Cold River (13 page)

“No, you’re right. I know very little about you. I suppose it’s a religious thing? I shouldn’t have pushed.” Vince put down the bottle. “Try the steak.” His white teeth gleamed. “You do eat meat, don’t you? Or do I have that wrong, too?”

She picked up her fork and knife. “Not at all. My grandfather is a rancher. I grew up on beef.”

Hoping to take the sting out of her refusal to drink his wine, she kept up a flow of light conversation during lunch. She talked about her house and about her morning amble. She told him about walking out on the great trunk to sit in the sunshine above the river.

Vince frowned and told her that logjams like that were deathtraps. Mandy lifted her brows and he went on to explain. “The current is flowing so fast when the river is high that it creates suction as it goes under. If your boat comes up against the logjam, first it’s going to turn broadside and then it’s going to capsize because of the forces pulling on it.” His mouth was set in grim lines. “
Hiesel
is a local Indian word that translates as ‘dangerous.’ Only it’s more than that. It carries the meaning that death can be sudden, and you’ve been forewarned.
Stallo
means river, and before white men came, they called it
Hiesel Stallo
to let strangers know a person in the water didn’t have a chance. I hope you’ll be careful.” He paused and looked away.

He didn’t speak again, and she searched for a way to break the silence. She picked up the wine bottle and studied the label. A picture of a square-rigger, flying a black flag, rode the crest of a wave that melded cleverly into the word ‘Bratararia.’

“I like your label,” she said. “Did you design it?”

“Yes. Thank you.”

She smoothed the label with her thumb where it had come unstuck from the bottle. “So, why wine? What made you, a building demolisher, decide to become a maker of wine?”

“It must be in the blood. My father made moonshine.”

Involuntarily, Mandy’s eyes flew to Vince’s face.

“Ah,” he said. “You have heard that I’m a— that I’m illegitimate.”

She nodded. She felt her cheeks getting hot and looked away.

“Don’t be embarrassed. It’s the truth, but I know who my father was.”

“Who was he?”

“Buck Timberlain.”

Mandy blinked. “Timberlain? Then, you’re Rael’s—”

“I’m Rael’s cousin.” Vince took the wine bottle from her, as she was in danger of tipping the contents into her lap. “Grange is also my cousin.” He set the bottle on the table. “Israel Timberlain— my grandfather— was a baby when his family moved from North Carolina in the twenties. Rael lives in the house he built.”

Mandy nodded. “That’s just up the road from me.”

“Old Israel had three sons.” Vince lined up his knife, fork, and spoon. Touching each in turn, he said, “Rael’s father’s name was Joseph. Grange’s father’s name was Frederick. My father’s name was Benjamin, but everyone called him Buck.”

Vince raised his brows for permission, and she nodded, so he picked up her spoon. He put the spoon down with the others. “There was a sister, Lucinda,” he said. “She married Ben Hawes and had two children, Tammy and Stevie Joe. Anyway, Buck had a still in the woods on his father’s property.” He moved the wine bottle to the edge of the table. “It sat on a bluff by the river, and he did a tidy bit of business around the county.”

“You speak of him in the past tense. Is he dead?”

Vince took a sip of wine before he answered. “Yes, he is. He was found in the woods near his still, shot to death. I was eighteen at the time, and I remember my mother wept when she read about it in the newspaper. It was the only time I ever saw her cry.”

“Did she tell you why?”

Vince shook his head. “I didn’t find out who my father was until just before she died.”

“When was that?”

“Thirteen years ago. I was twenty-five.”

Mandy carefully folded the checkered napkin on her lap. “I never knew who my father was,” she said without looking up.

“But your name— Steenburg. Is that your father’s name?”

She smoothed the edges of the folded napkin. “No. It’s my mother’s maiden name. It’s funny how society’s views have changed in the last thirty years. People don’t think anything about it anymore. Back then it was called
out of wedlock
. I came to hate that phrase.”

Vince leaned back in his chair and fingered the stem of his wineglass as he regarded Mandy.

She didn’t look at him. “I made the decision not to drink when I was ten. I asked my mother why I didn’t have a father, and she told me how she had been drinking one night at a teenage party, and that’s when I was conceived. I decided right then I was never going to let alcohol influence my life in any way. Too many people carry the scars.”

She laid the napkin on the table and met Vince’s eyes. “But it turned out all right. When I was eleven, my mother married a man I called Poppy. He wanted to adopt me, but I wouldn’t change my name because I wanted my real father, though that’s silly because Poppy was a real father to me. But in my childish fantasy, I wanted the man who… who… you know. I wanted him to be able to find me, and I was afraid if I took Poppy’s name, he wouldn’t be able to.”

Vince reached over and laid his hand briefly over hers, curling his fingers under her palm and giving just the slightest pressure. “It’s tough, isn’t it, waiting for your father to recognize your existence?”

“Yours never did?”

He shook his head. They sat in silence for a moment.

“I don’t know,” he went on. “Maybe the wine business is to do what he did, only better. Legitimate, you know? Make a name for myself and my label in the world. Invite the world in to see my operation instead of skulking around trying to elude the revenue agents.”

Mandy nodded. “I bet you’ll succeed.”

He smiled ruefully. “Well, I haven’t got very far with you. I tell you what. You may not drink, but you don’t have anything against smelling, do you?”

“What?”

Vince picked up her glass. “Here. I want you to smell this.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes. I want you to smell it and tell me what it reminds you of.”

She took the goblet and held it under her nose.

“Close your eyes,” he prompted.

She did as he asked and sniffed.

“Take your time.”

She inhaled again.

“Say the first thing that pops into your head.”

“Cherries.”

“Good girl. Anything else?”

“Cinnamon? Is that possible?”

He nodded. “Yes. What else?”

“It was a more of a remembrance of how the morels smelled when you showed them to me. Just a fleeting memory, really. I can’t explain it.”

“You don’t need to. I know. It does the same for me. Open your eyes.”

Mandy did as he bid and found him facing her, leaning forward, with elbows on his knees. He held one hand out to take the glass from her and set it on the table. Then he took her hand and brought it to his lips. “Thank you.”

He didn’t prolong the moment but stood and began to gather up dishes and place them in the cooler, tossing Mandy’s leftover wine into the ground by the arbor.

She stared for a moment at the wet patch on the sod. Then she folded up the linens and handed them to Vince. “I can’t tell you what a lovely day this has been.”

“My pleasure.”

“Truly? I’m glad.” She eyed the cooler. “I don’t think we can get that in the trunk.”

“That’s all right. I have to come back out this afternoon. There are some things I need to get done before the crew shows up on Monday.” He stood aside to let her walk in front of him on the narrow path around the building.

They got in the Miata and drove home at a leisurely pace on back roads, and as they went, Mandy asked about the demolition business. Vince explained the basic laws of physics that govern how they set the charges and then went on to tell a couple of stories about disasters when those laws weren’t fully taken into account. They were descending the gravel road to her house as he recounted the tale of his first demolition job when, as a young man, he worked for someone who contracted to get rid of a beached whale by disintegrating it with dynamite. Mandy laughed so hard at his description of the resulting blubber bombs and fatty shrapnel and how all the spectators had to dive for cover that she could hardly see to stay on the road.

It was only as she pulled into the driveway by the A-frame that she noticed Rael Timberlain’s Jeep parked by Vince’s Escalade.

“It looks like you’ve got company,” Vince said.

Still giggling from his story, Mandy nodded, but she frowned when she saw her open front door. “Rael doesn’t seem like the kind of person to go into someone’s house…”

The sentence never made it the rest of the way from her brain to her mouth. Rael was indeed standing in the doorway of her house. On one side of him slouched the sullen, raven-haired girl who worked for Midge Cooley at the district office, but it was neither of them that made Mandy stare openmouthed. It was the tall, blonde girl standing on the other side with a tentative smile, her hand half raised in greeting.

Mandy finally found her voice. “Leesie? What on earth are you doing here?”

HALF AN HOUR
later, Vince, Rael, and his daughter were gone, and Leesie sat at the kitchen table munching a peanut butter sandwich as Mandy set a mug of tomato soup in front of her.

“Thanks, Sis,” Leesie said. “It’s been a long time since the Twinkies I had for breakfast.”

Mandy sat down across from her and tucked one foot up. “Let me get this straight. You got on a bus right after you talked to me Friday morning? Why didn’t you tell me you were coming up here?”

“Because you would have told me not to.”

“Well, yes, I would have. This doesn’t make sense! And riding all the way up here from Stallo with a complete stranger!”

“Who’s a complete stranger?”

“Rael.”

“He’s not a complete stranger. The agent at the bus station introduced me to him, and he had his kids with him, anyway.”

“Kids? Do you mean there’s another gothic sibling?”

“No, the sibling isn’t gothic. But never mind that. Where were you today? Or maybe I should ask who you were with? Who’s Heathcliff?”

“Heathcliff?”

“The guy you were with— the one with the big, black Cadillac SUV, which, if you want to be judgmental, could really tell you a lot about the guy.”

“Why are you calling him Heathcliff?”

“Because he looks like someone out of
Wuthering Heights
— all dark and brooding and more than a little sinister. Rael, on the other hand, looks like the Angel Gabriel.” Leesie laughed. “No, don’t look cross-eyed at me. Don’t you think his hair looks like a halo, the way it curls around his head?”

“I’m looking cross-eyed because you shouldn’t call him by this first name. He’s an adult.”

“He told me to call him that.” Leesie took a drink of soup and regarded her sister over the rim of the cup. “You haven’t told me who he is.”

“Rael is the mailman.”

“Not him. Heathcliff.”

Mandy stood and went to the kitchen. “His name is Vince Lafitte,” she said as she began to wash the soup pot. “He’s a member of the school board.”

“Oh, and I’m sure all you talked about today was school board business. You looked very chummy when you drove up. Where had you been?”

Mandy rinsed the pot, dried it, and put it away. Then she stood with her hands on her hips and said severely, “We’ve strayed from the original point, which was what are you doing here? And does Mother know?”

“Who’s that?”

Mandy frowned. “Leesie, what’s the matter with you? Mother. Your mother. My mother. Does she know?”

“No. I meant who’s that?” Leesie pointed. “You’re very popular. Big frog in a little puddle, I guess.”

Mandy turned and looked out the window at the white-haired lady getting out of a blue sedan. “I have no idea.”

Mandy took off her apron and went to answer the doorbell, steeling herself to be gracious.

It turned out to be easier than she expected. Her visitor swept in with a smile as wide as the Hiesel Valley and, resist as she might, Mandy smiled back.

Millie Barlow, wife of the local pastor, brushed aside Mandy’s declaration that she would attend church the following Sunday, saying that was her husband’s affair. Taking the chair Leesie offered her and declining refreshments, Millie Barlow stated she had two reasons for visiting and launched in. When she left half an hour later, Mandy had not only agreed to visit Granny Timberlain each month, but had also said she would work in literacy outreach. Mrs. Barlow explained that Tammy Wilcox couldn’t read, and she asked Mandy to spend three hours a week coaching her.

“Wow,” Leesie said as Mandy closed the door after her visitor. “She really is a powerhouse!”

“I’ll say. I need to study her technique. Did you see how she got me to say I’d teach this lady?”

“Yeah. Usually the pastor’s wife just brings a plate of cookies and an invitation to come to worship service. How did she even know you were here?”

Mandy curled up on the couch. “News travels fast in a small town, I guess.”

Leesie went to the kitchen table and looked in the empty soup mug. She put it in the sink, then opened a cupboard door and began scanning the contents. “I think the cookies would have been a good idea.”