Seven Sisters - Earlene Fowler [22]
“Why don’t you go over and stand with your husband?” Dove whispered in my ear.
“He’s busy right now,” I said, determined not to appear the paranoid second wife.
“And going to get a might busier if’n you don’t get over there and guard the rooster roost.”
“I trust him,” I said firmly. “This situation is something he and Lydia have to work out. Sam is their son.”
Dove made a disbelieving sound deep in her throat. “All I have to say is you’d better keep your eyes open on this one.”
“Nothing to watch, Dove. They just want to work out what’s best for Sam.”
“Let’s eat,” Dove said. “I do believe you’re getting light-headed.”
“Daddy!” I turned to him, exasperated. “Would you please talk to your mother?”
“Don’t look at me, pumpkin,” he said, setting his empty plate and glass down on the arts and crafts—style coffee table. “Your gramma gets something in her craw, may as well try to wrestle a bobcat as change her mind.”
“Just be nice to her,” I grumbled in Dove’s ear as I took her arm and we walked out to the patio.
“Me?” Dove feigned shock and hurt. “Honeybun, I’m always nice to everyone.”
I scanned the sky.
“What are you looking for?” Dove asked.
“The cloud holding the lightning bolt that God will strike you dead with for lying.”
She smacked my hand. “You are more stubborn than a roomful of Baptists. And that’s all you know. If God wanted to strike me dead, He wouldn’t need a cloud.”
Laughing, we walked out to a brick patio overlooking the neat vineyards with the Santa Lucia mountains in the distance. It was almost dark, but the patio, thick with clay pots filled with flowers and ferns, was cleverly lit by recessed lighting and electric lamps made from old mining lanterns. Part of the patio was glassed in, facing west with a clear view of the Seven Sisters peaks. The rest of the patio was tiered with steps leading down to deep second and third levels, plush with emerald grass. The second level had long tables covered with white tablecloths and set with china plates, silverware, and linen napkins embroidered with the Seven Sisters brand and huge bowls of green salad, coleslaw, wild rice salad, San Celina sourdough bread, spicy pink pinquito beans, sliced avocados, tomatoes, and ripe strawberries the size of small apples. In the middle of it was a cake inscribed with Bliss’s and Sam’s names and a detailed picture of two horses nuzzling—one a deep, dark brown, the other a palomino. At the bottom level, with only a white rail fence separating the grass from the grapevines, a traditional Santa Maria—style cast-iron barbecue was being manned by a thin Latino man in his sixties and a younger man who looked like his son. We helped ourselves to the food and made our way back up to the top level where round tables were set up.
“I’ll go eat with my husband if it will make you happy,” I told Dove.
“Doesn’t make no nevermind to me. It’s your life,” she said, shrugging.
I found Gabe at a table inside the glassed-in porch where he was sitting with Bliss and Sam. We were joined shortly by Lydia, Cappy, and Willow, the third sister, who’d left the city council meeting early. She was dressed elegantly in a navy tailored pantsuit with a maroon blouse. An antique watch hung from a thin gold chain around her neck. Her hair was the same iron gray as Cappy’s but cut in a soft wavy halo around her head.
“I’m going to sit right here next to the chief,” she said, smiling mischievously. “See if I can convince him to loan me some of his officers for a charity fashion show the Monday Club is putting on.”
Gabe smiled his politician smile, but I knew he’d rant about her nerve to me later on that night.
The conversation