by Kenzie Reed
“Look what she did to my car!” Cesare howls at me.
I don’t need to look. I can smell what she did to it. There’s a pile of cow manure in the back seat, and an empty wheelbarrow lying next to the car.
Vito and his wife Chiara, Rocco and his wife Katherine, Cesare and Sara are all gathered around and standing at a safe distance.
“How did you get that in there? You could have hurt yourself!” I chastise her.
“That’s your takeaway?” Cesare stomps his foot like a petulant toddler. “I’ll never get that car clean!”
“How did you get home?” Katherine asks her.
“I was discharged today, and Minnie gave me a ride home. Don’t even try to change the subject. You made my Sienna into a prostitute!” Fernanda bellows at my assembled relatives. “And even worse, you pimped her out to a Witlocke!”
“I think I’m offended.” I put my hands on my hips. “And I know I’m mad as hell that you could have injured yourself with that wheelbarrow.”
“Pssht. I had one of the farmhands do it for me.”
“You what? Who?” Rocco says angrily.
Fernanda waves her hand at him. “Never you mind. He wanted to say no, but I told him I’d hex him so badly his manhood would shrivel up to the size of a mushroom.”
Everyone winces, grimaces, blushes, and looks away. The men surreptitiously cover their bits with their hands.
I walk up closer her, possibly taking my life in my hands. “Aunt Fernanda. I need to explain.”
She bangs her cane down on the grass. “No. First I must apologize. I have been terrible this summer, to all of you. You took time every day to have someone visit me, and I was very very rude. I was angry at being weak and sick, and I took it out on all of you. I shouldn’t have done that. After I got in my fight with Sienna, I channeled all of that anger into my rehab exercises, and here I am. I behaved very poorly, and for that, I can only hope that someday you’ll forgive me. As an apology, I will make you my ziti and tiramisu.”
Everyone starts to relax and smile. Nobody makes ziti like Aunt Fernanda.
“Now what the hell is this about Sienna marrying Donovan?” she screams at the top of her lungs, startling us and causing us to jump so hard we practically levitate.
We were fools to think that word would never get to her. We’re just lucky it lasted as long as it did.
I move between her and my family. “Nobody forced me to do anything. We did it because the property sale–”
“I know about the damn terms of the deal.” She sweeps us all with a furious glare. “I could tell that Minnie was lying to me, and I forced her to tell me everything. Why would you idiots agree to this deal with the Devil?”
“To save the property,” Uncle Vito speaks up. He moves his arm in a slow, sweeping gesture, taking in the rolling hills, the mischievous goats scampering on top of their barn, the cows slowly moving through emerald fields. “To save our family’s legacy.”
“I’d rather lose everything than deal with those brutto figlio di puttana bastardos.” She spits on the ground. That loosely translates to “ugly son-of-a-bitch bastards.” When we swear, we go all in.
“Aunt Fernanda. With respect. You can’t make that decision for all of us.” Rocco shakes his head wearily. “You can do what you want with your vineyard, but I want to leave the farm to my children, and I hope someday they can leave the farm to their children. And all we agreed to was a marriage on paper only, for one summer.” He shoots me a look, and I blush and turn away.
I know, I know. The fact that the relationship briefly turned real – that’s on me.
“You haven’t heard the last of this. Right now, I need help moving back into my house. My suitcases are out front. And I can’t walk very far yet, so I need a ride to the house. Preferably in a car that doesn’t smell like cow shit.”
I forgot what a mouth that woman has on her.
Uncle Vito gives us a ride over to the barn-house, and we carry her suitcases inside.
Aunt Fernanda greets Aceto with a cry of joy. She pets Ducktape approvingly, and goes out to the back porch to check out their living quarters.
“You’ll take the downstairs bedroom, of course. I’ll move up into the loft,” I tell her. It’s full of Donovan’s things that I haven’t packed up and mailed back to him yet. I might ask Pamela to do it for me. If I asked anyone in my family, he’d get all of his belongings in pieces no bigger than a marble.
“You really loved him, didn’t you?” She cocks her head to the side.
“I don’t know if I know what love is,” I sigh.
“I think you do. And I think maybe he loved you too, in his own way.”
I put her suitcases in the bedroom and help her hang up her clothing.
Then we settle onto the sofa, and I fetch some cheese and crackers and pour us each a glass of Syrah. Aceto curls up in her lap, purring like a motorboat.
She strokes Aceto’s head. Then she looks at me. “I know he isn’t really my Nuccio.” Her gaze goes sad and soft.
“Oh. Well, of course you do.”
“He’s an angel sent by Nuccio to watch over me. That’s why I need to take good care of him.”
I look at Aceto sidelong. “Angel” is pushing it.
But I have my aunt Ferdie back, and the vineyard is thriving, and thinking about Cesare’s car fetches my first genuine smile in weeks, which probably makes me a horrible person. I’ll go help him clean it later. Right now, it’s nice to find something, anything, to laugh about.
Chapter Thirty-One
SIENNA
Three days home have sweetened my aunt’s disposition – marginally. “The weather is pretty good,” Aunt Fernanda grudgingly admits. She’s sitting outside in one of the chairs in our seating area. We’ve applied for and been granted an extension of premises, so we can now seat triple the number of customers that we had before. Every table is full. We’re working on getting licensing to cook and serve food.
“Pretty good?” I shove a glass of Pinot Grigio at her. “It’s absolute heaven and you know it. When I was a little girl, if I had complained this much, you’d have followed me around spouting inspirational platitudes until they were running out of my ears.”
“Yes, well, I was an annoying know-it-all back then. But really, what did I know?” She contemplates her glass, then swirls it, holds it up and sniffs deeply.
The wine transports her, leaving her grumpy mood behind. “Ahh. 2017. I can taste the sunshine gilding the treetops.” I didn’t even identify the wine before I handed to her. She just knows. We don’t just bottle wine, we bottle seasons and wind and rain and sun, and memories.
My gaze sweeps the vineyard, and despite the ache in my heart over Donovan’s loss, I feel good today. I love this vineyard. I do. I never let myself admit how much I missed it over the years, but now that I’m back here, I don’t think I could return to Seattle. I love the grapes and the vines, I love the soil and the change of the seasons, I love every step of the winemaking process. And I love bringing my accountant’s expertise to it all, crunching the numbers and making everything run smoothly.
I turn and look at my aunt.
“This is a good day,” I say to her. “Admit it.”
“Fine. The weather is wonderful and I’m happy to be home,” she admits. She takes another sip and smiles at me. “I’m happy to have you back. It’s been a long time.”
My gaze falls. “I’m sorry about that. I shouldn’t have stayed away so long. I mean, I came and visited, but it wasn’t the same.”
“I knew you’d come back to us when the time was right.” She takes another sip, then frowns. “There is something I am worrying about, though.”
“Of course you are.” She wouldn’t be Aunt Fernanda if she wasn’t fussing about something.
“Two things, actually. One is that Donovan has clearly broken your heart, and I haven’t seen a smile on you since I’ve been home. I wish I knew what happened.”
“I’ll tell you s
omeday.”
I’m not ready to talk to my family about what happened yet. I’ve told them he didn’t cheat on me or steal from me or deliberately hurt me. We’ve publicly put out the story that Donovan had to go to Los Angeles to run his company until the end of the summer. That is also sort of true. And in the eyes of everyone outside our family, we had established that the relationship was real, so Murray didn’t seem too worried.
She takes another sip of wine and closes her eyes, letting it rest on her tongue before she swallows it. Then she opens her eyes and smiles at me. “At least you don’t have to jog anymore.”
I’ve explained to her about the couples’ relay, much to her scorn.
I manage a faint smile. “At least.”
“And the other thing that worries me is this property deal. The questions that you’ve raised… I think they’re good ones, and I don’t like that nobody has been able to give you answers. I shouldn’t have rushed into signing the agreement without knowing more about who we were selling to. I understand that we all need money, but what’s even more important is that this company doesn’t harm our land. I just have a bad feeling about this.”
I hate to say it, but when she has a bad feeling, she’s never wrong. “What could they possibly be up to, though?” I ask.
She shrugs. “I don’t know. But people will do terrible things for money There are many tens of millions of dollars involved in this property, right?”
“Many hundreds of millions. They’re building five hundred high-end homes, which will be selling for a million or more each.”
“And they are paying a very high price for our property. Much higher than anyone else offered.” She frowned in thought. “These houses will be close to our land. If they’re trying to do anything that hurts the environment, it will hurt us. What if they taint the river?”
“They’d go to prison.”
“Would they? Do bad people always go to prison?” She takes another sip of her wine. “I used to have more faith in the system. The longer I live, the more I think that a lot of the time, bad people don’t face any real punishment until the next life. Which leaves it to us, as stewards of the Earth, to look after things in this life.”
Well, Aunt Fernanda’s definitely back.
“What would you want me to do if I found out that they were up to something shady? Not that I necessarily think they are, but if I did.”
Aunt Fernanda just looks at me.
“Got it,” I say with a sigh. “Keep pursuing it until I get a satisfactory answer, and report anything bad that I find to the appropriate authorities.”
“That’s my girl,” she says. She holds up her wine glass and toasts me. “Now, go do your research and leave me to enjoy this beautiful day and this superior wine.”
She raises her voice as she says that, and casts a smirking gaze over at the Witlocke property. She just subtly insulted their wine, and I’m tempted to say something, but I have to acknowledge that fifty years of habits – since the day she met Uncle Nuccio – are going to be hard to break. At least she’s cast off her mantle of bitter self-pity. Baby steps.
So I settle down in the office and start doing my research. Numbers are my friend. Numbers don’t lie to you or make sneaky deals with your mother behind your back or–I shake my head. Donovan is gone. That part of my life is over.
So why can’t I get him out of my head? I can still smell him every night when I sleep in the loft. I’ve opened all the windows and sprayed air freshener and burned candles. I threw away the mattress that he used, and the pillows and sheets and blankets, and bought new ones. It doesn’t matter. The scent of him, his earthy manly smell mingled with the hint of bergamot and spice, lingers like a ghost. A taunting reminder of what I’ve lost.
Or maybe it doesn’t and I’m just imagining it.
I’d go sleep at someone else’s house, but I need to keep an eye on Aunt Fernanda, who’s still using a cane and sometimes a walker.
I’m starting to get an idea of what’s bothering me, though, so I leave the office and drive to the planning department, and ask for copies of the subdivision plans.
Randy Wilkins, the clerk, looks puzzled. “Why do you need that?”
I’m not in a great mood, so I just reply coolly, “They’re public records, and I’m paying for the copies. I’d like them now, please.”
“Well, I’m about to take my lunch break.”
“It’s three p.m.”
“I didn’t get a chance to eat earlier.”I stare at him steadily.
He heaves an exaggerated sigh. “I don’t see what the rush is.”
He just stands there for a long time, then finally slouches off to fetch them. He proceeds to copy them at the slowest possible pace, until I suggest that maybe we should call the head of the planning department and ask him to come down and help, since this is obviously more than Randy can handle, at which point he suddenly proceeds to move at double speed, his eyes smoldering with resentment.
It’s not until I leave the office, with the plans clutched in my hot little hands, that I remember that he’s Murray’s cousin.
Am I being paranoid? I don’t know who to believe anymore. What Donovan told me has shattered my ability to trust. I still boil with anger that he thought it was all right to let me believe in my mother’s lies – for seven years.
Well, it’s not entirely true that I don’t know who to trust, I guess. I trust Aunt Fernanda. She may have been a crabby old bitch all summer, but she’s always been brutally honest. Still is. I trust Pamela. I mostly trust my family, in that they wouldn’t deliberately lie to me, but I know how desperately they need this deal. I could imagine them ignoring warning signs, maybe not on purpose and maybe not admitting to themselves that’s what they were doing, but I could definitely see it. After all, neither Uncle Vito nor Rocco has gotten back to me with any answers to my questions about Ferguson.
I take the plans back to the office with me and spend the rest of the afternoon doing research. I look up the types of building materials they’ve listed, and the cost of those materials. I research the costs of construction for these types of buildings, and the estimated sale prices of the buildings. When I compare them to the price they’re paying us, I see that my suspicions were right.
We knew all along that they were paying us a very generous price for the undeveloped land, which has zero infrastructure in place. No roads, no existing power grid, no wells. And looking at the costs of construction and everything else that will have to go into place, I can’t see how they’re going to be making a significant profit. Certainly not enough to justify that purchase price.
I lean back in my chair, massaging my temples, and try to imagine what they could be up to.
The office phone rings, but it says unknown number. I ignore it and let it go to voicemail.
I go on the Ferguson company website and try to find a picture of Mr. Ferguson so I can run an image search on him. There are none. Nothing but stock photos of happy, smiling families standing in front of beautiful homes.
Donovan and I have discussed his odd, faint accent. And when we had that dinner, I noticed that he neatly parried any questions about his past. We didn’t press at the time, because it didn’t seem necessary or relevant.
And what was with those big hulking bodyguards? Donovan said that wasn’t an unusual thing for very wealthy men. I guess? I don’t know, but when I think about it, between Liam’s flashy suit and his goons, there was a definite whiff of crime syndicate there.
I call the Ferguson company and reach a chipper secretary. I leave a message asking for a return call, and let them know who I am and that I’d like the names of the previous subdivisions they’ve developed.
The phone rings again. I let it go to voicemail again. This time, my mother’s voice starts speaking.
“Sienna, I know you’re there! Pick up the phone!”
I snatch it up.
“Linda?” I’m teetering between fury, relief that she’s not dead, and mor
e fury. “Where the hell have you been?”
“Excuse me.” Her voice goes sharp. “Since when do you speak to your mother that way?”
“Since you stood me up on my birthday, broke your year’s lease, failed to show up to work and made a bunch of people scramble to cover your shifts, and vanished without a word to anybody. And stayed missing for weeks.”
“We’ll talk about that later,” she says briskly.
“No, I think we’ll talk about that now, if you want me to stay on the phone.”
“Really, Sienna!” She lets out a hiss of exasperated breath. “Fine. An emergency came up regarding the paperwork for my last divorce. I had to go deal with it or I would have owed a lot of money, and the Ribaldis might have been on the hook for it as well.” Her voice turns softer, wheedling. “I know you want me to be independent. I want that too, so you can be proud of me. My ex was trying to go after me for a bunch of money, and he said he’d sue the family trust for what he claimed I owed him, so I had to fly to Panama to straighten things out.”
I listen with growing astonishment. We wouldn’t have been on the hook for anything to do with her marriage, and there are so many holes in her story, Swiss cheese is jealous. Has she always been this bad at lying? Did I just want to believe so desperately that I made myself stupid whenever she spoke?
I went through absolute hell after she disappeared. I pictured her being held captive, abused, molested, murdered…and she can’t even be bothered to come up with a decent lie to cover her sorry butt. I don’t even try to argue with her nonsense. I don’t ask her why she didn’t tell me or the family that she was leaving, because she’d just top her already ridiculous fable with even more cow manure. And wherever she was, I’d bet my last dollar it wasn’t Panama.