Page 28 of The Wandering Season

Stephanie stepped into the living room of the farmhouse, scanning the space with an assessing eye. “Okay, this isn’t half bad, Ave. I’ll grant you that. Aside from being out in the boonies, its only deficit is the lack of room service.”

Stephanie was usually The Ritz-Carlton/Four Seasons/The Plaza Hotel sort of traveler, but the recently renovated farmhouse was undeniably gorgeous. The furniture was modern and minimalist without being too spartan, and the floor-to-ceiling windows let in expansive views of rambling farmland and vineyards. It had clearly once been a country home for a wealthy family, meticulously maintained over the generations.

“Isn’t that why I’m here?”

I chided. “I’ll cook for us. Real Italian food.”

Stephanie shot me a questioning glance. “Seriously, Vero. Do you really want to cook on vacation?”

“Sure. I mean, we can definitely find restaurants and takeout too. But I don’t mind at all.”

I understood why Stephanie was dubious about my offer. She’d come to the conclusion that I considered it a chore, akin to laundry and scrubbing toilets. And to be fair? A lot of people felt the same. I just wasn’t one of them. “Why don’t we go classic? I can make pizza. From scratch. Maybe tiramisu to go with?”

“That sounds labor intensive,”

Avery said, clearly concerned about getting roped into KP.

I waved my hand. “I’ll manage it all. Get yourselves settled and I’ll find a grocery.”

Avery insisted I get my choice of bedroom, as there were four to choose from. I selected one on the second floor that was somewhat smaller than the others but with an oversize bed and expansive views of the vineyard off in the distance. Avery chose the sprawling primary bedroom on the main level and Stephanie the one next to mine. The fourth would be reserved as office space if either of them had to take a Zoom meeting for work that couldn’t be put off for a week.

The farmhouse was located almost equidistant between two small towns: Piozzano and Rezzanello, and a quick search on my phone directed me to an open grocery only seven minutes away, and thankfully Avery had put my name on the rental car as well so I didn’t have to haul the jet-lagged pair of them to the market. I left them with promises to purchase high-quality wine and chocolate, since calories were no longer being counted, and I only fumbled for a few moments getting the hang of the rental car, which was mercifully not a stick shift.

The market I found was a small one. It made even a modest grocery store in the US look enormous, but it smelled like food instead of the industrial-cleaning-agent smell of an American chain store. The mélange of fruits, vegetables, meat, and fresh bread wafted to my nose as soon as I entered the shop, and I let it soak in for just a moment before I began to shop in earnest. Apart from its diminutive size, the grocery store held fewer processed foods than its American counterpart. Naturally, there were boxed pasta and cookies, but very few of the neon-colored kid-centric foods that contained more chemicals than nutrition. I loved the idea of being a parent here and not having to worry that the “Mommy, may I have—?”

item would be laced with Red No. 40 and preservatives that were barely a molecule away from antifreeze. And unlike the natural grocery stores in the US, the total bill wouldn’t equal a month’s pay.

I got the basics I’d need for the dough, the promised top-shelf wine and makings for tiramisu, as well as coffee and some staples for breakfast. I decided to make three pizzas: a vegetarian option with artichoke hearts and a resplendently green spinach, a meat option with artisanal sausage and mushrooms, and a classic Margherita with tomato sauce, a generous blanket of mozzarella cheese, and leaves of fresh basil. We could mix and match as we liked, and leftovers would reheat beautifully.

As a concession to vacation, I found a respectable-enough jarred sauce rather than taking the time to whip up a marinara from scratch. To do it right would take all day, and if I rushed it for dinner that night, the results would be on par with the store-bought sauce at best. The dough would take time enough, so I tossed the makings for a modest charcuterie board in the cart as well. And as I reached the checkout, I felt revivified. Most of my Coloradan counterparts went into the mountains to hike, bike, or ski to recharge. Apparently being in a decent grocery store was my way of getting back to nature.

Advisable or not, Avery and Stephanie decided to indulge in a nap to assuage their jet lag, so I set about making the pizza dough and leaving it to rise in the warming drawer below the oven that looked so new I checked to make sure the protective film wasn’t still affixed to the front. The kitchen had every modern convenience and was laid out with the sort of efficiency that came from a contractor who had designed a thousand kitchens and had settled on the design that yielded the fewest complaints. It was a pleasant enough place to cook. It was less cramped than the cottage in Beynac and had even a few more bells and whistles than Niall’s commercial kitchen at Blackthorn, but it was less welcoming somehow.

Both of the previous kitchens had been renovated multiple times in the course of their existence, but this one felt like the house had somehow not cared for the changes. It missed the original cast-iron stove and massive sink that had washed everything from dishes to vegetables to newborn babies. It missed the massive scarred wooden worktable where thousands of loaves of bread had been expertly kneaded. It missed having a family that gathered in this space every night to share a meal and family conversation. Such a thought was obviously daft—a house missing the love and continuity of a family—but I seemed prone to those lately.

I cleared my head and put together the layers of tiramisu—ladyfinger cookies dipped in cold espresso and rum, mascarpone cheese blended with whipped cream and sugar, and a top layer of grated chocolate—so it could chill long enough to solidify before dinner. Then I arranged meat, cheese, and crackers on a cutting board and focused my thoughts on the here and now. I made no special effort to keep down the noise, knowing that Avery and Stephanie’s internal clocks would be royally screwed up if they were allowed to sleep much longer. But I wasn’t about to face their wrath by waking them up directly. Once the charcuterie was in place, I poured the wine into three glasses. Apparently the faint sound of the cork was enough to rouse them from their slumber, and they each gratefully accepted a glass with the same veneration as their morning coffee.

Stephanie sniffed before taking a sip. “Not bad, Stratton. Good to see you’re not losing your touch on vacation.”

I assumed an imperious expression that I hoped was comical. “We’re in the heart of Italian wine country and I’ve just come from Bordeaux. I’d have to actively beat my touch off with a stick to lose it here.”

Avery, true to form, had taken a deep draught from her glass without paying any mind to the bouquet or observing any of the wine-related niceties. “More likely she’s met every vintner between here and the Atlantic Ocean and has a whole suitcase full of business cards to lug back home.”

I thought of the tidy stack I’d acquired in the Beynac area but didn’t concede the point. If any one of those contacts helped bolster The Kitchen Muse, it’d be well worth hauling them home.

“She’d have done the same in Ireland too if they made wine there. Wait, they do, don’t they?”

Stephanie eyed me with short-of-wary suspicion.

I laughed. “Technically, yes, I believe there are a few commercial vineyards in Ireland, and the wine’s not half bad. But the cider? Life altering.”

“You’re supposed to be on vacation, Vero,”

Avery scolded. “I hope you haven’t spent the whole time working.”

Stephanie spoke up on my behalf as she polished off a cracker and some particularly nice sheep cheese. “She’d relax less if she wasn’t low-key working, Ave. I know this one, and forcing her to shut all the open browser tabs in her brain would just cause her to blue screen.”

Avery gave Stephanie an intense stare. “I had no idea you were such a nerd. Well done.”

She turned back to me. “To follow that”—she made a dramatic gesture Stephanie-ward—“um . . . metaphor, we hoped you’d come here for a reboot.”

“And so I have. It’s been great and I can’t thank you enough for all of this.”

I went around to the other side of the kitchen island where she and Stephanie sat and gave her a one-armed side hug. “I thought you were crazy at first, planning this spur-of-the-moment offseason trip, but everything has been sort of . . . perfect, really.”

Avery sat straighter in her barstool. “Of course it has. Project management is my thing. Fashion isn’t just about pretty fabrics and trips to Fashion Week. Logistics, baby.”

Stephanie raised a glass to her, and I followed suit. “To logistics,”

Stephanie proclaimed.

“To girls’ week,”

Avery echoed.

We had a sip of our Chianti, and I turned my attention to getting the pizzas formed and ready to bake while we talked.

After a while Avery looked a bit distant and almost squirming in her seat, which was not typical for someone who, if not perfectly comfortable in her own skin, was pretty dang confident in it most of the time. I gave her a hard look after I placed one of the pizzas in the oven. “Spill it, twerp. Something’s bothering you.”

She rolled her eyes. “Says you.”

“I’ve known you since the day you were born, and I can smell your BS from a mile away. Dish or I’ll text Mom that you’re being weird.”

Avery huffed and took another sip from her wineglass. “I just hate that we’re not related, you know, biologically.”

I went over and pulled her into my arms. She didn’t break down into sobs, but there were a few muffled gulps against my shoulder. I pressed my lips to the top of her head. “I was a jerk not to ask how you felt about this, but if it’s any consolation, I didn’t ask because it didn’t even occur to me that it would change anything between us.”

She lifted her head off my shoulder and wiped a few errant tears. “Thanks, sis. I mean, I know this is happening to you more than anyone, but it really is happening to the whole family too.”

Stephanie leaned over and squeezed Avery’s shoulder in solidarity.

“It is,”

I acknowledged. “And I’m sure it’s a lot for all of us to process, even if Mom and Dad have known for almost twenty-seven years.”

“Are you mad at them?”

Avery asked.

I glanced away, searching for the right words. “I wish they’d been the ones to tell me years ago. I know there were NDAs and they just sort of wanted to pretend the adoption part didn’t matter. That we were a family like any other, but the truth is . . . we aren’t. And that’s fine. Everything I am I owe to Mom and Dad, and I’ll always be grateful. I just wish they’d trusted me—us—with the truth.”

“That’s fair,”

Avery said. “And for what it’s worth, they feel terrible about it.”

I sighed. “They don’t need to.”

Avery shifted uncomfortably some more, and I gave her my infamous side-eye. You weren’t finished so fess up, little sister.

“So you’ve been busy traveling. I know you’ve been dealing with a lot . . . so I’ve been keeping tabs on your DNA site for you while you’ve been away.”

I ran my finger along the rim of my wineglass. “That’s nice, but did something change? Did they find some Estonian ancestry somewhere in the strands or something? And by the way, I am not going to Estonia in January, so don’t even think about it. Denmark will be bad enough.”

“They found cousins,”

she blurted. “The company’s new, so it takes a while for all the data to come in. You have mostly third and even further removed cousins, but they seem legit from some very modest cyberstalking. I didn’t think you’d mind a little sleuthing on such distant family members.”

I took the barstool between Avery and Stephanie but slid my wineglass a few inches farther away from me rather than drinking from it. I didn’t trust my hands not to shake.

“Wow,”

I managed to finally mutter. Stephanie placed a hand on my back and rubbed gently.

Avery rubbed her eyes, looking more than just travel weary. “You don’t have to meet them or anything. But I wanted you to know. FamilyRoots finally released their app, and you can keep tabs on it all yourself now.”

“Good to know.”

I took a few breaths, digesting that there were, existing somewhere in the world, people who shared some actual DNA with me, even if it was just 1 to 5 percent. It was a connection. “I mean, seeking out distant relatives is kinda weird, but I wouldn’t mind seeing their names. Maybe knowing where they settled . . . It could be interesting.”

Avery laced her fingers, her knuckles growing white. “They’re bound to find more, Vero. Maybe closer ones. Just promise me you won’t drop us for them?”

“Of course not, you turd.”

I wrapped an arm around her and pressed my lips to her temple.

I was doing my job. Being the big sister and comforting Avery in her time of need. But inside? My head was spinning. There was a very real possibility that I had half brothers and sisters out there. Who knew, maybe full siblings? I had no idea why my birth mother had made the decision she had. I didn’t know if my birth father had been involved in that or if he even knew I existed.

Did I want to know them? Aside from medical history—which the DNA test had been helpful with—there wasn’t a practical reason for it. It felt like opening up a tremendous can of worms . . . and there would be no cramming them back inside once the lid was off.

But I couldn’t think of that right now. It was too big, too much. I downed the last of my wine and stood. “I know exactly what this situation needs, ladies. Pizza. Let’s eat.”