A Fine Year for Love (Shores of Indian Lake)

by Catherine Lanigan

  “True. I’ll find more land. Maybe I’ll go up into Michigan. Yours isn’t the only vineyard around the lake,” he replied harshly. Then he ground his jaw. “Fine, you just go on pretending I’m the bad guy. That’ll keep you all safe and secure. If that’s the way you want it, you got it.” He put his champagne glass down. “I’ll see you around, Liz.”

  “Thanks,” she said and watched him walk away from her for the second time.

  Liz didn’t know how it was possible, but this second departure was more annihilating than his first one had been. They were in a house. He had only gone into the next room, and yet he could have been on Mars. It suddenly felt as if they were light-years apart. She’d finally gotten through to him. She knew this time he wouldn’t bother her again. She should have been washed in relief, but what she really felt was inexplicable sadness, as if she’d just lost something very valuable.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  BEYOND MRS. BEABOTS’S two-story carriage house, which had been recently refurbished, was a well-maintained walking garden. It had been Mrs. Beabots’s pride and joy ever since she came to live in this grand dame of a house on her wedding night.

  In the center of the garden was a row of flowering fruit trees, which were now heavy with pears and apples. A faint gilding had brushed the edges of the leaves to signal the end of the growing season. Along the south-facing side of the garden were several trellises with lush climbing roses, passion flowers, mandevillas and night jasmine. Beneath the trellises were hundred-year-old marble and stone benches. Most modern homeowners would have installed path or solar lights, and maybe even “moon” lighting up in the trees, but Mrs. Beabots was old-fashioned. She insisted on carrying a kerosene lantern or flashlight with her whenever she ventured out into the dark.

  Liz followed the red brick pathway to the gazebo at the back of the garden, where she could see a lantern glowing. Two figures sat inside—a man and woman.

  As she drew closer, she could hear them laughing, and from their soft, hushed tones, she sensed camaraderie.

  Sam and Gina?

  Suddenly, Liz felt as if she was intruding on a private moment. Questions came at her like bullets, each one opening a new wound. Their whispers and soft laughter suggested a deep, emotional connection that went far beyond friendship. Had they been in love once? Were they in love now? When had it all started? And why were they seeing each other now?

  Sam had his arms around Gina, and she’d laid her head on his shoulder. They seemed comfortable and familiar in each other’s arms.

  Liz couldn’t stand any more second-guessing. “Grandpa? Is that you?” she said as she marched forward.

  “I’m here,” Sam replied. Gina slipped out of his embrace and stood a foot away from him. “What’s up, ma petite?”

  “Dinner is being served.” Liz paused at the bottom step to the gazebo. She looked directly at Gina. “How are you tonight, Mrs. Barzonni?”

  Gina smiled softly. “I’m good. Very good now, actually.” She reached out her hand to Sam. “Thank you, my friend. I will never forget this night.”

  “The pleasure was all mine,” he said, taking her hand and kissing it.

  Gina shot Liz a meaningful glance. “I’ll see you both inside.”

  She walked away, the full skirt of her white chiffon dress swishing. As she passed through the dappled moonlight beneath the autumn trees, the sequins and seed pearls on her sweater sparkled like dewdrops, making her appear ethereal.

  “Gina is so beautiful,” Liz said.

  “She sure is,” Sam replied admiringly. “That’s exactly what I thought the first day I met her.”

  Liz spun around. Was she actually going to get the truth? If Sam had caught her red-handed, she wasn’t so sure she’d have told him the truth about Gabe. In fact, she hadn’t told any of her friends about what had been going on between the two of them. Not that he’d kissed her, nor that he’d told her he wanted to be more than friends. She certainly hadn’t told anyone she’d been fool enough to think he’d been telling the truth. She’d kept his invasion of her life a secret. Was it because she was ashamed of him? Ashamed of herself? Did she think herself weak for having fallen for him? Or had she kept her mouth shut because she wanted to get rid of him before he had a chance to cause any real damage?

  “And when was that, Grandpa?”

  “About two years after your grandmother died. It was the summer of 1979.”

  “But she was married!”

  “No, she wasn’t married, but she was engaged. Angelo had been in Indian Lake for about eight years by then. He lived in a trailer on his farm. He’d already started buying up the surrounding land. Times were tough for all of us back then. Interest rates were sky-high. Winters were brutal. Summers were worse—drought, diseases. The government had banned all the good pesticides and hadn’t come up with anything to replace them with. Most farmers thought it was the end of the world. I was buried in grief and depressed. I’d taken to coming into town on Saturday afternoons to see the science-fiction double features at the Roxy Theater. Your dad was about sixteen then, and on every other Saturday, he took off to the beach and I went to town. I saw Gina coming out of the ladies’ shop next door one Saturday. She was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. She was much too young for me. She was only twenty-seven and I was forty-three. But she was just learning English. She was renting a room at Hazel Martin’s house.”

  “Hazel still rents rooms. Maddie has lived there for years.”

  “No kidding? I thought Maddie lived above her café.”

  “She rented it to Lester MacDougall. Ann Marie Jensen wanted Lester to have a good experience here in town so he wouldn’t run away again.”

  “Ann Marie was always wise,” Sam said, sitting back down on the stone bench. “Anyway, I drove Gina around Indian Lake—showed her some places to shop, the Civic, the beaches, the ballet and symphony. I told her where to send her children to school when the time came.”

  “Shouldn’t Angelo have been doing all that for her?” Liz asked.

  “You would think so,” Sam said. “But Barzonni was too busy building his empire. He didn’t have time.”

  “Wow, it’s a miracle they met in the first place.” Liz glanced back toward the house. “Do you know how they did meet?”

  “She said it was almost like an arranged marriage, but without the family doing the arranging. Angelo was an orphan. Somehow he’d amassed a fair amount of money in Sicily before he came to the States. Anyway, Gina was one of six girls, and she met Barzonni just before he came to Indiana, at some friend’s birthday party. She was only fourteen or fifteen at the time. I guess Angelo kept bragging that he was going to America and that someday he would be very wealthy, own a big house and throw great parties of his own. Gina told me she was young, naive and hooked. She fell in love not with Angelo, per se, but with his dream of the future. He left Italy but they always stayed in touch. Gina didn’t want to become another Italian housewife. She wanted to live an adventurous new life in another country. She loved growing things. She knew she would make him proud with the lovely garden she would keep, and the dinner parties she would throw using her own fresh ingredients as the bases for her meals.

  “So, when she was twenty-six, he sent for her. She made him promise they would not get married until after she’d spent at least six months in the US so that she would know if she liked it.”

  Liz tried to imagine what her grandfather had looked like back then, when he was in his early forties. He would have been fit from working the vineyards every day, yet vulnerable because his wife had recently died. Liz guessed that back then, Sam could easily have put sparkles in Gina’s eyes. “And she fell in love with you?”

  “No. I don’t think so.”

  “What? How could she not fall in love with you? You are the best ever. Was it the age difference?”

&nbs
p; He smiled at her then took her hand and patted it. “Sometimes, life is so complicated. Even if something seems right or natural, it doesn’t always happen the way it should.”

  “But you fell in love with her?” Liz ventured.

  “I did. I always told myself it was just a crush. But tonight, seeing her, smiling at me with so much life in her eyes, I swear, I think I lost my heart all over again.”

  “But, Grandpa, this time she really is married.”

  “Don’t I know it,” Sam groaned.

  Liz rubbed her temples. “How is it possible that everything has gotten so thorny all of a sudden?”

  “Really? I thought things just got straightened out,” he said.

  “How’s that?”

  “I had a chance to really talk with Gina. Over the years, we’ve seen each other around town or at the symphony or on the Christmas candlelight tour, but I’ve never really been able to tell her how I felt. I mean, she had the boys to raise...”

  Liz put her hand on his arm. “What do you mean, tell her how you felt?”

  “I wanted her to know that I’m her friend and she can always count on me if she needs me. With or without Barzonni, I’m there for her.”

  “You said that?”

  “Yes. I did.”

  “That’s really...courageous, Grandpa.”

  “Because I’m so old?”

  “Well, yes,” Liz replied. She didn’t want to hurt her grandfather’s feelings. He was still the most precious person in the world to her and she would never want him to think he wasn’t first on her list of priorities.

  “Liz, it’s precisely because I am this old that I decided to speak up. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve stayed awake all night and wondered ‘what if...’”

  “What if what?”

  “What if I’d told Gina I was in love with her before she married Barzonni. What if she’d fallen in love with me, too? My life might have been very different. It might have been fuller. Richer. The land and the vines might have meant even more to me than they do now.” He paused and peered deeply into her eyes, his own filled with sincerity and regret. “You see, we have these dreams of making the best darned cabernet in the United States, but it just won’t be enough if you don’t have someone to love and someone for you to love back. It’s love that makes the vines sing and the grapes want to create for us. It’s love that brings out the magic in the wine. We weren’t put on earth to sleep and eat and talk on our cell phones. We were put here to be with the people we care about.”

  “I believe that, Grandpa. I have you,” Liz said, with tears in her eyes. She threw her arms around his neck. “I love you so much.”

  “I love you, ma petite. I always will.” He smoothed her long hair with his palm. “None of us knows what tomorrow will bring. I don’t know if I’ll be gone tomorrow or if I’ll live to be a hundred. But I do know I had to take this chance to tell Gina I care for her. And if I see her next week by some coincidence, I’ll tell her that again. It saddens me that an amazing woman like Gina may have gone all her life without having been truly loved.”

  “Oh, Grandpa...”

  “I don’t want that to happen to you, either, Liz. You keep your eyes and heart open. Don’t close them off, like I see you doing.”

  “I’m not doing that.”

  “Sure you are. You’ve always done it. You’re afraid that if you fall in love, madly in love—like your dad did with your mom—that something terrible will happen. That you’ll lose your lover like you lost your parents.”

  Liz started to protest, but Sam quieted her quickly. “Don’t deny it. I’ve known that about you for a long time. You have to ditch the fears, Liz. Just think about what I’ve said.”

  “I will,” she told him.

  “Promise me.”

  “I promise.” She smiled.

  Sam stood up. “Let’s go in for that scrumptious dinner that only Emma can make.”

  “Just one more question, Grandpa. Do you hate Angelo because you never told Gina that you love her?”

  “It’s not him I’m mad at. I’m mad at myself for not stepping up when I had the chance.”

  “So you think he’s an okay guy, then?”

  “I didn’t say that. I still don’t trust him. Those Barzonnis have always got a secret agenda.”

  Liz chewed her bottom lip thoughtfully as she took her grandfather’s arm and began to walk toward the house. One thing was for certain: Gabe had an agenda when it came to her.

  Her grandfather had loved Gina Barzonni nearly half his life. Liz wondered if she would be able to forget Gabe and live hers without him in it. Or would she be like Sam and only gain the courage to be honest with him when it was already too late?

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  GABE APPEARED IN the entranceway and held the door open for Liz and Sam as they climbed the back porch steps. His eyes bored into hers. Suddenly, all she could think about was that night, not unlike this one, when she had been held under the moonlight in Gabe’s arms. Only now her mind was filled with her grandfather’s warnings about missed opportunities and lost years.

  “Can I talk to you, Liz?”

  “We were just going in to dinner.” She looked at her grandfather, who gave her a slight nod. In light of everything he’d just revealed to her, she couldn’t tell if he was giving her permission to have it out with Gabe once and for all, or if he believed she should yield to her emotions and see where they led her. Anticipation and fear crept over her like dew, causing her to shiver.

  She hesitated on the top step.

  “Five minutes, Liz? Please?”

  Sam moved past Gabe. “I think I hear Emma calling me. Excuse me,” he said, leaving Gabe and Liz alone.

  Liz backed down the steps, not taking her eyes off Gabe. She wondered how much he knew about his mother and her grandfather, if anything. Liz had seen Gina’s affection for Sam only a few moments ago in the gazebo. Even if Gina considered Sam to be just a friend, her grandfather clearly felt more than that for Gina.

  Gabe moved boldly toward her with a purposeful expression that swept all thoughts of her grandfather and Gina from her mind.

  “I understand there’s a gazebo back here somewhere,” he said, taking her arm. “I thought we could talk there.”

  “Aren’t you angry with me?”

  “I am. I was. Mostly, I’m frustrated, and that’s what I want to talk to you about.” He took her hand in his and then started kissing it. “I don’t like fighting with anybody, and I especially don’t like fighting with you.”

  She nodded. “I don’t like it, either. I don’t understand why I do that. I’ve never been one to pick fights, but with you I seem to do it so naturally.”

  They reached the gazebo and stepped onto its wooden floor. Still holding her hand, Gabe pulled her closer.

  “You’ve never been like this with anyone?” he asked.

  “No,” she said, dropping her eyes to his lips, remembering too easily what they had felt like pressed gently to hers.

  “That’s good,” he said.

  Liz blinked. “What? How can my anger toward you be a good thing?”

  “It’s just as I thought. You’re falling in love with me.” His grin was much too confident, and that really made Liz mad.

  “I am not!” Even if it was true, she didn’t want to admit it.

  “Sure you are,” he replied. “Think about it. I bring out your bad side because you’ve never been in love before and the idea that you could lose control like that terrifies you.”

  Gabe was hitting the bull’s-eye, making Liz even more uncomfortable. She tried to retract her hand, but Gabe held on to it.

  Then he put his arm around her, splaying his fingers across her lower back.

  “It’s okay if you fall in love wi
th me, Liz, because I’m falling in love with you.” Gabe wanted Liz to know that she was the most important person in his life. Land or no land.

  “You are?”

  “Uh-huh,” he replied, his eyes brimming with sincerity. “I told you I wanted to be your friend and I truly do, but I also want more than that. I don’t know yet how I can win your trust and respect, but I’m willing to push the limits for you. How can I stop you from feeling anxious every time you look at me?”

  “I’m not anxious right now,” she protested.

  “You’re shaking.”

  “It’s just chilly out here.” She tried to deny his observation, but it was true. It was his closeness and his daring that made her nervous.

  He closed his arms tighter around her. “Then I’ll keep you warm.”

  It would be so easy to cut the tether that held Liz’s emotions in check and float away on this rushing tide of romantic promises. His eyes had always been deep, hypnotic pools—she lost her train of thought whenever she gazed into them. Reluctantly, she admitted to herself that when she’d shunned him, she’d ached to hear from him. Even his text messages held a mysterious power over her that she didn’t fully understand. At times, she thought he was the enemy. The opposition. Yet when her dreams were haunted by remembered kisses and echoes of his velvet voice, she would succumb to his charm.

  Just as she was doing now.

  She felt safe and protected in his arms. But at the same time, a terror that started in the pit of her stomach rose up like an uncoiling cobra, ready to strike out and kill her chance at happiness. Liz had never had to battle with herself, but the more Gabe pressed her about her feelings toward him, the more she realized that loving him was going to require a great deal of courage. She didn’t want to be afraid, but she was.

  Suddenly, Gabe cradled her face in his hands. “You’re thinking too much, Liz. Don’t...” He pressed his lips softly against hers.

  Liz’s thoughts ceased instantly. Gabe’s kiss made her feel more alive than she ever had. She closed her eyes and lost herself in the moment, wondering if anyone on earth had ever felt this giddy, this dizzy, this euphoric. She wasn’t sure if she was in love, but she felt as if she were physically falling.