One Fine Day

“Well,” said Sara. “He’s looking your way now.”

Tyler Gaines, a tall, gangly boy with too-long blond hair that fell in his eyes and Tarzan’s style of communicating was pointing at Melissa, then back at his chest.

Sara, Frannie, and Elizabeth had no idea how to translate his sign language, but Melissa immediately knew that, “He wants to come over and talk to us.”

“Tell him to come on,” said Frannie. “And to bring the cute one with him.”

Melissa smiled shyly at Tyler and motioned for him to come on over.

Tyler got up and loped over with Danny beside him. “Hey, Melissa.”

“Hey, Tyler.”

“This is Danny Keener.”

“And this is Sara Minton, Frannie Anise, and Mary Makebo,” Melissa said. Like everyone else besides Sara and Frannie, Melissa knew Elizabeth by an alias.

“Ladies,” said Tyler with a respectful nod. His eyes lingered on Elizabeth. Then he looked at Melissa. “I think it’s cool that your dad’s giving you a sweet-sixteen.”

“I nearly gagged when he suggested it, but it’s growing on me,” said Melissa.

“Cool!” said Tyler. That word was apparently his favorite in the English language.

“I was wondering if I could bring Danny. The invitation said I could bring a guest. It doesn’t have to be a person of the opposite sex, does it?”

Melissa was momentarily struck dumb. What could he possibly mean by that? He and Danny weren’t gay, were they? “No, Tyler. You can bring whomever you want to. Danny’s welcome.”

“Cool, ’cuz, see Danny just broke up with his girlfriend and he’s kinda down right now and I figure you’re gonna have lots of ladies coming to your party tomorrow night. Maybe he’ll meet someone.”

Danny looked as if he wished the floor would swallow him whole. But his parents had obviously instilled good manners in him because he smiled at Melissa and said, “Thanks for having me, Melissa. I’m looking forward to it.”

“Sure, anytime,” said Melissa, smiling nervously.

“Well,” Tyler said, yanking on the sleeve of Danny’s football jersey. “See you tomorrow night, Melissa. Ladies, it was nice to meet you.”

Danny smiled at Melissa before turning to leave.

When they’d gone, Melissa heaved a sigh of relief and said, “I almost peed my pants.”

To which her friends burst out laughing.

Chapter 5

On Saturday afternoon at five, the bookstore’s closing time, Sara was ringing up the purchases of a last-minute customer when Rosaura Ledoux came through the door. Sara had met Rosaura a year ago during harvest. Rosaura had patiently shown her how to snip the grapes from the vine without damaging the parent vine. Since then, Rosaura had joined the Wednesday Night Book Club there at the bookstore, and on occasion Sara babysat Rosaura and Claude’s children, Claude, Jr. and Katrina.

Rosaura went to check out the new arrivals on the shelves while Sara finished. But as soon as the customer left she approached Sara. “Claude doesn’t want me to interfere but I think you ought to know that they found root rot in the vines and Mr. Bryant is terribly worried. I wouldn’t mention it but you know I sometimes help with the housework at the Hacienda and I overheard Mr. Bryant talking to his sister and he said he had not said a word to you about it. And he wasn’t planning to.”

Sara was stunned to hear that Jason hadn’t wanted to confide in her.

Rosaura, a petite woman in her late thirties with smooth chocolate skin, gray eyes, and beautiful long jet-black hair, wavy hair that she wore down her back, smiled at Sara encouragingly. “Men can be so stubborn,” she said.

“And bullheaded,” Sara added.

She felt like crying. If Jason didn’t want her to know something as vital as this then maybe he was emotionally distancing himself from her. Formerly, he’d confided in her about things as mundane as choosing a new label for a variety of wine. Now, when the entire vineyard could be in jeopardy, he was leaving her out of the loop!

But she couldn’t rush over there accusing him of wanting to hurt her by keeping her in the dark. That wouldn’t be very mature.

Besides, she had her pride.

“What are they doing about it?” she calmly asked Rosaura.

“He has an appointment to see a plant pathologist at U.C. Davis in two weeks.”

“Two weeks!” Sara cried, disgusted. “The damn rot could spread to the rest of the vines in two weeks’ time.”

“That’s the earliest they can see him.”

Sara knew Jason must be climbing the walls by now. He had reluctantly come back to run the winery and he wasn’t yet confident in his ability to make it work. He was probably riddled with a whole new set of doubts.

She had to see him. But she couldn’t let him know she knew what was going on.

“Rosaura, let’s pretend you didn’t tell me a thing, shall we?”

“That’s fine with me,” said Rosaura, smiling. “Claude would not be happy if he found out I’d done the exact opposite of what he told me to do.”

“He won’t hear it from me,” Sara assured her. “And, thank you!”

“We girls have to stick together,” Rosaura said with a smile before leaving.

The store was empty now except for Sara. She had let Frannie and Elizabeth go home early. Frannie to start fretting over what she could possibly wear to Melissa’s party that could qualify as sexy but would not make Erik Sutherland’s tongue hang out of his mouth. And Elizabeth had plans to go to a movie with one of the other bookstore employees, Linda Ramirez. Sara was both surprised and delighted when Elizabeth had told her she was going out. It was proof that she was coming out of herself more every day and was making a real effort to be happy.

Sara wanted to rush over to the Hacienda and offer comfort to Jason.

However, she made herself go through all of the steps of closing the bookstore for the day in order to give herself time to think about her actions before she did something she would regret.

An hour later, she left the bookstore, locking the door behind her, and hurried to the bank down the street to deposit the day’s receipts. From the bank, she went home, showered, put on her robe, then sat down at the computer on the desk in her bedroom.

She went to the organization’s Web site and went through the profiles of her sisters, looking for a plant pathologist. Whatever that was! One of the advantages of being a member of Aminatu’s Daughters was the rich sources of life experiences the other sisters had to offer. Whenever a sister was in need of help, all she had to do was ask and she received.

This was the first time she’d had to ask any of her sisters for a favor, but if there was indeed a plant pathologist in the sisterhood, she was going to request her help.

It took a few minutes, but she finally came up with a name: Dr. Willow Quigley.

Unfortunately she worked at a university in the Pacific Northwest. She wasn’t right there in California. Sara sent her a message explaining her predicament, anyway.

At that precise moment, at the Hacienda, Jason was standing under the spray in the shower, letting it rain down on his head. In the last twenty-four hours he’d castigated himself over and over for not being more thorough. When his parents had handed him the reins, they had specifically told him he needed to read the winery’s log books. His parents kept a record of every important occurrence on the farm. There was a book for every year the winery had been in operation, dating back to the sixties. Last night, he hadn’t been able to sleep, and he’d found an entry about his parents finding root rot in the southern field. His father had made a note in his careful handwriting: “We believe we got it all, but you can never be sure with root rot. Be sure to keep an eye on the southern vineyard. If it comes back, we’ll have to be more aggressive.”

But his father hadn’t said what kind of root rot they’d discovered in 1978. Maybe there had been no plant pathologists to name the culprit back then.