Prayer by Susan Fanetti Page B

computer or cell phone—so she had found her entertainment in music and books.
     
    She didn’t play much anymore; pianos were expensive. She had a decent electronic keyboard, but it wasn’t the same; the sound was too plastic. Besides, she owned a television and a laptop. And had a Netflix account. She’d had a lot of catching up to do.
     
    “Is it tuned?”
     
    “Of course it is!” Without waiting for an answer, Dana flitted off to the kitchen. Katrynn sat on the piano bench and opened the slip.
     
    She had sat before she’d checked the bench to see what music was in it, and she hadn’t played in several months, so she didn’t have any song warm in her head. She just let her fingers play over the keys until they found what they wanted.
     
    What they wanted surprised her a little, but she supposed it shouldn’t have. The last song John had played last night was one she knew well: ‘The Wayward Wind.’
     
    Her mom was a Patsy Cline fan and had all her albums and a big songbook with most, if not all, of her released music. ‘The Wayward Wind,’ about a man who couldn’t stay put, had often been on heavy rotation on the turntable and on the piano. Katrynn had learned it in middle school.
     
    Katrynn could sing, but she didn’t while she played now. She just played, softly, thinking more about the night before than about her father. But about halfway through the song, her mother came to the doorway and leaned on the jamb, a paring knife forgotten in her hand, and she began to sing: the next of kin to the wayward wind .
     
    Katrynn picked up the harmony, and they finished the song together.             
     
    When she was finished, her mom said, “You know I don’t mind, darling. It’s how he’s always been. I wander, too. I just don’t leave home to do it.”
     
    “I know, Mom.” Even if there were rough edges on this life, it worked for her parents. Her mom would find someone to keep the loneliness at bay until her dad came home, and then they’d be as happy and in love and together as ever. It worked for them.
     
    They had a great love, and they had decided long ago that they would never hold each other down, that they would never settle for less than the life they needed or wanted.
     
    What her parents had was not at all what Katrynn wanted, but she understood the impulse not to settle for less than what was right. What was right for her, what she wanted, was someone who would neither need nor want to wander from her.
     
    She’d been wrong to think she was ready to give up hope, ready to settle for whatever she could get.
     
    She didn’t want to settle for someone. She wanted someone to settle with .

~ 5 ~
     
     
    On Monday morning, John sat in the waiting area at Pagano Brothers Shipping. He was dressed for work: jeans and work boots, a flannel shirt and t-shirt under a thick hoodie. His heavy-duty coat was in the truck; the weather continued warm for February. Sitting in the corporate reception area, with a gorgeous brunette behind the desk across the room, John felt awkward and nervous and completely out of place. There was a concern lurking in the back of his head that he should have worn a suit for this meeting.
     
    But that was ridiculous. He had to go to work after this, and he worked construction. Besides, Nick was his cousin . He was family. As much as it felt like he was sitting outside the principal’s office, he was not.
     
    No, he was not. He was sitting outside Don Pagano’s office. Because he’d started a fight that had done significant damage to the don’s wife’s business. More than that.
     
    But Nick was family. More than ever. That should count for something.
     
    For most of John’s life, the two branches of the Pagano family—John’s father and his family on one, and Uncle Ben and Uncle Lorrie and their families on the other—had been connected but not especially close. Ben and Lorrie had taken over the shipping business from their father,