The Apple Orchard

Twenty-Seven



“I have a dilemma,” Tess said to Lourdes Maldonado. “I wonder if you’d be willing to discuss it with me.”

Without speaking, Lourdes held open the door to her house. It was a small place in town with a fenced yard littered with kids’ toys. Inside, there was a vaguely musty smell nearly masked by the scent of a bayberry candle and freshly cut pine. The entryway was cluttered with shoes, coats and unopened mail. A couple of laundry baskets crowded the hallway.

Lourdes looked exhausted, even though it was early evening. “You’ve got a lot of nerve, coming here. I told you, I’ve been trying to put us back together—”

“Like I said before, that’s between you and Dominic—”

“There can’t be anything between me and Dominic so long as you’re around.”

“Look, this has nothing to do with my personal situation. I’m trying to help my sister. That’s why I’m here.”

“You’re not making any sense.”

Tess took a deep breath to compose herself. She hadn’t told either Dominic or Isabel about the theory she and her mother had come up with at Thanksgiving. She needed to check it out on her own first. Shannon had tracked down Carlos Maldonado’s widow in Placerville. A far cry from the heartbroken young mother Tess had imagined, Beatrice Maldonado—now Beatrice Perkins—did not harbor cherished memories of her first husband. He’d been a drinker and gambler, and he ran with a rough crowd. After the drowning, Beatrice had left Archangel and made a new life for herself. Carlos had died in debt and intestate; she’d ended up with a financial mess, and a small collection of keepsakes and personal items, which she’d subsequently passed on to her daughter, Lourdes.

“I’ve been trying to help her find something that was lost. It’s a Johansen family heirloom, something that’s really important to her and her grandfather.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about or why you’d come to me with this.”

“I’d love to explain it to you, if you have some time.”

Lourdes expelled a dramatic sigh. “Come on in. I have nothing against Isabel. I know it must be terrible for her, what happened to her grandfather.”

Tess stepped farther into the living room. This was the home Lourdes and Dominic had shared, which she’d kept in the divorce. No wonder Dominic was such a neatnik, his home sparsely decorated. The decor here was busy with painted furniture, brass lamps, embellished mirrors and framed school photos of the children.

“Your tree is lovely,” said Tess. It was a noble fir, at least ten feet tall, dripping with lights and ornaments of all sorts.

“The kids and I decorated. We always go over the top with the tree.”

For a moment, Tess felt a wave of nostalgia, sweeping her back to her childhood Christmases in Dublin with Nana. It was often just the two of them, with Shannon away at work, but they made it cozy with cream scones from the neighborhood bakery, spiced tea, carols playing on the stereo.

As an adult, Tess practiced rigorous Christmas avoidance. She attended a few parties, but prior to the holiday she took off for someplace like Thailand or Mumbai, where Christmas was just another day. Often her mother would meet her somewhere and the two of them would exchange gifts and go out to dinner, and that would be that. She told herself Christmas was overrated. Families got together, and there was awkwardness and squabbling. Invariably someone had too much to drink and someone else got her feelings hurt, a gift didn’t fit or failed to please. There was an overabundance of food, especially sweets, a feeling of uncomfortable excess. A family holiday was never really the warm and fuzzy time it was cracked up to be.

In the deepest part of herself, she didn’t believe any of that. But she had to tell herself so just to keep from wanting something she couldn’t have.

Maybe this year, things would be different. She had Isabel. She’d been told the party at Bella Vista was not to be missed. Everyone on the estate gathered for a Christmas Eve feast. Father Tom would stop by on his way to celebrate midnight mass to offer a blessing. Tess knew the traditions would have a deeper meaning this year, with everyone’s hearts yearning for Magnus to heal.

“I’ll get you a glass of wine.” Lourdes went to the kitchen. “I’ll get us both a glass.”

“I don’t...” Tess changed her mind. “On the other hand, I’d like that.”

Listening to the clinking of glass in the other room, she blinked and looked at the Christmas tree. Other people’s Christmas trees had always held a peculiar fascination for her. She and Nana used to keep it simple—a few choice bone china ornaments, glittery balls, fairy lights and a few treasures from Things Forgotten. Lourdes’s tree was far more elaborate, covered in gold ornaments, mostly flashy glass bulbs. On the lower, sturdier branches hung the heavier ornaments, some made of pottery or carved wood or resin. There were a few doughy-looking creations that had probably been crafted by children through the years.

A light sparkled over the burnished golden curve of a Christmas ball. Frowning, she bent down to inspect the flash that had caught her eye. The ornament was shaped like a large, shiny egg. She didn’t breathe, didn’t move a muscle. Reaching through the branches of the tree, she unhooked the golden ball.

Instantly she knew—this was a glass bulb, painted gold from the inside. Pretty, but hardly the treasure she was looking for. Feeling foolish, she looked for a place to rehang the bauble. She found a spot down low, amid the homespun carvings and school projects. She paused to look at one, a framed Polaroid photo showing a beautiful little girl with dark hair and large, dark eyes, a laughing mouth. She sat at the knee of a handsome man with a moustache; Tess recognized Carlos from her research. As she reached in toward the trunk of the tree, the needles of the fir tree brushed over her arm. The back of her hand brushed something heavy, hanging amid humble ornaments on the lowest branch of the tree, beside a thick clay imprint of a child’s hand and a moss-clad nativity scene.

It was weighty, its finish a dull yellow. As she lifted it toward her, she stopped breathing again. Working gingerly, she unhooked the object and freed it from the lighted branches. This time, there was no mistake.

The egg was slightly larger than she’d imagined it. And infinitely, immeasurably more elaborate. Clad in a basket of the most delicate gold filigree, its surface was tarnished by time and neglect.

Holy mother of God. She was holding the treasure in her hand. The golden surface felt warm and alive with stories. Simply cradling it between her palms transported her. She freed the delicate latch and opened it to find the interior filled with Christmas candy.

“I didn’t ask if you prefer red or white,” said Lourdes, coming into the room with two glasses of wine on a tray. “I’m guessing white for you.”

Tess composed herself and straightened up, dusting herself off. She kept her face completely impassive. “White’s fine,” she said. “Thank you.” She knew what she had to do. This was her job, separating people from their treasures. It was common to her experience to find artifacts where they didn’t belong. Her task was to put things right. But never had the stakes been higher.

She closed and latched the egg and held it by the slender wire attached to it, causing it to slowly turn. The sensation gave her the shivers. “Do you know where this came from?”

Lourdes took a gulp of wine. “It’s been around for decades. After my father died, my mother found it in a box of my father’s things, carnival prizes he’d won, lottery ticket stubs, other Christmas ornaments, toys he meant to give me but never did. It was probably with all his other things.” She handed Tess a glass of wine.

“Cheers.” Tess had done stranger things than clink glasses with her boyfriend’s ex-wife, but she couldn’t remember when. “Actually, this piece is what I came to ask you about. Isabel’s been looking for it. I believe—and this comes from a lot of research—this belonged to Erik Johansen.”

Lourdes laughed and took a drink of wine. “God, you are a piece of work. It’s not enough that you’re dating my husband...”

Ex-husband, Tess thought.

“But now you want to take away a trinket that was left to me by my father?”

“I’m trying to help out my sister and Magnus, that’s all.” Tess had brought only two photographs with her, both taken at Bella Vista during Erik’s lifetime, both showing the egg on display with both Erik and Magnus present. “I trace heirlooms as a job. It originally belonged to Magnus. He brought it from the old country after the war. It went missing, so it’s kind of a miracle to find it. Having it again would mean the world to Isabel.”

Lourdes finished her wine and refilled her glass. “Maybe it would mean the world to me.”

“Would it?”

“I barely remember my father. It’s nice having something that belonged to him.”

“Isabel and I never knew ours, either.” Tess kept a poker face. Softball or hardball, she asked herself. Lourdes was a lawyer. She was probably smart as a whip. If she had the first inkling of the egg’s value, she’d never surrender it.

“Look, I’ll be frank,” Tess said. “Isabel is having an incredibly hard time and reclaiming a family heirloom will help her. It still belongs to Magnus Johansen. Restoring a piece of family history to Isabel would be such a kindness.”

“And if I refuse?”

Tess wanted to avoid any hint of drama. She could provide provenance that would make Lourdes’s father look like a thief, but she didn’t want to use that as leverage. “If you refuse,” she said, “you won’t be the person your kids think you are. They adore and admire their mom.”

Lourdes’s gaze flickered, and she took a hurried sip of wine. Tess carefully replaced the egg. She avoided looking at it.

Lourdes poured herself another glass of wine and took a seat on the sofa. “It seems to me,” she said slowly, “we’ve each got something the other wants.” Lourdes crossed one leg over the other and twirled her foot.

“I’m not sure I understand. I don’t want anything from you. I was just suggesting it would be a kindness to Isabel if you were to restore the ornament to her.”

“I’m not going to mince words. You know as well as I do that you’re the only thing standing in the way of me and Dominic reconciling.”

Tess felt bad for her, worse still for Dominic and the children. Recalling the loneliness and isolation of growing up without a family, she wondered if she could put herself in the way of this broken family’s attempt to repair itself. “I’m not in the way,” she said quietly.

“He is the father of my children. We’re a family. You have no right to interfere with that. Let’s agree that you can give Isabel the Christmas ornament, and you go back to wherever you came from.”

Her flawed thinking was breathtaking, but Tess was not about to point that out. Lourdes was offering her a bargaining chip. Never mind that it was made of crazy.

“And if I refuse?” Tess deliberately echoed Lourdes.

“Then you’re not the long-lost sister Isabel thinks you are. Oh, and by the way,” Lourdes continued, “did Dominic tell you we’re going to counseling?”

Tess felt as if she’d been punched in the gut. It must have shown on her face, because Lourdes gave a tiny smile. “Thought not. It’s true, though. Ask him yourself.” The woman was delusional. Yet she was also willing to make a deal.

Tess knew exactly what she had to do.

* * *

Tess went to the hospital. It only seemed right to bring the treasure straight to Magnus, who thought he’d lost the egg when he’d lost his son. When she got to his room, she found the doctor and two nurses clustered around the bed.

Her heart froze. Was she losing him?

“What’s happening?” she demanded, pushing into the room. He looked the same. “Is something wrong?”

Dr. Hattori stepped back, adjusted his glasses. “We’re upgrading his condition. There’s been more reaction to stimuli.”

“Upgrading. You mean he’s waking up?”

“I’m seeing increased brain activity. There’s eye movement and possibly some tracking.”

“Have you called Isabel?”

“I left her a message.” The doctor gave Tess a full report. The process could take days or even weeks, and the prognosis was far from certain. There was no way to predict the recovery. He might be in a vegetative state, or he could regain full functionality or anything in between.

“There is every reason to hope for a good outcome,” the doctor said.

“What can I do?”

“What you’ve been doing all along. Talking and touching, staying close. He’s lucky to have a granddaughter like you.”

Tess felt a lump in her throat. “He has no idea. I mean he really, really has no idea.”

Alone with Magnus, she rolled her chair close to the bed. “So I found it,” she said to him. “Just like I told you I would. Hurry and wake up. I need to know what you know. Did you realize Erik had the egg? Did he just help himself to it? Did you realize it was then taken by Carlos?”

She took the egg from her bag. It was surreal, carrying a multimillion-dollar artifact around like it was a powder compact. “After I show you and Isabel, we’ll want to go straight to the bank with this.”

She placed the egg under the palm of his hand. She imagined that hand in younger years, holding the object, taking pride in the idea that it had been awarded to his grandfather for saving a precious young life.

“I had to make a deal in order to get this,” she told Magnus. “Dominic’s ex-wife gave it to me on condition that I take myself out of the picture. She’s delusional if she thinks that is going to bring them back together, but of course I didn’t tell her so. I do have to leave, though. Not just because of the deal I made, but because I don’t...belong here.”

She drew in a breath and realized her chest was aching. The rhythm of the pumps and monitors pulsed into the silence. “I didn’t ever think anything would be this hard. I love him, Magnus. I’ve never felt this way before. I love his kids. I love his life. And yet I have to walk away. And it’s tearing me up. I didn’t know. I had absolutely no idea what real love feels like, what it could do to me. And now I have no idea what to do without it.”

Freeing a tiny gold filigreed latch, she opened the egg. A half-melted candy cane fell out. “Lourdes had no idea what she was hanging on her tree, year in and year out,” Tess said. “It was right in front of her the whole time.” She put the egg back in her bag and sat in silence for a while.

Behind her grandfather’s thin, closed eyelids, she could see movement. The doctors had cautioned her all along that Magnus was not simply going to leap out of his bed one day and take up where he’d left off. But that didn’t keep her from hoping and dreaming that someday, they would meet face-to-face.

“I need to go,” she said. “I have to show this to Isabel and then have a less fun conversation with Dominic.” She took Magnus’s hand and squeezed it.

“You squeezed back,” she whispered. “I swear, I felt you do it. Do it again.”

Nothing. But she refused to dismiss the feeling that he was somehow more present, the muscles of his face perhaps less slack, the position of his body more solid, as if someone was in charge.

Leaning down, she whispered, “See you soon,” and drove back to Bella Vista.

* * *

Tess found Isabel up on a ladder at the roadside stand, detaching the sign from above the door. The old-world, hand-lettered sign read Bella Vista Fine Produce and according to Isabel, had hung in its place for more than fifty years. She looked adorable in faded overalls that were a couple of sizes too big, a hand-knit sweater and fingerless knitted gloves. Her breath made little clouds in the cold air.

Tess parked across the road by the mailbox. “Hey,” she called.

“Hey, yourself.” Isabel turned on the ladder to greet her.

“Be careful,” Tess said. “Our family has bad luck with ladders.” Hearing the words “our family” come out of her own mouth was surprising. “What are you doing?”

“I didn’t want to leave this behind,” Isabel said, indicating the enamel sign.

“Isabel—”

“I know you think I’ve been in denial about the foreclosure, but that’s not true. I know exactly what’s going to happen, and I know exactly what has to be done. I’ve got to start somewhere.” She lowered the sign to the ground, then climbed down after it.

“Or not,” said Tess. She crossed the road to Isabel and stepped into the abandoned shop. She remembered the day she’d met Dominic here, driven by a downpour. Had she fallen in love with him that day? Had it happened all at once, and she just hadn’t recognized it?

Isabel followed her in. “I used to spend hours in here with my grandmother,” she said. “The shop was her pet project. I wonder if it’s a coincidence, that both our grandmothers kept shops.”

“Dominic said it’s in my blood.”

“Maybe it is. After Bubbie got sick, Ernestina kept it up for a while, but it was never the same.”

Tess set down her big handbag. “I just came from the hospital. Magnus is making progress.”

“Really?” Isabel’s face lit up. “Tell me everything.”

“I had a little scare when I first showed up. There was a whole team all clustered around him. But it’s good news. They’re seeing increased activity.” She explained what the doctor had told her.

“It would be a miracle if he got better. The Christmas miracle we’re all praying for.”

He seemed a long way from truly better, but there was no good reason to take her hope away. Especially now.

“There’s something else,” said Tess. “I went by the hospital because I wanted him to be the first to see this. You’re the second.” She moved to a counter-height table and took out the egg.

Isabel’s breath caught. “Are. You. Kidding. Me.” She shuddered as if a cold wave moved through her. “That’s it? That’s it?”

Tess laughed aloud at the expression on her sister’s face. “Congratulations.”

Isabel inspected every facet of the egg, her eyes soft with wonder. She held and touched it, set it down and regarded it from all angles. “You’re amazing, Tess. My amazing sister. Tell me everything.”

“My mom and I came up with a theory,” she said.

“That’s the first time I’ve heard you call her your mom.”

Tess didn’t want to let Isabel know about the deal she’d made. Not now, anyway. “Open it,” she said to Isabel. “It needs a good cleaning, but it’s just beautiful.”

Isabel studied the gleaming inner surface. “So the angel fits right here.”

“Yes.”

“I’m freaking out. Are you freaking out?” Isabel laughed aloud. “So, now what? What on earth do we do next?”

“You need to be the one to decide.”

“Oh, no. This is a family matter. You are family. We’ll both decide.”

“You have his power of attorney.” Tess watched her sister’s face, soft with sentiment and memories. She thought about her conversation with Miss Winther. It seemed so long ago. If you’d trade memories for money then maybe you haven’t made the right kind of memories.

Isabel set the egg back into the nest of tissue paper. Her movements were brisk and efficient. “There’s really no debate. You and I both know what this egg means to Grandfather.”