Page 47 of Cursed

Chapter Seventeen

Edeena leaned close to the window, trying to see beyond the next curve in the road. “You’re sure this is the right direction?” she asked in Garronois.

“Yes, ma’am,” the driver said, the soul of patience. “We should be there presently.

She sat back with a frown, her mood no better though Vince was right beside her, the way he’d been at her side everywhere since they’d arrived in Garronia. But today, there was something different about him, something solemn and formal, and it added to the misery she sensed was stacking up on all sides.

They drove through a small knot of farm houses, and it was Vince’s turn to sit forward. “What’s that about?” he asked frowning as a group of men and boys gathered in front of a charming house which set back from the road. It had a tree leaning precariously over its roof.

“Bad storm came through about a week ago, damaged a lot of trees,” the driver said, speaking in flawless English. “They’re probably—”

“Stop! Stop the car,” Vince barked.

Before the limo had barely slowed Vince pushed open the door and pounded out of the vehicle, shouting and waving his hands. Of course, he was shouting in English, and the townspeople would have no idea what he was saying. They’d probably think he was a crazy person.

“Vince!” she shouted, but he was already halfway to the crowd before she slammed the door and dashed across the road, grateful for her sensible walking shoes despite the filmy blouse and long skirt she wore. They were already late for her first luncheon, and now this!

“Vince, what’re you doing?”

The men were gathered around him looking at him dubiously, and the kids were openly slack jawed. Still, they seemed to view him more as an amusement than a threat, and Edeena’s tension eased a bit.

Vince turned toward her. “They don’t speak English?” he asked, clearly surprised. “I thought all of you spoke English.”

“We all learn it, but not everyone has a need to speak it every day.”

“Well, they need to stop what they’re doing. Stop right now, and back that truck the hell away from that tree,” Vince snapped. “If they keep at it the way they are, the whole damned thing is going to fall straight through that roof.”

“What?” Edeena looked from him to the tree. She could see now that the farmers had cut several gashes into the trunk and were looking to lever it away from the house. To her untutored eye, the gashes made sense. The tree should fall well to the right of the building, clearing it completely. “What’s wrong with—”

“And these kids! Christ almighty, why are all these kids so close? They should have a perimeter set up and everyone well back. How bad was the storm?”

He asked the question of Edeena, but of course she hadn’t been here, she’d been in South Carolina. Still, an older man stepped forward, possessing the gravity of a family elder. Edeena felt the curious urge to curtsey, but she did around everyone who was over the age of sixty. Something her mother had taught her, she supposed.

“I am Guillarmo Aconti,” the man said gravely in English, his voice deep and sonorous. “Who are you?”

“Prince—I mean Vince, Vince Rallis, sorry. Old habits, they called me that when I did this work with my cousins.” He glanced sheepishly at Edeena who could no more stop the rush of his words than she could stop an oncoming wave. Vince was truly upset, his whole body shaking. “Look, I live in the United States, the coastal state of South Carolina. We get storms all the time, right? Some big, some small, but some of them seem to come in sideways instead of down. That sound familiar to what went through here? And how long ago was that?”

“Seven days.” The old man looked first at Vince, then Edeena. “The wind came sideways. It doesn’t normally come in so far, but this time,” he shrugged, “it did. We have several trees that lost limbs, twisted.”

“Yeah, they didn’t simply twist. They broke inside. Only you don’t know it yet.” Vince put his hands to his head. “We need two trucks, not one, and we need ropes, not axes. We need to keep the kids back.” He looked hard at the man. “You’ve got builders, too, here? Someone who built these homes? Because the roofs are going to leak if you don’t reinforce them, and then shear clean off during the next perfectly ordinary storm. We run into it all the time in South Carolina. The first storm doesn’t seem to cause much damage, but the second one knocks people off their feet.”

Edeena stared. She’d never seen Vince so animated, but it made sense, she supposed. He lived in an area under constant threat of storm damage, and he cared—truly cared—about protecting people.

Soon, another man strode forward, then a third, and Vince reached for Edeena. With her as a translator, she was able to explain the problem in simple terms, conveying Vince’s sense of urgency that they take a completely different direction to remove the tree than what they were planning. Cell phones came out, and Vince visibly sagged with relief. “Thank God.”

Edeena eyed him. “You didn’t think we had phones?”

“This place looks like something out of a Disney movie,” he snapped back. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the chickens started singing.”

Someone drove up with a truck a few minutes later, and this man apparently had more construction experience, because he understood what Vince was saying right away—which was good, because Edeena still didn’t. Still, to her surprise Vince accepted it when the local men bid him on his way. He shook hands, clapped shoulders, then turned and walked back to the car with her.

She waited until they slid back inside the vehicle to turn to him. “You’re okay with them carrying on without further supervision? You’re not . . . I don’t know . . . worried they’ll do the wrong thing?”

“They won’t,” Vince said, shaking his head. “So much of the time, people simply don’t know what they don’t know. It’s not so much that they’re trying to screw up, they’re just approaching the problem the way they’ve approached similar problems in the past. They don’t need someone to show them step by step how to do it correctly, they need to know that their way isn’t the right way forward. They can figure out the rest on their own.” He slanted a glance at her. “Make sense?”

“It makes absolute sense.”

She turned forward and realized the driver had been listening in on their conversation, but the man’s eyes were on the road, his manner easy, so she supposed there was nothing lost there. It made her feel good to know those strangers were going to save their house, protect their other homes from problems they wouldn’t have known about without Vince. It was all the craziest kind of coincidence, but if it helped someone . . .

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