one of my favorite I Love Lucy episodes, but I thought they had machinery for squeezing the juice out of the grapes these days,” he said to Mia.
“The stomping is just matrimonial,” Mia replied.
Gina hastened to correct her. “Ceremonial, Mia. Wrong word.”
“Ceremonial, then. Ooh, that’s a good one to tell Frankie.” Mia prided herself in collecting words to impress her eleven-year-old cousin. “Anyway, at our family’s winery we have a grape-stomping contest. They don’t use any of the stomped juice to make wine, though, because we stomp barefoot and that wouldn’t be sanitary. They have crushers to get the juice out of the grapes for the wine that we make, and after that there’s a whole lot of things they do to the grapes to make them into wine. My dad’s the winemaker, so that’s how I know all this. It’s cool. Would you like to come to crush with us?” She gazed disingenuously up at Josh.
“I—” Josh began, but Gina had heard enough.
“He would not like,” she said pointedly. “He has other things to do, I’m sure.” To Josh, she added, “Did Tahoma come with you?”
“Tahoma?” he replied, wrinkling his forehead. “Why would she?”
“I thought you were in love with her. Why else would you toss me aside like yesterday’s old salami?” Gina walked to the far end of the counter.
“Maybe because I really cared about you,” Josh said with a determined air.
Gina indulged in a ladylike snort. “How could I not have known? Who would have thought?”
“Listen, Gina, I’d like a chance to talk it over.”
Gina treated this statement with the stony silence it deserved.
Josh turned to Mia. “Crush sounds like so much fun that I’d like to go.”
“Oh, it is.” Mia’s eyes sparkled up at him. She ducked under the counter and bobbed back up with the Harry Potter book, careful to mark her place with the ticktacktoe paper. “You can explain everything to Aunt Gina when we’re at crush. You can’t miss it. It’s bad luck if someone doesn’t go.”
Gina set her straight. “That only applies to family members, Mia. It doesn’t apply to people you’ve invited for no reason at all.”
“But, Aunt Gina, I invited Josh because he likes I Love Lucy,” Mia said, frowning. “My mom says that we can invite anyone to crush. She says it’s hospital.”
“I think you mean hospitable, Mia. It means making people welcome. And we don’t have to show that kind of courtesy to Mr. Corbett.”
“But, Gina, we’re old friends,” said Josh. “Doesn’t that count for something?” He beamed the full wattage of his smile on Gina, who immediately steeled herself against his charm.
“We were friends,” Gina corrected him. Turning her back on Josh, she said, “Mia, I have to run upstairs and get my jacket.” The October day was cool, and the night might become chilly.
“Please hurry,” Mia said. “We don’t want to be late.”
With one last scalding look over her shoulder at Josh, Gina ran up the stairs of the rustic stone cottage that served as both shop and living quarters. When she returned, Mia was pulling on her own sweater, a cable knit in bright purple.
“Now we can leave,” Gina said.
“When you have a customer?” Josh asked plaintively.
“That’s not what I would call you.” For emphasis, she went to the door and flipped the Open sign so that it read Closed.
“I was going to buy—” he cast his gaze around wildly “—some sachets for my landlady.”
“At this moment, nothing in here is for sale. We officially closed at noon. Are you ready to go, Mia?”
“Yes, and I can’t wait to get there. Josh, you can ride in the front seat with Aunt Gina. We have to pick up Frankie ’cause his dad’s helping to cook the barbecue.”
“Oh, I forgot about Frankie,” Gina said. Frankie was at his accordion lesson about a half mile away. She had no idea what to do about Josh short of a knock-down, drag-out argument, which didn’t seem fair to Mia.
Shooting a go-eat-roadkill look in Josh’s direction, Gina grabbed her keys and ushered Mia out of the shop in front of her, with Josh following along behind. She had probably no more than a minute to think of some tactic that would send Josh on his way. So far, nothing had occurred to her. Nothing legal, anyway. Murder was not an option, and neither was assault. She could only hope that he would take the hint and back off.
Her red-and-white 1966 Ford Galaxie convertible was parked with its top down in its customary spot under the olive tree, and Mia climbed into the back seat.
“We could ride in my car,” Josh said.
“There is no ‘we’ as far as you’re concerned,” Gina retorted. She started the car.
“I invited Josh,” Mia piped in her clarion voice. “It would be rude to tell him he can’t go.”
Mia was into defining the differences between rude and polite these days, mostly because her parents emphasized good manners at their house. Gina, knowing this, wavered under the power of Mia’s righteous and expectant gaze.
“I invited him,” Mia repeated. Her voice was beginning to take on the aggrieved tone that preceded a bunch of difficult questions.
Gina exhaled and rolled her eyes. “Get in,” she said to Josh, who beamed.
He opened the door and slid in beside her with the air of someone who expected to be included all along. “Nice car,” he said.
She edged a glance toward the BMW parked near the door of the shop. “So is yours,” she pointed out as she backed out and turned.
“It’s rented,” he said. “I flew in a couple of days ago and had to have wheels.”
So he’d been here for a while and was only now getting around to saying hello? She could have taken offense at the delay if she cared anything about him. Which she most emphatically did not.
“Aunt Gina loves this car,” Mia said, squeezing her head through the gap between the front seats and sending a whiff of Juicy Fruit their way. She chomped on the gum enthusiastically.
“Mia, dear, would you mind leaning back?” Gina said, trying not to sound as annoyed with her niece as she felt.
“It is a fine car,” Josh said, taking in the restored upholstery, the gleaming knobs on the radio.
“My father bought it used when I was a kid,” she said. She didn’t add that she’d fallen in love with the Galaxie’s style and elegance from the first moment that her father wheeled it into their driveway. “He always meant to restore it and give it to me, and after he died, I discovered that he’d put money aside for years for the restoration. My cousin Rocco volunteered to do the work.” For a moment she
