Fortune Is a Woman - Elizabeth Adler [160]
CHAPTER 34
Annie drove her little Packard roadster along the leafy lanes of the Sonoma Valley to the de Soto Ranch. Over the years, Francie had bought more and more land encircling her original forty acres until now it stretched farther than the eye could see, four hundred and thirty acres dotted with shady oaks and stands of silver birch. Tended by Mexican cowboys, contented golden Jersey cows grazed in the pastures. On either side of the ranch house itself lay neat rows of vines interspersed with roses that at this time of year were into their second fragrant blooming. Francie planted the roses because pests attacked them before they attacked her precious vines, and she inspected them every morning so that she could take fast action, but Annie suspected she loved the flowers so much she would have planted them, bugs or no bugs. There were new outbuildings too: cottages for Zocco and the housekeeper, as well as workers’ quarters and the small winery.
The years since Ollie’s death had been ones of quiet seclusion for Francie, but they had been fruitful. Annie could hardly bear to think of the first terrible months after the tragedy; Francie had seemed to shrink into solitude like a small, wounded animal seeking a quiet place in which to find her own death. Waking and sleeping, she had endlessly relived the night of the fire in her mind, until they were afraid she would lose her mind.
She had retreated to the ranch, the place where she always went to lick her wounds, and for two years she never left it. Zocco and his wife took care of her, though she barely spoke to them. She went nowhere and saw no one. Though Annie’s own heart had been broken by Ollie’s death, she finally could bear it no longer. She’d driven to the ranch in a fury of despair and stormed through the door; Francie had been sitting in the rocking chair by the kitchen stove with Ollie’s dogs at her feet and she’d lifted her head indifferently to see who was there.
“Here,” Annie had said, snatching a shotgun from the rack on the wall and flinging it onto the table. “Why don’t you just get it over with instead of putting us all through the agony of dying slowly? I’m sick of it, Francie Harrison. And I’m sick of seeing your sorrowful face. We loved Ollie more than we’ll ever love again, but he’s gone, and you are young and able-bodied and now you’re rich, probably richer than you even know or care about. There are dozens—no, hundreds, maybe thousands of poor, sick, needy children back there in San Francisco who need people like you. But if you would rather die than help them, then do it now and put us all out of our misery once and for all.”
Stamping her foot she burst into tears. “Oh God, what have I said…. how could I be so cruel. I didn’t mean it, Francie, truly I didn’t. … I don’t want you to die—only please, please, come back to the land of the living.”
Francie had stood up and walked to the table. Annie’s brown eyes widened and her hand flew to her mouth with a little gasp as Francie picked up the shotgun Zocco used for killing the rapacious blackbirds. Frozen with terror, she watched Francie break open the barrel and check it. Francie’s eyes met hers; she clicked the barrel back in place and then she’d pointed the gun at her; seconds had passed. Then she flung the gun back on the table and said calmly, “That shows how much you know about ranching, Annie Aysgarth—the chamber’s empty.”
Annie had hurled herself on Francie. “Oh, thank God, thank God,” she’d gasped, “I didn’t mean it, honestly I didn’t. It’s just that I didn’t know what to do.”
Francie had glanced out the window at the sun slanting off the stable