Sonoma Rose: An Elm Creek Quilts Novel (41 page)

“Ottesen Orchard and Vineyards?” said Marta.

“That’s not any better,” said Ana.

“How about, Mama’s Grapes and Prunes?” suggested Lupita.

Marta shook her head. “That sounds like a roadside fruit stand.”

“I like it,” piped up Miguel. “Or Mama’s Fruits. That’s good too.”

Everyone laughed, and Lars said that if they didn’t come up with anything else before he had time to make a new sign, they’d flip a coin—heads for Mama’s Grapes and Prunes, tails for Mama’s Fruits. When Rosa protested that they should name their new ranch after the whole family, not her alone, Lars joked that unless she came up with something better herself, and soon, she would be stuck with the results of the coin toss.

Daniel Kuo awaited them on the front porch, a well-read edition of
The
Call of the Wild
in one hand and a heavy ring of keys in the other. Rosa accepted the honor of unlocking the front door, and the children raced past her into the house, bounding up the stairs and claiming rooms and beds. Unpacking and settling in took up most of the day, with Rosa in the house and Lars mostly in the barn and stables and nearest outbuildings. Once, in the middle of the afternoon, Rosa and Lars both found themselves in the hallway outside the largest bedroom at the same time. Rosa carried her mother’s last quilt, the one Elizabeth Nelson had repaired and named Arboles Valley Star, the one pieced of scraps that carried a lifetime of memories, of hope and regret.

“Help me make the bed?” Rosa asked, suddenly shy. He nodded, and together they smoothed the sheets over the mattress, lay the quilt on top, and plumped the pillows along the headboard.

The task complete, Lars started to leave. “It’s not for appearances,” Rosa blurted. He hesitated in the doorway, his back to her. “It’s not because I’m worried that the sofa will give you an aching back. It’s because I love you.”

After a moment he turned, but when he merely stood silently looking back at her, she felt tears spring into her eyes
and she wished she hadn’t spoken. Then he came to her and took her hands. “Rosa, would you marry me if you were free to do so?”

“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 such 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.”