Diane Greenwood Muir - Bellingwood 06 - A Season of Change (4 page)

Polly put her hand on top of his and he quieted down. “What about your dad?” she asked.

“Dad?” Henry said the word and then said nothing more. He drove in silence.

Polly continued. “He knows everyone in town. He knows the business. Surely he knows all of the lumber yards in a hundred mile radius. He understands construction. Is it a bad idea?”

“It’s a great idea, Polly. I just don’t know if they’d move back. They wanted to go to Arizona so badly. Mom hates Iowa winters and she loves their little house down there.”

“What if they came up during the spring and summer and drove back in late fall. Just like the rest of the snowbirds. You would love having them around again.”

Henry nodded. “The only reason Dad agreed to move was because he didn’t think there was enough work for both of us. I know Mom misses some of her friends. They talk on the phone all the time.” He squeezed her hand. “Polly, that’s really the best idea in the world. Why didn’t I think of it?”

“Because you were too focused on how you would handle it. You don’t ask for help very easily.”

“All of their things are still here at the house.” He turned to Polly. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think they left things exactly the way they were just in case they wanted to come back. I’ll call Dad this afternoon. I might sleep tonight after all.”

“Since you’re sleep-deprived too, could we stop and get coffee before you pick up the trailer? I’m kind of desperate,” she laughed. “I didn’t take time to make any this morning.”

“Let’s stop for coffee and breakfast.” Henry smiled at her. “You are my bright, pretty girl, do you know that? I’m the luckiest man on earth because you love me.”

“You keep thinking that. Head down Lincoln Way and we’ll stop for bagels. Now that you mention it, I’m starving.”

Henry turned off the highway and drove into Ames. “You change my world every day, Polly. I feel so much better than I did an hour ago. I can’t wait to work with Dad again.”

“I love you, too,” she said
.

CHAPTER FOUR

Polly and Henry dropped the trailer at the front of the construction site. As he unhooked it from the truck, she watched two utility vehicles traversing the rows of the vineyard. Every once in a while, one would stop and the driver would get out and fuss with something on a grapevine and then he’d take off.

“Who is that?” she asked, pointing to the men in the vehicles.

“Probably Bruce Victor and Wayne Phillips. Wayne is in charge of the grapes and Bruce is the winemaker here.” Henry turned around and pointed to a large building tucked behind a grove of trees. “That’s where they make the wine. Sometime you’ll have to ask for a tour. It’s pretty cool.”

“Just the two of them work here?”

“Today, yes, but generally no. They’re the guys in charge. The Terrible Trio hired them to come to Bellingwood seven years ago. They bring on temporary workers in the fall to pick grapes and there are several others who work in the winery itself. Since it’s the off season, these two are really the only ones here right now.”

Polly nodded, trying to grasp the immensity of the venture. “Do you think they’ll be successful?”

“No reason why not. Iowa has great wineries and the boys have plenty of money to invest in it. As soon as J. J. and Ryan start marketing, it will take off.”

“You’d think they’d have started by now.”

“There were a couple of rough years, but they’re finally building up a nice collection of wines.”

Because they were running late, Henry drove her straight to Davey’s. One of her friends would take her home after lunch.

She reached for the door handle when he pulled up to the front of the restaurant and he stopped her. “Thanks for going with me this morning and thank you for listening.”

“You take care of me every day, Henry Sturtz. I don’t get many opportunities to do the same for you.”

“I’m calling Dad when I get back to the shop. I don’t know what they’ll say about moving home, but
I’ll ask.”

She kissed him. “Don’t forget that we’re going to Joss and Nate’s tonight. Do you want to pick me up?”

“I’ll come get you. Have a good rest of the day.”

Polly hopped out and ran inside. The hostess gestured to the main room. Lunch with Lydia, Beryl and Andy was a regular affair and Polly knew where to find them.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” she said, sitting down. “Henry and I went down to Ames to get a trailer for the winery’s construction site.”

“That’s pretty exciting,” Lydia responded. “We ordered coffee for you and the specials are a fajita salad and chicken and noodles over mashed potatoes.”

Polly pushed the menu back. “We ate breakfast in Ames. The salad sounds good.” She noticed Beryl smirking across the table. “What’s up with you?”

“We were just talking about Sunday night’s dinner. I want to hear what you think of little Miss Priss-Pants.”

“She’s high maintenance. Patrick Stephens must be some kind of saint to put up with that.”

“Maybe she’s really good in the sack,” Beryl said in a stage whisper.

“Beryl!” Lydia scolded. “That’s not nice.”

“And you know it can’t be true,” Andy giggled. “No one who is that miserable could be good in the sack. It would take too much effort.”

“Andy!” Lydia looked at her friend with wide eyes.

“Am I wrong?”

Lydia chuckled, “No, probably not. But we shouldn’t be talking like this.”

“Sometimes you are such a prude,” Beryl scolded her friend. “It’s not like we weren’t all thinking it.”

“But you don’t need to say everything out loud. Some things are better left unsaid.”

Beryl turned back to Polly. “You’ve been quiet. What did you think of Mrs. Stephens?”

Polly opened her mouth, shut it, thought through her words, and said. “That was the first time I’d ever met her. I’ll reserve judgment.”

“Chicken.” Beryl laughed at her. “You formed an opinion. We all saw you watching her.”

“Not everyone makes a good first impression. Maybe she’ll grow on me.”

“Or maybe you won’t ever have to spend time with her again,” Beryl interjected.

Polly turned to Lydia. “Why did you invite them?”

“I thought it would be nice for them to spend time with professional people their age. When they left town, they really left, and now they’re strangers. No one knows them anymore. They haven’t gotten involved in the community and no one really believes they’ll stick with this winery. It’s a big investment and so far all they’ve done is drop money on it and run back to California.”

“They didn’t come back here in the beginning?”

“Oh hell, no,” Beryl laughed. “They hired Bruce Victor and Wayne Phillips. Those boys want to be the face of Secret Woods Winery, but don’t want to do the work. At least that’s what I hear. Everyone in town is just waiting for them to get bored and move on.”

“That would be awful! It’s a huge investment in property and time,” Polly said. “Are they really that foolish?”

“I hope not. That’s one of the reasons I invited them to the party. I hoped that you and Henry and the Mikkels would begin to help them make a connection to the community again.” Lydia stopped the conversation then and beckoned for the waitress.
After she had taken their orders, Lydia went on. “I’m sorry I set you up, though.”

“We had fun,” Polly assured her. “And with time, I think I could like them. But J. J. acts like a kid, Ryan isn’t sure what to do and Patrick was so stressed out about his wife’s behavior, I don’t think we got to see the real him at all. Did they think it was weird they were invited to the Sheriff’s house?”

Lydia laughed. “Maybe they did, but good for them. They showed up and got involved in the spirit of the thing. We’ll have to do one of those again sometime.”

“Do you know Ken and Maude Wallers very well?” Polly asked. “It never occurred to me that he was married. He’s just the Police Chief.”

“We’ve done a few things with them. She is a dear, but it’s hard to find time during the school year. That poor woman works like a demon is chasing her. You’d think after all these years of teaching, she’d have it down to a science, but she says that she likes to keep it fresh for herself as well as the kids.”

The conversation hit a lull as their food was delivered, and Polly said. “Henry is talking to his parents about moving back to Bellingwood.”

“That’s interesting,” Lydia said. “Everyone misses them. I was surprised when they just picked up and left town.”

“I think they wanted to let Henry have the business and there wasn’t enough work for both him and his dad and,” Polly nodded as she spoke, “his mother hates winter. After this last one, I don’t blame her.”

“Why does he want them to come back?”

“He’s so busy that he is losing sleep. He needs to hire quite a few people, but he can’t manage everything. His dad knows the business, they trust each other and if Bill could run things at the shop, Henry thinks he can do the rest.”

“Len would love to spend more time working there,” Andy said. “Everyone talks about how great retirement is until you actually get into the middle of it and find that you’re bored silly. He’s been refinishing furniture at home, but soon he’ll be all out of things to do. He and Bill know each other pretty well.”

“He should talk to Henry. If those two men managed the shop, he’d probably feel a lot more confident going forward. I hope his parents say yes. They could still live in Arizona during the winter.”

“Would they move back into the house?” Lydia asked.

“I suppose. Henry says they didn’t take much of anything with them.”

“Where would Henry live?”

Polly shrugged, “He hasn’t thought it all out. All I know is that he was so exhausted this morning, he nearly cried when I mentioned his father and he’s hardly started the big projects yet. I can’t stand seeing him like that.”

“If you two got married …” Beryl began.

“Hush. Don’t you start. I refuse to get married to someone just because it might be convenient. That’s terrible!” Polly said. “Now be good.”

Beryl laughed and pushed her nearly empty plate back, then leaned forward on the table. “Everybody in town knows the two of you are going to be together forever. You just need to move forward and be done with all of this stupidity.”

“I’ve warned you before, Beryl Watson. Don’t you start with me.”

“Uh huh. You scare me bad. I’m wetting my Depends.”

Polly threw her napkin at her friend and then checked the time. “I hate to do this, but I’m taking Obiwan to the library this afternoon and since Henry and I were late, he dropped me off. Can one of you take me back to Sycamore House?”

Andy put her napkin on the table, “I can. I told Jeff I would rotate some of the displays in the auditorium this afternoon.”

During the renovation of Sycamore House, they had discovered a cache of items from the days when the building was a high school. A custodian with a tendency toward hoarding, picked things up that the kids weren’t paying attention to and kept them in crates, one for each year. Former students stopped by to see items from their high school days. Sometimes one would recognize an item that had belonged to them and thought it great fun to retrieve it after so many years. Andy had developed displays for the items in the auditorium. There were still many in storage, but she kept them cataloged and changed things around on a regular basis.

Polly handed Lydia cash and said, “I’m sorry to rush off and take Andy away.”

“Don’t worry, dear,” Lydia said. “It was good to see you. Tell Henry that if he needs anything, I’m always available.”

“Thanks, Lydia.” Polly hugged her and followed Andy outside, pulling her jacket back on.

Andy pulled into the Sycamore House parking lot and the two went in the front door. Polly hugged her, then went up to her apartment. Obiwan was waiting at the doorway.

“What did you get into while I was gone?” she asked and glanced toward the kitchen. There wasn’t any trash on the floor. That was a good sign. He followed her into the bedroom and nothing seemed out of place, but when she went into the bathroom, she discovered why he’d been at the door. There was toilet paper all over and it didn’t look as if Obiwan was the only culprit. Chunks of toilet paper were gone from the roll and the cats both slunk in when she cleared her throat.

“When did you all decide that this was going to be your new plaything?” she asked. “We’ve been together for a year and now you discover the toilet paper? What am I supposed to do?”

She knelt down and gathered up the pieces and long strands, then tossed them in the trash can under the sink. “Really. What am I supposed to do?” She shook her head and walked back into the bedroom and sat on the bed. Luke and Leia jumped up to sit beside her and she rubbed Luke’s head while Leia jumped on her lap. “I love you two, but you are bad cats.”

Polly put Leia down on the bed and headed for the back steps. “Come on, Obiwan. You have an afternoon of reading ahead and we don’t want to be late.”
He followed her downstairs and out to the truck, then sat in the passenger seat as she backed out of the garage and headed downtown. When he saw the library, his tail wagged.

“You do enjoy this, don’t you?” Polly scratched his head and snapped the leash on his collar. They trotted across the street and up the steps of the library.

The door to the library opened for her and she smiled down at little Rhett Clarence.

“Hi, Miss Polly. I was waiting for you.”

“Obiwan couldn’t wait to see you today, Rhett,” she said and patted the boy’s head. “Do you have a book ready to read?”

“I left it in his room. I thought he might want to say hello to everyone first.”

“Thank you for getting the door for us.”

He ran up the steps to the main level where Joss was sitting at the desk. She grinned at Polly. “Rhett has been watching that door for the last ten minutes.”

Polly took Obiwan around the back of the desk so he could greet Joss. They had been doing this since Thanksgiving and as soon as he got a snuggle from Joss, he was ready to go to work.