Wuthering Kites

by Clover Tate

  “Come see the view,” Claire said.

  I followed her behind the house, where a small vegetable garden linked the farmhouse’s back door to a narrow dirt road that ran perpendicular to the house. Beyond the road, hazelnut trees in rows ran down a gently sloping hill. We must have been facing west, because the sun pooled at our feet.

  To the right stood an old barn large enough to house a few tractors, and, probably at one time, horses and a dairy cow or two. To the left, the land rose suddenly, the road lifting with it and cresting at the ridge. The orchard stopped at its feet, and brambles and fir trees covered the slope above it.

  The breeze rustled the hair around Claire’s face as she stared over the hill. She absently pushed up her sleeves, revealing a cobalt tattoo of the constellation Orion on one forearm. Her mouth was set in a vague smile, an expression I recognized from Jack. I forced myself not to check my phone to make sure he hadn’t called.

  “You’re thinking about the farm’s future now, aren’t you?” I said.

  She turned toward me. Her eyes were moist. “We grew up here. Practically did, anyway.” She swallowed. “Jack and I used to play in the barn. Sometimes we followed Dustin around. Uncle Gus gave us motors to take apart and put back together. We made go-carts one summer, I remember. Matt used to hang out sometimes. Until . . .” She didn’t finish the thought.

  I made a mental note to come back to Matt later. “You liked mechanical things?” Dustin was an inventor, and Jack had studied engineering. But Claire?

  “Sure,” she said absently. “I was a daredevil, too. We used to ride our bikes all around the countryside here.” She smiled. “I was the only one who didn’t break an arm at some point.”

  “It must have looked different here then. Fewer vineyards.”

  “And fewer wine-tasting visitors clogging the roads,” she added. “There’s a shortcut through the woods, but let’s take the road.”

  She led me up the dirt road and through a small copse of trees. After a few minutes, we reached the top of the hill. It was as if we’d stepped through a tear in time’s fabric and left the valley as it used to be and stepped through to today’s busy wine country. Manicured grapevines trellised the south side of the hill. The vines, still laden with leaves were naked of fruit. Harvest was finished.

  “Look there.” Claire pointed to the rear of a new building with the stamp of an architect all over its metal roof and exterior designed to melt into the countryside. The trees hid it from Uncle Gus’s house, but the farm and winery weren’t more than what would have been a few city blocks apart.

  “That’s Matt’s winery, isn’t it?” I said.

  Claire took a moment before replying. “Yes. And that”—she pointed toward the wooded slope we’d just come around—“is the land Matt wants to turn to a vineyard.”

  “Your uncle’s land.” It started to come together for me. At the Tidal Basin, Matt had said he wanted Uncle Gus’s land. According to Claire, Allison hadn’t been sure she wanted to sell it. Now Allison was dead. Suddenly, I felt a chill. I rubbed my shoulders to warm them. “What will happen to the land now?”

  “I don’t know,” Claire said. “There’s Rosa to think about.” We turned back toward the farmhouse. “And I haven’t had the chance to talk to Jack.”

  The wind had picked up, and I thrust my hands in my pockets. “Would it be so hard to manage a farm from Astoria and Rock Point? I mean, you’d have Rosa and probably other crew. Maybe you could hang on to it.”

  “Neither of us are farmers. The land’s a lot more valuable as a vineyard.”

  “And you have a ready buyer,” I added. It seemed a shame to let such a grand part of old Oregon die, but I had to admit I wanted Jack to stay in Rock Point. “A Century Farm, too.” We were close enough to the house to see Rosa through the kitchen window.

  “I wonder if the sheriff will have more questions for us,” she said.

  “He might, but he’s reasonable. I wouldn’t worry about it.” No, Jack was the one who would have to worry. He would never kill someone, no matter how many millions of dollars hung in the balance. But what about Claire and Dustin—together? I winced at the thought. With Uncle Gus gone, no one would stand in the way of their relationship. Or Matt? Any of them might have stolen Allison’s phone and texted Jack. Any of them might have planted the kite charm at the shop. Claire and Dustin had visited the night we went to the Tidal Basin. Matt might have thrown the charm through the mail slot while the rest of us were on Dustin’s yacht.

  But Dustin didn’t need the money the farm would bring. I had a hard time envisioning Jack’s twin sister as a murderer who would frame her own brother. I didn’t know enough about Matt to say anything either way. But it didn’t look good for Jack.

  We went into the house through the back door. From the warm kitchen light, I realized how dark—and cold—it had become outside. The kitchen was full of the smell of sage and roast pork.

  “Dinner is just about ready,” Rosa said.

  “Do you mind if I wash up?” I asked. Yes, my hands could use some soap and water, but mostly I wanted a few minutes alone to check my phone.

  Alone in the bathroom, I perched on the edge of a massive claw-foot tub and woke my phone. I had a message, and it was from Jack. I couldn’t check my voice mail fast enough. I pressed the phone to my ear.

  “Hi, Emmy. Got your messages, but I’m afraid we’ll only be in cell phone range for another hour or so. Strange, but I got a call from Sheriff Koppen, too. I’ve been thinking about you. If I don’t hear back, we should be back in town tomorrow afternoon.”

  I didn’t even wait for the end of the message to punch in his number. I paced the tiled floor, worrying a bleached white towel as the phone rang and rang and, eventually, dropped into voice mail. “Call me as soon as you get in. It’s important.”

  Tomorrow, then. It would have to wait until tomorrow.

  chapter eighteen

  When I returned to the kitchen, Matt was at the back door, hands in his pockets.

  “Come in,” Rosa said. “You’ll join us for dinner, won’t you?” She glanced at Claire, as if asking permission.

  “We’d love you to,” Claire said, seeming a bit surprised at Matt’s appearance.

  “I was out for a walk and wanted to check on you, Rosa,” he said. “You don’t have to feed me.”

  Rosa was already setting an extra crockery plate on the table. She pulled a worn linen napkin from a drawer. “Nonsense. We have plenty of food. It’s not a fancy meal, just a little something here in the kitchen. Do you know Emmy?”

  Matt stepped in and shook my hand. “We’ve met. Nice to see you again, Emmy.”

  The meal might not be fancy, but I knew plenty of people who would have chucked their reservations at a favorite bistro for a seat at this table. The round wooden table in front of the woodstove was nicked from years of use and topped with soft cotton place mats. I imagined decades of bread kneaded on it, Jack and Claire as kids with a box of crayons, many a farm morning’s coffee poured into fat mugs. Come hungry, the table seemed to say. Come for comfort. You won’t be disappointed.

  “Nothing fancy,” Rosa repeated, jarring me out of my thoughts. “Just a salad, some pork roast, and some of your uncle’s green beans I canned this summer.”

  “And a pie,” Claire said. “Right? Is that for us?” She nodded toward a lattice-topped dish on the counter.

  “Of course it is. Peaches, also canned this summer.” Rosa untied her apron and joined us at the table. The lamp on the side table was soft but deepened the already marked lines on Rosa’s face. No wonder. She’d had a lot to worry about, not the least being how she’d make it now that Uncle Gus was gone.

  Matt watched her, too. “Rosa, you’re magnificent. Thank you for this.”

  “It’s nothing. I’m just glad to have you kids here.”

  “I know it’s an u
ncertain time,” Claire said.

  I listened. It wasn’t my place to talk. I couldn’t help but feel for Rosa as she faced the quiet days ahead.

  “Like I said, I’ll be just fine,” Rosa said. “I have a little bit set aside, and your uncle was kind enough to leave me something in his will.”

  “Do you want to work?” Matt asked. “Or maybe you’re ready to retire.” Matt’s wide face and nose might not have earned him a living as a model, but when he relaxed and smiled, it was hard not to look at him.

  “Don’t you talk that way to me, young man,” Rosa said with new energy. “I might not be a teenager anymore, but I’m not dead yet.”

  Quiet fell over the table at her choice of words.

  “Well, I’d always be happy to have you come work for me,” Matt said. “There’s a caretaker’s apartment in the new tasting room. You could live there.”

  Rosa reached past Claire and patted Matt’s hand. “That’s sweet, honey. Let’s see what happens over the next few weeks. Right now, you’d best be eating before all my hard work here gets cold.”

  “First, I’d like to make a toast. To Allison.” Matt lifted his water glass. “If I’d known I was coming for dinner, I’d have brought a bottle. This will have to do.”

  “Just a minute.” Rosa scooted back her chair and disappeared into the pantry. She returned wiping a rag around the neck of a bottle of wine. “Let’s open this. It’s from your first vintage as winemaker, Matt. I was saving it for a special occasion.”

  Matt took the bottle while Rosa fetched wineglasses. “Thank you. I only have a few bottles of this left.”

  When our glasses were filled, we lifted them. “To Allison,” Matt said.

  “And Gus,” Claire added.

  “For all her big-city ways, Allison would have liked this,” Claire said, looking at the rag rug in the kitchen and Dutch oven on the table.

  “She liked it all right,” Rosa said. “I had a hunch she wanted to get back together with Gus.”

  “What made you think that?” Claire said. I noticed that Matt continued eating, not even looking up.

  “When I called her to tell her about your uncle.” Rosa set down her fork and leaned back. “She was so upset.”

  “Naturally,” I said.

  “She said she’d had her fill of Portland. She said she was thinking of coming back anyhow. She could have run the farm and kept public relations clients on the side. I think she had to break up with Gus and move to the city to prove herself.” Rosa dropped her head. “A shame.”

  “I still can’t believe it,” Matt said. “It’s been years since I spent any time with Allison—I can’t say we were close—but it never seemed urgent to get to know her better. Even after she and Gus separated, I always figured she’d be around. And now . . .” He didn’t need to complete his sentence.

  “I was looking forward to seeing her,” Rosa said. “Dustin loved his father, but men don’t grieve the same way women do.”

  “I know you miss her,” Claire said. “I hope they find whoever did this to her soon.”

  “The sheriff in Rock Point. What do you think of him?” Matt asked, looking at me.

  “People respect him. He can be infuriatingly closemouthed, though.” Encouraged by this turn of conversation, and maybe by my few sips of wine, I turned to Rosa. “When you talked with Allison, did she say anything about anyone holding a grudge against her?”

  “You mean, like someone wanting revenge?” she asked. “Allison wasn’t the sort to pick up enemies.” Rosa touched Claire’s wrist. “Honey, what’s wrong?”

  In my eagerness to learn more about Allison, I hadn’t noticed Claire’s silence. “I was just thinking. Jack doesn’t know about Allison yet,” Claire said. “He and Dad should be home tomorrow. He’s going to be shocked. Dad, too.”

  I wished there was some way I could absorb some of the shock for him. “Definitely. First, to learn about Allison. Then about inheriting.”

  “You two will have a lot to work out,” Rosa said to Claire.

  “Yes.” She pushed a green bean around her plate. “I love this farm. I have so many good memories here. It seems like one of those places that could never disappear from my life. But neither of us is set up to run a farm. I know you’re interested in the land, Matt.”

  “I am. I’ve made no secret about that. At least once a year I talked with Gus about buying the hillside between our properties.” He softened his voice. “If I had the land, you’d always be welcome to visit and stay as long as you’d like.”

  “You can grow grapes on that steep a hill?” I asked.

  “No problem at all. It’s ideal, in fact. Pinot loves afternoon sun.” He set down his fork to better gesture with his hands. “I’d clear out the brush and terrace the land so it wouldn’t erode. It would be a big job, but worth it. We’re known for a restrained pinot—you know, Burgundian style. But with hotter grapes, we could do a lush—”

  Rosa lifted her hands, palms out. “No more talk about that.”

  “I’m sorry,” Matt said. A hush fell over the table.

  “The hillside Matt’s talking about? That’s where Uncle Gus fell,” Claire told me quietly.

  I remembered the steep, brush-covered slope. “Of course.”

  “It was an accident. An awful accident.” Rosa emphasized the words.

  “Yes. Of course,” I repeated and looked at Claire with surprise. An accident. Was she sure?

  Rosa rose and began stacking dinner plates. I stood to help, but she motioned for me to stay put. “Who wants pie?”

  “I think you’re safe bringing each of us a slice,” Claire said.

  As Rosa’s knife clinked against the pie dish’s glass sides, I had the feeling that as much as had been said tonight, even more remained unspoken.

  * * *

  • • •

  Rosa had insisted she and Claire would do the dishes, even going so far as to pat Matt and me on the back to encourage us to settle in the living room. “You make a fire, Matt,” she said.

  “That’s for special occasions,” he said. “The woodstove’s already going.”

  “This is a special occasion.” Rosa was already clearing the table. “Not every special occasion is a celebration. Or a holiday.” She deposited our plates in the sink and returned to the table for cutlery.

  I couldn’t argue with that.

  Porky followed us to the living room. The kitchen had looked to me like the farmhouse’s heart, but the living room was well used, too. A quilt draped over an armchair near the front window. A basket of yarn and a partially knit sweater sat next to it. Near the fire was a recliner with a side table and reading lamp nearby. On the table sat a biography of Thomas Jefferson with a pair of men’s reading glasses on top. Gus’s. Rosa must not have been able to bear to move them yet.

  Evenings, housekeeper and employer must have sat together companionably, knitting and reading or maybe watching the television perched in the corner like an afterthought. They would have known a lot about each other. No chair clearly set aside as Gus’s soon-to-be ex-wife’s was obvious. I had to wonder if Rosa had resented Allison—or vice versa.

  “I should bring Rosa some of our old grape cuttings. They’re good kindling,” Matt said, lighting the pile of newspaper and branches he’d topped with a split log. Despite the pile’s haphazard construction, it leapt into flames.

  “You seem at home here,” I said.

  “Dustin and I used to hang out, since I grew up next door, so I spent plenty of time in Rosa’s kitchen eating sandwiches. It’s been years, though, and I never had the chance to get to know Jack and Claire very well.” Satisfied with the fire, Matt first made toward Gus’s chair, then turned to a blanket-covered couch nearby. I took its other end while Matt peeled up the blanket. “Porky’s, I bet,” he said.

  “What was Allison like?” I
scanned the living room’s walls but didn’t see her photo among the oil landscapes.

  “She was vivacious. Young. I think her energy really woke Gus up. He’d retreated into himself after his first wife Judy’s death. Look on the table behind you. There should be some photos.”

  I clicked on the table lamp. Here was the family’s trove of photos in carefully dusted silver frames. Instead of looking for Allison, I reached for an old photo of the farmhouse’s living room with a Christmas tree where the television now sat.

  I pointed to a boy in footed pajamas holding a puzzle. “That’s Jack. He can’t be more than ten years old.” I pulled the photo closer. He was adorable with his scrawny body and messy hair.

  Matt leaned over to look. “And Claire. Poor kids. They had to wear matching pajamas.” He moved his finger to a messy-haired teenager leaning sulkily against the bookcase. “There’s Dustin.”

  I replaced the photo. “He’s not much younger than Allison, is he?”

  Matt almost smiled. “Neither am I, for that matter.”

  Embarrassed, I looked at the fire. Porky was trying to wedge himself up to what was clearly his favorite spot on the couch, now occupied by Matt.

  I returned to the photos. One showed Allison holding a handful of hazelnuts, their shells brown against her pink palms. She was laughing, and her joy showed in her eyes. I knew why Gus had chosen this photo to frame.

  Porky finally succeeded in cramming himself between Matt and me. I slipped my fingers into the scruff of his neck. “Tell me about yourself. About the winery.”

  “There’s not much to tell. Dad started it in the 1970s, but it was always a side venture for him. He focused on selling grapes to other winemakers. I was the one who ran with it. I got my degree in viticulture at UC Davis and convinced Dad to plant a few acres of new pinot clones. I interned with a winemaker in Napa Valley and another one in Australia before coming back to Oregon. Not long after, Dad died, and Mom wasn’t interested in the winery business. So, I took over.” He rose to toss another, larger, log into the fire.