“San Francisco.”
Dal let out a whistle. “Nice. Your ads are paying off. Pretty soon, you’ll have groups up here every weekend. You’ll have to hire guys to pick apples for you.”
His words eased the tension that had plagued Leo since his eyes first opened this morning. Leo was sure that was calculated on Dal’s part. The hunting business was the only thing that kept Leo from totally losing his shit most days.
“You think so?” His hands darted in and out of the tree, snatching apples and depositing them into the pouch hanging from his shoulders.
“Hell, yeah, man. You’re going to have a booming business. I know it.”
“You should come up to the cabin this weekend. I’m sure there’s a pig up there with your name on it.”
“Nah.” Dal shook his head. “I’ll stay here with Nonna. I have to study. Besides, someone has to make sure Anton and Lena come out and pick their share of apples.” He flashed an easy grin at Leo through the trees.
Leo snorted. “Good luck with that. There’s no hope of Anton doing his fair share of anything until after he graduates.”
“Yeah. He might try to sneak away and go hunting with you if I don’t put a leash on him.”
Despite the animosity toward his little brother, Leo chuckled at the mental image of Dal putting a leash on him. It would serve the little shit right.
“Seriously, man,” Dal said. “Word is going to get around. I mean, San Francisco! No one has ever come that far to hunt here. They’ll spread the word. All the hunting circles in the South and East Bay will know about Nonna’s cooking and your tracking skills by the end of summer.”
Dal’s optimism lightened Leo’s load. He glided down the ladder with a full bag of apples, dumping the fruit into one of the big plastic bins his father had placed up and down the rows.
As he climbed back up into the tree for the next fifty pounds of apples, he
couldn’t help but feel optimistic about the upcoming hunt. Maybe Dal was right. Maybe word about his guided hunting trips would get around.
Maybe he had a real shot at saving the family from bankruptcy.
Chapter 3Ex-Ballerina
DESPITE THE FACT THAT he always wore a broad-rimmed hat, the tip of Dal’s nose was sunburned by the time he finished working in the orchard. He’d filled ten bins of apples that day. Each bin held a thousand pounds, meaning he’d single-handedly picked ten thousand pounds of apples.
“It’s too hot,” Leo said to him as he slid the pallet jack beneath the last bin. “They’re ripening too fast.”
“I don’t have to work on Saturday,” Dal said. “I’ll pick with Anton and Lena while you guys are with the hunters. We’ll get all the apples in.”
The resentment that always rode Leo’s shoulders slackened. “Thanks, Dal.” He glanced at his watch. “You’d better go or you’ll be late to class. I’ll get the bins into the barn.”
“Thanks, man.”
Dal had just enough time to shower and shovel a few peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches into his mouth, courtesy of Nonna. Then he was back in his car and speeding to Bastopol High.
Lena stood on the curb, waiting for him. The headphones were on her ears, portable cassette player in hand with its Russian language tape.
“Hey.” She slid into the front seat. She gave him a smile, but didn’t take off her headphones.
“Hey.” Dal hustled out of the parking lot.
Minutes later, he was on the freeway, driving east toward Rossi. He poked Lena in the arm.
She glanced at him before sliding the headphones around her neck. “Yeah?”
“Your dad asked me to tell you something. Don’t shoot the messenger, okay?”
Her eyes narrowed. “What is it?”
Dal braced himself for the unpleasant task at hand. He’d rather pick another bin of apples. “The dance studio is holding auditions for the Christmas recital.” He picked up the folded newspaper clipping from the dashboard and handed it to her.
Lena snorted. “The Soviets could attack anytime and all my dad cares about is a stupid dance recital.”
Dal said nothing. They both knew it was more than a stupid dance recital. Before her mom died, Lena had been one of the best ballerinas in the Rossi Dance Academy. She was more talented than girls who were two and three years older.
“Mom cared about all the crap happening in the world,” Lena said. “You know the Russians have almost forty thousand nukes? Forty thousand, Dal. Mom got it. She knew how precarious everything is. Dad doesn’t take the Soviet threat seriously. He never took mom seriously when she was alive, either.”
Lena knew full well her father had nearly been crushed under the pressure of running the farm and taking care of Mrs. Cecchino. Her illness and subsequent death had devastated everyone.
Dal chose his words carefully. One of the few things he’d learned from his biological father was that, once spoken, wrong words couldn’t be taken back.
“It’s because he loves your mom so much that he wants you to keep dancing.” That was the truth of it. Everyone knew nothing made Mrs. Cecchino’s eyes light up more than the sight of her daughter on center stage of a ballet recital. “It’s his way of honoring your mom.”
All the fight went out of Lena. She put her headphones back on and resumed listening to her language lesson.
Dal poked her again.
“What?” She didn’t look at him or take off the headphones.
“You actually learning anything from those tapes?” He had yet to hear her speak a word of Russian, and she’d been listening to those things for over two years.
“Zdrastvooyte, dobrit den’,” she replied.
He was impressed. “What does that mean?”
“Hello, good afternoon. Satisfied?”
He didn’t rise to the bait. Instead, he just nodded.
She looked away, staring out the passenger side window. He gave her space, turning up the music on his radio. Music always made everything better. It’s the main reason he wanted to work in radio.
As he pulled onto the offramp that led into downtown Rossi, Lena took off her
