A Fine Year for Love (Shores of Indian Lake)

by Catherine Lanigan

  Then she felt as if she was being lifted up, and together she and Gabe were sailing through the cosmos, the stars sliding and spinning past them.

  His breath was warm on her cheek and he smelled of vanilla and spice. She placed her hands over his. She could feel the blood surging through his wrists to his hands and in that instant, she knew deep in her heart that what he was saying was true.

  Gabe is in love with me.

  He wasn’t playing with her affections and he wasn’t fabricating stories and scenarios to wrest her land from her. He was genuine. He was sincere.

  When he pulled away, she felt the oddest sense of abandonment, as if she’d been truly cared for and now she was adrift again. Ever since their first kiss, she’d tried to convince herself that a second one would probably be disappointing. She’d been bowled over the first time because it had been just that—the first and it had rocked her world.

  But surely such explosions of tenderness could not continue. Undoubtedly, the newness would eventually wear off. Then she remembered her father’s journals. For some people, the thrill, anticipation and love grew deeper and more intense year after year.

  For some people, love was everlasting.

  She hadn’t wanted that second kiss to end. She had wanted it to go on forever.

  Gabe tipped her chin up. “Don’t look so sad. I have a lot of those to give you.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You were pouting,” he said, kissing the tip of her nose.

  “I was?”

  He nodded and then pulled her into a hug, resting her head against his shoulder. “You do that a lot. I always know where I stand with you because your thoughts are written all over your face.”

  Liz sighed, thinking how lovely it was to be in Gabe’s strong arms. “I’m that readable, huh?”

  “You are.” He chuckled. “But then, so am I.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Mother. She tells me everything.”

  Everything? Liz wasn’t so sure. When the time was right, she would bring up the subject of Sam and Gina. But tonight, Liz was learning more about herself than she’d learned in the past twenty-seven years. And the bulk of it she was discovering while standing in the circle of Gabe’s arms.

  “Still cold?” Gabe asked.

  “Not anymore.” She wrapped her arms tightly around his back.

  “I thought I’d find you out here!” Angelo’s voice boomed from the dark shadows, causing both Gabe and Liz to jump.

  “Dad! You scared us to death!”

  “Good!” Angelo growled and gestured at them with his wineglass. “I leave you alone for two minutes and you go sneaking into the bushes.”

  “Sneaking?” Liz stepped out of Gabe’s embrace.

  Gabe instantly reached for her hand and held it firmly. Liz got the distinct impression he was not only protecting her, but also seeking an anchor for himself.

  “You didn’t actually come out here to find me, did you, Dad?” Gabe asked through clenched teeth.

  “I did.” Angelo moved out of the shadow of the giant blue spruce and into the moonlight.

  “I’m not a kid anymore,” Gabe said, gripping Liz’s hand a bit more tightly. She squeezed his hand back supportively.

  “You’re acting like one.” Angelo took another step, and this time he wobbled to the left, tripping on a raised stepping stone “I thought we had this out weeks ago. Apparently—” he raised his glass in Liz’s direction “—you lied to me.”

  Liz’s eyes tracked from Angelo to Gabe. “What does he mean? Were you two talking about me?”

  Gabe whispered, “I’ll tell you later.” He glared at his father. “You and I have nothing more to say to each other about Liz or about any other aspect of my life. You got that?”

  “We’re not through by a long shot, young man,” Angelo retorted, taking two long strides toward Liz and Gabe. He stumbled on a broken brick in the pathway. He tried to break his fall with his hands, and he landed on the wineglass, cutting his palm.

  Angelo shouted in rage and pain.

  Gabe rushed down from the gazebo and helped his father back to his feet. He turned to Liz. “Go inside and get my mother and Nate. No, getting Nate would break up the party. Get Rafe. Yeah, Rafe can take Dad to the emergency room.”

  “I’m not going to the hospital!” Angelo pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wrapped it around his bleeding hand. “It’s just a little cut.”

  Liz looked at the wound. Though it wasn’t large, it was bleeding badly. “But the blood...”

  Angelo cut her off. “It’s from the warfarin.”

  Gabe’s eyes widened. “What warfarin?”

  Liz saw the warning look in Angelo’s eyes and spun around. “I’ll get Gina and Rafe.”

  Liz raced into the kitchen, where Gina was talking with Mrs. Beabots about her recipe for the beef marinade.

  “Mrs. Barzonni, could you come outside, please? Mr. Barzonni fell and cut his hand. Gabe said I should get Rafe because he’s bleeding pretty badly.”

  “Oh, dear!” Mrs. Beabots exclaimed. “What can I do to help?”

  “Nothing,” Gina answered, patting Mrs. Beabots’s arm. “Angelo is just out of sorts and stumbled on the path. He’ll live.” Gina carefully placed her dinner plate next to the sink and went into the living room. When she returned she was followed by Nate, Rafe and Mica, like an elegant queen leading her princes to court. As they all marched to the gazebo, none of them spoke. They appeared to be calm, in control and unflappable. How often had this kind of thing happened in the Barzonni family?

  “Gabriel,” Gina said as they approached. “Talk to me.”

  “Dad stumbled on the path. He was holding a wineglass and when he fell, the glass cut his hand.”

  “Nate,” Gina said, not taking her steely eyes off Angelo, who suddenly seemed quite mollified. Angelo stuck out his hand while Nate unwrapped the handkerchief.

  Nate inspected the cut. “It won’t need stitches. Just clean it up, use an antibiotic cream and put a butterfly bandage on it.” Nate wrapped the handkerchief back around the wound. He patted his father’s shoulder. “Go home and get some rest. Doctor’s orders.”

  Gina turned to Rafe and Mica. “Your father has had too much to drink. You boys drive him home. I’ll follow in Gabe’s car. We’ll stay till the party is over. There’s been enough disruption for one night.” Gina glared at Angelo with condemnation in her dark eyes.

  “I’m not drunk,” Angelo protested. “I just tripped.”

  Gina’s gaze swung between Gabe and Liz. “Maybe not, but you were out here when you should have been having dinner with me and paying attention to the bride and groom, not to mention our hostess. Now go home and calm down.”

  “I’m fine, I tell you!” Angelo growled.

  She stepped up to him until they were nose to nose. “You listen to me. This is Nate’s party and I will not have you embarrassing me or the rest of this family. You go home. I’ll make excuses for you.” Then she looked at Rafe. “Take his blood pressure before he goes to bed and write it down.”

  “I can do it myself,” Angelo said.

  Gina put her hands on her hips. “But will you write down the real numbers or lie to me like you usually do?”

  Rafe and Mica each took one of Angelo’s arms and led him away from the gazebo.

  “I apologize on my husband’s behalf,” Gina said to Liz.

  Liz smiled softly and shook her head. “No need. I was just worried about the bleeding.”

  Gabe put his arm around Liz’s waist, and the warmth of the gesture spread all the way to her heart. “How long has he been on warfarin, Mom?”

  “A year. Nate’s been watching his numbers like a hawk lately. He’s supposed to avoid stress, but honest
ly, I think the man goes looking for things to make him angry.” She sighed. “He’s always been a hothead. Even when we were young. For years, he was too exhausted from the hard work on the farm to spend any energy on anger. But lately, he rages and rails at everything.”

  “What do you think it is, Mrs. Barzonni?” Liz asked, glancing at Gabe.

  “Nate getting married.”

  “What?” Gabe’s jaw dropped open.

  Gina shrugged. “He’s losing control of his sons. Nate is the first to marry and he won’t be the last.”

  “But Nate hasn’t been around Indian Lake for eleven years. I would think Mr. Barzonni would be happy to have him back in town. Nate and Maddie will be living here in their cottage. He can see them all the time.”

  “My husband is a complicated man,” Gina said, a resigned smile on her face. “All men are.” She placed her hand tenderly on Gabe’s cheek. “That’s what makes them so fascinating, I suppose.”

  “Fascinating and famished,” Gabe said. “How about we join the party?”

  “Splendid idea,” Gina said, taking her son’s arm. “Then over dessert you both can tell me your story.”

  “What story is that, Mrs. Barzonni?” Liz asked, taking Gabe’s other arm.

  “The one about how the two of you fell in love.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  GABE WAS PENSIVE as he drove his Porsche down the highway out of Indian Lake toward their expansive farm. The moon was full and high in the sky with only a few clouds scudding across its face. Gina stared out the passenger’s window at the acres of harvested summer cornstalks and the fields of ripening pumpkins and squash.

  “Late summer has always been my favorite season,” she said. “It’s not quite autumn yet, but the days are still warm and long without the blazing summer heat. And all the crops are ripe and full.”

  “For me, late summer always means my back is going to be sore from all that harvesting,” Gabe grumbled.

  Gina pushed on his shoulder playfully. “Oh, you boys. Always complaining. I remember late summers when there wasn’t enough left to eat.”

  “You mean back in Sicily, before you moved here?”

  She smoothed the folds of her full skirt. “Yes. It was a difficult life for me when I was young, as it was for your father. I want you to remember that and try not to be so hard on him.”

  “Hard on him?” He guffawed. “He’s the one making my life difficult. Not the other way around.”

  Gina paused thoughtfully. “I suppose I should tell you the truth about your father and our family.”

  “The truth?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I don’t know if every family has secrets, but I’m going to guess that a great many do.”

  “This isn’t about something Dad did back in Sicily, is it? I mean, Rafe and I always figured maybe he killed somebody back there and that was why he came to America.”

  “You boys watch too many mob movies.” Gina laughed. “It was nothing like that, though he had to take every odd job he could from the age of seven or eight. By the time he was fifteen, he was already saving every dime he could to book passage to New York. He worked his way over to the States on a freighter to save even more money. When he got to New York he worked as a busboy, a waiter, a truck driver. Any position he could find. He told me he always wanted to be a farmer. He hated city life, which for him meant living on the streets and scrounging for food and clothing. He heard about the drought in Illinois and Indiana at that time. Farms were being sold for next to nothing. So one night, he got on a train and left New York.”

  Gabe jerked his chin up. “He stowed away?”

  “On a freight train, yes.”

  “So the trip out here was free. That was thrifty of him. But what about you? When did you fall in love with Dad?”

  “I never fell in love with your father.”

  Gabe coughed and choked on his words. “Come again?”

  “I knew him when he delivered vegetables. My father owned a small restaurant. Just spaghetti and other pasta, basically, but we made an excellent gravy. I still have my mother’s recipe.”

  “Which we all love,” Gabe interjected.

  Gina smiled. “Thank you, dear. Anyway, I was only fourteen, waiting tables and cleaning up alongside my five older sisters. They were always flirting with the American sailors who came to town on furlough. They all dreamed of sailing across the ocean with a handsome American and I guess their dreams became my dream. When I met Angelo, he was young and focused on his goal to live in the United States. I would give him free scraps from the kitchen and he would share his dreams with me. One day, he told me he had saved enough money to leave Sicily, and that if I waited for him to make his fortune in America, he would send for me so I could join him. We sat at the back table in my father’s restaurant and shook hands on the deal. I promised to wait till Angelo sent for me and then we would be married and live in America together.”

  “That’s...pretty incredible,” Gabe said as he slowly absorbed what his mother was telling him. “But you were just kids. How could you honestly think he would stand up to his end of the bargain?”

  “I had faith. I prayed about my future every night. I was only fourteen when we made our pact. Angelo was nineteen, I believe. Do you know he doesn’t know his real age? It’s always bothered him that he was an orphan, born in the streets. I think that’s why he loves his land so much. The dirt is his ancestry. His literal roots. But that is only part of my story.”

  “There’s more?”

  “Yes. So much more.” She inhaled deeply.

  Gabe glanced at his mother, and in the light from the illuminated dashboard he could see tears in her eyes. He reached for her hand. “If this is too difficult, Mom, we don’t need to do this now.”

  “Yes, we do. I’ve held the truth back far too long and now I see what is happening with you...and Liz. She’s a wonderful girl, Gabriel. Do you think she loves you back?”

  Gabe swallowed hard. His mother had just asked the one question that could sink a dagger into his heart. He didn’t know the answer, and he was afraid to find out. “I don’t know,” he said. “There are times when I believe I can convince her to love me, but it doesn’t work like that, does it?”

  “No, it doesn’t. Love just is. We can’t pick who or how or when. Oh, I know the psychologists have all kinds of books filled with theories about relationships—that’s what they call love now, relationships. That’s so silly to me. To take the romance out of love. It’s just so un-Italian.”

  “Well said, Mother.” Gabe chuckled. “Then I think I have fallen in love.”

  “You’re not sure?”

  He raked his hand through his hair. “I know I’ve never felt like this before. I want to be with her all the time, and when I’m with her, it’s not enough. I swear I could talk to her all day and night about wine, but then we get into these arguments—she thinks I have some kind of ulterior motive. Like I’m a crook. I don’t know where she gets these ideas—”

  “I do,” Gina interrupted.

  Gabe nearly swerved the car. He gripped the steering wheel tightly. “What? How can you possibly say that?”

  “That’s the other part of my story.”

  “Believe me, I’m listening.”

  “When I came to Indian Lake, I was still in my twenties. I had this idea in my head that if I waited half a year to get married—half a year to get settled in America—then the decisions I made about my future would be smarter.”

  “Okay...”

  “Angelo had acquired most of the farms around his by that time, and he was working full speed. He’d hired some farmhands and they were very busy. I took a room in town. I joined my church and a few of the ladies’ groups that appealed to me. I went to the library nearly every day and to the movies on the weekends.”
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  “You did this alone, while Dad was on the farm?”

  “Not exactly. I met someone who was very nice to me and a lot of fun to talk to. We laughed so much. I hadn’t known what it was like to laugh that much. He introduced me to all of his friends. That’s when I met Mrs. Beabots and Helen Knowland and others.”

  “And this man’s name was...”

  “Sam Crenshaw,” Gina admitted.

  Gabe pursed his lips and then slammed his palm over his mouth. “This isn’t for real.”

  “We didn’t have an affair, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Gina added quickly. “But I did fall in love with him.”

  “You did?”

  “And it wasn’t until tonight that I found out he’d also fallen in love with me.”

  “Oh boy.” Gabe exhaled.

  “When I met him, Sam’s wife, Aileen, had recently died, and I was afraid I was just a substitute for her. I didn’t dare let him know my true feelings. But I can tell you, I counted the hours until I knew I would see Sam again. I knew Sam thought he was too old for me. He was forty-three then. But I knew I wasn’t in love with your father.”

  “I’m afraid to ask. Does Dad know about any of this?”

  Gina hung her head. “Yes. He’s been horridly jealous for years. He caught Sam and I coming out of the Roxy Theater one night. We were laughing about something in the movie, having a wonderful time as we always did, and Angelo was sitting in his truck across the street. He stormed up to Sam and punched him. I broke that fight up, but Angelo knew all kinds of ways to hurt a person. He’d lived on the streets in Sicily. He’d seen a lot, even if he hadn’t ever hurt anyone himself. To protect Sam, I broke it off and married Angelo. You boys were my life and I know I’ve spoiled you all in too many ways, but I didn’t care. I still don’t. I believe you can’t give a child too much love.”

  “You are, and always were, the best mom ever,” Gabe said.