The Tender Vine (Diamond of the Rockies #3)(119)

“What are you thinking, Mamma?” Carina held the knife poised over the fragile shell.

“I’m trying to imagine your papa in here watching me.” She slowly folded the cloth and laid it on the edge of the counter.

“And?” Carina held her breath.

“I would take a spoon to him.”

“Mamma!”

Mamma shook her head, laughing. “It’s no use, Carina. Your papa could no more sit in here than I could tell him how to grow his vines or cure his patients. We are what we are.”

“But, Mamma . . .”

“No, Carina. Some things don’t change. Maybe . . . maybe it’s different with your man. He is not . . .”

“Italian?”

Mamma shrugged. “Who can explain the humors that flow in the blood?” She rested her hands on the counter. “If you had chosen Flavio . . .”

Carina met her mother’s eyes. Would she be condemned again? Would this time of connecting end here with that name mentioned?

Mamma sighed. “Flavio would not have watched you cook, Carina.” Her heart swelled. It was true. Flavio was her own kind, but she had chosen Quillan, or God had.

“Your home will not be the same as mine.” There was a wistful note in Mamma’s voice.

“Not so different, Mamma.”

Smile lines crinkled at her mamma’s eyes. “Not in the bedroom, eh?”

Carina looked up, startled.

“Not when your sons come, nor your daughters.”

Carina’s heart constricted. “I don’t know, Mamma.” Her cycle was again irregular. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d bled.

Mamma waved her hand. “Your husband is capable still. I asked Papa.”

Carina flushed. Her parents had discussed that? She swallowed the pain in her throat. “It’s not Quillan I’m worried about. After my miscarriage Dr. Felden was unsure if I could—”

“Don’t say it, Carina. Of course you can.” Mamma crossed herself, then sobered. “It must have been awful.”

Carina nodded slowly, tears stinging her eyes. And then she was in Mamma’s arms, the knife and prawn lying where she dropped them, and the scent of Mamma’s lemon water and the soft flesh of her throat against Carina’s face. She poured out the story of the terrible men and her own temper and the disastrous price her baby had paid. She sobbed.

“Cara mia.” Mamma stroked her hair. “And where was your Quillan?”

Carina sniffed. “Away.”

Mamma rocked her. “Ah, tesora . . .” She dropped a tear of her own to Carina’s face. “If you can forgive him that, you must truly love him.”

“With all my heart, Mamma.”

Her mamma pressed her face to Carina’s hair. “Then God will provide, eh? You hear, Signore? Give them a child again.” She squeezed Carina and released her.

Carina laughed, suddenly seeing that Mamma’s scolding was really a deep belief that God could and would answer her prayer. Carina knew God would do as He saw best, but silently her heart added its own plea.

“I’ll finish the prawns. You go wash your face.”

Carina sniffed, grateful for the release the tears had given, but ready to be through with it. She went to the bathhouse and washed, then toweled her face dry and drew in a deep settling breath. God was good. His perfect will would be done. Surely she and Quillan would both recover. She just had to be patient.

She went outside and drank in the spring scent of waking earth, budding and blooming shrubs and bulbs and nut trees. The Gravenstein apple trees would soon be profuse with blossoms and the scent from the rows of forty orange trees just behind the barn indescribable. Everywhere life quickened, and she had to believe it God’s promise that hers and Quillan’s too would be restored.

Feeling almost buoyant, she wanted to see Ti’Giuseppe. Quillan had taken so much of her time and concern that— “Mrs. Shepard!”

Carina turned in surprise.

“I am so glad to find you.” Mr. Pierce hurried over from the gates outside the courtyard. “I’ve come every day, but your brothers turned me away. I can only hope it isn’t at your bequest?”

She was too surprised to be anything but truthful. “I didn’t know you had come. What is it you want?” She only hoped her tears didn’t show again.

He looked exasperated. “I heard about the accident, but no one seems to know what happened. The men at the quarry shake their heads and mumble with side glances at each other; but get a straight answer?

I’d have to be Socrates.”

“Mr. Pierce—”

“Now don’t put me off, Mrs. Shepard. Quillan and I have a deal, and I find it my duty—”

“A deal?” She dropped her hands to her sides. “What deal?”

“His story, of course. I told you I had an opportunity.”

“Yes, but—” She spread her hands wide. “Quillan agreed?”

“Of course.”

She looked at him probingly. How much of this was bluster? “My husband was badly injured.”

“How badly?”

She shook her head. “The wagon fell on top of him.”

“How? How did it fall?”

“An explosion.”