his fiancйe Maggie’s house, and when he was gone, Sam tended to loosen up on the rules.
Anchoring Holly’s ankles with his hands, Sam called out to the vineyard crew, who were starting up the Caval tractor. The vehicle was fitted with a huge spool of netting that would cover four or five rows of vines at a time.
Holly wrapped her arms more tightly around Sam’s head, nearly blinding him. “How much are you going to pay me for helping you this morning?”
Sam grinned, loving the slight weight of her on his shoulders, her sugar-scented breath, her endless quick-spun energy. Before Holly had come into his life, little girls had been alien creatures to him, with their love of pink and purple, of glitter glue, stuffed animals, and fairy tales.
In the spirit of gender equality, the two bachelor uncles had taught Holly how to fish, throw a ball, and hammer nails. But her love of bows and baubles and fluffy things remained intractable. Her favorite hat, which she was wearing at the moment, was a pink baseball cap with a silver tiara embroidered on the front.
Recently Sam had bought some new clothes for Holly and put the old ones that no longer fit into a bag for Goodwill. It had occurred to him that Holly’s past with her mother was eroding. The clothes, the old toys, even the old phrases and habits, were all gradually, inevitably, being replaced. So he had set a few things aside to be kept in a box in the attic. And he was jotting down his own memories of Vick, funny or sweet stories, to share with Holly someday.
Sometimes Sam wished he could talk to Vick about her daughter, to tell her how damn cute and smart Holly was. To tell her the ways Holly was changing, and the way she was changing everything around her. Sam now understood things about his sister that he had never thought about when she’d been alive— how tough it must have been as a single parent, how troublesome it was to leave the house whenever you wanted to go on an errand. Because when you had to take Holly somewhere with you, it never took less than fifteen minutes to find her shoes.
But there were rewards Sam had never expected. He’d been the one to teach Holly how to tie her shoelaces. All Holly’s shoes had Velcro fastenings, and when they’d bought her ones with laces, she hadn’t known how to tie them. Since she had been six years old, Sam had figured it was high time for her to learn. He had shown her how to make bunny-ear loops and twist them together.
What Sam hadn’t expected was the feeling that had come over him as he had watched Holly’s little brow furrow in concentration as she worked at the laces. A fatherly feeling, he guessed. Damned if he hadn’t gotten misty-eyed over a little girl tying her shoes. He wished he could have told his sister about it. And about how sorry he was for having had so little to do with her or her baby when he’d had the chance.
But that was the Nolan way.
Holly’s light-up sneakers thumped gently against his chest. “How much are you going to pay me?” she persisted.
“You and are I both working free today,” Sam told her.
“It’s against the law for me to work for free.”
“Holly, Holly … you aren’t going to turn me in for breaking a couple of measly little child labor laws, are you?”
“Yep,” she said cheerfully.
“How about a dollar?”
“Five dollars.”
“How about a dollar and a ride into Friday Harbor for ice cream this afternoon?”
“Deal!”
It was Sunday morning, the vineyard still dressed with mist, the bay a quiet silver. However, the atmosphere was disrupted by the rumble of the Caval as it started up and began to prowl slowly between the rows.
“Why are we going to put netting over the vineyard?” Holly asked.
“To keep birds away from the fruit.”
“Why didn’t we have to do it before now?”
“The grapes were still in the beginning part, when the flowers were turning into grape berries. Now we’re in the next stage, which is versaison.”
“What does that mean?”
“The grapes get bigger and they start to accumulate sugar, so they get sweeter and sweeter as they mature. Like me.”
They stopped, and Sam set Holly down with care. “Why do we call it versaison instead of just calling it grape-growing?” she asked.
“Because the French got to name it before we did. Which is a good thing, since they make everything sound prettier.”
It would take about two to three days to tent the entire vineyard, which would keep it safe from predators but also allow for easy access when the crew went with lopping shears to drop the fruit that was too green.
After the first few panels of netting were laid out, Sam hoisted Holly onto his shoulders again, and one of the crew showed her how to thread twine through the edge of the netting with a short wooden dowel.
Holly’s small hands were deft as she stitched the panels together. Her pink hat glittered in the morning sun as she looked up at her handiwork. “I’m sewing up the sky,” she said, and Sam grinned.
* * *
When it was time for lunch, the crew took a break, and Sam sent Holly inside the house to wash up. He took a solitary stroll through the vineyard, listening to the whisper of leaves, occasionally pausing to rest his fingers against a trunk or cane. He could feel the subtle vibration of health in the vines, the water rising from tap roots, the leaves eating up sunlight, grapes beginning to soften and turn heavy with sugar.
As his hand hovered near the cane growth at the top of the plant, the leaves moved toward him visibly.
Sam’s affinity for growing things had revealed itself in childhood when he’d worked in a neighbor’s garden.
Fred and Mary Harbison had been an elderly childless couple that had lived in the neighborhood. When Sam was about ten, he had been playing with a boomerang he’d gotten as a birthday present, and it had gone through their living room window.
Fred had hobbled outside. His form had been as tall and gnarled as a Garry Oak tree, but there was an innate kindness in his stern, homely face. “Don’t run off,” he had said, as Sam had prepared to bolt. And Sam had stayed, staring at him with wary fascination.
“You can have your toy back,” Fred had informed him, “soon as you do some chores to help pay for that window. To start with, Mrs. Harbison needs some weeding done in her garden.”
Sam had instantly liked Mary, who was as short and round as her husband was tall and gangly. After she had shown him which sprouting green plants were weeds, and which were the flowers, Sam had set to work.
As he had knelt and pulled weeds and dug holes for bulbs and seedlings, he had felt as if the plants were communicating with him, telling him in their wordless way what they needed. Without even asking for permission, Sam had gotten a small spade from the Harbisons’ toolshed and had replanted primulas where they would get more sun, and had put the larkspur and Shasta daisy seedlings in different parts of the garden than Mary had told him to.
After that Sam had gone to the Harbisons’ house nearly every day after school, even after Fred had given back the boomerang. While Sam did his homework at their kitchen table, Mary always gave him a glass of cold milk and a stack of white salted crackers. She had let him pore through her books on
