Sonoma Rose: An Elm Creek Quilts Novel

by Jannifer Chiaverini

  While the men pruned the vines, the women weeded the soil so that no predatory growth could siphon away nutrients from the grapes. Darting in and out among the rows, the children gathered up the uprooted weeds and pruned vines and tossed them onto a pile in a clearing on the edge of the vineyard. At suppertime they gathered around the long table in the Cacchiones’ kitchen and devoured a hearty supper of beef stew, pasta, and polenta, which Rosa and Francesca had helped Giuditta prepare.

  At dusk Dante set the enormous pile of clippings ablaze. Thrilled, the younger children watched the flames lick the wood, squealing and jumping when a sudden pop and shower of sparks startled them. As the fatigued adults found places to sit and discuss the work accomplished that day and the unfinished tasks they would need to complete in the days to come, the children ran around searching out dead twigs and dried leaves to throw upon the bonfire. Smoke rose into the evening sky and drifted over the still, shadowed trellises, wafted aloft by gentle breezes from the south. Giuditta reminisced aloud about a time in the not too distant past when a multitude of bonfires at vineyards throughout Sonoma County would fill the air with white smoke and the scent of burning. She had learned to associate the smell of burning grape wood with anticipation for spring on the vineyard. The old, dead vines had been cut away to make room for new growth and new vintages, and throughout wine country, grape growers and vintners prepared for a new season, fresh and full of hope. But now only a scattering of bonfires sent plumes of smoke rising into the skies above Santa Rosa, and only the most optimistic and determined among them believed that their spring toil would guarantee a bountiful harvest come autumn.

  But even those with lowered expectations and diminished hopes labored vigorously in their fields and vineyards throughout the waning days of winter, holding on until better days could come.

  Spring brought unbroken sunshine and tranquil breezes to Cacchione Vineyards. The return of temperate weather lifted Rosa’s spirits despite the strain and worry that lingered in the aftermath of the secrets discovered and revealed over the winter.

  Fair weather also heralded the return of tourists to Sonoma County. Several times a day, the sight of a roadster churning up a cloud of dust as it turned off the main road toward the winery summoned Giuditta from her chores to fetch the visitors walnuts, prunes, fresh eggs, lunch, a tour of the vineyard—whatever they wanted. After Mabel gave birth to a daughter in mid-April, Giuditta was often too preoccupied caring for her grandchild and daughter-in-law to greet visitors, so Rosa and Francesca would see to them instead. Unlike Giuditta, however, they were too nervous to offer guests glasses of wine with their lunch or after a tour. Rosa had been startled the first time she witnessed Giuditta produce a jug of wine and distribute glasses to three couples enjoying eggplant caponata, bread, cheese, and olives on an old, soft quilt spread on the grass in the shade of a stand of oaks. “Did you know,” Giuditta had inquired conversationally as she filled the glasses, which the picnickers held up eagerly, “that despite Prohibition, it’s perfectly legal for families to make up to two hundred gallons of wine each year for their own use?” She never claimed that the Cacchiones produced no more than that amount, nor did she explain how serving wine to paying guests fit within the definition of a family’s own use. The tourists were either too busy enjoying their wine to parse her logic, or they understood and were more than willing to play along.

  Once a wealthy San Francisco couple traveling to their summer home on the Russian River cajoled Giuditta into selling them an entire cask of the vintage they had sampled. “Dante would get in a lather if he knew I’d done that,” she confessed to Rosa as the couple drove away. Rosa had spotted her selling casks a few other times too, but only when Dante was away from the vineyard, and Dominic and Vince, who would have told him, were nowhere in sight. When it fell to Rosa and Francesca to entertain tourists, they offered nothing stronger than iced tea, lemonade, and ice water. Word must have spread about the differences in hospitality, because over time, tourists and summer residents began asking specifically for Giuditta, and they often drove away without a bite of lunch or basket of prunes when they were informed that she was not available.

  In the last week of April, Giuditta, Francesca, and Rosa were out among the trellises training new vines when they heard the sound of car wheels churning on gravel. Giuditta, intent on the task at hand, sent her daughter to see what the visitors wanted. Francesca hurried off and returned about twenty minutes later to report that two gentlemen had only wanted directions to Highway 101, but she had persuaded them to buy a dozen prunes before they left.

  “That’s my girl,” Giuditta praised her. “They wandered a bit out of their way, didn’t they?”

  Francesca nodded. “They said they came in from San Francisco this morning, but one of them mentioned something about Los Angeles, as if he’d lived there until recently.” She nudged Rosa and grinned. “He looked so much like your husband that when I first saw him from a distance, I thought that’s who he was.”

  Rosa felt her stomach turn over. “My husband?”

  “Yes, although the resemblance isn’t that striking up close. He and Nils could be brothers, but not twins. They both have the same blond hair, though this fellow had more of it. He was a bit younger than Nils too, but shorter and heavier. Not chubby, I don’t mean that. Just as if he’s eating well at home.”

  “I imagine Nils eats well at home too,” replied Giuditta, a gentle reproach in the sidelong look she gave her daughter. “I know he eats well when the Ottesens join us for dinner.”

  “He certainly does. We all do,” said Rosa, managing a shaky laugh although her heart thudded in her chest. Her husband—of course Francesca had meant Lars. Francesca’s description did not resemble dark-haired, muscular John in the least—but suddenly Rosa realized that it described Oscar Jorgensen all too well. Could the visitor have been him? Could Lars’s younger brother have traced him so far? No, it couldn’t be. They had left no trail to follow when they had fled Oxnard, except for the false leads pointing pursuers south to Mexico, and like John, Oscar would have had no idea where to begin searching.

  Francesca got back to work and Rosa quickly did too, her momentary terror fragmenting under the weight of cool reason. If the visitor had indeed been Oscar, he certainly wasn’t looking for his brother particularly well, since he hadn’t mentioned him or shown Francesca his photograph. Nor was it likely, Rosa realized with some amusement, that the diligent, responsible Oscar would have left the Jorgensen ranch to his hired hands in the middle of such an important season, not unless he knew exactly where to find Lars and believed him to be in mortal peril. A search unlikely to bear fruit was a task for the doldrums of winter, if ever.

  Seven months had passed since Dr. Reynolds had first examined Ana and Miguel at the Stanford Hospital, and in all that time, Rosa had scrupulously kept them on Dr. Haas’s diet, contriving variations on bananas and polenta so that they would not grow bored with a monotonous menu and be tempted to stray. Although Rosa sometimes feared her eyes deceived her and that such simple changes to their diet could not possibly have brought about the miracle she had prayed for, Ana and Miguel seemed perfectly healthy, lively and vigorous, with no sign of the symptoms that had once tormented them. Even so, when Dr. Reynolds pronounced them fully recovered from the symptoms of their illness, Rosa was stunned. She had borne the certainty of her children’s inevitable early deaths for so many years that she had long forgotten what it felt like to look forward to watching them grow up. Rosa stammered her thanks, wishing she could express to the generous, attentive physician the depths of her gratitude. A handshake and prompt payment of their bills seemed a perfunctory and indifferent response to the man who had saved her children’s lives.

  She promised the doctor she would keep Ana and Miguel on the diet so they wouldn’t suffer a relapse. She promised herself she would never take a single day with them for granted.

  Before catching the train home, she and the children paid one last call on Mr
s. Phillips. Rosa had brought her a basket full of asparagus, rhubarb, and spinach from the garden she had planted in a sunny spot near the cabin. Mrs. Phillips accepted the gift with delight and lamented that all she had to offer Rosa in return was tea and cookies and a newspaper clipping. Torn, both wanting and dreading news of John and Henry with equal measure, Rosa forced herself to wait until she and the children were on the train bound for home to read the article. After Miguel fell asleep with his head resting on her lap and Ana became engrossed in a library book, she took the clipping from her purse, smoothed out the creases with shaking hands, and read that John had been found guilty of racketeering and had been sentenced to five years in federal prison.

  Rosa folded the paper, tucked it back into her purse, and took a deep, shuddering breath. Five years seemed an alarmingly brief span of time. And if John chose to become a model prisoner, he could be released even sooner than that on good behavior.

  That night after the children fell asleep, she told Lars the news and was not surprised when it left him unperturbed. He was not afraid of John, not the way she was, and he found it highly unlikely that anything John might report to his old mobster friends upon his release, whether five years hence or half that, would help them hunt him down. “He doesn’t know where we are,” Lars told her as he had so many times before. This time he took her hands and pulled her close to him. She rested her head on his chest and listened to the reassuring sound of his steady heartbeat until her own heart stopped racing from fear. Then she pulled away from his embrace, unwilling to meet his gaze although she kept her hands in his. It was dangerous to let him hold her too long, for it made her yearn for their old intimacy. She could never divorce John now, and after what Lars had said to her the day Lupita was conceived and as they danced at the harvest celebration, she was ashamed to suggest that she would be willing to take him as a lover while she was married to someone else. She didn’t feel married to John anymore—her marriage vows had been damaged when John beat her and when she had betrayed him, and they had been shattered beyond repair when he murdered her mother—but Lars still saw her as married. And so, she was forced to admit, she was still married, whether she felt that way or wanted to be or not.

  She couldn’t ask John for a divorce without coming out of hiding and endangering them all, and Lars understandably didn’t want to be with someone else’s wife. He cared about Rosa, but he had fled with them because he couldn’t bear the thought of never seeing Marta and Lupita again. He remained with them, pretending to be her husband and fulfilling the role of father for his children as well as John’s for the their sake, not hers.

  It was a brutal, bitter truth, but she had to accept it. To deny it now, as she and Lars were growing closer, would be to confront inevitable heartache later.

  A few days later, Rosa was in the vineyard helping Francesca train the last of the new vines when she glanced up at a sound from the road and saw a dark sedan approaching the residence. Giuditta was in the house caring for the baby while her exhausted daughter-in-law slept, so Rosa brushed debris from her hands and said to Francesca, “I’ll see to them. You got the last one.”

  “Thanks. Don’t take any wooden nickels,” Francesca advised cheerfully.

  Rosa laughed and hurried back through the rows of trellises, lush and green with new foliage. When she reached the yard, she spotted a black-suited man striding back and forth beside the dark sedan, a gray flannel hat on his head, his hands on his hips. When he removed his hat and mopped his brow with the back of his hand, she stopped short, taken aback by his resemblance to Lars. When the stranger glanced her way and nodded, she roused herself and went to welcome him. This surely was the man who had bought prunes from Francesca once before, and he did indeed look enough like Lars that he could have been a third Jorgensen brother.

  “Welcome to Cacchione Vineyards,” she called breathlessly as she approached. “What can I do for you?”

  “I’d like to speak with Giuditta Cacchione,” he replied, glancing past her toward the house. “Are you her?”

  “No, I’m Rose. I work for Mrs. Cacchione.”

  “Nice to meet you, Rose. I’m Dwight Crowell. Could you go fetch Mrs. Cacchione for me? There’s a particular purchase I’d like to make, and I hear she’s the one to ask for.”

  “I’m afraid she’s busy at the moment.” Rosa gestured over her shoulder to the residence, smiling apologetically. “Her daughter-in-law had a baby girl a few weeks ago, and like any proud grandma, Mrs. Cacchione is always on call. But I’d be happy to help you if I can. Would you like some lunch, or perhaps some more prunes?”

  Mr. Crowell’s eyebrows rose as if he had not expected Rosa to know that he had visited the vineyard before. Indeed, if not for his resemblance to Lars, Rosa wouldn’t have known, because Francesca wouldn’t have bothered to describe him. “I guess another half dozen prunes would be about right.”

  Rosa smiled and beckoned him to follow her up to the front porch, where she showed him to a comfortable redwood chair and told him she would be right back. She hurried inside to the kitchen, descended into the refreshing coolness of the root cellar, and carefully placed six perfect, sweet prunes into a paper sack. When she returned to the front porch, the chair was empty but the sedan was still parked in the yard. Rosa searched for Mr. Crowell and found him wandering by the winery, peering in through the windows and testing the double front doors. Uneasy, Rosa halted in the middle of the yard and called, “I’m afraid they’re locked.”

  “So I found out myself,” he replied, grinning easily as he stopped tugging on the doors and came to join her. “I guess there’s not much use for this old building anymore.”

  “On the contrary, the wine cellar’s full,” said Rosa. “The Cacchiones have a storage permit, but the wine’s out of reach behind a very strong padlock.”

  Mr. Crowell planted his hands on his hips and turned slowly in place, squinting as he took in the winery, the residence, and the main outbuildings. “Seems like a waste to pay to store wine they can’t sell.”

  “I’ve heard Mr. Cacchione say the same on more than one occasion.” Rosa found herself wishing that Dante would appear, or Dominic or even young Vince. Something about Mr. Crowell made her uncomfortable, something that had nothing to do with his superficial resemblance to Lars. “I think when he considers all the work his family put into the creation of those wines, he can’t bear to destroy them.”

  Mr. Crowell nodded thoughtfully, his gaze returning to the winery. The longer Rosa studied him, the more differences between him and Lars she noticed. Mr. Crowell had a thin white scar running from his right earlobe to his jaw, and there was a look of arrogance in his eyes that would never appear in Lars’s. Rosa thrust the bag of prunes toward him and named her price. He took the bag, dug some coins out of his pocket, and placed them in her hand. As she thanked him, he said, “It’s a mighty hot day, Rose, and I’m parched. I don’t suppose I could refresh myself with a glass of wine before I hit the road?”

  Rosa assumed a tragic expression. “I’m so sorry, but we aren’t allowed to sell wine anymore. Would you like some lemonade or iced tea instead?”

  He fixed her with a piercing stare, but she did not flinch. “Lemonade, please.” She smiled, nodded, and hurried back into the kitchen. When she returned, he accepted the glass, sipped the sweet coolness, and leveled his gaze at the vineyard. “Mind if I have a look around?”

  “Of course not,” said Rosa brightly, falling into step beside him as he headed off to the barn, although it was obvious that he had intended to go alone. As they walked, she recited a history of the vineyard and noteworthy facts about each building they passed, having memorized the standard tour she had overheard Giuditta deliver so many times.

  Time and time again, Mr. Crowell’s gaze returned to the winery. “You say the Cacchiones can’t sell me any wine, but folks say they’re still making it.”

  “Well, of course,” said Rosa innocently, wondering which folks he meant. “But no more than two
hundred gallons for their own use. That’s the law. They can and do sell wine grapes, though. Would you be interested in a bushel?”

  Mr. Crowell shook his head and handed her his empty lemonade glass. “No, thank you.” Frowning thinly, he strolled back to his sedan, opened the door, and touched the brim of his hat to her. “Thank you for the refreshments, Rose, and the tour. What did you say your last name was?”

  “I don’t think I did. It’s Ottesen.”

  “Ottesen,” he repeated thoughtfully, and climbed in behind the wheel.

  Disconcerted, Rosa nonetheless smiled and waved as he pulled away, but as soon as he drove out of sight, she let all pretense of hospitality drop. Mr. Crowell resembled Lars, but he reminded Rosa of John. Both men shared an almost tangible determination to get whatever they wanted.

  When Rosa next saw Giuditta later that afternoon, she took her aside and told her about Mr. Crowell’s return visit to the vineyard, how he had wanted to speak to Giuditta personally, and how he had wanted to buy wine. “Did you sell him any?” Giuditta asked.

  “Why, no,” said Rosa, taken aback. As far as she knew, except for a few jugs the family kept in the cellar of the residence to drink with meals, all of the Cacchiones’ wine was locked away in the winery and the old wine cellar. If Rosa wouldn’t dare serve glasses of wine to jolly picnickers, Giuditta ought to know she wouldn’t sell an entire barrel to a lone stranger. “He bought another half dozen prunes and looked around a bit. I gave him the usual vineyard history and a glass of lemonade.”