The Apple Orchard

by Susan Wiggs

  “Didn’t that put you even deeper in debt?”

  “It’s the American way. It was a Band-Aid, of course. The truth is, I’m loaded with student debt. I’ve got a good job that pays the bills, but just barely. Ultimately, I need to make a plan for the long term.”

  “This must be a real letdown for you,” said Isabel, “to come into this situation....”

  “I’m not exactly suffering here.” Tess tried some of the jam. “This isn’t better than any sex, but it’s better than most.”

  Isabel flushed. “I just feel overwhelmed by everything.”

  “Judging by what I saw yesterday, you seem to have a huge network of friends,” Tess observed. As the sun’s warmth filled the morning, she noticed Oscar Navarro ambling along with his peculiar gait. Other people had appeared in the fields and orchards, getting down to the day’s work. “I’m sure you’ll get a lot of advice and support from them about your...situation.” Although Tess was in no position to suggest it, she assumed Isabel had options. It wasn’t just the beauty of the surroundings that made Bella Vista seem so special. It was the idea that this was a land that sustained people, the residents and workers and their families took care of the land and, in turn, were nourished by the orchards and gardens.

  An overly romantic notion, she realized that. But this place had value, and if there was a cash flow problem, there had to be a way to fix it.

  “What’s that part of the building over there?” she asked Isabel, getting up from the table and crossing to the main courtyard, the one with the fountain in the center. The house formed three sides of a square around the stone-paved center, but she’d only seen one of the three wings.

  “It’s vacant,” Isabel said. “At one time, there were quarters for workers and servants, room after room. And in the other wing there are mostly bedrooms and storage rooms. Bubbie once told me she and Grandfather wanted a big family, but they couldn’t have kids.”

  “They had Erik,” Tess pointed out.

  “More kids, I guess she meant. For as long as I can remember, both wings have been empty, or just used to store odds and ends.” Isabel rubbed her temples. “I’m sure Grandfather didn’t mean to leave things like this. Even though he’s old, he’s always been in excellent health. But...accidents happen.” She looked so fragile and exhausted by worry as she spoke.

  Tess had an urge to reach out to her, but she had no comfort to offer. “Well,” she said. “Broke is a relative term. Look at this place. You can take out a loan to help your cash flow, and find a way out of it. Dominic Rossi will help you with that. Isn’t that what bankers are supposed to do?”

  “One would think.”

  “So tell me about Dominic,” Tess said, keeping her voice completely casual. “How did he end up being your grandfather’s executor?”

  Isabel sighed. There was a world of meaning in that sigh, but Tess didn’t know her well enough to make sense of it. “Ah, Dominic,” she said. Her gaze shifted to the distant view, where the mist rose from the hills and softened the line of the horizon. “Grandfather has always been his mentor. He’s always been so wonderful in that way. He used to say he’d been helped so much by others in his life. He wanted to do the same. I hope you get a chance to know him.”

  All he had to do was find me, thought Tess. And he hadn’t. But Dominic Rossi had.

  “So...the banker guy,” she prompted, hoping she sounded merely interested, not obsessed.

  “Dominic and Grandfather did business together, but they’re more than business associates. I suppose that’s why Grandfather designated him executor.”

  There was so much more Tess wanted to know, but she couldn’t figure out how to ask. She wanted to know about Dominic’s world, and why his marriage had fallen apart, and if he had a happy life these days. She wanted to know what his laughter sounded like, and what he looked like when he wasn’t wearing a three-piece suit.

  She wanted to know if he had a girlfriend. No, she didn’t. Yes, she did. But she’d never admit it.

  “A few months ago, Dominic’s bank failed,” Isabel said. “It was awful. It happened in a matter of hours. The building was surrounded by police, and federal agents seized all the records. In a single day, a bigger bank came in and took over. A bloodless coup, I suppose. But after that, Grandfather seemed stressed out. He never talked about it. I could just tell.” She sighed yet again. “After seeing the bank statements, I guess I understand why.”

  “I really would like to see him. Is it a long way to the hospital?”

  “No, it’s the county medical center, ten miles from here.”

  “Then we should go.”

  Isabel hurried to the side patio and started clearing the table. Tess followed her lead, reaching for a plate. Her hand brushed Isabel’s. To Tess’s surprise, Isabel’s fingers were like icicles, and she was trembling violently.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  “I don’t think I’m up to a hospital visit,” Isabel said. “I might be coming down with something, so I’d better stay away. One of the biggest risks to Grandfather is infection. We’ve got to be really careful about that.”

  She didn’t look as if she were coming down with anything, Tess observed, confused by Isabel’s reluctance. Maybe it was just too hard for her to see her beloved grandfather in a coma. Tess wondered if there might be something more; this did seem like a family of secrets. “I’d still like to go,” she said.

  “Of course.” She brightened a little. “I know exactly who’ll go with you.”

  * * *

  That evening, Tess borrowed Magnus’s Volkswagen, which ran on biodiesel and was cluttered, a typical old man’s car, as if he’d just left it moments before. Which of course, he had, never anticipating that trip to the orchard on the morning of his accident. The visors were stuffed with old receipts, a half-eaten Clark bar, the drink holder rattling with spare change and a tarnished St. Christopher medal. She drove along the winding byways that traversed the hills, crossing Angel Creek and taking a right at the mailbox marked Rossi. At the corner, she sat in the car for a minute, gathering her thoughts and trying to talk herself out of seeing him. He might think she was stalking him. She’d phoned him from the landline at Bella Vista, getting his voice mail. He hadn’t called back, but Isabel had assured her it was fine. In Archangel, people dropped in on each other all the time.

  That was certainly the case at Bella Vista. The day had sped by quickly, with people coming and going—neighbors and workers alike. Tess had also used the landline to phone the office, only to be told that there was business to be done, and she was holding up a number of transactions, not to mention the meeting with Mr. Sheffield. But this was important. For once in her life, she was willing to let business wait.

  Tess had never been hesitant or apprehensive about guys, and she was not about to start now. Besides, this was not about seeing a guy. Isabel said he could take her to see her grandfather. Yes, she could go on her own, but it didn’t seem right to simply show up, a stranger....

  Taking a deep breath, she got out of the car. He lived in a vintage bungalow with a big fenced yard twined with climbing roses losing their petals. The place was surrounded by vineyards and orchards on all sides, and it didn’t look like the kind of place where a man like Dominic would live, but she reminded herself that she barely knew him.

  The front porch of the bungalow had a preternaturally neat shelf filled with soccer balls, and three bicycles arranged by size, the smallest one painted a sparkly pink, with streamers coming out of the handlebars. Dusty shoes were neatly lined up by the door, including some little Velcro sneakers featuring a cartoon character Tess didn’t recognize, and bigger shoes with soccer spikes.

  She racked her brain, trying to remember the kids’ names. Trixie? Anthony? She inspected the pink two-wheeler and discovered a small fake license plate that read Trini.

  That’s right. Trini and...Antonio. Yes, that was it. Cute names.

  An ominous flutter started in her ches
t, the now-too-familiar prelude to panic. Ignoring it, she stepped up to the door and rang the bell.

  “I’ll get it!” piped a girl’s voice. “Maybe it’s the pizza guy.”

  The door opened, and a little dark-haired girl peered up at Tess. “Oh.”

  Tess suppressed a smile at the disappointment in her little face. “Sorry. Not the pizza guy. I’m Tess. Are you expecting the pizza guy?”

  “Yep. Dad said. But you can come in.”

  “You can’t let a stranger in,” said Antonio, who shared his sister’s dark hair and big gorgeous eyes.

  “She’s not a stranger. She’s Tess.”

  “Oh, the one Dad was talking about.” The little boy grinned. “Yep, come on in.”

  “Thanks.” He was talking about her? What had he said? She resisted asking as she stepped through the door. Unsurprisingly, Dominic Rossi’s yard and home were as uncluttered as his car had been. How was it possible to have two kids and two dogs and a clean house? Maybe he really did have OCD. “What kind of pizza did you order?”

  “I got to pick,” Antonio said, guiding a soccer ball with expert moves of his feet. “I ordered pepperoni and melanzano.” A lithe little shorthaired dog scampered around, trying to capture the ball.

  Suddenly Tess felt like an intruder. Yes, she should have talked to Dominic first. “Sounds delicious,” she said. “And you pronounced melanzano perfectly, by the way.”

  Trini crooked a finger, indicating that Tess should come closer. “He doesn’t know melanzano is eggplant,” she whispered. “If he did, he would think it’s gross.”

  “We know lots of words in Italian,” Antonio said, pausing to stick out his tongue at his sister. “Our dad speaks Italian because his parents come from Italy.”

  “Nonna and Papi,” Trini explained. “They live in Petaluma.”

  “Well, it’s very cool that you know some Italian,” Tess said. Technically, Tess didn’t like children. They were noisy and inattentive. Unpredictable and uncontrollable. These two were...okay, so far. They didn’t seem too noisy at the moment, and they definitely were not inattentive.

  Dominic spoke Italian, she thought. Of course he did. As if he needed one more thing to make him more appealing.

  “Do you speak something?” Trini asked.

  “I speak with an Irish brogue,” Tess said in her thickest Dubliner accent, “on account of me grandmum was Irish.”

  Antonio stopped kicking the ball, and both kids stared at her as if she had spoken in Elvish.

  “I understand you,” Trini said, her voice a whisper of wonder.

  “Then maybe you speak Irish, too, and you just didn’t know.”

  “We don’t speak Irish,” Antonio said. “We understand it, though. We’ve watched Darby O’Gill and the Little People, over and over.”

  “So did I, when I was a little person myself. I watched it so many times, my mom called it Darby Overkill and the Little People.”

  “Are you here to see our dad?” Trini asked.

  “Yes, I am.”

  “He’s in the shower. He got really dirty and sweaty working in the yard.”

  The thought of Dominic, all dirty and sweaty in yard-work clothes, was impossibly sexy. “Oh...then maybe I’ll come back another time.” Tess started for the door.

  “No, it’s okay. He’ll be really quick. He’s always quick in the shower.”

  “It’s a guy thing,” said Antonio. “We’re super quick.”

  “He sings ‘Rubber Ducky,’” Trini said. “He’d be mad that I told you that.”

  The little dog gave up its tussle with the soccer ball and started sniffing around her feet. Technically, she didn’t like dogs, either, but this one seemed as polite as the children, and its smooth, short hair felt like silk under her hand. “Tell me about your dog.”

  “That’s Iggy,” said Antonio. “He is an Italian greyhound.”

  “Which is why he’s called Iggy,” Trini explained. “After his initials—I.G.”

  “That’s clever. I bet he can run fast.”

  “Like the wind,” Antonio said.

  “The wind at forty miles per hour,” Trini said. “Our dad rescued him.”

  Of course he did, Tess thought. He was a handsome, Italian-speaking hunk with two adorable kids and a nice dog he just happened to have rescued. What was it Isabel had said? He rescues people. Dogs, too, apparently.

  “From a puppy mill,” Antonio said.

  Trini went and opened a screen door to the backyard. In bounded another dog whose breeding was so uncertain, Tess wasn’t even sure it was a dog.

  “That’s the Dude,” Antonio explained. “Dad rescued him, too.”

  “Not from a puppy mill,” Trini said.

  Using the light, quick steps of an expert soccer player, Antonio rounded up the dogs and corralled them into a corner of the room. “Look, I’m the dog strangler,” he said.

  “What?” Tess lifted her eyebrows.

  “Wrangler,” Trini said. “He means dog wrangler.”

  “Yeah, that.” Antonio regarded Iggy and the Dude with pride as they sat at attention.

  “Is the pizza here?” Dominic asked, coming down the stairs. “I thought I heard— Oh. Hey, Tess.”

  He wasn’t wearing a shirt. He wore only faded jeans that looked as though they’d been hastily pulled on after the shower. He had bare feet and damp hair curling into whorls, a chest and abs, shoulders and biceps that made her want to stare at him all day long, the way an art lover might stare at a masterpiece. Who knew so much male beauty could be concealed beneath that three-piece banker’s suit? Suddenly she didn’t give a hoot whether or not he had OCD. She almost didn’t care whether or not he had a pulse.

  She realized after a moment that it was her turn to speak. But her mouth had gone totally dry, and her normally high-functioning brain was filled with nothing but nonverbal lust.

  “Uh...hey,” she managed to get out, probably sounding like a sex-deprived cavewoman. “Um, I don’t mean to intrude—”

  “You’re not intruding,” he said. He must have felt the intensity of her stare, because he grabbed a gray hooded sweatshirt from the hall closet and took his sweet time pulling it on over his head.

  Leave it off, she wanted to say, and probably would have if not for the presence of his two extremely attentive children.

  The sound of a car door slamming sent both kids and dogs to the front door. “Pizza!” they yelled, as if they’d spotted Halley’s Comet. “It’s pizza time!”

  The dogs barked in a frenzy.

  “Money is on the hall table,” Dominic said. “The tip is included.”

  While the kids swarmed the pizza guy, Tess edged away. “I can see this is a bad time. Sorry. I’ll call you tomorrow,” she said.

  “No,” he said. “What’s on your mind, Tess?”

  “That I’m an idiot for showing up without checking with you first.”

  He grinned. “Besides that.”

  “I wanted to visit Magnus in the hospital. Isabel said you went to see him most evenings, so I thought I’d ask to join you.”

  “I do go see him most evenings, but tonight I’ve got the kids.”

  “Which is why I’m an idiot for not checking with you.”

  “No problem,” he said. “Stay for dinner. The pizza smells amazing.”

  “I don’t mean to intrude.”

  “But we want you to,” Trini said matter-of-factly, balancing a large pizza box on top of her head as she led a parade of her brother and two dogs into the dining room. “You’re gonna love the melanzano. It doesn’t even taste like you-know-what.”

  “I should go,” Tess pointed out.

  “We want you to stay,” said Antonio, glaring at his sister as she elbowed him. “You can have a glass of wine, too. My dad makes it himself.”

  “I’ll go grab a bottle.” Dominic went out the back door.

  Tess could tell they weren’t going to take no for an answer. “Okay,” she said. “I surrender.”

>   Inwardly she braced herself for the wine tasting. In all her globe-trotting, she’d sampled some of the best wines, but her experience with homemade wine was limited. That didn’t matter. If Dominic’s wine gave her botulism, it would be no more than she deserved for having an inappropriate crush on him.

  “Are you my dad’s girlfriend?” asked Trini, grabbing a small stack of plates.

  “What? No.”

  “Didn’t think so.”

  “Why not?”

  “He’s weird about us meeting his girlfriends.”

  “He doesn’t want us getting attached,” Antonio added.

  “He’s afraid we’ll get our feelings hurt if the girlfriend doesn’t stay,” said Trini.

  “They never stay,” Antonio said.

  “That’s because he never has girlfriends, moron,” Trini said. “Almost never. And anyway, he and my mom are getting back together.”

  Oh, really? Tess made no comment. The girl spoke with casual confidence. Wishful thinking, or something more?

  “They are not,” Antonio said loudly.

  “Are too, moron,” Trini shot back. “Mom said.”

  “Dad,” Antonio called out.

  “Yeah, Bud?” Dominic came into the room with a bottle of wine and a pair of glasses.

  “She called me a moron. Twice.”

  “Apologize for that, Trini-Meanie-Minie-Moe.”

  “Sorry I called you a moron,” Trini said, then muttered under her breath, “moron.”

  “Hey,” Dominic said.

  “Melanzano!” Antonio flipped open the pizza box. “Can I start?”

  “Go for it.” Dominic poured them each a glass of milk and used a spatula to serve the pizza.

  “Looks heavenly,” Tess said.

  “Mario is from Naples,” Dominic said. “He built a replica of his family’s wood fire pizza oven. You’ll have to try it someday, before Isabel stuffs you full of health food.”

  He opened the wine with an expert twist of a corkscrew. The bottle had a plain-looking label that said Rossi, followed by some letters and numbers, and the year 2004. Oh, boy, she thought. Not only was he serving homemade wine, but it was bound to be spoiled. She would try to be polite.