The Diamond of the Rockies [03] The Tender Vine (45 page)

Caught between Quillan and her papa, Carina had felt like a fox between two hounds. They were both too stubborn to give the other any ground. So Papa accepted her marriage. Could he not extend some courtesy to Quillan? And Quillan, couldn’t he go a little way toward showing gratitude and forgiveness?

She felt him slip into sleep under her gentle massage and slowly removed her hands. Let him sleep now, and perhaps he would wake in better humor. She brushed a kiss across his forehead and left. Mamma was in the kitchen, working garlic pulp into the focaccia. She could have a Chinese cook like Gelsomina did, but Mamma loved the feel of the dough beneath her palms, the steam of the savory sauces on the stove, the heat of the oven as she removed the crisply browned fishes and roasts.

Carina understood.

“How is he?” Mamma asked without looking up, making the best of that to which she must resign herself. She had stopped harping when she read Father Antoine’s letter. No matter how heartbreaking the match, it was done.

“He is cross. He wants more than broth, and it frets him to be so helpless.”

Mamma smiled. She couldn’t help it, though she hid it at once. “How long does Papa say before he can eat?”

Carina shrugged. “Papa is equally cross. He doesn’t say.”

Now Mamma glanced up. “Like two bears, are they?”

“In springtime.”

Again Mamma smiled. “It won’t hurt your papa to reach a little.”

Carina cocked her head. Could Mamma mean that? Did she see it was mostly Papa’s pride that had muddled things?

“Eh, soon enough I’ll bake him a lasagne with fresh ricotta and spinach from the garden.”

Of course Mamma didn’t mean Papa; she was thinking of Quillan.

Carina’s mouth watered, and she knew Quillan would succumb at the first bite. If anything could make peace between them all, it was Mamma’s lasagne, dripping cheese and rich tomato sauce.

“I wish he could have it now.”

“Your papa knows best.” Mamma turned the dough and dimpled it with her fingers.

Carina reached for the cruet and drizzled olive oil over the garlicky circle her Mamma formed. She had to admit Papa was tending Quillan as carefully as she would herself.

Mamma lifted the dough onto the cornmeal-sprinkled baking stone and slid it into the oven. “I have fresh prawns for supper.”

Carina looked at the bowl of large gray prawns, their legs like stunted tentacles gathered in the curl of their bodies. “Shall I devein them?” She reached for the small sharp knife when Mamma nodded. What would Quillan think of prawns? Fried with butter and oregano and lemon until they turned pink and firm, their edges crisp and golden. She closed her eyes and pictured his expression as he filled his mouth with a new flavor.

“What is it?” Mamma touched her hand.

Carina opened her eyes, picked up a thin-shelled prawn. “I was thinking how Quillan would look when he tried it for the first time.”

“Has he had no shrimp?” Mamma swabbed the marble counter with a hot cloth.

Carina shrugged. “He never saw a crab until San Francisco.”

“What did he think of it?”

“He thought it tasted better than it looked.” She dangled the prawn from her fingers. “He has a point.”

Mamma laughed. “That’s why we don’t allow men in the kitchen.

It’s better they don’t know.”

Carina sliced the blade down the back side of the prawn, splitting the shell and cutting shallowly into the translucent flesh beneath. With the tip of the knife she lifted out the thin blue vein that was really the animal’s intestine. Why was it a woman could deal with that thought, but Tony and others grew pale, contending they would never touch a prawn again—until, of course, a plate of them was set sizzling before them in savory buttery sauce.

“Quillan would try anything I make. He loves to watch me cook.”

“You’ve let him in your kitchen?” Mamma slapped the cloth onto the counter with a soft plop.

Carina pictured Mae’s kitchen with the long board table where she had served Quillan that first meal of cannelloni, how he had lingered over each bite. What would Mamma think that she had fed him right there at the table where she prepared it? And then the time he had watched her make the ravioli, mixing the pasta with her fingers, the intensity in his eyes as he watched.

She smiled. “Yes, Mamma. Quillan is welcome in my kitchen.”

Mamma stared at her a long moment. “Then where can you be separate?”

Carina considered that. She knew what Mamma was asking. Where was her woman’s place, her refuge from a husband’s expectations, her place to control, to rule. She picked up a second prawn. “I don’t want to be separate. I want to be one.” She looked up into Mamma’s face. She had no doubt Mamma loved Papa, but she had never fought for that love as Carina had. Could she understand?

Brows raised, Mamma lifted the cloth and squeezed the excess water into the washbowl. “You are naïve, Carina.” She smiled. “But maybe . . .

not so much, eh?”

Carina laughed. “You should see him, Mamma. He watches me as though I speak the lasagne into being. He says it’s magic. He thinks my fingers are magic.”

Again Mamma paused. “Is it possible—could it be I’ve missed something all these years?” She looked around the room where the women had always gathered to prepare meal after meal, their world.

“What are you thinking, Mamma?” Carina held the knife poised over the fragile shell.

“I’m trying to imagine your papa in here watching me.” She slowly folded the cloth and laid it on the edge of the counter.

“And?” Carina held her breath.

“I would take a spoon to him.”

“Mamma!”

Mamma shook her head, laughing. “It’s no use, Carina. Your papa could no more sit in here than I could tell him how to grow his vines or cure his patients. We are what we are.”

“But, Mamma . . .”

“No, Carina. Some things don’t change. Maybe . . . maybe it’s different with your man. He is not . . .”

“Italian?”

Mamma shrugged. “Who can explain the humors that flow in the blood?” She rested her hands on the counter. “If you had chosen Flavio . . .”

Carina met her mother’s eyes. Would she be condemned again? Would this time of connecting end here with that name mentioned?

Mamma sighed. “Flavio would not have watched you cook, Carina.” Her heart swelled. It was true. Flavio was her own kind, but she had chosen Quillan, or God had.

“Your home will not be the same as mine.” There was a wistful note in Mamma’s voice.

“Not so different, Mamma.”

Smile lines crinkled at her mamma’s eyes. “Not in the bedroom, eh?”

Carina looked up, startled.

“Not when your sons come, nor your daughters.”

Carina’s heart constricted. “I don’t know, Mamma.” Her cycle was again irregular. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d bled.

Mamma waved her hand. “Your husband is capable still. I asked Papa.”

Carina flushed. Her parents had discussed that? She swallowed the pain in her throat. “It’s not Quillan I’m worried about. After my miscarriage Dr. Felden was unsure if I could—”

“Don’t say it, Carina. Of course you can.” Mamma crossed herself, then sobered. “It must have been awful.”

Carina nodded slowly, tears stinging her eyes. And then she was in Mamma’s arms, the knife and prawn lying where she dropped them, and the scent of Mamma’s lemon water and the soft flesh of her throat against Carina’s face. She poured out the story of the terrible men and her own temper and the disastrous price her baby had paid. She sobbed.

“Cara mia.” Mamma stroked her hair. “And where was your Quillan?”

Carina sniffed. “Away.”

Mamma rocked her. “Ah, tesora . . .” She dropped a tear of her own to Carina’s face. “If you can forgive him that, you must truly love him.”

“With all my heart, Mamma.”

Her mamma pressed her face to Carina’s hair. “Then God will provide, eh? You hear, Signore? Give them a child again.” She squeezed Carina and released her.

Carina laughed, suddenly seeing that Mamma’s scolding was really a deep belief that God could and would answer her prayer. Carina knew God would do as He saw best, but silently her heart added its own plea.

“I’ll finish the prawns. You go wash your face.”

Carina sniffed, grateful for the release the tears had given, but ready to be through with it. She went to the bathhouse and washed, then toweled her face dry and drew in a deep settling breath. God was good. His perfect will would be done. Surely she and Quillan would both recover. She just had to be patient.

She went outside and drank in the spring scent of waking earth, budding and blooming shrubs and bulbs and nut trees. The Gravenstein apple trees would soon be profuse with blossoms and the scent from the rows of forty orange trees just behind the barn indescribable. Everywhere life quickened, and she had to believe it God’s promise that hers and Quillan’s too would be restored.

Feeling almost buoyant, she wanted to see Ti’Giuseppe. Quillan had taken so much of her time and concern that— “Mrs. Shepard!”

Carina turned in surprise.

“I am
so
glad to find you.” Mr. Pierce hurried over from the gates outside the courtyard. “I’ve come every day, but your brothers turned me away. I can only hope it isn’t at your bequest?”

She was too surprised to be anything but truthful. “I didn’t know you had come. What is it you want?” She only hoped her tears didn’t show again.

He looked exasperated. “I heard about the accident, but no one seems to know what happened. The men at the quarry shake their heads and mumble with side glances at each other; but get a straight answer?

I’d have to be Socrates.”

“Mr. Pierce—”

“Now don’t put me off, Mrs. Shepard. Quillan and I have a deal, and I find it my duty—”

“A deal?” She dropped her hands to her sides. “What deal?”

“His story, of course. I told you I had an opportunity.”

“Yes, but—” She spread her hands wide. “Quillan agreed?”

“Of course.”

She looked at him probingly. How much of this was bluster? “My husband was badly injured.”

“How badly?”

She shook her head. “The wagon fell on top of him.”

“How? How did it fall?”

“An explosion.”

He pulled the ever-present pad from his pocket. “What caused the explosion?”

She looked into Mr. Pierce’s face. Was it any of his business? Did he have a right to their misery? “You’ll have to ask Quillan.”

He nodded sharply. “That’s all I want. To speak to him.”

Unsnagging the hem of her skirt from a honeysuckle bush, she looked back toward the house. “I don’t know. Papa will have to decide.”

“Mrs. Shepard . . .”

She recognized the cajoling tone and turned back, annoyed. “Mr.

Pierce, my husband was nearly killed. My papa is the finest surgeon around. Maybe no one else could have brought him through. I will let him decide.”

Mr. Pierce backed up one step, with his palms raised. “All right, all right. But ask, will you? Ask Quillan when we can meet.”

She stared at him. How did one become so insensitive and bullheaded? He removed his hat and fanned his face. “One more thing. Was it your lover who injured him?”

Her breath came out in a rush of indignation. “My lover?”

“I asked around. Flavio Caldrone . . .”

“Flavio—was not—my lover.” She punctuated each phrase with a step in his direction.

“You were betrothed.”

He was not as tall as Quillan, but she was aware of her diminutive size in comparison, mainly because she considered slapping him. Instead, she eyed him as she might a particularly odious reptile. “Mr. Pierce, you overstep yourself.”

“It must be painful to be the cause of your husband’s tragedy.”

The breath left her lungs in a huff. “Painful? This is painful!” She kicked his shin with everything in her.

Hopping backward, he gripped his leg and howled, even dropping his pad into the dirt.

She snatched it up. “Now get off my land.” With a flourish of skirts, she stalked toward the tiny cottage beside the barn.

“Mrs. Shepard.” He gasped, limping behind. “I meant no disrespect.”

No disrespect? Seething, she gained Ti’Giuseppe’s door, yanked it open, and turned. “Go away, or I’ll have my uncle blow your head off.”

Mr. Pierce stopped. “Well, all right, then. Tell Quillan I want to see him.” He straightened his pants leg, gathering what dignity he could.

She went in and closed the door in his face. Ti’Giuseppe sat by the fire with a smile as wide as his ears, bare gums and all. She took the stool at his side. “I kicked him, Tio.”

“Good, good. Nosy one, that.”

“Did he talk to you?”

Giuseppe nodded. “Wandered this way when Tony wouldn’t let him in the gate.”

“What did you tell him?”

“Eh?”

“I said, what did you tell him?”

“Eh?” Giuseppe burst into a wicked laugh.

Carina’s mouth dropped open, and she laughed full chested as she hadn’t in a long time. “Oh, Tio.” She flung her arms around him and squeezed.

“How is he, your man?”

Carina sighed. “Better, but frustrated he can’t do everything for himself. He doesn’t like to be helped.”

Again Giuseppe laughed. “Then he’ll learn more than he might have.”

T
WENTY-FIVE

Life stripped of any consequence, brings one to aching cognizance.

Strength once commanding reality; Keen, now, the mind knows futility.

—Quillan

Q
UILLAN WINCED ONLY SLIGHTLY
when Dr. DiGratia unbound his arm and probed the collarbone. He imagined the doctor’s fingers like insect antennae sending information to the brain as his mouth puckered slightly in concentration, and the tendons in his gray-haired forearms rippled with each movement of the fingers.

“Better, eh?” the doctor said.

“Yes,” Quillan grudgingly admitted.

Dr. DiGratia pointed to the other arm still in the cast. “That one was a compound fracture. The bone broke through the flesh. It will take longer. But at least you will have one arm now to use.”

“Thank you.” These last weeks had reduced him to gratitude for the smallest things. Being allowed to fumble about left-handed would be significant. He moved his arm, dismayed by its weakness.