Sonoma Rose: An Elm Creek Quilts Novel

by Jannifer Chiaverini

  “Of course I would.” Did he really need to ask? “I would marry you today if I could.”

  “Will you marry me when you can?”

  “Yes, yes, of course I will.”

  “Then it’s settled. That’s good enough for me, for now.” He cradled her face in his hands and lifted her chin so that her lips met his.

  For weeks they were too busy to worry about a new name for the estate, although Lars and the children often teased Rosa by pretending they had already decided upon Mama’s Grapes and Prunes. They settled into their new home, met the few hired hands the Vanellis had kept on after their fortunes tumbled, and set themselves to the work of the harvest.

  With Daniel to advise them, they hired additional seasonal workers to pick the grapes—round, ripe, full of color and flavor—the table grapes first, and then the Zinfandel and Cabernet Sauvignon. Every day Rosa woke before dawn and prepared a hearty breakfast for everyone, and then, in the cool hours of the morning, the real work began. In teams of three, the pickers walked the vineyard, snipping the ripe clusters from the vines with sharp and well-oiled blunt-tipped clippers, loading them gently into wooden lugs, and hauling them to the grape house. It was hot, exhausting work, and Rosa was on her feet for fifteen hours a day, cooking, picking, and managing the household. They worked swiftly and against time, determined to harvest the clusters at the height of their perfection, before the first rains of autumn swept into the Sonoma Valley and diluted the sweetness of the berries. She and Lars would have been lost without Daniel, who had welcomed them as his new employers civilly but with less warmth than he had greeted Rosa as Bea’s visiting friend. Rosa did not take it personally; she assumed he missed the Vanellis and was preoccupied with the arduous work of the harvest. It was perfectly understandable, but Rosa and Lars would have tolerated it even if it were unreasonable. They needed him. Although Sal had left them detailed records, first-hand experience was far more useful than notes, and precious hours could be lost searching for information that Daniel knew by heart.

  The new school year began before harvest concluded, and on the first day, Lupita set off happily with her sisters. Without Marta there to watch Miguel, Rosa could no longer work in the vineyard with the pickers, but she had plenty to do in the house and garden. Daniel proved himself invaluable again when it came time to sell the table grapes, but he admitted his uncertainty with the markets for wine grapes, as the Vanellis had always reserved the crop for winemaking. Hoping for the best, Lars and Daniel consulted with Giuditta and made the most advantageous arrangements they could as newcomers in an already crowded market.

  After the last batch of wine grapes was packed for delivery to the train station the next morning, Daniel took Rosa aside and asked her if they shouldn’t hold some back in the coldest part of the cellar for their own use. “Bea told me you were interested in winemaking,” he said. “I could teach you.”

  Rosa hesitated. “Nils—my husband—he would rather we didn’t.”

  The look on Daniel’s face as he nodded and folded his arms over his chest told Rosa that Daniel had already approached Lars, and had been told to haul every last grape off to market. “Two hundred gallons a year per household is perfectly legal.”

  “The legality isn’t the problem.” Suddenly Rosa remembered something Bea had told her on her first visit to the vineyard—throughout Prohibition, the Vanellis’ winery had produced four hundred gallons of wine a year, two hundred for the Vanellis and two hundred more for Daniel. If they did not crush that season, Daniel would lose what was probably a significant part of his compensation.

  She thought quickly, wishing she had more time to ponder the consequences, but the fruit would not stay perfect long, and they could not afford to lose Daniel to a more practical vintner. “You can make your two hundred gallons,” she told him. “I won’t make any, at least not this year.”

  “You’d prefer to watch and learn this time around?”

  Rosa nodded, ignoring a pang of guilt. She had not promised Lars she would not learn, only that they would make no wine.

  Daniel grinned and thanked her, and as he quickly set off to sort out his allotment of berries, Rosa heaved a sigh and considered herself fortunate. With the work of winemaking to keep him occupied, Daniel was unlikely to quit for at least another few months, giving them more time to win him over.

  That evening, as they sat on the front porch watching the children play in the garden with the collie pups the Vanellis had given them, Rosa told Lars about the promise she had made to Daniel, and why. “It’s not too late to tell him it’s simply not possible. We can return the grapes he held back to the rest of the shipment—” Then, suddenly, she had another thought. “Or we can let him keep them. He could sell them and keep the profits, or crush them and make wine, as long as he doesn’t do it here.”

  Lars mulled it over, resting his elbows on his knees as he watched the children play. “It wouldn’t be fair to take something from him that the Vanellis have always granted, especially after you told him he could have it,” he said. “Any other vineyard would give him what he wants, and he’s too good a worker, too decent a man, to risk losing him all because of my weakness.” He settled back against the daybed, putting his arm around her shoulders and lacing his fingers through hers. “All right. Let Daniel make his wine, and learn all you can from him. But I can’t help you, Rosa. I won’t set foot in that winery. That’s not a risk I’m prepared to take, not when I have so much to lose.”

  “It’s not a risk I want you to take,” she said. He had returned to her, and she could not bear to lose him again.

  At last the long, hard, exhilarating days of their first grape harvest were behind them. Lars, Rosa, and the children joined the Cacchiones for their annual harvest dance, a far more subdued affair than the previous year’s, when Dante was a free man inviting friends and neighbors to drink his wine and share in his family’s prosperity. There was no wine barrel in the corner of the barn that year, and to everyone’s disgust, Crowell and another dark-suited man interrupted the gathering just as they were sitting down to their feast, jotting down the names of the guests and inspecting glasses and mugs to be sure no alcohol was being served. He seemed surprised to see Rosa and Lars among them. “Back in town?” he asked, jotting their names on his pad with a stub of a pencil.

  “Only for the party,” Lars replied shortly.

  “Long way to come for a party,” Crowell remarked as he moved on. “I guess that means you didn’t go home to Stavanger after all.”

  Rosa and Lars exchanged a look, and she knew he was as annoyed and dismayed as she was that Crowell knew anything at all about their whereabouts.

  As Crowell and his partner circled the room, Alegra Del Bene appeared increasingly unsettled the closer he came to her table until she suddenly went ashen gray and fled the barn. Alarmed, Rosa ran after her and found her in the Cacchiones’ kitchen, her head in her arms on the kitchen table, trembling. She quickly sat up and struggled to compose herself, but she would not explain why she was so afraid. When Rosa tried to assure her that Crowell was a hateful bully, but he could not harm her or Paulo if they had committed no crimes, Alegra shook her head bleakly, unconvinced.

  Eventually Alegra calmed down enough to return to the party, but only after Rosa made sure Crowell had left. “Don’t tell Paulo I was upset,” she begged, and reluctantly Rosa agreed. If Paulo knew the truth, he might be able to arrange for someone else to stay with Alegra whenever he needed to leave the vineyard on business. Rosa settled for reminding Alegra that she was welcome to stay with her and Lars whenever she wanted. They had plenty of room, the end of harvest allowed them more time to visit, and Miguel would be delighted to play with his best friend more often. Alegra managed a smile and agreed to take Rosa up on her invitation when she could, and they walked back to the barn together, where the feasting and dancing had gone on merrily in their absence.

  Rosa had agreed not to tell Paulo about Alegra’s distress but she had made no su
ch promise about Lars. “She’s new to this country,” Lars said, as if trying to explain her excessive fear to himself as well as to Rosa. “She doesn’t understand that ordinary citizens have rights, and that no one, not even a federal officer, is above the law.”

  How could she, Rosa wondered, when the law no longer made any sense or held sway when it was most necessary, when bribery and intimidation were the order of the day, when a judge could convict a barkeeper of serving alcohol in the morning, levy a fine, and stop by the same man’s establishment for a drink on his way home from work? How was Alegra to know which laws would be enforced justly, which would be ignored, and which would be invented on the spot to suit those who would enforce their own will upon others? Rosa was tempted to put the question to Dwight Crowell the next time she saw him, a meeting she hoped wouldn’t come anytime soon. With any luck, it would be months before he discovered that the Ottesens and their secrets had only moved away as far as Glen Ellen.

  All the more reason not to put their alias on the sign marking the turnoff to their property, or upon any of the fruit crates they sold at market.

  Rose had mulled over many possibilities for what to call their new business, and endured ever-sillier suggestions from the children, but nothing seemed to fit. Just when she thought they might have to use one of the children’s ideas after all, Lars announced that he had come up with the perfect name. The children tried to tease and wheedle it out of him, but he wouldn’t tell them and vowed that he wouldn’t until he had made a sign for the post by the road. Rosa thought he shouldn’t go to the trouble of making a sign until everyone—especially herself—agreed upon it, but Lars assured her she would love it.

  For two days he worked on the sign, out of sight in the barn, shaping a large, round slab from the ancient stump of a coast redwood that had been cut down ages before. From a distance Rosa overheard the sounds of carving and chiseling, and smelled scorched wood, and once, Lars returned from an errand in Sonoma with three cans of paint he quickly hid beneath a tarp behind his workbench. “I can’t even see which colors you chose?” she protested, laughing, but Lars insisted on keeping the entire project secret until it was complete.

  And then, at last, it was.

  One morning Lars called Rosa and the children into the garden, where he had leaned the sign up against a pine tree and covered it with an old cloth. At his signal, the children counted to three and he pulled the cloth away, unveiling an elegant oval with a carved border of grapevines accented with prune blossoms. Painted in the center in graceful script of red and gold were the words, “Sonoma Rose.” Underneath, in smaller letters, appeared the phrase, “Vineyards and Orchard.”

  “That’s you, Mamá,” said Ana. “You’re Sonoma Rose.”

  “It’s perfect,” exclaimed Marta, clasping her hands to her heart. “Sonoma Rose Vineyards and Orchard. It’s absolutely perfect.”

  Lars was watching Rosa closely, awaiting her verdict. “Well? What do you think? If you truly hate it, I can make another sign—”

  “I love it,” Rosa said, smiling. “I do. I wouldn’t change a thing.”

  “Let’s hang it up,” ordered Lupita, tugging on Lars’s sleeve. “Let’s do it right now.”

  Lars laughed and swooped her up in his arms, and for once she didn’t scowl and demand to be set down. “Not yet. It’s not quite finished.”

  “What more do you need to do?” asked Rosa. “It’s lovely just as it is.”

  “No, it needs one thing more. I want to trim the edges with hammered copper. It’ll look nice, and it’ll protect the edges from the weather so the wood won’t split.” He set Lupita down and ruffled her hair, grinning. “I thought I’d check that old building on the edge of the orchard for scraps. The other day I glimpsed a flash of sunlight on metal through the window.”

  “That might have been an old tin can,” said Rosa. “Be careful. Bea said that building could collapse at any moment, and the wood is so old and dry it’s likely a fire hazard. We should tear it down before lightning strikes it.”

  “Not before I salvage what I can,” said Lars cheerfully, and he set out for the orchard.

  Rosa admired the sign a while longer, then kissed the children and left them to their play while she went into the kitchen to start supper. She was peeling potatoes and humming contently to herself when Lars appeared, his expression stunned and disbelieving.

  “What is it?” asked Rosa, alarmed.

  “I think…” Lars hesitated and tried again. “I think I might know why Sal was feeling so much strain. I think I know why he had that heart attack.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I think I’d better show you.”

  Quickly she snatched off her apron and took his hand, and together they hurried off through the vineyard to the orchard, not slowing their pace until Lars brought them to the old prune barn. There, at the edge of the orchard farthest from the house, he halted.

  “What’s wrong?” demanded Rosa. “Is the roof caving in? Did something fall and strike you? We can have this deathtrap torn down tomorrow if it’s too—”

  Shaking his head, Lars opened the door and gestured for her to take a look inside.

  Within the dilapidated old barn, Rosa discovered a gleaming expanse of copper boilers, rubber tubing, and tin milk jugs; sacks of sugar; charcoal left from burning; and inexplicably, large wooden crates marked on the sides with painted loaves of bread and biscuits and cakes and the words, “Johnson’s Bakery.” A heavy, sweet, yeasty smell hung in the air.

  Rosa had never seen a still except in newspaper photos printed alongside descriptions of intrepid federal agents’ raids on hapless moonshiners, but she immediately recognized the contraption for what it was. It was a still, and it was enormous and elaborate and very much illegal, and it was in their prune barn, and there was not a speck of dust upon it.

  Chapter Eight

  Rosa stared at the still, incredulous, unwilling to believe that the Vanellis had sold them their estate without mentioning the illegal contraption hidden within their old prune barn. “Do you think it’s possible that Sal and Bea didn’t know this was here?” Rosa tried to remember Bea’s exact words, but all she recalled was that Bea had said—or perhaps she had only implied—that they never entered the crumbling structure.

  Lars studied the still, dubious. “I guess it’s possible, but I doubt it.”

  “Maybe someone else built it—one of the hired hands or someone.”

  “Without the Vanellis or anyone else finding out?”

  The only way to know would be to ask. They sought out Daniel first, and when they realized he was in the wine cellar, Lars told Rosa he would wait outside while she went in to question him. He had vowed never to set foot in the winery, and he meant to keep that vow.

  “But there isn’t any wine there now,” said Rosa. “The Vanellis took what was left of last year’s two hundred gallons with them, and Daniel’s new wine is too young to drink. It’s only unfermented grape juice. Wouldn’t it be fine, just this once?”

  “Rosa,” said Lars, pained, “the worst thing an alcoholic can do is start convincing himself that just this once, it would be fine.”

  Rosa bit her lips shut and nodded, ashamed that she had even suggested it.

  She went inside and found Daniel in the cave inspecting the wooden troughs of new wine he had recently crushed. Rosa had worked alongside him all the while, scrubbing the winery clean, sorting the grapes, removing the stems and leaves, and crushing the berries. Later they would press the juice, and Daniel planned to teach her how different oak barrels with different toasts added notes and flavors to the wine, making each vintage unique. He had shared his knowledge generously, openly, and as they worked together, his cool demeanor had thawed. Rosa hoped she was not about to make it ice over again.

  “Daniel,” she said after he greeted her cheerfully, “did you know there’s an enormous still in the old prune barn?”

  His smile promptly vanished. “I knew about it,” he said guar
dedly. “I’ve never seen it.”

  “Did Sal build it, or one of the hired hands?”

  Daniel grimaced. “I make it a point to mind my own business.”

  “Please, Daniel, tell me. If it was the Vanellis’, it belongs to me and Nils now, and that makes me very nervous.”

  “It wasn’t the Vanellis’, and it doesn’t belong to any of the hands, either,” Daniel said. “For the past few years, some gangsters out of San Francisco have been renting the prune barn to make grappa. The deal is five hundred dollars a month, no questions asked. Sal couldn’t turn down that kind of money, not in these hard times.”

  “No, I suppose he couldn’t.” Rosa leaned against a wine barrel and took a deep, shaky breath. “And since the Vanellis switched almost entirely to table grapes years ago, and don’t have any old wine in storage, and have never sold wine grapes, Prohibition agents wouldn’t suspect them of bootlegging. They probably don’t bother coming around often to inspect.”

  “Strictly speaking…” Daniel seemed almost embarrassed to say it. “The Vanellis weren’t bootlegging. They were just renting out an unused prune barn.”

  Rosa could well imagine how Dwight Crowell would regard that fine distinction. “How often do these gentlemen come around to make grappa?”

  “About once or twice a month.”

  “Then they’re overdue.” Rosa paced the width of the cave, clasping her hands, working the sudden cold out of her fingers. “Maybe the Vanellis told them they had sold the estate and that they shouldn’t return.”

  “Maybe,” said Daniel, but he looked doubtful. “Would they have left the still behind? It must be worth something.”

  The equipment was valuable, even if only for the price of the parts. On the other hand, it was illegal, and if the gangsters didn’t have another place to hide such unwieldy incriminating evidence, they might have thought it more prudent to abandon it.