Sugar Creek (17 page)

After a long day of apple picking, Rachel and Edna sat down to a hearty beef stew Edna had let simmer all day in the Crock-Pot. “An amazin’ thing, the Crock-Pot,” Edna said. “Back before the Crock-Pot, I’d have lost some pickin’ time makin’ us a decent supper, but it’s a dandy thing to have around come harvest.”

Rachel nodded and said, “Mmm-hmm,” as she forked a carrot slice into her mouth. She wasn’t ignoring Edna purposely, but she’d spent much of the day thinking. About how hard Edna worked here. And that maybe there
were
easier ways, whether or not Edna knew it.

“What’s on your mind, girl?” Edna asked, sounding annoyed. “’Cause I can tell ya got
somethin’
cookin’ up there.”

Rachel met her grandmother’s eyes. “I’ve been contemplating ways the orchard could make more money.”

Edna didn’t look the least bit impressed. Closer to bored. “Is that so?”

But Rachel ignored her attitude. Edna was a creature of habit, averse to change, but it seemed important to push her on this. “For one thing, we could build a website. A lot of orchards have them.” She knew, because she’d done some Googling on her Blackberry. “You’d get a lot more day-trippers from farther away. And that’s not all. You could make it worth their drive by having other weekend activities—hayrides maybe, or evening bonfires with ghost stories. And you could put in a bakery counter and sell pies and caramel apples for people to take home.”

Edna just blinked at Rachel across the table, flashing that same blasé expression. “And just how do you think I’m gonna do all this when I can’t even get the apples harvested?”

Rachel had been pondering that part, too. Even though it still didn’t seem like the wisest time in her life to lay out extra cash, she said, “Maybe I could hire a web designer and someone to manage it. And somebody to orchestrate the activities. I could oversee all that from Chicago.” It would be more constructive than hiring extra hands as she’d once considered, and it would keep her directly involved, even if from a distance.

But Edna was already shaking her head. “Nope. No, I’m too old a dog for those kinda new tricks. I’m lucky to keep things runnin’ as they are without makin’ em’ busier or more complicated. Now, as you know, my hope was always that one of my progeny would care enough about this place to run it someday, but as you also know, it don’t look like that’s gonna happen. So the way I see it, all I need to worry about is keepin’ the orchard afloat until I’m too completely broken down to do it.”

A familiar wave of guilt wafted through Rachel, but at least she was
trying
to get more involved with sustaining the place while Edna was still around to handle the day-to-day operation. And again she reminded herself that she
came from a large family and no one else wanted to take over the orchard when Edna was gone, either.

So maybe she just plain shouldn’t care anymore. She hadn’t cared a few weeks ago, after all. But the idea of having the Farris Family Apple Orchard die—in name anyway—still depressed her; she still didn’t want Mike Romo to have it. Even if she
had
agreed to go on a strange sort of date with him—almost against her will. She gave her head a slight shake, still in disbelief. “Are you going to sell it to Mike Romo?”

“Don’t know,” Edna said as she cut into a large chunk of potato with her fork, but she seemed more thoughtful now, like she’d moved beyond her annoyance to seriously consider the question. “It’s hard, ’cause to me, it’s a Farris thing. The place has meant a lot to me, and I believe it meant somethin’ to your grandpa, who really built the business up before he died. But Mike
does
have some historical claim on it, and at least he wants it, at least he’d keep it thrivin’.” Edna paused to take a bite, then looked back across the table at Rachel. “Why do you suddenly care so much anyway?”

Rachel stirred her fork through the remains of her stew, feeling a little adrift at the question. “I’m not sure—the same reason you do, I guess. Family pride.” She swallowed then, having said it. In a way, she’d left Destiny to outrun her extended family and their sometimes questionable reputation. But since coming back, she’d felt bound to defend her Farris roots to Mike Romo, and now she continued to worry about the Farris Family Apple Orchard ceasing to exist. “I guess if he gets it,” she said, “it’ll somehow feel like the Romos won the feud, you know?”

Across the table from her, Edna gave a small nod of agreement. “But I’ve told ya before—the older I get, the more I see it’s just easier to let go of grudges. Part of me sees it as the Romos winnin’, but part of me sees it as your
grandpa’s efforts bein’ carried on. And besides,” Edna said, her voice softening a bit, “Mike’s been through a lot—and I think he…wants somethin’ to care about. He’d never admit that, but he’s lost so much—I think he needs some solid ground to stand on. Both figur’tively and liter’lly.”

The notion surprised Rachel in a way…but then again, knowing what she knew now about Mike’s little sister disappearing and how it had apparently torn his family apart, it didn’t surprise her at all. There was more to Mike Romo than the gruff cop who liked writing out tickets so much. Even more to Mike Romo than the guy who was so skilled at pleasuring a woman. Rachel wasn’t sure she’d ever see it, but if Edna said it was there, she believed it.

As the visual image of Mike standing on that solid orchard ground permeated her thoughts, she also found it easy to imagine Giovanni Romo there, too. And the more connected she began to feel to her
own
family, the more she could understand why Mike wanted this place so much. “Do you have any pictures of Giovanni?” she asked.

Edna didn’t even act as if the question was out of the blue. Instead, a sly sort of smile snuck onto her face. “As a matter of fact, I do. Just one. I kept it hid from your grandpa all those years—he just wouldn’t have understood. I loved Edward dearly, but savin’ a picture of Giovanni just seemed like…part of the scrapbook of my life, a thing I had a right to remember.” As Edna rose to her feet, Rachel noticed how slowly she moved at the moment, and it made her heart hurt a little despite Edna’s merriment. “Stay right here and I’ll see if I can’t find it.”

Edna returned a minute later, holding a yellowed piece of paper in her hand, folded in half, wrapped around a black-and-white snapshot. Remembering the picture was likely over fifty years old, Rachel took it carefully from Edna’s fingers—and saw a strikingly handsome man
who bore a remarkable resemblance to his grandson. She couldn’t hold in her gasp.

“What is it?” Edna asked.

“He looks like Mike.”

Edna peered down at the picture now, too. “Hmm—he does, don’t he? Reckon I never realized how much. But now you can see why I was head over heels.”

Indeed she could. He was lankier than Mike, probably from all that farm work, and of course his hair and clothing reflected the time, but yeah—if Rachel had been around in 1958, she’d have been swooning over Giovanni as badly as she seemed to swoon for Mike.

“So,” Rachel said, eyes still on the photo, “you never told me what happened with Giovanni—I mean the rest of it.”

Edna looked at herself in the mirror in the pretty new dress Giovanni had given her. He’d not bought it for any particular reason, but just because she was his little fiore, he’d told her, explaining that the word meant “flower” in Italian. She smiled at herself in the glass, biting her lower lip. I am his little flower.

At first, she’d worried over having given her virginity to Giovanni so quickly. She couldn’t imagine the shame she’d feel if her parents knew, not to mention the folks at the Trinity Church—but it had been so easy, so impossible to say no. Just like it had every time they’d been together since. When she subtracted everyone but her and Giovanni from the equation, it felt perfect. She’d been right about Destiny being a magical place—she’d found more than she’d ever hoped for here.

When a knock came on the back door, she smoothed down the front of her dress and went to answer. It was Eddie, a boy who’d recently come to work on the farm along withWally and Dell. These days, Edna mostly took care of the house chores—cooking, cleaning, laundry—
and Giovanni had needed another hand. Eddie stood on the back stoop, tall and thin, hat in hand, his pale brown hair looking lighter beneath the sun. “Howdy, Miss Edna,” he said with his usual friendly smile.

She returned it. “Afternoon, Eddie.” Eddie lived on the other side of town with his parents and siblings, and he struck her as a sweet country boy, the sort she might notice at home—or if she didn’t have themost handsome man in the world already in love with her. But as it was, even though he was a few years older than her, that’s exactly what Eddie seemed like: a boy.

“Was hopin’ you could tell me if Wally and Dell’s off in that back field workin’ today.” His eyes twinkled a little when he spoke.

“I reckon they are,” she said.

“Sorry I’m late—m’ truck broke down.”

“Well, I can surely understand that. Don’t worry about it—it was our own broken down truck that led me and my brothers here.”

Though it seemed like so long ago now, when she thought about it. So much in her life had changed. She was wearing the first new dress she’d ever owned and she was Giovanni Romo’s girl.

“Well, you have a nice afternoon,” Eddie said, turning to go—but Edna couldn’t help feeling charitable toward him.

“Eddie, you wanna piece of apple pie to keep ya company on the walk?” She’d just been slicing some up, fixing a picnic basket for her and Giovanni.

Eddie’s grin widened. “Why, I’d march across a bed of nails for a piece of your pie, Miss Edna.”

As Edna stood at the screen door watching Eddie depart with a big slice of pie a moment later, Giovanni’s palms closed warmly over her shoulders from behind. “Giving my pie away to another man, my little fiore?” he whispered teasingly in her ear.

“It’s not another man, silly—it’s just Eddie,” she said, turning into his embrace.

Giovanni nodded, looking pleased. “That is good. I could not bear to have you look at another man, my Edna. I cannot help but feel, well…possessive where you are concerned,” he concluded, his gaze glittering hotly on her.

Despite herself, she liked Giovanni’s jealousy. “The same goes for me, with you,” she informed him. “And if I ever see you look at another girl, I’ll give away all your pie.”

Giovanni just laughed, then drew back slightly, his expression playful yet full of torment. “Can I help it if the girls at the theater in town flirt with me when you are not looking? Am I to blame when the bakery lady smiles and winks at me?”

The very images put Edna’s stomach in knots, so she planted her fists at her hips. “They’d better not. And you’d better not like it if they do!” To which Giovanni simply raised his dark eyebrows, still taunting her, and she realized…“You’re teasin’ me. You’re bein’ cruel and teasin’ me.”

Giovanni let out another full-bodied laugh and pulled Edna back into his arms. “Do not worry, my little
fiore.
You will always be my number one.”

An hour later, the two of them rested on a blanket at their favorite spot in the orchard, where they’d first kissed—and more. It was a beautiful late summer day—the sun shone down clear and bright, but a pleasantly cool breeze wafted through the branches above, where the apples were becoming a vivid red. Edna lay back on the blanket, her arms stretched over her head. “I love this place,” she said dreamily. “More than I knew I could love any place.” Not that she’d been many places to love, but to Edna, the orchard seemed like heaven on earth.

Giovanni peered down at her, his eyes heavy lidded,
same as when he wanted her. She thought he would lean down to kiss her then, so it shocked the heck out of her when he instead said, “Marry me, my
fiore.”

Edna drew in her breath. She’d yearned for this moment with all she was—but she’d never imagined it could happen so soon, so suddenly. “Yes! Yes, I’ll marry you, Giovanni!”

As Giovanni’s face filled with joy, he scooped her into his arms, lifting her, crushing her in his embrace. “You make me so happy,” he breathed in her ear. Then, pulling back, still smiling, he turned more practical. “I had intended to wait, to travel to Kentucky—I wanted to ask your father for your hand, do this the proper way. But you look so beautiful today…the words, they just came out.”

Sitting up now, Edna curled her fingers into the front of his shirt. “That’s sweet, but I’m glad you didn’t wait. Mama and Daddy will love you.” Then she shut her eyes and simply drank in the warmth of the day, the scent of the air, the wonder of the moment. She was going to be Mrs. Giovanni Romo. “I can’t wait to tell Dell and Wally. And, well, maybe me and you could drive down home this weekend.”

“That sounds like a magnificent idea, fiore. I cannot wait to meet the rest of your family. And…” He leaned close, that seductive look in his eyes again. “I cannot wait to make you mine in every way.”

Edna didn’t even worry about the boys coming upon them as Giovanni began to kiss her, to lay her back on the blanket, soon pushing up her dress. They were far away—the rest of the world was far away. And her world was perfect.

Late that afternoon, she and Giovanni returned to the house, laughing, hand in hand. “I should go to the field, work with the others,” he said, adding with a lighthearted smile, “Such happy news gives me extra energy.”

But Edna argued, pouting. “Oh, not today. Take the rest of the day just to be with me.”

That’s when a blue pickup came rumbling across the bridge, throwing up a light cloud of dust as it drew to a squeaky halt. Edna and Giovanni both watched as Harvey Miller from the bank in town hopped out in a hurry, to press an envelope into Giovanni’s hand. “This just came for ya from the Western Union.”