SLOW PLAY (7-Stud Club #4) - Christie Ridgway Page 0,5

on their trip down the coast.

They’d stopped in Sawyer Beach, at that time nothing more than a gas station and some houses. There were smalls farms nestled in the hills and the valleys between and Grandpop had used his family money to buy a generous parcel for his small group.

A commune? Harper remembered asking her mom, kind of awed at the idea that her gray-haired grandfather had been a member of the counterculture.

Her mother had explained that after a few years most of the hangers-on had drifted to other places, where you didn’t have to plant and water and pick for your supper. Even then, Grandpop had seen what he could do with the fertile ground. Even then, he’d been a hard worker and he’d learned by mistake and from the other small farmers in the surrounding area.

A young woman had showed up one day, she had a green thumb and an interest in growing herbs. Grandpop had taken her on as temporary help and ultimately married her. They’d had one child, Rebecca, and Rebecca had given birth to one daughter as well—Harper. Eugene and Mary continued to run the farm with their daughter’s help and a handful of others. Seasonal workers were hired a few times a year, but it was still very much a family operation. The microclimate created by the topography of the property made growing the herbs, spinach, lettuces, avocados, and lemons a year-round endeavor.

Organically grown since day one, harvest from Sunnybird Farm now was sold to local restaurants and independent specialty markets.

As she turned off the paved road onto the wide gravel lane that led to the house, Harper found herself holding her breath. Around a turn, the house came into sight and she released it on a long sigh.

It looked the same.

A two-story Craftsman-style home, it had the low-pitched triangular roof that extended past the exterior walls on both the first and second stories, creating a deep porch on the ground level and a balcony on the second. Natural stone faced the foundation work and was used as footings for the exterior columns. The wood siding was painted a muted sage color and the trim around the windows was the same color as the goldenrod plant that thrived in the uncultivated portions of the surrounding hills. A brown-stained picket fence surrounded the house, and after parking in the wide turnout by the standalone garage, she let herself through the gate and crunched along the pea-gravel path to the front door, neat grass and flower beds on either side.

Before she could pull open the screen door, her grandfather exited, his silver hair in a ponytail and a leather cord with an amulet hanging around his neck. He took her up in his sinewy arms, and she released another sigh as she pressed her cheek to the well-washed shirt he wore, which smelled of laundry soap and sunshine.

“It’s been so long, Grandpop,” she said, clinging back, then leaning away to take him in. His tanned face was lined from long years of living under the sun, but his eyes were the same as hers, green and still clear. If he seemed more slightly stooped than before, that was a small thing. He was in his seventies, after all.

“Too long,” he said, slipping her duffel bag off her shoulder.

She started to protest. “I can—”

“Go in and see your mom and Grandmom.” He pushed her gently toward the open front door. “I’m right behind you.”

As always, he had her back. Though not one of her relatives had ever questioned her choices. They’d say they missed her, that they loved her, but they never wondered aloud whether she should leave the country to teach English overseas. Or spend months in Las Vegas pouring drinks for people looking for nirvana in a crazy town in the middle of the desert.

Okay, once Grandpop had called it hell on earth, but it had been too hot to be outdoors—Grandpop lived for outdoors—and the concert she’d enticed him to see, by a band from his youth, had left him dismayed.

“They’re too damn old to be working,” he’d pronounced, even as he still started his day with the dawn.

“Harper?” Her mom’s voice floated through the front door and she hurried in its direction.

Delicious smells beckoned her into the kitchen, where she found her mother slicing herb-laced bread and her grandmother at the stove, stirring a big pot of her famous minestrone soup.

“Oh, boy,” Harper said, breathing deep and putting her arms around Mary Hill,