The Vineyard (21 page)

Olivia grinned. With the camera strap on her shoulder now, she followed at a saner pace. She couldn't see Tess above the vines, but the occasional squeal was a tip-off to where she'd gone. Olivia followed the sounds, walking along the end of the block, looking down one row after another in search of the pair.

She was nearly at the last row when she found them, but a regrouping had taken place. Buck was now with Simon, who wore dark glasses and a sheen of sweat. He was on his haunches, working with the leaves nearest the grapes. Tess stood alone at the end of the row.

Olivia came up behind her, thinking that now that they'd found him, they should make tracks, but Tess seemed firmly rooted. Apparently the game wasn't done.

Simon gave the two of them little more than a glance. Aside from its brevity, which suggested their irrelevance in his life, it was neither here nor there.

“Are you pruning again?” Tess asked.

“Yes,” he said without looking her way.

“Is that all you ever do?”

“No.”

“It's all
I
ever see you do.”

“That's because you're off playing while I work.”

“Not playing. Studying.”

His hand hovered midair before settling on a leaf and gently removing it. “Fine. You're studying.”

Tess stepped closer to the grapes. Bending at the waist, she
peered at the little bunches of buds. “These are still pathetic. When do they start looking like grapes?”

Simon shot Olivia an annoyed glance. She held up her hands and shook her head. He was a big boy. He could take care of himself. Besides, she had been wondering about those little bunches herself.

He studied the vine for a minute before removing another leaf. “August.”

“Why so long?”

“It takes them that long to grow.”

Tess took another look at the cluster nearest her. “Are you sure they're
grapes?”

He stopped for a minute and mopped his forehead with his arm. His voice was tight. “Yes. I'm sure they're grapes.”

“It was a legitimate question,” Tess charged.

Simon looked at her then. “That's a big word, ‘legitimate.' Too big for a little girl like you. You shouldn't use words you don't understand.”

“I understand it. I'm not dumb.”

Olivia couldn't see Tess's face, but she sure knew that voice. It was defensive. They were walking on thin ice here.

The cat felt it, too. He was looking from Simon to Tess and back.

Olivia was wondering if she should speak up and diffuse things when, calmly enough, Tess asked, “What else do you do?”

Simon moved on to the next vine, first reaching up to guide the highest leaves around the trellis. “I use a ripper on the ground you're standing on.”

“A ripper?”

“A machine that furrows the dirt and aerates the soil.”

“Why do you need to do that?”

He sighed. “The more holes there are in the dirt, the better it breathes. Of course, your standing there clogs them all up again. You're undoing my work.”

For a minute Tess didn't move. Then she took a large, flat-footed step that brought her right up to the nearest vine.

“Tess,” Olivia cautioned, but Tess was on a roll.

“How do you know what leaves to pick?” she asked Simon.

Simon sent Olivia a warning look, put his hands on his hips, and looked back at Tess. “I just know.”

“How?”

“It's instinctive.”

“I'll bet you're just saying that. I'll bet there aren't any rules. I'll bet you just pick off whatever leaves you want.” In the blink of an eye, she reached out and tore off as many leaves as a hand could get in one clutch.

“Tess!” Olivia cried and came forward this time.

By the time she reached the child, Simon was there, too. His expression was dark. “Thank you,” he said, taking the leaves from her hand. He held them up. “Do you know what you just did?”

Tess tipped back her head to meet his gaze. Her face was pale, but she didn't cower. “I pruned your vines.”

“You just tore the life and guts away from this fruit.”

“I don't think she meant—” Olivia began, but Tess cut her off, jutting her chin toward Simon.

“You
do it.”

“Not like that, and not as many. It's an art. But you wouldn't know that. You think you're pretty smart, but you're not.”

“Simon, please don't—” Olivia tried, but he cut her off.

He was glaring at Tess. “Oh, are you
ever
not. What you just did was thoughtless and mean. What you just did was
stupid.”

Tess stared at him, breathing hard, fighting tears. About to lose the battle, she turned on a heel and headed back the way she had come. “You're the one who's mean,” she called back. “I don't care if you hate me.” She whirled around again. “I wouldn't
want
you for my friend.”

“Well, that's good,” he called, “because it ain't gonna happen. Want friends? Try a smile. Bet you don't know how to do that, smart little girl.”

“Simon,” Olivia begged.

“I know how,” Tess said, rigid with fury, “but I wouldn't waste it on you. You're mean—and—and you smell and you're lousy at tennis—and—and—and—your cat is
fat!”
She whirled around and stalked off.

Swearing softly, Olivia started after her. She hadn't gone far, though, when she turned back to Simon. “That was incredible,” she said in dismay. “Just
incredible
. I mean, I can excuse her because she's a child, but you'd think you were one, too, the way you stood there bickering with her.”

Judging from the belligerent look on his face, he wasn't ready to back down. His eyes were still dark, his jaw square and hard. “Did
you see what she did? These grapes are my responsibility. How'd you like it if she tore up some papers and ruined three days of
your
work?”

“She didn't know she was doing that. Maybe if you'd explained what you were doing instead of being so
superior,
she would have responded more rationally.”

“I don't have time to explain every little thing I do. In case you haven't noticed, this is a business I'm running.”

“Oh, I noticed. How could I not? You work all the time. It's no wonder you have zero social skills.” She put a hand over her face, then took it off and held it up. “Sorry. That isn't the issue here. The issue is Tess.”

“She's a hateful child,” he said and started to turn away, but Olivia wasn't about to leave it at that.

“No,” she replied, leaning forward with fury, “she's a child with a problem, just like you are. Yours is eternal grief, terminal self-absorption, maybe even a martyr complex—I don't know. Hers is dyslexia. She's ten years old, and she can't read. She just finished a nightmare of a school year with a teacher who belittled her and kids who made fun of her, and yes, she should smile more, but how do you make a child do that when she feels like scum? She thinks she's dumb because she tries and tries and can't get more than a C, and she wears glasses, so she thinks she's
ugly
. She came here with a big self-esteem problem. I was hoping the summer would give her a break. You just single-handedly blew away that hope.”

She glanced at Buck, who was staring at her with startled eyes. “She's right. Your cat
is
fat.”

With that, she went off in search of Tess. She jogged back down the rows the way they'd come, turned at the end of the block, and let anger propel her up the road toward the house. All the while she searched the fields, but there was no sign of a little girl with a green Asquonset T-shirt and faded denim shorts. In a matter of seconds, Olivia feared that Tess had run into the woods, lost her way, ended up at the river, fallen in, and drowned.

She stopped running, suddenly short of breath. “Tess?” she called, frantic now.
“Tess?”
She shaded her eyes and scoured the horizon.
“Where are you?”
She would call the police. She would call the fire department. She would ring a bell. An alarm. Surely they had one at the Great House.

She had just set off in that direction when she spotted something
green that didn't match the rhododendrons. It was Tess, sitting with her back to the world, in the midst of the shrubs in front of the Great House.

S
IMON SPOTTED
T
ESS
at the same time Olivia did, and though her legs moved faster, his were longer. He overtook her when she was still thirty feet from the child, and slowed only marginally.

“I'll talk to her,” he said.

“Not unless you've grown up in the last two minutes,” Olivia warned in a voice that was low but tight.

He deserved the dig and knew it. But realizing that was solving only half the problem.

Stepping in front of her, he forced her to stop. “I'd like to talk with her.”

Olivia's eyes flashed. “If it's to ease your guilt about behaving badly, don't bother. She knows there are uncaring people in the world.”

He felt the force of her anger, flashing in her eyes. Even if she hadn't spoken, he would have gotten the message.

“I'm not one of them,” he said.

“How do I know that?”

“You'll have to take my word for it. I made the mess, so I should clean it up.”

He held her eyes, thinking that she ought to look like a boy with that hair but that she didn't. Then her fierceness eased, and it was even more true; when she allowed even an ounce of weakness to show, she was downright feminine.

Was it weakness? Or was it vulnerability? Or even confusion? He wondered.

Whatever, she looked like she wanted to believe him but wasn't sure she could. And she was right to be that way. There were plenty of uncaring people in the world. Only, he wasn't one of them. He really wasn't. At least, he didn't want to be.

“Please,” he said.

The fierceness returned in a look that said she would have him
by the balls
if he made things worse. The message was so pointed—so lewd—that he nearly laughed. Fortunately, he knew better than to do that.

He approached Tess quietly. When she shot a look over her shoulder and saw him there, her eyes flew to her mother, then back. Her body tensed. She slid a foot under her thigh in advance of rising.

He struck quickly, keeping his voice low. “I'm sorry. I was wrong. I shouldn't have said what I did.”

Tess stared at him.

“I was upset.”

She didn't move.

“I should have explained why I do what I do with the leaves. There is a reason behind it all.”

Tess clenched her jaw.

She wasn't making it easy for him, and he deserved her resistance, too. But it wasn't easy. He wasn't experienced in dealing with ten-year-old children, much less in groveling.

“I'm used to working alone,” he said, hoping she might understand that.

“It's me,” Tess said, and suddenly it was there on the surface, just as Olivia had said, an issue of self-esteem. “You just hate me.”

He felt terrible. “I don't hate you.”

“You've never said one nice thing to me. Never once.”

“I don't hate you. How can I hate you? I don't know you.”

“I annoy you. You take one look at me and you think about every awful thing in the world.”

“No,” he said. “I take one look at you and I think about my daughter. She died four years ago. I miss her.”

He hadn't planned to say that, couldn't believe that he had. Tess was a child. She wouldn't understand death. And if she asked how Liana had died? He couldn't mention a sailing accident.
Couldn't
mention that. If he did, she would never step foot in a sailboat.

Olivia would never forgive him.
Natalie
would never forgive him.

But Tess was looking less harsh. At least she was listening.

“That doesn't excuse it,” he told her. “The things I said were mean and untrue. I was punishing you because I don't have her. It was wrong of me. I'm sorry.”

He sent Olivia a tentative glance, wondering if he was botching it, looking for a sign but seeing an expectancy instead, like she was waiting for him to say more.

What in the hell more was he supposed to say?

He wasn't good at this. He would have been a lousy father.

Putting his hands in his back pockets, he faced Tess again. “Well, that's it. I just wanted to apologize.” Feeling awkward and more inadequate than he had ever felt in his life, he cut his losses and left.

He didn't look back, not even when he knew that Olivia's eyes were on him. He didn't want to see those eyes. They made him
feel
.

He kept walking toward the Pinot Noir fields, kept walking until he was immersed in the scent of the vines, until he heard the soft creaking of the only creatures that he did know how to raise. He was good at this. He would stick with it for a while.

Thirteen