. I can tell he’s thinking she won’t answer. He’s probably grateful for it.
But I’m confident she’s going to pick up. She’ll be expecting his call, after all. Her whole baby daddy lie is an elaborate trap to back Giovanni into a corner.
“Giovanni,” Janine says, finally picking up. Her voice is deceptively sweet, like a poisoned apple.
“No, Janine,” I say. “This is his girlfriend. We’ve seen the article.”
She exhales dramatically on her end of the line. Meanwhile, Luanne rolls over to the whiteboard and grabs a red Sharpie.
Strong opening! she scrawls supportively. Now ask if she’s really pregnant, or if she’s planning on stuffing a beach ball under her shirt.
Helen steps up and grabs a purple marker off the whiteboard and underlines ask if she’s really pregnant.
“So you know about our news,” Janine says, the word our making my skin prickle just like she knew it would.
“I know that it’s impossible for you to be carrying his child, unless it’s an immaculate conception, which would be impressive for sure, but I don’t believe you.”
“You don’t have to believe me,” she says airily. “You’re irrelevant.”
Giovanni bristles beside me, but I layer my hand over his and squeeze it. I want to deal with her. I know I can. I’ve been handling difficult patients and management for my entire professional life.
“We’re in love,” I say. “So you’re the one who’s irrelevant.”
Helen draws a heart on the whiteboard.
“He’s confused,” Janine blusters. “He didn’t think I’d go through with marrying another man.”
“But you did, Janine. And if you’re not happy with your marriage, by all means, leave your husband. But you threw away your chance with Giovanni, and you’re not getting him back. We’re together, we’re in love, and he’s not going back to you.”
“I’m pregnant with his baby,” she says loftily. “He’ll come home and do the right thing. His grandmother will expect him to marry me when she finds out about the baby, and he’d do anything that old bag asks.”
Giovanni makes a sound deep in his throat, nearly a growl, and Luanne rapidly scribbles down, Oh no she didn’t. But neither of them says anything.
I squeeze Giovanni’s hand again in appreciation. He promised he would leave it to me, and that’s exactly what he’s doing.
“And what’s going to happen when he releases all the unhinged messages you’ve been sending him?” I ask Janine.
“He wouldn’t do that.”
“Maybe not, but I will if you don’t back off. But say he does take you back…what’s going to happen next year, Janine? What’s going to happen when they do a blood test and they find out it’s not his? You haven’t thought this through.”
“He won’t ask for a paternity test. He’s always wanted kids.”
I feel Giovanni tensing beneath me, so I find his hand and cradle it. “So you’re counting on your charms to pull you through. Interesting.”
What charms? Helen writes.
“If you let that reporter go through with publishing this article,” I continue, “it’ll hurt Giovanni in the short run, but there’s only one person it’s going to hurt in the long run. You. And the baby, if there really is one.”
“I know he’s not really with you,” she snaps. “I saw the stories, but he didn’t go there because of you. He went because he was running away. He’s a fucking coward, just like he’s always been. Just like he’ll always be.”
“What was that?” asks Diana, the resident with the hearing aid. “Can you speak up? I didn’t hear the last part.”
“She said he was a coward,” Helen says with a snort, tapping the whiteboard sharply with her marker. “Has she even met Giovanni? I’ll have you know that man stripped off his own shirt to put out a kitchen fire. How many men do you know who’d do that, little missy?”
“What the fuck?” Janine sputters. “Are you on speakerphone with your grandma?”
“No, she’s on speakerphone with all of her grandmas,” Luanne says hotly, and then she hesitates, shrugging. “Except for her actual grandmother. Would you like us to conference her in? We probably should have invited her.”
“Her brother’s here too,” Miles adds. His gaze lands on Emily. “And her best friend.”
“You’re a bunch of freaks!”
“I’m here too, Janine,” Giovanni says, his voice hard. “You’re right. I came to Apple Ridge because I was a coward, but I’ve found someone and something worth fighting for.” He pulls me close, his hand wrapped possessively around my hip. “Give this up before more people get hurt.”
Janine’s quiet for a long moment. Then she says, “I want money. I know you have money now.”
Luanne snorts. “At least four of us are recording this conversation, dear.”
Diana swears under her breath. “I thought I was, but I was actually playing my audiobook on my headset. Sorry. But there are three others. That should be enough.”
“Fuck you,” Janine practically screams into the phone. “Fuck all of you.”
And the connection cuts off.
“Well, that was exciting,” Luanne says, then reaches for the Dong of Discussion. “What was everyone’s favorite smut scene in the book?”
Miles, Giovanni, and I are in high spirits as Giovanni pulls into the farm under the Evergreens & Apples sign, which is only visible as a swaying shadow in the dark.
We discussed sending the recordings directly to the It’s Not Gossip reporter but decided to wait until after Giovanni talks to his agent.
Still, we’re feeling pretty good about having settled this Janine business.
But as we approach the farmhouse, an ambulance with flashing lights speeds past us. It must have come from the house…
“Fuck,” Miles says, which conveys what all three of us are feeling.
The last time an ambulance was at our farm like this was several months back, when it came for Uncle Ted. It took him away to the hospital, and he never came home.
Giovanni doesn’t hesitate. As soon as he can manage it, he makes a sharp U-turn and follows the ambulance, speeding along the gravel road until we catch up to it. He follows behind it, his expression severe, and none of us say anything.
We all know what the two most likely scenarios are. Something happened to our grandmother, or something happened to his.
After a few seconds, I fumble my phone out of my pocket, but it only has half a bar of service. I try calling Theo anyway, but it won’t connect.
“It’s my nonna,” Giovanni says, his voice a harsh whisper in the quiet of the car. “I know it. I was thinking of breaking my promise, and—”
I put my hand on his thigh and squeeze. “We don’t know what happened. It won’t help to assume the worst.”
Glancing back, I see Miles running his fingers along the edge of the plastic-wrapped tattoo on his arm, his expression serious and deep in thought.
If our grandmother’s the one who’s taken ill, what’ll it do to him? Will he be thrown back into his old patterns?
I hear a quiet murmur, and I realize it’s Giovanni, praying the rosary again and again under his breath. Tears fill my eyes, because he’s doing for her what she did for him weeks ago—not because he believes in its power, necessarily, but because she does.
Finally, we pull into the turnoff for the hospital.
We’re not supposed to follow the ambulance into the emergency area, but Giovanni continues on—though he gives the ambulance a respectful distance, providing plenty of space for whoever’s being transported to exit the ambulance, whether they walk out or are carried.
“What if Theo broke a nail?” Miles asks, trying to break the tension, but it doesn’t land, even for him. The worry in his eyes is the same feeling pulsing through my body.
As we exit the car, the driver of the ambulance climbs out. I recognize him from the brief time I spent working at the hospital. “You’ve got to move,” he tells Giovanni. “You can’t park there.”
Then he notices me.
“Who’s in the ambulance?” I ask, my voice shaking. “We followed it from the house.”
“It’s not your grandma. It’s another old lady.”
I hear Giovanni’s pained groan—another old lady, as if she were no one important—and my heart rips for him as they open the back of the ambulance and a couple of EMTs hop out and begin to guide a stretcher out.
Nonna Francesca looks so small lying on top of it. Especially since Theo is sitting in the back next to her.
“Nonna,” Giovanni cries out and hurries over to them as Theo clambers out behind them. “I’m here, Nonna. I’m here, and I’m not going anywhere. I’ll always be with you.”
“Nonna Rose is at home with Isabella,” he whispers to Miles and me.
Nonna Francesca reaches for Giovanni’s hand as they start to roll her toward the doors. “It’s nothing,” she says, her voice like sandpaper. “I only fell a few steps. I told them I don’t need to come here, but they don’t listen. All I need is rest.”
“This is your grandmother?” one of the EMTs asks Giovanni as they glide her stretcher into the lobby of the hospital. The space is small and cramped but serviceable.
“Yes,” he says.
“They’ll need to do some scans to make sure nothing was broken. When someone’s this age, a simple fall can be serious.”
I know the EMT is only trying to be helpful, but at the moment, I feel like slapping him. Because with every word, Giovanni’s face is becoming increasingly anguished.
I follow them toward the back, needing to be with Giovanni, but the EMT pulls me back.
“Only family right now,” he says.
“She is my family,” Giovanni protests.
My heart fills even as it breaks.
He’s right. Over the last month and a half, it feels like he and his nonna have become a part of us. They belong with us, and it’s not right for them to be separated from us as if that doesn’t matter.
“Only one visitor right now,” the EMT says regretfully. “Y’all can wait in the waiting room.”
I squeeze Giovanni’s shoulder, feeling the gulf of agony inside of him and trying to take some of it away. “It’s okay. I’ll be here. I’ll be waiting. I love you.”
“I love you too.” He kisses the top of my head, and then they’re gone, rushing out of sight.
“Is someone going to move this car?” a nurse hollers from the entryway, sounding put out.
Theo, who likes to keep busy in a crisis, hurries outside to help.
For a moment, there’s nothing. Just the usual hustle and bustle of the ER, and a feeling of aching emptiness fills me. Everything is falling apart, and it’s happening so quickly, and there’s nothing I can do about it.
Then Miles wraps his arms around me. “I’m here,” he says. “I’m here, Bianca. You can fall apart if you need to.”
And I cry and cry into my brother’s shoulder there in the lobby of the hospital where I used to work. Because I know that even if Nonna Francesca is mostly okay, this may be the incident that sends her home.
Which means Giovanni may be leaving with her.
I know he said we’d be together no matter what, that we’d try long distance, but I know in my heart it won’t be the same as having him here with me.
I don’t know who called her, but Emily arrives at the hospital only twenty minutes or so after we do. She takes one look at us sitting in a row and lowers into the empty seat next to Theo.
“You don’t have to be here,” I tell her, tears in my voice.
“I do,” she says firmly, and she reaches across my big brother to hand me a book.
I half expect it to be some kind of treatise on grief and loss, but no, it’s an adventure to occupy my mind. Because of course, Emily knows best when it comes to books.
“I didn’t know how long you’d have to wait,” she says quietly.
“As long as it takes.”
“I had a feeling you’d say that. That’s how long I’ll be here too.”
I notice Miles watching her, a quizzical line between his eyebrows.
She’s surprised him somehow, but not me. Emily is the kind of friend who’d keep you company anywhere. She would have shown up if I was stuck in the waiting room of hell.
After another half hour, my grandmother arrives with Isabella, who’s pale and apologetic.
“She wouldn’t rest until we came,” Isabella says.
Nonna Rose sighs wearily. “I’m right here. You can speak to me, not for me.”
And so all of us wait together. We wait, and we hope.
I hope so hard it hurts, thinking of those seedlings we planted and arranged all throughout the house.
Let them live. Please, let them live.