Annette was just glad her sister was willing to get help. She deserved to be happy.
Annette sat in numb silence, waiting for the lawyer to speak. She didn't understand why she had to be here for this. Surely Carlo could handle the business stuff. She didn't understand why everyone else was there as well, a living will wasn't like a regular will, was it?
But everyone was there. Her parents, Lynette, Carlo and his parents.
No Joyce or Fantino though. They were the reason everyone had been called to the lawyer's office. Annette's baby sister was in a coma along with her husband. A semi-truck driven by a man who'd had too little sleep on roads slick with ice had crossed three lanes to run into their car as they returned from the airport. Annette shook her head, unable to believe what was happening.
Joyce had worked hard at regaining her equilibrium at the clinic. Their last video chat before she and Fantino returned to New York had shown the sister Annette remembered, a vibrant woman who couldn't wait to see her baby in person.
Now, she hovered in a no man's land between life and death, her injuries so severe, she could die before she ever woke up.
With both her parents in comas none of the doctors could be sure they would ever come out of, Jo-Jo was as much an orphan as Annette had ever been. She was determined her niece would never feel the pain of not being wanted as she had. Annette would take care of Jo-Jo, making sure the baby knew she was absolutely loved and wanted.
Annette's numbness turned to horror as she heard the terms of her sister's and then her brother-in-law's respective living wills. In the unlikely event that both were incapacitated for any length of time, they had placed Jo-Jo under the sole guardianship of Carlo.
"But that can't be right!"
The lawyer stopped speaking and gave her a censorious glance. "If I could continue?"
What else was there to say? What else mattered? "But he barely knows Jo-Jo."
He'd met the baby when she was born and then seen her again at the christening. It was the only time he'd held the baby that she knew of. Yes, Carlo had been good with her, but he hadn't been to New York to see his niece in the intervening months. And now they were saying Carlo was to be the baby's guardian?
"For the past three months I'm the one who has fed Jo-Jo, woken in the middle of the night to comfort her, played with her, bathed her, changed all her diapers." Joyce has spent six weeks at the clinic. Fantino had been there for the first two and then on the weekends thereafter.
One thing neither one had moved on though was their unwillingness to hire a nanny, so Annette had been on her own taking care of Jo-Jo. Not that she'd ever really considered herself on her own with a house full of staff.
"Perhaps pushing your way in where you don't belong is why your sister had such a hard time coming to grips with motherhood," Elise Hudson said with angry judgment.
Old pain from her adopted mother's many rejections pricked at Annette's soul.
"You know that's not true," Annette said softly, her voice cracked with emotion. "I only stepped in when Fantino asked me to help, when it was obvious Joyce wasn't coping."
"So you claim. However, both your sister and her husband have made it crystal clear who they wished to take guardianship of the child," Annette's father said coldly. "And it wasn't you. I'm sure we all have no difficulty understanding why."
"I don't understand why." Despair and desperation became a tight vice around Annette's heart. She owed her sister. She owed Jo-Jo.
Annette had to take care of the baby until her own parents were capable of doing so. She refused to believe they wouldn't come out of their comas.
Carlo just sat there in silence, his expression unreadable.
"If you need help securing a flight back to Portland, my administrative assistant will see to it." That was Carlo, finally putting his oar in.
This was him getting back at her for ignoring his texts and other attempts to get in touch over the past couple of months. Annette simply hadn't had the wherewithal to deal with her complicated feelings where Carlo was concerned. She'd accepted he only wanted sex and she had admitted to herself that she needed more.
So, she'd ghosted him. Fair? Maybe not, but Annette had spent a good part of those months exhausted herself, finally adjusting to her new sleep schedule just this past week.
She'd thought it was a sign. Everything was getting better. That incessant stress nausea had finally settled down too.
"I don't care what those papers say, I'm not going anywhere until Joyce and Fantino are well enough to care for their child." Annette tried to sound firm, but her voice broke at the last.
Joyce and Fantino had to get better. They just had to.
CHAPTER 8
Carlo frowned. "Pamina will be with Jocinda. You do not need to worry about her safety and well-being."
"Pamina? You're trusting her care to a woman who has known Jo-Jo less than a week?"