Sugar Creek (12 page)

Her friends just looked at her like she was crazy. But then she had to remind herself—this was Destiny, land of picket fences and small town values. It was hard for Amy—and maybe even Tessa now, apparently—to get where she was coming from, about not pursuing this. And it was one more reason why she belonged in Chicago, where people were more…forward thinking.

“And even though I feel a little weird about it,” she went on, “I’m much calmer than I was before. I think it really worked some stress out of me.” And since Rachel wanted to
stay
unstressed, as in not thinking about her job woes or other worries, she decided to change the subject. “So,
finally
, can you tell me what happened to Romo that was so horrible?”

“Well, not
now,
” Amy replied, eyes widening. “Sue
Ann and Jenny are due any minute. They both came to book club last night and I invited them to lunch with us today.”

“That’s great,” Rachel said, and she meant it. “But this is getting ridiculous. Come on and spit it out already. Because it was one thing when I was just curious because I hated him, but now I’ve had sex with him. Sex, Amy! So tell me. Right now.”

Amy let out a big, conceding sigh. “Fine, but I’ll have to hurry.”

“Please do.”

“Okay.” She leaned forward in her chair, looking as if someone might be eavesdropping even though the three of them were alone. “When Mike was twelve, he and his family were camping at Bear Lake, north of Crestview, in the state park. He was watching his little brother, Lucky, who was ten at the time, and his sister, Anna, who was five, while their parents left to get some supplies or something. And while they were gone, Anna disappeared.”

Rachel’s heart nearly stopped. “Oh Lord, he’s
that
Romo? I
do
remember this story.”

“Yeah, I couldn’t believe you
didn’t
—it was such a big deal when we were kids. I guess we were around nine at the time.”

“There were just so many Romos, and I remember Lucky since he was only a year ahead of us, but I had no idea Mike was the other brother in that family. God.” Amy was right—at the time, it had been a tragedy felt by the whole community. “My dad even went over there looking for her. He said when it came to something like that, feuds didn’t matter.”

“My dad and uncle drove to the lake to help, too,” Tessa added.

“Right,” Amy went on. “There was a huge search of the whole park.”

“But they never found her,” Rachel recalled.

Amy nodded. “To this day, no one knows what happened to her.”

And it was Mike’s
sister
! “Lord.” It gave her chills.

“Anyway,” Amy said, “according to Logan, Mike never got over the guilt. Because he was supposed to be keeping an eye on her when it happened.”

“Oh, that’s awful.” Her stomach wrenched.

“And now…”

“Now what?”

“Well, now he’s pretty much alone.”

But she didn’t know what Amy meant. Suddenly
she
was the one leaning forward. “Alone how?”

“Well, Lucky was pretty messed up—he turned out to be a pretty bad kid.” Yeah, that’s exactly how Rachel remembered Lucky—like a guy you stayed away from, a guy who was always in trouble. “And he left town after high school and never came back—so no one knows what became of him. And after that, Mike’s parents moved to Florida. They never got over the loss, and they just couldn’t take being here anymore.”

Rachel asked what she thought was an obvious question. “Why didn’t Mike leave, too?” After all, what did he have to stay for?

Yet Amy shook her head. “Who knows? But…that’s why I cut the guy some slack for being so angry all the time.”

Just then, the little bell above the door jingled and in walked Sue Ann and Jenny. “Rachel Farris, back in Destiny—I thought I’d never see the day!” Sue Ann said, smiling brightly. And just like when she’d run into Jenny at the Dew Drop, Rachel was excited to see her old friends—and in a few minutes, she was sure she’d be immersed in catching up with them and enjoying their lunch. But at that particular moment, she was still reeling, struggling to catch her breath after hearing what had hap
pened to Mike Romo. It was worse than anything she’d imagined.

“Yeah, me neither,” she finally managed, rising to greet Sue Ann.

“I can’t wait to hear all about your world travels. I hear you went to Italy last year and I’m insanely jealous.”

Rachel forced a smile. “I’d rather hear all about
you
. And I’m told there’s a little miniature Sue Ann these days”—everyone said Sophie looked just like her—“so I hope you have pictures.”

As Amy locked up the bookstore for the hour, Mike Romo’s painful past still weighed heavily on Rachel—but she tried to concentrate on her friends and tell herself it didn’t matter.

After all, he didn’t like her anyway—and vice versa.

They’d had sex one time and gotten it out of their systems. It was over and done now.

But to her surprise, her heart still broke for him.

N
ow that August had given way to September, the orchard was hopping. Rachel would normally have spent the long Labor Day weekend jet-setting to Miami with girlfriends or boating on Lake Michigan with some of her co-workers—Chase owned a cabin cruiser and frequently invited his employees out on the water with him. But on this particular holiday weekend, she was greeting customers who paid to come to the Farris Family Apple Orchard and pick their own apples.

She stood just outside the barn in jeans and a fitted red tee, distributing bushel baskets and directing visitors to the grove of their choice: there were still some ripening Galas left, and the McIntoshes and Honeycrisps were mostly ready for harvest now, too.

“Rachel, can you show the Benson family out to the Honeycrisp grove?” Edna requested. “And when ya come back, you can help me restack all these baskets we just emptied. It’s early yet and we’ll have lots more customers today.”

Frankly, Edna was running her ragged. But she didn’t
mind. Mostly because she didn’t like to think of Edna juggling all this without her. Yet she also found the work more invigorating at times than she might have expected, too. It was a beautiful blue-sky day, the sun shining brightly overhead, and the scent of apples floated on the breeze. Somewhere a bird sang. And after all the standing on ladders she’d done lately, it actually felt good to do a little walking along one of the paths that led between rows of trees as she showed the Bensons the way. When she saw Brian Cahill—the boy Edna had hired part-time—helping an older couple lift their baskets of McIntoshes onto one of the wagons the orchard provided, she raised her hand in a wave.

She also couldn’t deny that talking with people about apples was…weirdly relaxing. It was a hell of a lot less stressful than talking with stern men in suits and ties about spending tens of thousands of dollars on advertising. The apple trade was, quite simply, a much kinder and gentler business.

But that’s why you make a lot more money in advertising than Edna makes on apples. And money makes the world go ’round. And it keeps roofs over people’s heads and food in their mouths.

And maybe the apple business was
too
simple in a way. Because it wasn’t enough to keep her mind off Mike Romo. While she wasn’t thinking too terribly much about life at Conrad/Phelps, everything she knew about Mike Romo remained front and center in her brain. From the way he kissed to the way he’d moved inside her, making her feel so amazingly…full. And connected to him. She didn’t like admitting that part to herself, since they’d both agreed it was a one-time thing, but it was hard to have sex
that
intense and not come away feeling…a little bit attached.

In a
weird
way, of course. Since she barely knew him and couldn’t seem to get along with him outside of a concession stand—and at times not
in
the concession stand.

She even felt a little…
unsettled
about not having seen him since then. Not that she knew what she’d do when she did, but the situation had certainly changed from a few days back when she’d been trying to avoid running into him.

Well, as far as a sense of attachment went, she’d just have to shake that off. She wasn’t a woman who formed attachments to guys to begin with, so a small town Destiny cop on a power trip was the last guy to be wasting that sort of emotion on. And she’d be leaving soon anyway.

“Here you go,” she said to the Bensons, a typical family of four with a friendly yuppie-dad—day-trippers from Columbus. The adolescent brother and sister shared wagon-pulling duty. “This whole section is Honeycrisp and they’re good and ripe, particularly the apples on the outer branches. Remember, don’t go by color—they should feel crisp and firm in your hand. If you need help or have questions, let us know, and otherwise, have fun.”

As she returned to the little red barn, though, she found herself pondering more than just sex with Mike Romo or her shock that it had happened. Learning he was part of the family whose little girl had disappeared when they were all kids had left her dumbfounded. And despite all she disliked about him, hearing he felt responsible for it made her ache every time she thought about it. He’d been only twelve, after all, just a little boy himself. What must a loss like that—and the weight of thinking it was his fault—do to someone?

“Good, just in time to help me check these folks out,” Edna said as Rachel rounded the barn’s corner. Several families and couples were ready to pay for their apples and leave. So Rachel began tallying up totals and helping Edna run credit cards through—just in time to see another few vehicles cross the bridge, ready to join in.

By six
P.M.
when the last car departed, Rachel was bushed. And Edna looked tired, too—but she kept right on going, like some kind of Energizer bunny.

“You should call it a day,” Rachel told her. “I can tidy things up out here.” There wasn’t much more to do—stack some baskets, put a few stray wagons in the barn, bring Edna’s old portable cash register and ancient credit card press into the house.

“Soon,” Edna said, bustling about the barn’s entrance.

“After all, you have bad knees,
remember
?” Rachel added,
still
unsure if Edna was faking the knee thing or not.

Neatening the money in the cash drawer, Edna paused and reached down to rub one of them. “They
are
hurtin’, now that ya mention it.”

Okay, were they or weren’t they?
And…oh hell, did it even matter anymore? “Then go inside and let me finish.”

But Edna looked torn between concluding the work and resting. “I reckon they’ll last me a little longer—and now that everybody’s gone, there’s somethin’ I wanna show ya.”

“What’s that?”

“Follow me,” she said, so Rachel headed around to the back of the barn with her grandmother—to the old root cellar she’d forgotten about until just now.

“Oh, we used to play here,” she said cheerfully, remembering it had made a great “dungeon” during make-believe games with her brother and cousins.

“Used to damage a fair amount of apples is what
I
recall,” Edna grumbled.

“It was Robby who used to stomp on them and try to crush them, not the rest of us. He just lied to spread the blame around.”

Edna shook her head and muttered, “That Robby—he was a sneaky one,” as she bent over the old cellar doors, which lay nearly flat, edged by the tops of stone walls that descended underground.

“Here, Edna, let me,” Rachel said since, again, Edna looked worn out and seemed to struggle as she stooped to unlock the faded green wooden doors. Rachel took
the key ring Edna held and did the honors, swinging the doors wide open. Then they both went carefully down the rocky steps into the cool darkness below.

“There aren’t rats down here, are there?” Rachel asked—she’d never been particularly fond of dark, closed-in spaces underground, even basements.

“I hope not, or our apples’ll be in trouble,” Edna said, implying it was a needless worry.

“So what are we doing down here?” They’d reached the earthen floor and around them stood lots of mostly empty shelves.

“I don’t know if you remember from when you were little about storin’ apples, but I been meanin’ to give ya a refresher course.”

“All right—refresh away.”

“Now, apples that need to be stored for any length of time come down here. You see,” she said, pointing, “that I already sent Brian down with a few bushels of Galas I’m savin’ for the apple festival—the coolness and darkness keeps ’em fresh.

“As the festival gets closer, though, we’ll also wanna hold back plenty of apples for the winter, and those we store a little different. See that stack of newspapers?” She pointed again. “I save those up because each apple needs to be wrapped individually in about a quarter sheet. Then we stack ’em on the shelves and use ’em as needed. Mainly we take about a bushel a week up to the General Mercantile—you remember, run by Willie Hoskins?”

“Oh, that’s still there?” The old-fashioned store sold only the basics: snacks and soft drinks, some fruits and vegetables, and Grampy Hoskins, as most everyone her age had always called the proprietor, had kept old-time candy dispensers Rachel had thought pretty as a little girl.

“Sure is—and he’s my most dependable customer. I also get occasional folks stopping by who might just want enough for a pie or cobbler—so I just trot on down here to
get ’em. And, of course, I keep ’em on hand for my own use, too. So we’ll need to start wrappin’ some when we’re not busy pickin’ ’em so I’ll have me a full cellar to last through next summer.”

“So was the cellar here when you first came or did Grandpa Edward build it?” Rachel asked absently as they climbed back to daylight. She’d never wondered before, but she supposed she was growing more curious about the place as an adult, getting more interested in the orchard’s past.

“Neither,” Edna replied as they each swung one green door shut. “Giovanni Romo and my brothers built this cellar that first summer I was here.”

Ah yes—good old Giovanni. “You never did tell me the rest of the story,” Rachel hinted as she bent to padlock the handles together. She’d gotten so unwittingly caught up in Giovanni’s grandson lately that it had started to slip her mind, but now that she remembered, she wanted to know how Edna’s crush on Mike’s grandpa had turned out.

When she rose up, she found Edna peering wistfully across the top of the cellar, as if seeing something that wasn’t there. Rachel was having a hard time getting used to Edna being wistful about
anything
, but it made her ask, “What are you thinking about?”

“About how good Giovanni looked workin’ in the hot sun without a shirt.”

Rachel drew back slightly. “
Edna
,” she gasped.

But her grandmother just cast a critical look. “You think I’m not human? You think just ’cause I’m old I never had them kinda feelin’s?”

Rachel blinked. “Well, no, I’m sure you did, but…”

“But what?” Edna asked, hands on her hips.

“I guess…I’m just not used to hearing about them. And you
are
my grandma, after all, so it’s a little weird.”

Edna lowered her chin and spoke matter-of-factly. “Well, I’ll tell ya, darlin’, if you wanna hear this story,
then it’ll probably feel a lot weirder to ya before I’m done. Can ya handle it or not?”

Holy crap. “Yes,” she said. Because it
was
strange, but she really wanted to know.

“Come on, then. I got some apples in the barn I wanna load up and drive to the Mercantile. I can tell ya while we work.”

Edna sat on a blanket in the shade provided by the barn, breaking the green beans she’d picked from the garden this morning into a bowl in her lap—she planned to make them with a cottage ham for supper. But she was having a hard time concentrating on the beans—because her eyes kept being drawn to Giovanni’s back, and his arms, too. His olive skin glistened with sweat and rippled with muscles. Every time he spread mortar across one of the flat field rocks he used to build the root cellar, the muscle in his right arm shifted a little, and watching it made her tingle all over. Of course, Dell and Wally worked right alongside him and sweated just as much, but she didn’t even notice them—to her, Giovanni was the only one there.

When Giovanni stood up tall, stretching his back, then reached for the handkerchief in his pocket to wipe his brow, she took in his broad chest and noticed the wayward lock of hair that dipped over his forehead.

“Take a break, boys,” he told her brothers. “It is too warm to keep working at this now.” Indeed, it was high summer—late June—and the temperatures were blistering. Even in the shade, perspiration trickled between Edna’s breasts.

“Reckon we could fix the tractor instead, if we had the parts,” Dell suggested. “Seein’s it’s already in the barn, it’d be a damn sight cooler job.”

Giovanni nodded. “You are sure you can fix it yourself, Dell?”

“Told ya I could. Just ask Edna.”

Her brothers had both learned that Giovanni’s soft spot for Edna was often the quickest way from point A to point B, so when Giovanni glanced over, she called to him, “Dell knows all about motors. He’s kept plenty of tractors runnin’ in his day—our daddy’s Farmall, and our neighbor’s Allis-Chalmers, and lots more.”

Giovanni looked back to Dell. “You can get what you need at the tractor supply in Chillicothe, yes?”

“Sure thing,” Dell said.

A few minutes later, they all stood in Giovanni’s kitchen. The fellas had cleaned up and put on fresh shirts, and Edna was packing up cheese sandwiches and apples to send with Wally and Dell for the ride. Giovanni opened his wallet and gave Dell money for the parts—then he handed over a set of keys, as well, and said, “Take the Cadillac.”

Dell had long since fixed the old family truck using money from their first week’s pay, and Giovanni owned an old farm truck, too—so it was a shock to see him offer up the fancy turquoise car Dell admired so much. Edna saw her brother trying not to look too excited as he said, “You sure, Giovanni?”

Giovanni gave a short nod and told him to fill up the tank on the way back, and as she and Giovanni watched her brothers drive away in the shiny car, she knew Dell would be in seventh heaven for the rest of the day.

She smiled over at Giovanni. “That was real nice of you. You know how he fancies that car.”

Handsome Giovanni, now in a sleeveless T-shirt and trousers held up by suspenders, simply shrugged and smiled the smile that never failed to turn Edna’s heart on end. “He is a good fellow, your brother,” he said. “Both of them—even if Wally can be…what’s the word?…hotheaded.”

“You want a cheese sandwich, too?” she asked, motioning toward the kitchen, just through the back door.

The tilt of his head somehow felt mischievous. “Make enough for two and we will have a picnic in the orchard.”