The Cherry Blossoms (13 page)

When he got back in the truck, he told her, “I couldn’t abide letting you get your luggage from the cart into the truck bed, and do that belly flop thing to get back into the truck.”

Daniella howled with laughter, “Did it really look like a belly flop?  I must have looked like a whale trying to swim onto a beach.”

Garrett guffawed as well, “I don’t think you looked like a whale, you’re too small, but you certainly did a belly flop.”

He continued to chuckle, when he asked, “Betty told me you’ve been living in France for some time now.  Do you like it?”

“I do.  Where did you learn French?  I’ve lived in Paris since I went to college there, and I still don’t speak the language well.”

Garrett chortled, “I’ll tell you, but you have to promise that you won’t laugh.”

The drive from the airport in Denver to the ranch in Franktown would take an hour at this time of night, so he was glad that she could engage in conversation.

“I attended a cooking school in France.”

“Is that right?  When were you there?”

“I was there from 1996 to 1999.”

“That’s amazing.  I moved there in 1997 to attend a school that specialized in clothing designs.  I have to ask.  If you went to France for cooking, why aren’t you working as a chef somewhere?”

“This may sound crazy, but frankly I did not like the hours.  I did an internship in a popular restaurant.  While our patrons were enjoying themselves, I was in a hot kitchen sweating like a pig.”

Daniella hooted at the vision of a cow poke sweating like a pig in a French restaurant, “So then, how did the sweaty pig end up at a horse ranch?”

“I wandered around Europe for about year.  I had no idea what I wanted to do, so I ended up joining the Peace Corps, where I volunteered for about a year.  After that I went to school in Boston; I wanted to work with handicapped children.  I searched for jobs that were out of the box.  After I read an article on the internet about your grandfather’s ranch, I called and asked for a job.”

Daniella was amazed because no one had told her that the ranch worked with handicapped children.

He turned his head to see her face.  “By the look on your face, you didn’t know that did you?”

“No, I didn’t.  You’d think someone would have told me, but this is the first time that I’ve about it.”

“Matt can tell you the whole story, but he started working with handicapped children centers about 1996, so I’ve been working there since ’97.”

Daniella shook her head, “The things you just don’t know.  Do you like living on the ranch?”

“Damn straight I do.”

When the truck pulled into the driveway, it was after 2:00 in the morning, but there was her Nana standing on the porch waiting for them.  The rain had not let up, so when Daniella jumped down from the passenger seat, she slipped in the mud and fell face down into it.  Standing beside her, she heard Garrett howl with laughter.  He was laughing so hard that when he took her arm to help her up, he managed to slip and fall into the mud, landing beside her.  It was now Daniella’s turn to laugh at the predicament they were in.

He reached to help her up.  “Get away from me, I don’t trust you.  I’ll get up myself.”  As she stood in front of her Nana covered in mud, she laughed so that hard she started to fall.  She grabbed Garrett’s arm to steady herself and they both ended up back in the mud.

Nana’s face was aghast, “Have the two of you been drinking?  Garrett, you left this house at 10:30 to meet Danny at the airport, you should have been home by 12:30, and here it is 2:00 in the morning.”

Daniella was still laughing when she choked out, “Nana, my plane had to circle the airport for an hour, so I was late.  It’s not Garrett’s fault totally.  We lost a bit of time when we had to run back and grab my luggage which he left sitting on the sidewalk.”

Nana wasn’t in the laughing mood, “Daniella McPherson, you have ruined what looks to have been a perfectly good suit.  I want the two of you to march yourselves around the veranda to the back door.  Get out of those muddy clothes in the laundry room.  I don’t want to lay eyes on either of you till you’ve had showers and be quiet about it, your grandfather is sleeping.”

They made their way to the back door as Daniella giggled, “I haven’t laughed that hard in a very long time.”

Nana was in the laundry room holding two old robes in her hands.  She sternly told them.  “Turn yourselves away from each other; get out of those clothes and hand them to me.  Danny your old bedroom still has a bathroom.  I put fresh towels in there this morning.  When the two of you no longer look like swamp rats, I want both of you to join me in the kitchen for a piece of pie.  I figured you’d be hungry, so I baked an apple pie.”

Daniella grabbed the suitcase that contained her casual clothes.  When she dragged her luggage up the staircase, the memories of growing up on her grandfather’s ranch rushed past her. She had been a short chubby child, and with each step she took, she heard her classmates chanting in her ear, “Fat Fanny Danny.”  When she entered her bedroom she let out a gasp.  Nothing had changed.  The bedroom looked exactly the way it did, the day she left for France.  When she opened her closet door, she found that her high school clothes were still in it.  They were clean and freshly pressed.  Why Nana hadn’t given them to the Good Will or some other charity organization was beyond the realm of her thinking.  It even smelled the same.  She told herself that the reason it smelled the same is that Nana used the same cleaning products that she’s used since Daniella was a child.

Matt McPherson’s home was a large rambling ranch house.  Matt’s great-grandfather had built a small log cabin when he bought the property from the government after his emigration from Ireland.  The ranch had been in her family for five generations.  Each generation had added and expanded the house to the point where the log cabin sat in the middle of the house and served as the living room.  She hadn’t been in the kitchen yet, but she was certain that the old wood cook stove was still there.  She knew that if it were in the kitchen, Nana still baked bread in that oven.

When Daniella stepped into her bathroom, she saw that someone had modernized it.  Instead of the commode with the water tank high above the toilet with a pull string to flush the toilet, there was a modern, standard commode.  The old porcelain claw bath tub had been replaced with a shower stall.  A beautiful quartz vanity had replaced the stained porcelain sink.  Daniella stepped into the shower and was relieved to see that Nana had not held onto the soaps and shampoos that she’d left behind.  As she stepped into the shower, she was grateful that her grandfather had insisted that the hot water heater be large enough to supply the entire ranch house.  Standing under the hot spray of water, she felt the tension in her body run down the tub drain.

After her shower, she met Garrett in the hall that led to the country kitchen.  When they entered the kitchen, Daniella and Garrett looked like two school children entering the principal’s office.

“Nana, how’s Grandpa doing?”

“Not good child.  The doctor didn’t think he’d be able to hang in there until you arrived, but I just checked on him, and he’s sleeping soundly.

Daniella lost her appetite and pushed her pie around the plate with the fork.  She couldn’t eat a bite. “Nana, I think I’m going to turn in for the night.”

“You haven’t touched your pie.”

“I think I’m just so tired after the flight.  Save me a piece for tomorrow.”

She told her Nana and Garrett good-night and went up the stairs to her bedroom.

Just as Daniella laid her head on the pillow, she thought about her staff in Paris.  It was just before lunch, so she dragged herself out of bed and called Grant to let him know she’d arrived safely.

Annette answered the phone, “Maison de Daniella, comment puis-je vous aider ?”

Daniella smiled, she loved to hear the House of Daniella, “It’s me calling to let you know I arrived safely in Franktown, Colorado.”

“Mademoiselle, vous devez être épuisés.”

“I am exhausted, but before I can sleep, I wanted to touch base and let you know I’m here if you need me.”

“Mademoiselle, Michal a été nous appelant à plusieurs reprises à la recherche pour vous.”

“What did you tell him?”

“Je lui ai dit que vous avait été appelé plus loin sur une famille d'urgence.”

“Thank you.  Is Grant, available?”

“Oui.  J'obtiendrai lui pour vous?”

“Please, I need to speak with him.”

When Grant answered the phone, he asked her, “Daniella, shouldn’t you be sleeping?”

“Yes I should, but before I sleep, I must ask you if you have spoken with Michal.”

“Yes, I hung up with him to take your call.”

“Did you tell him where I was?”

“Yes, I did, since he is your fiancée, I told him; is there a problem?”

“No.”

“Then why did you ask if there is no problem?”

“When I arrived home Friday night after we had drinks; he was in bed with another woman.”

“Daniella if I had known that, I never would have told him where you are.”

“I know that.  Please don’t worry about it.  Michal would never follow me to the States.”

She managed to get in a two-hour nap when she woke to the sound of Nana fixing breakfast.  Daniella washed her face, brushed her teeth, and then pulled on a pair of jeans.  Nana would be putting together a ranchers breakfast of eggs, pancakes, bacon, sausage, toast, biscuits and fresh hot coffee.  Daniella didn’t realized how much she missed Nana’s cooking until she could smell the sweet aroma of the sticky buns that were a must before the cowhands went out onto the ranch.

When she stepped into Nana’s kitchen, there had to be at least ten men eating breakfast, around the oversized wooden kitchen table.  She stood in the doorway watching and listening as they talked through the day’s chores.  Nana had trained them well; as each man finished his breakfast, he took his dirty plate to the sink where he rinsed it.  The plate then went into the dishwasher.  Daniella missed the fact that Nana had the appliance when she had handed Daniella and Garrett their pieces of pie last night.  The ranch hands thanked Nana for breakfast as they filed out the back door.

Nana looked up when she heard Daniella laughing.  “My word child, I didn’t expect to see you until late this afternoon.”

“How could I sleep through one of your ranch breakfasts?  Is today a special day?”

Nana chuckled, “A special day?  What kind of special day would today be?  Come sit at the table and have breakfast with me.  I wanna hear all about living in Paris.”

“I’ll tell you everything you want to know after you tell me about all those men who were here for breakfast this morning.”

Nana put a plate full of food in front of Daniella and set her own plate across the table.  As she took her seat, she gave Daniella a questioning look.  “What men are you referring to?”

Daniella figured her Nana was up in age now, and was probably suffering from being hard of hearing, so she yelled, “Nana, I asked who all those men are that were here for breakfast.”

“Daniella Marie McPherson, I know that I’m not as young as I look, but for the love of God, I can hear just fine.  So, don’t be shouting at me like I’m some old geezer.”

Daniella doubled over with laughter, nearly spitting scrambled eggs across the table.  “Oh, Nana, I have missed you.”  Betty Schaffer had raised Daniella, so she had a very special love for her Nana.  “I was just asking about all the men having breakfast this morning.  Who are they?”

“Oh, I understand now.  They are the ranch hands.  I feed them breakfast, lunch and dinner.  Your grandfather remodeled the bunk house and modernized it.  He even put in some indoor plumbing for commodes and showers.  They live here on the ranch.  The best thing your grandfather did in the last ten years was to hire Garrett as his foreman.  Garrett hired all those fellers.”

“Garrett’s the person who picked me up from the airport, right?”

“That is correct.”

“And he hired all those men?”

“He sure did.”

“Why?  When I left for Paris, the ranch was losing money.”

“Danny, we’re making money now, so we need all those hands.  Your grandfather won’t be up for another hour or so.  Take a walk down to the stables and ask Garrett to show you the operation.  Just don’t forget I want to hear about living in Paris before you leave.”

“I promise to stay as long as you need me to and I’ll be sure you hear about Paris.  Let me help with the dishes, and then I’ll walk down to the stables.”

“The boys put their dishes into the dishwasher, so I only need to wash out the pots and pans.  Go get yourself acquainted with your grandfather’s business.”

Dressed in a pair of tight fitting jeans and a silk blouse, along with a pair of sandals that had been designed for her, Daniella strolled down the walkway to the barn.  Nana’s gardening skills were amazing.  Her flower gardens were starting to bloom and as she walked further along; Daniella saw that her veggies were peeking their little heads through the dirt.