Harvest Moon - By Robyn Carr Page 0,23
fruits and vegetables for the next season’s crop, and she’d started building retaining walls to use like steppes to level the slope of the hill to maximize her planting space in the spring.
The fall harvest of pumpkins, melons and squash was amazing—pumpkins that could indeed make Cinderella’s carriage.
“I’m saving the really big ones from Kelly so the town kids have a crack at them. She has a pumpkin soup she can’t wait to get to and so I’m pushing the smaller ones at her. And these huge zucchini and winter squash—it’s more experimental than anything. Come on, let’s go see what Colin’s painting. This morning he was working on a herd of elephants. He’s just back from shooting the Serengeti—lots of beautiful big game.”
The sunroom on the second floor of the house stretched the length of the building across the roof of the back porch. That was where Colin liked to paint because the light was good. The paintings—ranging from wilderness art to big African game—were astonishing. Also in that sunroom were a sectional, entertainment center and large flat-screen TV—their living room, or a reasonable facsimile.
Lief was fascinated by the creativity in this house. Jillian stretched her imagination in the garden, Colin painted incredible animals from all over the globe, and Kelly was cooking. Today it was pies, but tomorrow it could be dishes that might only be found in a five-star restaurant in San Francisco.
“Come on, Lief,” Colin said. “Let’s get a beer and sit on the back porch. Jilly has to shower off the garden and Kelly is working on making me the shape of Santa Claus. We’re on our own.”
“I feel like I should help somehow,” Lief said. “I dropped by unexpectedly and now I’m even going to be fed and entertained. Maybe I could hose off the gardening equipment or wash the pots.”
Colin just laughed at him. “What I’ve learned is—these girls are going to do exactly what suits them and the best thing for you to do is stay out of the way.” When they got to the kitchen, Colin opened the refrigerator and surveyed the contents. “We have ‘near beer’ and high-test. What’s your pleasure?”
“The real deal, by all means,” Lief said. “How did you stumble into this nirvana?”
Sitting on the back porch in perfect October weather, Lief heard about how Colin came to Virgin River after being retired from the army, a place to recover after a helicopter crash while Jillian had escaped a corporate job in Silicon Valley. They found each other by accident, but in a town of roughly six hundred, they were bound to meet. It was the falling-in-love part that was extraordinary. “I’m not a young guy,” Colin said. “I don’t think Jilly would be offended to hear me say I’ve met a few women—quite a few. I lived a transient, military life and wasn’t ever tempted to settle down. But Jilly? She makes me want to grow my roots deep.”
“Sounds serious,” Lief observed.
“Oh, I’m serious about Jilly. But we’re winging it for right now—just one day at a time. What about you? How did you end up in a place like this?”
He retold the story—wife died, daughter having a hard time of it, needing a smaller, friendlier town than L.A., trying to get past the rough patch of losing a wife and mother, fresh start. The question about what he’d done in L.A. didn’t come until later, when they were all sitting down to dinner together. “I’m a writer,” he said.
“As in newspaper?” Kelly asked.
Right then he suspected he was completely safe from any kind of notoriety. “No, as in script writer.”
“Seriously?” Jillian asked. “Like TV or something?”
“Something like that. Movies, actually,” he said.
“How interesting,” Kelly said. “I haven’t seen a movie in years. Well, I sometimes see them after the Academy Awards, when they finally make the cable networks. I’ve been held hostage in kitchens since I was eighteen.”
“And I was taken prisoner by a software manufacturer,” Jill said.
“I’ve been either in Afghanistan or the hospital. You don’t write war movies, do you? I only go for war movies.”
Lief smiled. “Nah. Mostly just family stuff. Kind of ‘coming of age’ stuff.” He was completely safe. Even if they’d heard of the films, they would never have heard of him, which was absolutely perfect. “This is the best lamb I’ve ever tasted. And these potatoes—fantastic. I grew up on a potato farm in Idaho and I’ve never experienced anything like this.”
“Thanks,” she said. “I was missing one or