Something woke Carmen from a dead sleep. What is that noise? Her room was dark. She glanced outside through the curtains. Complete darkness.
Someone was yelling, pounding on the door. She sat up in bed just as Lola rushed inside. “Someone’s at the door.”
“So, answer it!” Carmen snapped, crabby from lack of sleep. She opened the window, leaning out to get a look at the back door. The view was blocked by her father’s upstairs balcony.
Lola was already running down the stairs.
“Make sure you know who it is first!” Carmen yelled, scrambling into a robe.
By the time she got downstairs, Evan was in the kitchen talking to Lola. He glanced at her and continued. “Paolo is bringing the car so you don’t have to drive. I think it’s better if we all go in one car.”
Carmen, still groggy with sleep, tried to make sense of the strange scene. It was twenty after two in the morning. The air felt thick and heavy. It was strangely quiet.
Evan looked at Carmen as he talked, trying to bring her up to speed. “The wind picked up. There’s an advisory for seniors and anyone with respiratory issues to evacuate this part of the lake. The fire’s now on both sides and the Forest Service is worried about smoke inhalation. They’ll notify us if it becomes mandatory but to me it looks like it’s headed that way. The fire jumped the lake south of here. We’re going to go up to Twenty-Five Mile Creek and pass over there.”
“Wake up Papi,” said Lola. “I’ll pack some food.”
“Paolo is coming over with the van now. Don’t worry about food. We need to go.”
Carmen shook her head. “Evan…”
Evan lifted his hands. “Carmen, we don’t have time for this. We’ve got to have a truce. I don’t care about anything but getting everyone out of here as quickly as possible.”
She nodded. She’d intended to ask him if there was time to turn on the irrigation system. She looked outside. She’d dart up to the winery shed and turn everything on. They probably didn’t have time to wet Orchard House again. Hopefully, what they’d done yesterday would be enough. For a split-second, Carmen felt tears choking her throat. Evan watched her carefully, as if gauging how well she was functioning.
She nodded at him, throttling her emotions by breaking down what she needed to do. First, get dressed. That was all she’d let herself think about right now. Putting on clothes. Then she’d wake up her father.
In her room, Carmen quickly put on jeans and tennis shoes. Normally she’d be wearing sandals, but if they were stranded, they might have to walk. She’d driven past enough tiny start-up fires on the side of the road to know that they could crop up anywhere. After she pulled a sweatshirt over her head, she went to the door, saying goodbye to her childhood room, praying it would be there when she returned. On her shelf was a beloved stuffed rabbit from her childhood, worn nearly to pieces. She made a move to bring him with her, then superstitiously put him down. That would be asking for her home to burn down. He’d be fine. She left him sitting on a shelf, next to her collection of Anne of Green Gables books. Everything would be exactly the same when she came back.
Papi wasn’t in his bed, which didn’t alarm her. He’d probably heard the commotion and had gone downstairs. His bed was made, but then, Mami had beaten it into them all—if you leave the bed, you make it. It was the way a civilized person started their day.
He’d be making coffee. Papi couldn’t start a journey or a day without coffee. It would just like him to be calmly measuring Yuban into his trusty Mr. Coffee while Chelan County was on fire. But when Carmen went downstairs, he wasn’t there. There was no coffee in the pot. No reassuring aroma.
The little hairs on the back of her neck stood up. Lola was still upstairs, so she ran up to the winery, turning on all the irrigation spigots before entering the building. She turned on the lights. “Papi? ¿Papi, estás aquí?”
There was no answer. The winery felt frighteningly huge and still. A bat had somehow gotten in and swooped around frantically. Carmen left the doors open for the bat, running back down the hill to the Orchard House as fast as she could. By the time she entered the kitchen, her phone was ringing. It would be Papi, calling to tell her he’d gone to check on something. But when she answered, it was Evan. “I saw you running down the hill. Is everything okay?”
“It’s Papi. I can’t find him anywhere.” She heard the panic in her voice.
Evan’s tone was smooth and reassuring. “I’m sure he’s nearby. Paolo and I are getting into the van right now. Stay there. Don’t worry. We’ll find him.”
Carmen felt her throat squeeze into a tight knot. The only thing that stopped her mind from traveling down dark paths was remembering what Evan had said. Her father would be fine. There would be an easy explanation.
But still.
Where could he be?
It wasn’t like Papi to leave his family.
“You’ve looked in the winery, the fields, the beach, the barn?” Evan asked the assembled group. Juan had invited him into the weathered old barn once. It was a long shot but worth pursuing. Paolo, Lola and Carmen looked at one another.
“We haven’t looked in the barn,” said Carmen. “The only thing he keeps in the barn is that old truck of his.”
“Does it run?” asked Paolo.
Carmen frowned. “I don’t know.”
Lola shrugged. “Maybe? I don’t know either.”
Evan pointed to the van. “You guys load the van and I’ll go check the barn.” Before anyone could respond, Evan was out the door, running.
The barn was an old structure built with the original home, and had long been left to decay. It was halfway down the orchard, on a side of the vineyard rarely used except as storage. Unlike a lot of growers, Juan was pretty good about getting rid of equipment he’d outgrown or didn’t use. The barn was used for seasonal machinery, like his snowplow, and tools that might come in handy. The truck was the sentimental exception. An old Chevy held together by rust and love; Evan saw him tooling around in it a couple times of year. He said his daughters had badgered him about selling it, but he said one day he’d fix it up and then they’d be begging him for rides.
Evan hurried down the driveway as fast as he could, stopping a few times, staring into the wooded copse to look for the barn, slightly hidden in the trees. He remembered Juan’s delight, talking about his old truck, how it brought back memories of family excursion to the mountains for picnics and hiking. It should have been the first place they looked. Juan clearly loved that hunk of metal.
The doors of the barn swung open with surprising ease. Someone took care of the place. After his eyes adjusted, Evan entered the gloom, carefully stepping around some old irrigation piping. No truck. The place where it had been parked stood empty. Evan crouched down. Fresh tracks. Outside, he turned on his phone’s flashlight feature, following the tracks into the orchard. From there, they turned left onto the driveway.
Wherever Juan was, he wasn’t on the vineyard.
Evan marched back up the orchard, dreading telling the sisters that their father was definitely missing.
Lola’s hand was shaking on the countertop. They all noticed it, but nobody said anything. Lola looked down, staring at her hand as if it belonged to someone else.
Carmen was on the phone, talking to the Chelan County sheriff. To their surprise, the emergency operator had patched her through. He told her that with his dementia, her father would go to the top of the list for missing persons. “Either way, a fella his age shouldn’t be running around on his own right now.”
Carmen wanted to correct him. Her papi wasn’t “running around”. And dementia wasn’t the defining thing about her father. She wanted to explain: her father was a responsible man. A loving father. A business owner and maker of fine wines. She wanted the sheriff to see the whole person. Papi wasn’t some crazy old man. There would be a logical explanation for wherever her father had traveled. But then again, did she really know? How much did she really know about his life du
ring the five years she’d been in Seattle? He could have been taking long drives all over the county, visiting people she’d never met. For the past few weeks, he’d only been accounted for during the harvest, working with them.
What if he had a secret life they knew nothing about?
Maybe if she hadn’t been so busy trying to save the winery and fighting with Evan Hollister, she would have noticed that Papi needed more attention. Maybe they could have gone to Seattle to see specialists.
Had she been in denial about her father’s worsening condition? A wave of guilt and anxiety clamped down. She reminded herself to breathe, stop imagining the worst and focus on the sheriff.
At the end of the phone call, the sheriff gave her the option of filing a missing person’s report in Wenatchee or Chelan. Although Wenatchee would have been the safer option, Carmen said she’d come into Chelan. The sheriff advised her to avoid the direct route into town down the side of the lake on the 971, heading north instead to the Twenty-Five Mile pass, avoiding the fires that had jumped the lake. That would be the safer path. “Check the update on the Forest Service app before you leave,” he said.
“The app?” She’d been checking the website.
“You do have the app, don’t you?”
“Yes,” she’d said, even though she didn’t. She’d already lost her father. She didn’t want to sound like a complete idiot.
Carmen hung up, stunned. How had this happened? Stella wrapped an arm around her, squeezing gently, whispering: “Car, I know you’re over-analyzing this. Just stop. Okay?”
Carmen nodded, then explained the choices to Evan, Paolo, Stella and Lola, who had listened to her side of the conversation, glancing at one another with worried expressions.
Evan was already checking the Forest Service app which he, of course, had.
“We have to make a report in person. We can do it Wenatchee or Chelan. He recommends going around the fires by Twenty-Five Mile pass and then looping back if we’re going to Chelan.” She studied their faces. “What do you think?”
Lola spoke first. “I vote for heading directly into town. I can’t see Papi going anywhere other than Chelan. He wouldn’t leave us.”
Carmen nodded. “He wouldn’t.”
“If he went into town on the 971 and his truck broke down, he could be in serious trouble,” said Evan.
Paolo shrugged. “I do whatever you want.”
Evan grabbed his car keys. “Okay. We’ll head into town.”
They filed out of the kitchen. Carmen stopped to lock the door, then decided to leave it. Maybe her father would come home without a key.
Maybe that was a silly thought, but one thing Carmen knew for sure was that Lola was right. No matter what, her father would never leave them.
The last thing Carmen grabbed was the kitchen fire extinguisher. When she climbed into the car gripping it, Evan grinned.
“Don’t make fun of me,” Carmen snapped.
“I’m not,” said Evan, buckling his seat belt. “You’re optimistic. I like it.”
As they rattled down the driveway, facing the thick pocket of smoke trapped over the lake, Carmen thought that they’d all need to be optimistic. Otherwise they’d lose hope.
Right now, optimism was all they had.
Twenty-Four
Prayers
How quickly things can change, Carmen thought. The morning sky was a permanent dusk. Smoke hung low on the lake. The sun burned faintly overhead as they drove into town on the lakeside road. The normally busy road felt desolate, with few other cars. Carmen sat in the front seat next to Evan, watching his hands on the steering wheel. He scanned the side of the road, glancing occasionally at Carmen, who nervously chewed the side of her lip.
It was quiet as they slowly drove along the road, hedged between a row of lakeside houses and a steep shale cliff.
“Won’t he go to the Apple Cup when they open?” said Evan. “Isn’t that his hang out?”
Carmen nodded. “They open at six.”
“All right, we’ll look then,” Evan said. “And you’re sure you searched the entire house?”
Carmen twisted in her seat to look at Lola. “You checked the basement, right?”
“You said you were going to.”
“No, I didn’t. I said I’d look upstairs and asked you to do the lower floors. That included the basement.” The basement was small, mostly filled by a large furnace. An old couch occasionally provided a quiet place for cool afternoon naps in the summer heat. The stairs were narrow and tight; Papi avoided them.
“The basement isn’t the lower floor, it’s the basement.”
Carmen’s voice was tight with exasperation. “I can’t believe you forgot.”
“Me? You can’t blame this one me!”
“I went up to the winery. I looked in every shed. You had loads more time to look around the house.”
“You could have asked me, ‘Hey Lola, did you look in the basement?’ and I would have said, ‘No, great idea Carmen’ but you didn’t, so get off my back.”
Evan had pulled over to the side of the road, trying to interject but the sisters ignored him with their squabbling. Paolo clapped his hands. “Please, enough with this. You both worry too much and you both don’t go to the basement.” He turned to Lola. “What is the basement?”
“A room my sister forgot.” Lola swooped one hand under the other to demonstrate. “Under the house.”
Carmen shook her head. “We both forgot.”
“How about if I drop someone off back at the winery to do a thorough search, and if they find him, call us?” Evan said. They still weren’t far from the winery.
Carmen shook her head. “I think it’s too dangerous to leave someone behind. What if the road becomes impassible?”
Evan glanced at her, nodding. “Good point.” He executed an immediate U-turn in the middle of the road, driving back to the winery.
Carmen felt a momentary shock. Was Evan Hollister actually saying she was right? Part of her wanted to memorialize this moment. Dear Diary, today, while we were running from a wildfire, Evan Hollister said I had a point. Or was it Evan? Is it possible that Evan is now being inhabited by a new and improved entity? Someone reasonable?
She didn’t say anything. There was no fun in needling Evan. Nothing was fun. There was just the big, open, scary question of where her father was and how could they locate him.
“Chelan seems like such a small town until you have to find someone,” said Lola.
Carmen set her jaw. “He’s at home. He went down to the basement to take a nap and forgot to tell us. We’re idiots for not checking.”
“That’s the most likely explanation,” said Lola.
Nobody said another word until they got back to Orchard House.
Juan wasn’t in the basement. Carmen ran downstairs, twisting her ankle in the process. She fell the last two steps, landing on the cool cement floor facing the ratty old couch. Her mother had wanted to get rid of the couch, but Papi had said with a houseful of women, he needed someplace to hide. He hadn’t hid very often, but occasionally, when they were teenagers, he’d emerge refreshed and yawning from the basement.
When she stood up, Carmen couldn’t take much weight on her ankle. She made it halfway up the steep stairs, wincing and sweating in pain.
“What happened?” Evan stood at the top of the stairs. His frown said everything. He’d been worried.
“I twisted my ankle. He’s not here. Obviously.”
Evan hurried down the stairs. “Here, let me get on the same step.”
She moved over. The stairway was so narrow, they were shoulder to shoulder. Evan put his arm around her, lifting from under her armpits. The pain was sharp.
Evan stopped her after one step. “Maybe we should get more people.”
Carmen shook her head, gritting her teeth. “I’m not that heavy.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Afraid to be alone with me?”
“Somewhat
. You have a habit of biting my head off every time I open my mouth.”
“And you have a habit of, ouch, of sabotaging my business.”
“We’re back to this, are we?”
“Ouch! Apparently.”
They’d only made it up five stairs. Evan asked, “Are you okay?”
Carmen’s face was damp with sweat. “Do you think I’m going to give you a different answer?”
“There’s the girl I know.”
Carmen rolled her eyes. “Exactly. I was thinking it was weird, that whole getting-along thing.”
“I was quite enjoying it.”
One more stair. Five from the top.
Carmen inhaled sharply. She hadn’t sprained her ankle since fifth grade, ice skating in Wenatchee. It. Hurt. So. Much. “Yes, but it’s not what we do.”
Evan lifted her.
Three more.
“Maybe we should try something new? You do know that some people actually communicate without sarcasm. It is possible.”
“You don’t say?” she smirked.
“Now that’s…” He grinned. “Oh, I get it. You were being intentionally sarcastic. Okay. Well played, Carmen.”
“I always hated my name.” One more, Carmen thought. One more.
“This is the part where I say Carmen is a great name, but you won’t believe me.”
“It’s the ‘Sarah’ of Mexico. Very common.”
“Evan has about as much flavor as a cheese stick.”
Carmen sighed. They’d reached the top. “I miss cheese sticks.”
“I’ll get you one when this is all over.”
Evan pulled his arm away. Carmen found herself missing the steadying influence. Also, the warmth and closeness. The basement, in a weird way, had made things easier. They had been hiding from reality. As soon as they left Orchard House, there would be the smoke and the terror of Papi out there, on his own.
As she steadied herself on the wall, Evan reached over to help her.
“Thank you.”
Summer at Orchard House: An utterly compelling and heart-warming summer romance (Blue Hills Book 1) Page 22
