Chapter 8

DORIE STOOD AT THE FRONT WINDOW OF THE CRAB AND watched Van and Suze cross the street to Van’s car. She was a little annoyed that her plan hadn’t worked better. It was a perfect setup; boy meets girl after all these years, instant romance. The two of them had been as useless as a couple of wooden statues. They might as well have been standing in front of a cigar store.

What was wrong with them? Besides twelve years and God knows what. But whatever it was, Joe was still single. He’d never really gotten over Van. The fact that he was thirty-three and still not married attested to that.

She didn’t know about Van. She was successful, sophisticated. Hell, she’d gotten so polished, you would never know she was raised the way she was. Maybe she’d gotten too polished for Joe.

Dorie snorted. Thought she could get away and people wouldn’t find out about her. Did she think that none of them knew how to use the Internet? Really, the girl needed to lighten up, loosen up, and have some fun. And not the kind that she could find at Rehoboth Beach.

Van needed somebody she could trust, somebody who could love her and had enough good qualities that she could love him back.

What Dorie needed here was an intervention, but besides kidnapping the two of them and holding them hostage until they saw what they were missing, she didn’t have an idea.

“Whatcha looking at?”

Dorie let out a yelp. “Jerry Corso, don’t you sneak up like that on an unsuspecting woman.”

“Sorry.” Jerry grinned at her.

“You’re no more sorry than spit. What do you need? We’re a little busier than I thought we’d be today. Got people overworked now we lost the summer staff. I’ll send someone over to take your order.”

“Nah, I just wanted to say hi. And I just . . . Well, how long are Van and Suzy planning to stay?”

“I don’t know about Van. She has vacation plans somewheres else. But Suze is planning to stay for a couple of months at least. Needs a quiet place to work. And I hope you didn’t call her Suzy when you saw her.”

“Why not?”

Dorie threw her hands open and looked at the ceiling. “She’s a college professor.”

“So? What should I call her? Prof?”

“Maybe you should just stay away from her until you can locate your brain. I’d start looking south and work your way up.”

Jerry blushed. “Man, Dorie, you know how to get to a guy.”

“If that were only true,” said Dorie, and she wandered back to the kitchen, shaking her head.

JOE DIDN’T GO back to the marina but drove west. A thousand times in the past, he’d practiced what he would say when he saw Van again. After a while, it became if he ever saw Van again. And then he’d just stopped thinking about it . . . for the most part.

But now that it had actually happened, he’d been totally unprepared. Anything he might have said ten years ago, even five years ago, seemed stupid now. They’d both gotten on with their lives; they had nothing in common, and that had been obvious by the way she had reacted to seeing him. He could have been a total stranger for all the warmth she showed.

Either she hadn’t forgiven him, or she’d forgotten all about him. He didn’t like the idea of the first, but he didn’t like the second choice even more.

He was still beating himself up over his inept social skills when he pulled onto the two-lane road that led to the farm. He drove past the two metal posts that had once held the sign for Enthorpe Dairy but had held nothing but air for the last decade.

Maybe it wasn’t too early to have a new sign made up. ENTHORPE VINEYARDS. But he didn’t want to jinx the project. He should get a novice crop this fall, but the vines wouldn’t start producing at full volume for at least another year. And in the meantime, he had plenty to do.

Well, actually that wasn’t true. He should have plenty to do, but his business plan was in pretty good shape. He would need to start advertising but not for a while. The day-to-day operations would be a different thing. But for now, his father and brothers and the foreman he’d hired could oversee the work. And Joe would be back full-time in a week.

He stopped the truck in front of the white farmhouse he’d grown up in. These days the windows and doors were kept shut because of the air-conditioning. All was quiet but for the hum of the compressor around the side of the house.

Joe didn’t miss the heat, but he missed the sounds of the farm—the dogs, the roosters, the lowing of the cows as they were herded in to be milked, the kids playing on the swing set out back. They’d lost a thousand sounds along with the acreage.

As he walked to the kitchen door, an old bird dog scrambled to his feet and padded over to him, tail kicking up a breeze.

“Hey, Duffy.” Joe leaned over to scratch the dog behind his ears. As soon as Joe straightened up, the dog returned to his place in the shade and lay down again.

Joe opened the door and stepped into the kitchen. There were pots on the stove and the kitchen was warm. He heard voices from the other room and realized they were all at dinner.

He should have come here to eat, and then he wouldn’t have run into Van. But if he hadn’t gone to the Crab, he wouldn’t have run into her and wouldn’t have come here.

He laughed. He was a mess.

“Joe, why didn’t you tell us you were coming? I’ll get you a plate.” His mother was already pushing her chair back.

“Thanks, Mom, but I already ate.” He leaned over and gave her a kiss.

She smiled up at him. Gave his hand a squeeze.

“Come out to check on the vines?” His father sat at the other end of the table, still robust even though he’d been retired for the last ten years.

Joe pulled up a chair and sat at the corner of the table.

“No, just came to see my family.”

“River stench finally get to you?” His grandfather squinted down the table at him.

Joe nodded. “I’m getting pretty tired of it.”

His mother offered him the breadbasket and he automatically took a warm dinner roll. “Well, you’ll be home next week.”

His grandfather cackled. “Too bad he gave his house to Renzo and his family.”

Joe had heard this argument before. “Granddad. We need someone on-site who knows vineyards so you and Dad don’t have to stand out in the broiling sun digging weeds and trimming the vines.”

“What did we send you to that expensive school for then?”

For dairy management, Joe thought. But you sold the dairy while I was gone.

“He just enjoys giving you a hard time,” his mother said. “He’s the first one up every morning going out to look over the grapes. Aren’t you, Dad?”

“Just making sure Renzo ain’t taking advantage of Joe while he’s gone.”

“Thanks, Granddad.” This was an act his grandfather loved to put on. Actually, he and Renzo had already become fast friends.

“He can’t have his old room back,” Matt said. “I just finished painting it.”

Joe groaned dramatically. “What god-awful color this time?”

Matt grinned at him. “You can come see for yourself after dinner.”

“Be warned,” Dave said. “He’s got a lava lamp.”

“Lava lamps are back in style.” His mother handed Joe the butter and a knife.

“Hippie nonsense,” Joe Senior said.

Dave laughed. “Oh, Granddad, you never saw a hippie in your life.”

“A lot you know.” He cut a look at Joe Junior.

“No,” cried Matt. “Dad, you were a hippie?”

“I led a double life,” Joe Junior intoned in a deep radio voice.

Joe sat back in his chair and ate his roll, glad of the change of subject and the familiar banter. He felt better than he had the whole weekend.

After dinner, Joe and his father walked out to the vineyards. Joe felt the same twinge of excitement he always felt when he looked over the land, only now it was grapevines instead of dairy cows.

The rows of vines trailed green and thick along the trellises. The bunches had been thinned, and the grapes looked plump and firm. They would be ready in another four weeks or so.

“Looks like you might have a pretty good crop this year,” his dad said.

“I think we will. At least enough to experiment with.”

It had been a long time to wait for the land to start paying again. But it was a price Joe was willing to pay. Because he would not, could not, let it slip away from the family.

He and his father stood looking over the nascent fields, not talking. And if not totally in agreement over Joe’s methods of farming, they felt the perfect camaraderie that farming brought to both of them.

“Van’s back.”

Joe felt his father look at him, but Joe just looked ahead.

“Ah, come back for the funeral?”

“I guess.”

“Have you talked to her?”

“I ran into her at the Crab. I think Dorie manipulated it.”

His father chuckled. “Sounds like something Dorie would do. How did it go?”

“Not well.” Joe exhaled slowly. “I was stupid with surprise. She didn’t seem glad to see me. Didn’t get past ‘good to see you,’ and that was it.”

“Maybe she was surprised, too.”

“I guess.”

“Well, was it good to see her?”

At first, Joe didn’t answer. He wasn’t even sure what he was feeling. A mixture of pleasure and pain, hope and despair. “Yeah. I guess.”

“So what are you going to do about it?”

Finally Joe turned to look at his father. “I don’t know.”

His father slapped him on the back, his form of a hug. “Well, don’t wait too long to figure it out.”

They took their time walking back to the house.

It was dark when Joe finally left the farm. He met a steady stream of day-trippers leaving the shore for the day, but there wasn’t much traffic going in his direction.

He’d be glad to be back on the farm near the vineyard. He was glad he could help Grandy out, but it was beginning to wear on him. He wanted to be home with the grapes.

Grandy had actually asked him if he wanted to buy the marina. The same thing was happening to him that happened to the dairy farm. Grandy’s couldn’t compete with the big, exclusive marinas going up along the shore. Eventually he’d sell out. It was a shame, but Joe didn’t want it.

It wasn’t too late, and Joe considered going to Mike’s for a beer, but he wasn’t really in the mood. When he came to the marina, he pulled in.

The tide was going out. In a few hours the clam diggers would creep onto the mudflats, looking for their family’s next meal. Yeah, the river was polluted, but nobody had died of river shellfish that he’d heard of. And it helped stretch out budgets that were already stretched close to snapping.

He went inside, poured himself a glass of coastal cabernet, and took it over to his desk. Lights lined the opposite side of the river. Headlights of cars made a steady stream over the bridge in both directions. It was one of the perks of living at the marina, the constant light show out the big plateglass window.

Nothing fancy. Just a rectangle of glass. The window air conditioner rattled away behind him. It didn’t do much toward chilling the place, but it kept the worst of the heat away.

He sat down, dug his reading glasses out of the drawer, and opened The Principles of Vineyard Management.

It was almost midnight before he stretched, tossed his glasses onto the open book, and went to look out the window.

Across the water the buildings were dark, and the flow of headlights had trickled to a few. Joe yawned, stretched his arms out again, and watched the shadows of the clam diggers move along the flats beyond the marina.

Not his job, and if the harbor patrol didn’t care, neither did he. But just as he turned from the window, he saw a sudden flurry of movement out on the flats. Grabbing buckets and shovels and whatever they could carry, the clammers headed silently for the woods. And like shadows, they slipped into the darkness of the tree-covered bank.

Moments later, two squad cars pulled into the marina parking lot.

The poachers must have a lookout.

Car doors slammed. Heavy-duty flashlights were turned on, and arcs of light bounced along the riverbank. Joe wished he’d turned the lights off at the first sign of trouble, but it was too late. And he knew Bud would be out there leading the search. No way to avoid him; he might as well meet him head-on. Joe stepped out onto the porch.

It was only a few minutes before the officers returned, their flashlights bobbing along the ground in front of them. None of them were too interested in following the culprits through the mud and brush and who could blame them.

Vinnie Bukowski came to stand at the bottom of the steps. “Man, it stinks out here. We all think Bud has lost his marbles. He’s still out there looking for some poor sod. Shit. Here he comes, and it looks like he’s got one of them. Now we’ll have to take the guy in, and the whole damn cruiser will smell like river mud.”

Bud was half dragging, half carrying one of the diggers. The man was very small, and his feet stuttered along the ground as Bud yanked him toward the squad car. The guy didn’t stand a chance.

“Damn,” Vinnie said under his breath. “He’s already been reprimanded twice in the last year for using undue force in an arrest. He better be careful or he’ll find himself sitting at a desk if they don’t get rid of him completely.” He trotted across the boatyard to meet them, and Joe came down the steps.

Bud shoved the man to the ground. He hit hard and landed on his hands and knees. His cap fell off. A shaggy-headed boy cringed and covered his head with his arms. He was just a kid, not older than twelve, probably younger.

Bud growled something to his victim, yanked him to his feet, and ordered him to hold still. “Get my cuffs out of the truck.”

“Ah, Bud, he’s a kid. You don’t have to cuff him.”

“No-o-o!” The boy squirmed beneath Bud’s grip.

Joe ran down the steps. “Hey. What are you doing?”

“Catching me a poacher.”

The kid looked up with round frightened eyes.

“He’s not a poacher. He works for me,” Joe said. “He was on his way home and we saw the poachers. I told him to go run them off.”

“The hell you did.”

“The hell I did. You’ve been carping at me for weeks about them, so I was just doing my civic duty.”

Vinnie wiped his face to hide a grin.

“Yeah?” Bud shook the kid, and his head snapped back. “What’s your employer’s name then?”

“ Aw, Bud,” Vinnie broke in. “Stop bothering Joe, here. Everybody knows he hired a kid to help out with the boats. Isn’t that right, kid?”

The boy nodded energetically.

Joe stepped forward, put his hand on the kid’s shoulder. He looked at Bud, who was slow in letting go.

“If I find out you’re lying.”

Joe pulled the kid closer and out of Bud’s reach.

“Bud, give it a rest.”

“I’m warning you.”

The radio squawked. Vinnie and the two other cops returned to their cruisers. With another scowl at the kid and Joe, Bud finally strode back to his cruiser.

Joe waited until they had driven away, sirens blasting.

“Well, kid, it looks like you got yourself a job.”

THE FIRST THING Van did the next morning after pouring herself a cup of coffee was call her office. It was only eight o’clock, but she knew that either Ellen, her ace office manager, or Maria, her executive secretary, would already be there. They were perfectly able to run things without her for a couple of weeks. Longer if need be. She had tried to resist calling them too early. That would be a sign of not trusting them. Though she suspected she wasn’t fooling anybody. She had control issues.

They’d joked about it to her face and groused about it behind her back. But she couldn’t help it. It looked like she was going to have a full day, and she had things to do; besides, she really wanted to touch base with the familiar. She just had to remind herself not to micromanage when Maria answered the phone.

“Elite Lifestyle Managers. How may I help you?”

“Hi, Maria. It’s me.”

Was that a sigh she heard?

“Everything is fine. You better be on the beach with a drink with an umbrella in it.”

“There’s been a blip in the schedule.”

That was definitely a groan.

“I’m still in Whisper Beach.”

“Fine. As long as you’re on some beach. Having a good time. Don’t call unless you need us to send cash or get you out of jail.”

Van laughed. “I know you guys are capable of handling everything. I just wanted to—”

“Check in. I know. And we love you for it; now go have fun. Oh, and this should make your day. We just landed the Hallmark building account. So relax and have fun. I’m hanging up now.”

“Wow, I wasn’t sure they’d go for the group discount thing. How soon do they want—”

“We’re taking care of it; go to the beach.”

“Okay, okay, I’m putting on my bikini now.”

“Hooray. Good-bye.”

The line went dead. The Hallmark building. A biggie. Lots of apartments with overworked, harried families in need of organization.

Van sat down at the kitchen table and looked at her phone. Definitely too early to call the lawyer. Besides, she thought she might run her idea about renting the house to Gigi past Dorie. She didn’t want to enable Gigi to not deal with her life. But she knew Gigi wouldn’t get on with her life until she was out from under her mother’s thumb.

Suze wandered into the kitchen holding a huge coffee mug.

“Morning,” Van said. “Did you just get up?”

“Been up for hours. Trying to concentrate on my paper while waiting for the mailman to come.” She poured herself a cup and sat across from Van. “What are you doing today?”

“I’m going to try to get the key from Mr. Pimlico and go take a look at the house. If you’d like to go.”

“Thanks, but I have to get some work done. Why don’t you do that this morning, and after lunch, we’ll go to the beach. Or maybe we’ll take Dorie to lunch.”

The outer door opened, and Dorie came in carrying two filled grocery bags. “Take me where?”

“To lunch or something.”

“I thought you were calling Gigi.”

“Oh, right, I forgot. I will.” Van made a face. “But first, I wanted to consult you about something.”

“Let me put the eggs in the fridge, and you can hit me with it.” Dorie slid the carton of eggs in, along with lettuce and tomatoes and a few other things, then poured out the last of the coffee and sat down. “Shoot.”

“I’m going to see the lawyer about the house.”

“Well, it’s about time. I don’t guess you’re planning to live in it?”

Van gave her a quelling look.

“So you’re going to sell it?”

“I was thinking maybe Gigi and the kids could live there. It’s small, but big enough for them—if it’s in decent shape or at least doesn’t need a lot of work. I don’t want to put any real money into it.”

“And you would be doing this why?”

“I think Uncle Nate and Aunt Amelia have had enough. And I don’t think Gigi’s going to move on until she has her own place, and since her own place is foreclosed on and since my house is sitting there unused, it makes perfect sense.”

“Enabling,” Suze said from the bottom of her coffee mug.

“What do you think, Dorie? Is it enabling?” Van asked. “I thought it might give her the impetus to pull herself together. I know Nate is worried about her, and I got the feeling he would love to have his house back.”

“I don’t know. Why don’t you take a look at it before you make any decisions.”

Which is just what she did.

VAN MET THE lawyer at his office at nine fifteen and drove over to the house with his set of keys. She parked at the curb and sat, feeling a sudden lethargy that kept her in the car. Lethargy or anxiety.

She didn’t know what shape the cottage would be in, what she would feel, if anything. Would memories crowd around her like soul suckers in a sci-fi film? Or would it just be another empty house? One thing was for sure. It wasn’t going away.

Van got out of the car and walked up to the front door, noticed that her hand shook slightly as she pushed the key in the lock, turned it. The door opened on a squeak of hinges.

She automatically reached for the light switch. Of course the electricity had been turned off years ago.

She walked into the dim living room, groped her way to the windows and pulled back the drapes, setting off a cloud of dust. She stood in the center of the room and looked around. The light coming through the window barely reached into the gloom. Just enough to show the same old furniture untouched and covered by a thick layer of dust.

Van stepped through to the kitchen; the counters were bare, the laminate faded and cloudy. There was a water stain in the corner and the blackish mold that grew around it. That would have to be removed. A spray of TSP should do it; it didn’t look widespread.

She opened a cabinet. Mismatched plates and glasses; a drawer, cooking utensils, another drawer, the aluminum flatware Van had bought on sale for her mother’s Christmas present one year. Everything was like she remembered it, only dusty.

Back through the living room to the other half of the house; the two bedrooms and bath. She went through to her bedroom first. Opened the closet and saw the clothes she’d left behind, still hanging there. On the desk a pile of schoolbooks that had never been returned. A green stuffed frog that Joe had won at the boardwalk in Ocean City.

She didn’t pick it up, didn’t even touch it, just walked past it, the dust and mold tickling her nose and throat. She coughed, sniffed, pulled open the top drawer of the bureau, where she found underwear and pajamas neatly folded. The second drawer held T-shirts and jeans, just as neat. The bottom drawer, empty. She couldn’t remember what had been there.

She moved to the bathroom. Everything was gone from the windowsill except a bottle of shampoo and conditioner, the brand that she had used in those days, maybe the actual bottles she had used. The medicine cabinet had been cleaned out. A hand mirror and a glass of makeup brushes sat on the back of the toilet. Everything was just as it had been when she’d left twelve years ago.

She left the bathroom, hesitated, then stepped into her parents’ room. Her father’s room after her mother’s death. Still the white Battenburg runner on the dresser, a picture of the three of them at the beach. It had sat there ever since the summer it was taken when Van was seven.

They’d been happy then. Van picked it up. At least Van had been happy. But looking closely at her parents’ faces, she understood now that something was already deeply wrong.

The way you could almost feel her father bending away from her mother. Her mother’s frantic eyes caught perfectly by the camera. Van was smiling between them, oblivious. He’d even left that behind.

It takes two to make an argument, Nate had said.

But it didn’t take two to make a drunk. The photo had been taken before her father started drinking heavily. Van remembered he’d go to work every day. Come home and they would eat dinner together, then he would take a beer to the easy chair, turn on the television, and pick up the paper.

It was like he couldn’t do just one thing at a time; he had to be doing it all at once. And remembering this, Van wondered if it was him building a barrier through which neither she nor her mother could travel.

Later, tired turned into blitzed. He stopped eating with them, would grab something to put on his plate, and take his plate and beer down to the basement where he’d installed a second television; it was where he lived when he wasn’t at work or at the pub, and where he slept on an old sagging couch he’d found on the curb one day.

Van shivered. There was nothing of him left in the house. Not a forgotten razor in the bathroom, not an undershirt or a pair of socks in the dresser. Not one book that he kept by the bed for when he went to sleep sober enough to read. Nothing but empty hangers in the closet. And Van knew if she went downstairs, it would be empty, too.

It was like he’d never existed. Anger boiled up inside of her. He’d taken himself and his possessions away and left them behind. Everything that had been Van and her mother lay rotting in these few rooms. And nothing of him.

Bastard, she thought. He couldn’t wait to get away. Well, good riddance. Good riddance, good riddance.

But why? What did we do that was so bad that you needed to erase us?

Van backed out of the room. She’d have to hire a service to cart the stuff away and then cleaners. Everything would go. Everything. If Gigi wanted to live there, Van was sure she could scrounge some extra furniture from her parents.

And if Gigi didn’t want it? Well, Van would put it on the market before she left.