The Spia Family Presses On - By Mary Leo Page 0,83

catchnet. The pole ran off an air compressor and shook the limbs and the olives fell off. She could clear a tree in a quarter of the time it took the rest of us to pick, but Federico didn’t like the mechanical rake. He said it damaged the fruit and the tree, but my mom won’t be intimidated. Her harvest went into yellow bins and was pressed first along with olives that he’d purchase from other groves who harvested in the same manner. That way there was no time for the possibility of mold or rot to attack the olives. Mom had learned this technique that Federico despised while she was in the Basilicata region of Italy with my dad on our one and only trip as a family.

When I arrived in my apartment, there was a note on my front door from Lisa that she had gone home and would meet me at the ball that night. Her mom had stopped by to pick her up. Lisa probably felt a lot safer with her mom, and who wouldn’t? The woman was a tiger when it came to her cub.

I could only imagine how that went down. Her mom must have been in a complete meltdown when she saw the sling. I was glad I had slept through it.

As an afterthought on her note, she wrote, oh, by the way, Dickey’s finger is missing from the fridge. And might I suggest that you lock your door from now on. From the looks of things, the idiot-killer stopped by to search for the ring. Good thing we weren’t home when he/she came calling.

She signed it with a smiley face.

I opened my door to find my apartment in total chaos. The mattress was off the bed, the sheets had been ripped off, the closets were open and all my clothes and shoes were scattered on the floor, all the drawers in the kitchen had been emptied out, my fridge was open and the contents dumped, and what was the worst of all was that my mom’s espresso machine was in pieces on the table.

She would never forgive me or the dismantler.

Before I allowed myself to react, I immediately walked over, locked my door, not that it made a difference now, and phoned Lisa, only to get her voicemail. I didn’t leave a message. She didn’t like messages and rarely listened to them. My number on her missed calls list was all that was needed.

Then I sat right down on the floor and wailed, sounding very much like Zia Yolanda.

Two hours later, after I cleaned up as best I could—I was determined not to let the intruder get to me—I was out in the orchard, clad in jeans, a long sleeved sweater, a black hoodie, and hiking boots—the only shoes that weren’t touched—ready to do my share with the harvest.

The sacred ring was hanging from a silver chain around my neck, safely tucked under my clothing.

Okay, I admit this was strange behavior considering my apartment had just been trashed, but my self preservation was at risk of crumbling if I allowed myself to wallow in self pity, so off I went to pick olives and show the killer my True Grit, thank you very much, John Wayne.

“Start over on that row of trees,” Federico ordered when he saw me drive up in my pickup. I followed his directions, parking behind his brown Nissan pickup, along a row of countless bright red olive bins that lined the dirt road. I killed the engine and jumped out, totally psyched to pick as many olives as possible. It took a ton of milled olives to produce fifty gallons of oil. That was a lot of olives and after all, this was what Spia’s Olive Press was all about.

In the past few years we’ve had bumper crops with no frostbite or bug infestations, thanks to Federico. He pampered the trees and the crop as if they were his own children.

It had already been a wearisome day, to say the least, and I could still see those nasty vultures circling overhead. I would have laughed if I didn’t think the whole thing was ludicrous. After all, it was barely ten in the morning, plenty of time for my day to get even worse. But I refused to dwell on what else could possibly happen.

I would give my complete focus to the olives, joining Maryann and Uncle Benny as they moved from one tree to the next. I would