The Vineyard of Hopes and Dreams

CHAPTER TWO

COLBY GOT BACK to the house at Belvedere Cove just before dark. On a Wednesday evening, he expected to find his grandmother in the kitchen, whipping up the Diamondberry cheesecake that was her signature dessert at Diamante. The restaurant served it only straight from her kitchen, only Friday and Saturday nights.

They could have sold each piece a hundred times over, but Nana Lina knew better than to cheapen it by glutting the market. This way, every customer who succeeded in getting a slice felt as if he’d won the lottery.

But when Colby arrived, the kitchen was dim and undisturbed. The row of copper-bottomed pots lined up on the wall burned in the fading light that filtered in through the big back window. He glanced into the kitchen garden, but no figure, no shadow moved through the sunset-tinted herbs and grasses.

Surprised and slightly unsettled, he moved to the foyer and took the curving staircase two steps at a time. When he got to his grandmother’s door, it stood ajar, but he knocked anyway, softly, in case she was sleeping.

“Come in,” she called. “I’m just resting.”

When he pushed the door open, he was met by cool, dark shadows, which surprised him. Nana Lina’s room—once Grandpa Colm’s room, too—was always brightly lit and welcoming. Powdery blue drapes framed a picture window that overlooked the bay, and the view was so dazzling no one ever pulled them shut. Even while she slept, moonlight spilled in, making the silver picture frames and perfume bottles glow, and redoubling itself in the mirror over her vanity.

He’d spent many an hour in this room. Maybe because he was the first grandchild, he and Nana Lina had a special bond, even before his parents died. He’d always brought her his treasures, whether they were rocks with interesting fossils or cloudy shards of sea glass. She had always seemed to understand why a little boy would find these bits of debris fascinating.

“You sleeping?” He tried to sound casual, though he knew it was futile. She had a sixth sense about her family. Even the best lies set off her internal alarm.

“What an absurd question. Since when have you known me to sleep during the day?”

She had a point. She might be nearing eighty, but she would always be the heart and soul of Diamante. She might not always be the first in and the last out every day, as she once was. But she was still a force.

As his eyes adjusted, he realized she wasn’t in bed. She was sitting on a comfortable armchair, her feet propped on an upholstered ottoman. She reached up and twisted the knob of her table lamp, which immediately covered her in honey light.

“Don’t try to smooth-talk me, Colby Malone.” Her brown eyes twinkled at him. “What you really want to know is whether I’m sick.”

“Mind reader.” With a smile, he raised one eyebrow. “Well, are you?”

“I don’t know. I might be.”

His shoulders braced, and his chest tightened. He’d asked for an answer, and he’d received one. He should have known she wouldn’t sugarcoat it.

“What makes you think so?”

Her robe was made of silk, a pattern of elegant blue roses against a silvery background that matched her hair. She leaned forward from the waist and lifted the hem, which had puddled softly on the floor around the ottoman. She settled the fabric more demurely around her ankles, then repeated the motion with the other side.

Even that much activity seemed to leave her slightly breathless. He wondered why he hadn’t noticed sooner that her condition had grown this much worse.

He’d observed that she tired easily. That she stayed in bed later, turned in earlier. He’d asked her to get a second opinion about the A-fib, but she’d waved it off. Sometimes she seemed absolutely fine. Just Sunday afternoon, at Red’s engagement party, she’d played dolls with Sarah for hours....

But she hadn’t played chase or hopscotch, or pushed anyone in the swing—all activities she ordinarily loved. He frowned, wondering how long she’d been compensating for…

For what? God forbid it was something serious. He suddenly realized how impossible it was to imagine a world in which Nana Lina didn’t rule with an affectionate iron fist.

“Nana Lina, what’s really going on here? I know you’ve resisted seeing a new doctor, but clearly the meds aren’t working. I think it’s time to call—”

“I’m a little short of breath, that’s all,” she said, folding her hands in her lap and giving him her most regal look, which commanded him to remain calm. “Occasionally I get dizzy, and I don’t always have the stamina I should. Perhaps you boys and your ever-expanding offspring have finally worn me out.”

He chuckled. “It’s not us. You could handle us and the Holy Roman Army, too. With one hand.” He moved to her side, not the least bit intimidated by her scolding tone. “Look. I don’t like this. Like it or not, you’re going to see Dr.—”

“Dr. Douglas?” She tapped his arm. “Don’t you start adopting a bossy tone with me, young man. I am perfectly capable of recognizing when it’s time to consult a doctor. I have an appointment with him next Tuesday morning, in fact.” She squared her shoulders. “Sidney will drive me, so don’t get any ideas about coming along to babysit.”

Colby subsided, relieved. As long as she had the appointment, he could relax for now. He’d talk to Matt and Red. One of them would find a way to tag along and get some answers.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said in a phony meek voice. He sat on the edge of the bed, glancing at the magazine she’d been reading. It was a catalog of elaborate play sets designed to look like castles, forts and other magical places. One touted itself as Atlantis.

“You know,” he said, “if you don’t want the ever-expanding offspring to sap your life force, maybe you shouldn’t keep adding to the Disneyland you’ve built in the backyard.”

She whisked the magazine away with a low tutting sound. “I was just relaxing my mind after studying last month’s receipts, and Red’s proposal for the new store in Sonoma.” She fiddled a little more with her robe. “He seemed to think you might be heading over there today to take a look at it. Did you?”

He chuckled again. She was good, but they all knew each other too well. “Don’t try to smooth-talk me,” he said in a teasing imitation of her words. “What you really want to know is whether I went to Ben Watson’s funeral.”

She smiled, well aware the jig was up. “Well?” She tried to mimic his one-eyebrow query. But no one could beat Colby on that look, not even Red and Matt, though they’d spent their youths trying.

She settled for a scowl. “Well? Did you?”

He nodded. “Yes. And the answer to your next question is yes, as well.”

She lifted her chin haughtily. “My next question?”

“Yes. You want to know whether Hayley was there. It’s a fair question. I know you’ve wondered…all these years… We’ve all wondered. So yes, she was there. And she looked fine.”

“Fine?” His grandmother rolled her magazine into a tube, the paper making a soft, slithering noise. When it was safely rolled, she gripped it firmly. “What does fine mean?”

As Colby searched for the right words, a vision of Hayley Watson rose before his mind’s eye. What did fine mean? What exactly should he say to describe how she’d changed?

The transformation was dramatic. She had changed so much that, on a conscious level, he probably wouldn’t have recognized her. He might have had to ask someone to be sure—except that his body had identified her in an instant. The minute he laid eyes on her, every nerve ending he possessed zapped him with a small electric charge.

“She looks completely different. Poised, and well dressed. And she was wearing her hair—” He put his hands up and waved them around his head, trying to imply the complicated halo-braid kind of thing that had controlled her long, thick, honey-colored waves. “I don’t know. Sophisticated. She looks like someone else, actually.”

His grandmother tilted her head. “That’s the best you can do? I never saw her—or her hair—back then, except in pictures. Why would I care how she wears it now? I mean, does she look well? I don’t expect happy, given the circumstances, but does she look healthy and content?”

Did she? “Healthy, definitely. Content… I really couldn’t say. Maybe.”

Nana Lina nodded, tapping the magazine roll against her knee slowly. “Well, considering that until today we thought she might be buried out in that vineyard, along with her mother and her sister, I guess that’s saying a lot.”

Colby cut his gaze to the picture window, even though the drapes were shut and there was nothing to see.

Nana Lina didn’t know, of course, that twelve years ago, Colby had hired a private investigator to make sure all three Watson women were safe and well.

All he’d wanted, really, was to know that Hayley was alive. He shouldn’t have to spend the rest of his life wondering if there might be any truth to the local rumors that three ghostly beauties went weeping through the Foggy Valley Vineyard on nights with a full moon.

Finding them had cost a lot of money—at least, it had seemed like a lot to a twenty-three-year-old still in his last year of law school. Obviously the women had been desperate to keep their location a secret, in case Ben decided to follow them and make good on his threat that, if Evelyn Watson didn’t live with him, she wouldn’t live at all.

Something Colby’s investigator did must have tipped Evelyn off, because when Colby got the information and tried to contact her a few weeks later, all three of them—Evelyn, Hayley and Genevieve—were gone. No notice at their little apartment or their jobs. No forwarding address.

He hadn’t tried again. He knew Hayley didn’t want to see him—not if she’d remained away, without so much as an email, for years. And if she didn’t want to see him, he wasn’t going to push himself back into her life.

Especially since the investigator had told him there was no sign of a child. Colby had tried to forget it—forget her. She’d probably been mistaken about the baby, done some wishful thinking and turned a late period into an imaginary pregnancy. He’d been just a few months shy of going to college, and she had been desperate at the thought of being left behind. It wouldn’t, he told himself, be the first time a clingy female had tried to will a baby into being, just to trap a man.

It made Colby cringe to remember the bullshit he’d try to sell himself.

“Did she seem surprised to see you?”

He looked up, and he saw Nana Lina’s gaze on him, sharp and probing.

“She didn’t show it, but of course she must have been. She kept it short and…” Sweet wasn’t really the right word, was it? “We exchanged only a very few words, and they weren’t particularly personal.” He ran his hand through his hair. “Let’s just say she doesn’t wear her heart on her sleeve anymore.”

“Good.” His grandmother nodded, and he wondered what that tone was in her voice. It didn’t sound judgmental. It sounded…sad. Was it possible that she, like Colby, had found herself regretting what they did all those years ago? If she regretted what they’d said, what they’d done, she’d never showed it.

“Was she alone?”

Alone? For a minute, he could see Hayley standing there, in the wooded cemetery, with a storm building around her, and her dead father’s casket hovering just above the big rectangular hole. He wasn’t sure he’d ever seen anyone who looked more alone.

“Her mother wasn’t with her,” he said, deciding he’d just stick to the facts. “Neither was Genevieve.”

“No husband? No boyfriend?”

He shook his head. “No. No husband. No wedding ring. No—” He took a deep breath. “No family at all. At least, no one who had come to the cemetery with her.”

And he left it at that. But he knew that, as they sat there in silence, they were both thinking the same tangled thoughts.

No husband, no boyfriend.

And no sixteen-year-old total stranger, no nameless child with black hair and blue eyes who might, just might, have been Nana Lina’s unacknowledged great-grandson.

“THAT’S BEAUTIFUL, ELENA,” Hayley said, picking up the crayon drawing Roland’s granddaughter had made for her as they played and colored after dinner. “Is that me?”

Elena nodded somberly, and Hayley was glad she had interpreted it correctly. At four, the child’s art skills were still fairly primitive, but it seemed to be an illustration of a girl sleeping on the fragile tip-top branches of a tree. The stick figure, which stretched out rigidly across the branch, had bright yellow hair, and the tree’s leaves were made of circles so vigorously drawn they had left little green crayon shavings behind on the paper.

The four of them—Hayley, Elena, Roland and his wife, Miranda—had gathered in the front room of the little square adobe foreman’s house—well, what used to be the foreman’s house, back before her father started selling off the acreage. Now it was just Roland’s house.

Hayley smiled over at the serene-faced man, who sat in his straight-backed chair near the fireplace, watching quietly. “You must have made this tree story seem very romantic.”

“He made it seem a great deal too romantic,” Miranda said, with the rote sound of someone who had gone over this subject many times already. She had been gathering toys, and briskly tossed a bunny into a wicker basket. “When in fact climbing tall trees is quite dangerous, and if anyone I know ever tries it, she’ll be punished!”

Hayley glanced at Elena, whose eyes had grown large. “Your meemaw is right,” she said. “I wasn’t being smart. If I had fallen, I would have been hurt very badly.”

But could anyone have stopped her? She’d been about six when she fell in love with climbing the vineyard’s encircling trees. Maybe it was because, up high, she felt entirely disconnected from the misery inside her house. She imagined herself a fairy, with an acorn cap for a hat, bluebells for shoes and wings made of rainbows and wind. She was small enough to hide in the leafy branches, and sometimes she wouldn’t come down, even when she knew her mother was calling.

One day, when she was seven, her parents had a bigger fight than ever before, and she’d climbed higher than ever before. Fifteen feet up in the black oak tree, she fell asleep. According to Roland, the household was utter chaos as they looked for her—her mother frantic, her father furious, bellowing her name.

Roland was the one who had found her, sound asleep, luckily wedged between the huge trunk and the thick branch, her legs and arms dangling like pale pink tinsel. Though he had been nearly fifty, arthritic and tired from a long day in the vineyard, he’d climbed up and brought her down to safety.

The fight, she’d learned later, had been ignited by the news that her mother was unexpectedly pregnant again. After Genevieve was born, Hayley never climbed another tree. She still longed to escape, but one glimpse of the baby, and she knew she had to keep her feet on the ground, in case Genny needed her help.

She looked at Elena now, wondering if this little girl would also feel the need to find a private place, to pretend her life was different. Miranda had whispered earlier, as Hayley helped her prepare dinner, that Elena’s mother had run off a year ago, and probably wasn’t coming back.

It was hard for Hayley to comprehend that. She knew, of course, that not everyone wanted to be a mother. But this beautiful, fragile little girl…

It was so easy to damage a child like this. And so hard to make her whole again.

Her heart fluttered softly, as she thought if I had a child…

No. Not if. When. When she had a child, she would wrap him in so much love he could never break. She had a sudden image of the blue-striped wallpaper of the nursery she’d begun at home. And the five bright bluebirds that circled on the mobile above the crib. Only three more months now.

Three months, and the cradle that had been empty for so long would be filled.

She considered telling Roland and Miranda. They would be happy for her, even if they didn’t know the whole story, even if they could never understand how much this new baby would mean.

Her heartbeat sped up at the thought. Still, she wasn’t ready to share the news yet. She felt guarded, superstitious…haunted by the memory of the last time she’d had news like this to share. As if something terrible might happen if she spoke of it too soon.

They were all silent for a few minutes, listening to the crackle of the fire and the muted piano notes of Chopin on the sound system. Her heartbeat settled down—the magic of the Eliots working on her as it always had.

Hayley had spent many hours just like this when she was a child—back then, Genevieve would have been the toddler scribbling at the coffee table. By the time she was ten, Hayley had hoisted her fat, laughing baby sister onto her hip, and started coming here to the refuge of this little house, with the foreman who understood her better than her own father.

She’d given Genevieve as many hours of peace as she could. But she always had to go home again, eventually.

Just as she did tonight.

The only difference was that, tonight, her father would not be there. She wouldn’t have to wonder, as she entered the house, whether this was a good night or a bad one. Whether he was drunk or sober. Whether, when her mother turned around from the kitchen sink, she would be crying, or bleeding.

Banishing the image, Hayley stretched, shaking off the sleepiness caused by the plane ride, the time difference and the emotional day. The funeral had been harder than she’d expected. And seeing Colby…

No. She wouldn’t think about Colby. She put her hand softly on Elena’s dark curls, then stood up from the cushy leather sofa.

“I guess I should head back to the big house,” she said, trying not to sound ten years old again, and scared. “Miranda, the casserole was fantastic. Thank you so much for—”

She swallowed, suddenly unable to find the words to thank them for everything they’d done, not only tonight, but all those years ago.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t call,” she said in an abrupt switch of topic. “Or write. But Mom was always terrified. Always covering our tracks. She said any contact with our old lives would be fatal. She was so sure Dad would find us.”

Miranda came over and hugged her. “We knew,” she said. “Your mother wrote us once, just so that we wouldn’t fear for you. She didn’t tell us where you were going, merely that you had to leave. We understood, maybe better than anyone, why it was necessary. We knew your father.”

“Did he start looking for us right away? He never tried to contact us, but obviously his lawyer knew where we were.” For a long time, she’d wondered whether all the subterfuge, the fake names and the prepaid cell phones and the cash-only living, had been required. Somehow she couldn’t imagine her father staying sober long enough to launch a serious tracking campaign. Her mother had feared he would hire someone to find them, but Hayley had her doubts about that, too. She’d never known her father to turn loose of an extra penny for anyone but himself.

“I don’t think he looked for the first several years. Not until his first heart attack, I’d guess.” Roland rose, lifted Elena into his arms and came to stand near his wife, who still had her arm around Hayley’s waist. “I got the feeling he was afraid that, if your mother came back, she might press charges against him. She wouldn’t have, for herself, but for you…”

His gaze was gentle, but worried. She wondered how much he knew about that night, the night they disappeared. Someday, maybe, she’d tell him, but not tonight. She was so tired, and she still had to face that house.

Would it be better, she wondered, knowing that her father was in a casket, six feet underground, never to come storming through the doorway again? Or would that make it worse?

“Why don’t you stay here tonight?” As if she’d read her mind, Miranda squeezed her waist. “I can put some sheets on the sofa.”

When Hayley started to protest, Miranda laughed. “Really, it’s quite comfortable. Ask Roland. He’s out here half the time. We call it the doghouse.”

Elena giggled, then buried her face in Roland’s shirt self-consciously. Hayley couldn’t remember ever meeting a shyer child. But Elena’s laughter was adorable, and even its echo filled the room with a sense of light and optimism.

Hayley thanked Miranda, but firmly insisted that she wanted to stay at the big house. Roland offered to walk her back, but she turned that down, too. He’d already done everything he could to make the place welcoming. They’d put her bags there earlier, before dinner, and Roland had shown her around the downstairs, just as if she’d never seen the place before. That brief tour had been enough to let her know that he’d cleaned up a little bit, and added a few homey touches, as if he’d guessed she might plan to stay there, at least for a while.

A vase of blue hydrangeas on the kitchen table, a casserole and a big glass pitcher of fresh milk in the refrigerator. Even a book or two on the end table.

The Eliots’ sensitive presence permeated the place—or at least it had this afternoon. It had been light outside, then, the storm passed and sunshine streaming in through the windows. A playful wind had teased the fluffy, October-brown heads of the grapevines.

But she’d lingered so long, coloring with Elena, that it was full night now. She shot a glance out the front window, where the silhouettes of trees moved darkly against the silvery sky, and thought of the still, empty rooms waiting for her.