Sunrise Point

though she hadn’t been hurt, he could smell disaster coming and had no influence in convincing her to get an employee to climb the ladder if there was something she wanted done.” He laughed to himself. “Maxie’s been up on tripod ladders since she was just a kid, pregnant with my dad. She doesn’t really think she needs to slow down. And it probably keeps her young.”
    “It’s a shame,” Darla said. “She deserves a much more relaxing retirement!”
    “Like?” Tom asked, taking on the rest of the grape leaves.
    “Like a low-maintenance home where people do all the hard stuff for you. In a nice place, like near the ocean. Where there are lots of people and activities and life is finally about fun rather than back-breaking work. But if anything should go wrong, like a fall or illness, there are trained professionals nearby. At the orchard, if Maxie falls off a ladder, it’s only you or Junior to help her. Or if she, God forbid, had a stroke…”
    He stopped chewing and stared at her. He had never thought of that. In this place, in the country, people got old on their land and, unless they moved away to live with their children or grandchildren, they often died on their land. If they had an accident or got sick, their family took care of them.
    Darla picked up the last piece of her stuffed grape leaves and popped it in her mouth. “We put my grandmother in assisted living last year. She didn’t think she wanted to go, but now she loves it. She’s the community poker champ, can you beat that? And it’s in a really beautiful Colorado Springs valley with glorious views, near enough we can visit her and bring her to visit us for weekends, where there are walking trails and all kinds of fun things for the residents to do. She’s so grateful now.”
    “Is she,” Tom said in passing. Many things about Darla made him wonder. And then at the risk of slowing the conversation again he said, “I have such a hard time picturing you as the wife of a career marine… .”
    To his surprise, Darla laughed. “Career marine? What gave you that idea?”
    “Well, Bob gave me that idea when he said that was his intention… .”
    “Was,” she stressed. “When we got married he had pretty much given up that idea. I had a job all lined up for him—my dad has a golf buddy with a soft water conditioner manufacturing plant who wanted to add to his management team and Bob, being a smart, decorated marine, was perfect. Good salary, too.”
    Tom wondered if Bob just talked about a career in the Corps in front of his boys to encourage them when in fact he was planning to exit and get a civilian job in a factory. But Bob didn’t seem like that kind of guy.
    And the dinner arrived.
    “Oh, my God,” Darla said, looking down at her Greek salad. “Have you ever seen so much food?”
    Tom knew there would be a doggie bag, and not for Duke. But that was after he had a satisfactory taste of Darla’s uneaten dinner.
    She lifted her fork, poised over her salad, and asked, “So, Tom, if you sold your orchard and looked for another line of work, what would you do?”
    Tom had chicken kabobs—looked wonderful. He stabbed his fork into a wonderful cube of chicken and said, “Just out of curiosity, what do you have lined up for me?”
    She laughed merrily. “You’re so funny.” She lifted one lovely light brown brow. “Well, there’s that manufacturing job, still open…”
    He didn’t find that particularly funny. “There is nothing else I want to do.”
    “But it’s exhausting,” she counseled.
    “And if it ever becomes too much work at the harvest or the planting, there are lots of people around here looking for work. But if Maxie can last seventy-four years, I can last longer.”
    “You could actually invest the money you earn from the sale of the orchard, watch it grow, take care of Maxie in high style and begin another career.”
    He chewed and noticed that she grinned excitedly. What had her parents invested in that smile? It was simply beautiful. He was also curious about her breasts, so large and high and delicious-looking—he wondered if he would touch them and find them not real. That wouldn’t be an issue if he was in love, but he was beginning to realize he was not even close to in love. Still, he was curious.
    Finally he came back to the present. He looked at her levelly and said, “I’m going to work the orchard till I drop dead.”
    “Why?” she asked almost desperately.
    “Because I just