Keeping the Peace Read online

  Mia blinked. “I thought you had gone home.”

  “I was waiting to talk to you about something,” he said shyly.

  Mia waited. Roger stared at the floor until she said, “Well, what is it?”

  “My daughter is getting married soon. The man she’s marrying comes from a wealthy family from Boston. They are used to the best of everything.”

  “How does this involve me?”

  He shifted on his feet. “Well, I,” he stammered, “I have been told, that is, my wife wanted me to ask you this…”

  “Well, ask,” Mia replied in her direct fashion.

  “You see, what with the war and all, things are very expensive now. All manner of things are hard to get. I cannot afford the wedding dress my daughter wants, and she does not want any of the ones I can afford. My daughter is in tears, and my wife is beside herself with frustration. My wife says that you are a wonderful seamstress. She says you made the wedding dress for your cousin and that everybody who saw it was impressed. She…she thought that perhaps you could look at the dress my daughter wants and perhaps sew one like it for her. Would you do that, Mia? It would mean so much to me, and I would…I would pay you a fair price. I can get the fabrics and lace you would need.”

  Mia blinked at him. People had complimented her on her sewing before. She had done wedding dresses and other projects for her relatives, but she had never thought it of any importance. It was just something any good housewife was trained to do.

  Roger shifted uncomfortably on his feet again.

  “Your wife does not sew?” she asked.

  “No. No, she doesn’t.”

  Poor man, she thought as she considered his predicament. Sometimes in their quest for the good life, they overlooked where it was actually to be found. “Okay,” she said simply. “I will do it.”

  And so, as Mia was particularly talented at what she considered to be just a household chore, her new business took off. She made and sold wedding dresses, bridesmaids’ dresses, and other fancy formal women’s wear. People came from all over the state, sometimes with designs they wanted copied, sometimes to order a custom design from the beautiful Italian dressmaker. Mia prospered, buying a car and learning to drive. She kept her little farm. Her children were all able to finish high school. However, her children never felt the pull to the land as their father had. They married, took jobs at the marble companies, and built brand new houses in nearby Barre, becoming steadfast members of the comfortable, post-war middle class. Grandchildren came, and Mia loved them all, but there was something different about Joe’s youngest son John. He reminded her of Paulo, and she had a special bond with him. He spent as much time with her on the farm as he could, never seeming to tire of her stories of “the old days.” In him, she saw the legacy she and Paulo had hoped to create. It pleased her that he promised to raise his family someday on the homestead Paulo had bought all those years ago.

  The blinding snow snapped John out of his reverie. He slowed the big vehicle and crept down the hill. He could just make out his in-laws’ house as he passed. His father-in-law, Tom Dearborne, the seventh Thomas Dearborne in a direct line to own Dearborne Farm, was crossing the road to the big dairy barn. He waved as John chugged past, and John waved back. This weather should make the old man happy, John thought. The Dearbornes loved the cold. Sunshine made them nervous and giddy, and giddiness for any reason made them uncomfortable. They were Yankees, after all, and they were nothing if they could not control their emotions. John remembered with a sardonic smile the staid Dearbornes forced into friendliness when he had married their daughter. The Dearbornes could literally trace their lineage back to the Mayflower, and the marriage of their beautiful only daughter to the son of Roman Catholic Italian stone cutters was hard for them to swallow. The fact that John went to Boston College appeased them somewhat, as they had a begrudging respect for the Jesuits, but his career choice was beneath them. He did not join the family dairy business when they offered him a place. Medicine would have been acceptable, or education, or law itself. The Dearbornes respected lawyers and had been known to use them cleverly here and there over the years, but in their eyes, law enforcement was something not quite acceptable.

  Still, although reserved and austere, they remained a close family. They would rather tolerate John Giamo than lose their daughter or the grandchildren, so for the most part, they kept any irritation they felt well under control. John watched in the rearview mirror as his father-in-law disappeared, like a snow-cloaked phantom, into the blizzard. He was inclined to think that if Tom cut himself, he would bleed ice water. The police chief shook his head as he peered through the snow, wondering from whence his sexy, lusty wife came. Perhaps she was a throwback to her great-grandfather, who, according to rumors in both families, might have been warmer than anyone imagined. It had been whispered around town for three generations that old Tom Dearborne was the reason the young and very beautiful widow Mia Giamo had never remarried.

  John’s mind seemed stuck on his wife’s family this morning. Perhaps it was the cold and the snow. In this new world, the Dearbornes were seven generations on the same plot of land. The Giamos were only three. However, the new world was a great equalizer, and though the Dearbornes privately considered themselves to be several rungs up the socio-economic ladder from the Giamo family, the defining parameters of their assumption were blurred by a capitalist society that rewarded hard work and independent thinking. Although the Dearbornes would have vehemently denied it, they still held to a certain caste system that had put them on top, and they were loath to share the spot. For generations, everything from town politics to family dynamics had pretty much gone their way. They were ill-prepared when faced with the fact that their only daughter had fallen in love with a handsome Italian boy from a family only two generations born in America, and Catholic at that. It was frustrating for them to not be in control of their daughter’s life.

  To add to their disgruntlement, they had to share another of their lifelines—their water, the life’s blood of their farm—and guilt didn’t shadow the somewhat perverse pleasure John felt about him and Melanie owning it. It had been the sore tooth the Dearbornes had been forced to bite on since the first Thomas Dearborne had signed the deed in 1790. For, although the Dearbornes could be rigid and elitist, they were nonetheless honest, and each generation following on the other knew the secret to the spring would eventually come out.

  The Dearbornes

  The Dearborne farm water had flowed copiously from a spring on the hillside a quarter of a mile from the farm buildings. It was not until the property lines were re-surveyed when the stone house was built that the Dearbornes discovered their spring lay nearly five hundred feet inside their neighbor’s land. Years passed, and each generation of Dearbornes inherited the duty of trying to acquire the hundred acres that held their secret and plentiful water supply. Acquiring the land would absolve them of the sin of stolen water for every previous generation. They tried everything, legal and sometimes barely so. Once, the spring was hidden with a carefully placed “blowdown.” Another time, the survey team was spied upon and the pins quietly moved after dark. When their neighbor finally died in 1939 without issue and the will was contested, the Dearbornes waited, money in hand and confident, for the lawyers to approach them. Rumors began to circulate that the place was being sold for a song to a newly landed Italian stone cutter, but the Dearbornes scoffed. No Italian stone cutter would ever want a place so far out of town. Most of them lived in Barre, but there were a few Italian families in Clark’s Corner. The Dearbornes didn’t know any of them. They worked in the local quarry owned by the Barre stone company. They lived down by the railroad tracks and seemed to be related to each other. The Dearbornes’ cold dismissal of the more common aspects of the world around them proved to be fatal for their plans.

  The truth of the matter was that the foreman of the local quarry knew the banker who held the mortgage on the contested property. The foreman knew that one of his most ta
lented workers, Paulo Giamo, was looking for land. The foreman wanted Paulo to stay with the company, preferably in his local quarry in Clark’s Corner. He was afraid that Paulo would be offered a better position in the headstone factory in Barre and leave his employ. So he approached the banker, the lawyers, and Paulo and brought them together one day in the bank. Paulo put his money—cash—down on the big desk, signed the proper papers, and walked out onto the street a landowner. When the Dearbornes learned about the sale, they were furious. They ranted and raved. They threatened. They cajoled. They almost begged. They tried to litigate, but Paulo Giamo had made an impression on the bank president, who, like many other people, secretly felt that it wouldn’t hurt the Dearbornes to be taken down a peg or two. The litigation was dropped.

  During his lifetime, Paulo Giamo had cause to speak to the Dearbornes perhaps once or twice, but after his death, his widow came calling one Sunday afternoon asking to speak to Tom. Instantly curious, Mrs. Dearborne invited Mia Giamo into the big drafty kitchen and called her husband in from the woodshed, where he was chopping kindling. Mia Giamo sat at the kitchen table, hands folded, facing the Dearbornes. She was still very young, only thirty, and her olive skin was unlined and touched with a rosy glow. She was undeniably beautiful. With her dark hair curling out from under her bright kerchief, she would have been an exotic enough figure to the tall, pale Dearbornes, but it was the small gold hoops in her pierced ears and the gold bracelets on her wrist that made her so unspeakably foreign and somewhat frightening to them. They were uncomfortable in her presence, but they were well-mannered, after all, and listened to what she had to say.

  “You may have heard that my husband was killed in an accident in the quarry,” Mia Maronetti Giamo said.

  “Yes, I heard that. I am sorry for you,” Tom replied. He had never seen her up close.

  Mrs. Dearborne made a noise. Mia Giamo thought she might say something, but when she didn’t, Mia continued. “Yes, well. In settling his estate, it has been necessary to account for certain taxes paid on certain acreage, and a survey of the property was ordered.” If Mia noticed the flicker of eye contact between the man and his wife, she ignored it and went on. “The survey has been completed.” She looked up at both of them then. “Here it is,” she said. “There is a spring on my property, from which a pipe runs to your property. Do you know this?” She noticed Tom’s jaw muscle flex. She waited.

  “Our water does come from a spring on the hillside that abuts your property,” he said.

  “It turns out that the spring is actually on my property, quite a ways in, actually,” said Mia with a little smile. No one spoke for a few moments. Then she said, “I have a proposal. I am a poor widow. I have three children. I am always in need of money.”

  The Dearbornes’ hearts leaped as one. At last, they thought.

  “I propose,” said Mia carefully, “I propose a lease. I lease you the water rights, a lifetime lease, renewable the next time the deed changes hands.”

  It was not what the Dearbornes had been expecting to hear. Tom leaned forward, smiling in his most friendly way, but as he was not accustomed to smiling much, it appeared as more of a grimace.

  “I have a proposal,” he said. “A counter proposal. I will buy the farm from you. Tomorrow. Name your price. I will pay cash. That will give you plenty of money, and your children will be safe.”

  They were shocked when she laughed. She laughed suddenly and out loud, and her laughter was honest and beautiful. Mia’s full lips parted, and the sound cut through that somber household so dramatically that the beagle in the backyard bayed. The Dearbornes had never heard such a magical sound, although they were incapable of labeling it as such. Tom was moved by unfamiliar feelings.

  “No, no, you misunderstand me,” she said. Her gold bracelets tinkled as she raised her arms playfully. “Let me explain. My farm is not for sale. If I sell my farm, I could only buy some house in Barre or in Clark’s Corner. I would spend my money on food, on fuel. I have a cow here for milk. I have wood for my fires. I have gardens and chickens. I have planted grapes and apples. I have security for my children. They will not go hungry. I would rather have a little money and a lot of land. No, the land is not for sale, but the lease…the lease is available to you. Pay the lease. I will have some money, and you will have your water.” She leaned forward, smiling.

  Tom would not give up so easily. He cleared his throat. “Mrs. Giamo, I will buy just the acre of land that surrounds the spring, the water supply. Surely we can come to a price for an acre of land that is agreeable to us both.”

  Mia blinked. She sighed, as if explaining something to a dull child. “Thank you for your offer, Mr. Dearborne. Normally, I might not be opposed to selling one acre of my land. However, the acre of which you speak has on it a spring. A spring that has fed this farm for over one hundred years. That’s a lot of water, and that makes that particular acre very valuable. Now, I have another spring, near my house. It gives me plenty of water, too, but we never know about these things. Certainly I know that unplanned things can happen at any moment. A husband can slip. A rock could slip, too. The earth could tremble. And there would be no more water for Mia and her children. That is why I must keep both springs. Just in case. However, since these events of which I speak may not ever come to pass, I agree to lease you the water rights. As I said before, it will give me a little cash and secure the water supply for you.”

  Mia left that day with cash and a signed agreement for the lease of the water rights from her spring to the Dearborne Farm. The Dearbornes sat, unsettled, at their kitchen table long after she had left, each nursing their personal interpretation of what had just happened. Tom in particular felt warm around his ears. They had achieved their goal, but not in the way they had hoped. They had what they needed, but not what they wanted. The cool Yankee ingenuity that had made them wealthy and held them steady against countless Vermont winters had melted before the warm beauty of the Italian widow with the magical laugh.

  Dark shapes in the middle of the road interrupted John’s pleasant daydreams. He slowed to a stop. He would have to wait. About thirty wild turkeys, spectacular in their bronze plumage, were crossing the road, single file, probably headed for shelter in the hemlock stand at the southeast corner of Dearborne’s lower woodlot. They were a common sight, but John never tired of watching them. As he waited for the big birds to cross, he glanced at his watch. It was nearly seven o’clock, and the snow seemed to be swirling faster and more densely than ever.

  Chapter Three

  IN THE STONE HOUSE, Melanie continued to stare out the window after she had watched the billowing snow swallow the tail lights of her husband’s car. She let the storm mesmerize her. Recently, she had been on such a treadmill, her days running into one another. She juggled her household, her children, and her business automatically, changing hats as needed almost unconsciously. Sometimes she felt her life was a dizzying carousel, or a Ferris wheel, spinning round and round in concentric circles reaching such a crescendo lately that she felt if it stopped and she looked up, she wouldn’t know where, or even who, she was. So she appreciated the blizzard that now raged outside. It would ground her. It would give her a chance to look up. The storm would hold the rest of the world at bay. Suddenly, she wished that John had been stranded with her. She wished she had gone back upstairs with him this morning. He hadn’t shown much interest lately, and she had let an opportunity slip away.

  She heard the creaking of the stairs. Somebody was awake. Melanie turned away from the window to see her daughter Mia shuffle sleepily into the room, still dressed in the T-shirt and yoga pants she’d slept in.

  “Good morning, baby,” said Melanie as the girl plopped down on the couch and pulled a puffy blanket over her legs. “What are you doing up so early?”

  Mia yawned audibly. “Emmie texted me. She wants to get together today. She wants to come up here. It would be a perfect day to work on our project. You know, I told you about it. We have to do a comprehensive
talk on politics, the media, and the consumer. I said I’d go pick her up.”

  Melanie handed her daughter a cup of coffee. “Honestly, Mia! Sometimes your lack of judgment just baffles me! You are absolutely not going anywhere in this weather. Just look at it outside!”

  “Mom! Come on! Debbie won’t drive anywhere in weather like this, and she won’t let Emmie take the car. I’m a good driver. The Jeep has four-wheel drive. What am I supposed to do all day?”

  “Work on your project over the phone or the computer. I’m telling you once and for all, you are not driving anywhere.”

  The girl didn’t reply. Melanie rolled her eyes to the ceiling, glad that the issue had been put to rest so quickly.

  Mia seemed to change the subject as she scrolled through the television channels, landing on the local weather report. “Mom, do you think this will mess up Winter Carnival? Emmie and I are still trying to get tickets to the Ragged Rainbow concert Saturday night. I really, really want to go.”

  “I should think they would have the roads cleaned up by then,” Melanie said as she put the dirty breakfast dishes into the dishwasher. “These storms only last two days at the most. It’s just not wise to drive during the height of it.”

  “I told Emmie I would pick her up at nine thirty.”

  “Mia, did you not hear me? Call her back and tell her no, you can’t.”

  “Mom! Please! Come on. Why don’t you call Dad and ask him how the roads are?”

  “Your father has a whole town to worry about. I’m not going to bother him about two bored teenagers.”

  “You don’t have to be nasty about it.”

  “I’m not being nasty. I don’t tell you or your brothers no because I want to be nasty. I tell you no for your own safety!” Melanie ran her fingers through her hair in exasperation. She hoped the whole day would not be one of carping back and forth with her daughter.