Lemon Blossoms

Nina Romano

Description

2016 Finalist for Romance, Foreword INDIE

Angelica Domenico is born in a blossoming lemon grove, a prophetic fusion of sweet bloom and bitter fruit on an island governed by volcanoes and earthquakes.

In the continuation of Nina Romano’s epic Wayfarer Trilogy, an early childhood accident propels Angelica to battle trials in a world where proof of virginity is paramount. She suff ers the trauma of her aunt’s death in childbirth and is catapulted on a voyage towards the nunnery to seek refuge from a fear of intimacy. Fate intervenes on the Feast of Crucifixion when Giacomo Scimenti enters the family shop, and Angelica feels herself rent by lightning the instant they come face to face.

Lemon Blossoms is the story of Angelica’s struggle in pursuit of feminine identity and heritage while coping with the intricacies of loss, love, and yearning.

Sujets

• Romance historique
• Fiction
• Romance
• Historical

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 16 février 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781630269104
• Langue: English

Extrait

Lemon Blossoms
Lemon Blossoms
Nina Romano
T URNER
Turner Publishing Company 424 Church Street Suite 2240 Nashville, Tennessee 37219 445 Park Avenue 9th Floor New York, New York 10022
www.turnerpublishing.com
Lemon Blossoms, A Novel
Copyright 2016 Nina Romano.
All rights reserved. This book or any part thereof may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are either products of the author s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Cover design: Kristen Ingebretson and Maddie Cothren Book design: Kym Whitley
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Romano, Nina, 1942- Lemon blossoms / Nina Romano. pages ; cm. -(Wayfarer trilogy ; Book Two) ISBN 978-1-63026-909-8 (pbk.) I. Title. PS3568.O549L46 2016 813 .54--dc23
2015030457
Printed in the United States of America 14 15 16 17 18 19 0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
CONTENTS
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
Chapter XVII
Chapter XVIII
Chapter XIX
Chapter XX
Chapter XXI
Chapter XXII
Chapter XXIII
Chapter XXIV
Chapter XXV
Chapter XXVI
Chapter XXVII
Chapter XXVIII
Chapter XXIX
Chapter XXX
Chapter XXXI
Chapter XXXII
Chapter XXXIII
Chapter XXXIV
Chapter XXXV
Chapter XXXVI
Chapter XXXVII
Chapter XXXVIII
Chapter XXXIX
Chapter XL
Chapter XLI
Chapter XLII
Chapter XLIII
Chapter XLIV
Chapter XLV
Acknowledgments
For John Dufresne
Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes, Don t resist them-that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally Forward in whatever way they like.
-Lao Tzu
Love looks not with the eyes, But with the mind, and therefore Is winged Cupid painted blind.
-William Shakespeare
CHAPTER I
Angelica
THE WINE SHED VILLAGGIO PACE 1895
I WAS BORN IN A lemon grove, the scent of blossoms everywhere. Mamma told me it was paradise on earth, and so she named me Angelica, whispering in my ear that life, like the lemon tree, houses both the bitter and the sweet. A breeze had brought to earth a cover of white blossoms, and Mamma said she imagined a far-off winter playground. The day I was born she removed a veil from my face while lying in a bosk of flowering trees and looked up to see tiny white zagarelle frame an ocean of sky that mirrored the straits of Messina.
Mamma insisted we speak Italian-the language of angels, she called it-but sometimes we d slip into Sicilian. After she had my brother Peppe, Mamma lost four children before I arrived, followed by two sisters. Mamma prayed her guardian angel would send her a celestial being, but instead she got me. Mamma had a thing about angels, saying we are born with a host of eleven thousand watching over us. She had promised that if I were born and lived, she d make sure that I would be devoted to my own patron and, with God s help, the seraphim could choose amongst themselves who would guide me. That poor angel didn t have an inkling of what he d be getting into.
Angelica-a name that caused me difficulty right from the beginning. Angels are listed in God s Chain of Being as below God but above man. And man is above animals and animals are above plant life. This always troubled me because I knew I was human and humans suffered just like animals. And in my life on the farm I had learned to love animals.

ON AN OCTOBER DAY, EIGHT years after my birth, I started thinking about the heavenly trust with which Mamma had encumbered me. I couldn t be an angel all the time, nor did I want to be. The sun warmed, yet the air was cool. Autumn announced itself with the acrid fragrance of burning leaves and the sweet scents from Mamma s kitchen. Mamma asked me to pick up twelve eggs from the chickens so we could make ricotta cheesecake. I loved helping her.
I had a special chicken, Cluck, a true prize that laid the best eggs. On this day, I hunted all over but couldn t find the egg she d have laid, not a pure white nor a blood-stained one. I couldn t find her either. But when I finally found her near an abandoned stone cottage, she was dead. I looked at her outstretched body and open eyes staring back at me, unseeing. I swooshed my hand at the flies around her eyes and picked up her limp body, her neck hanging slack. She was lost to me forever, and there was nothing I could do about it. I put her in my apron and ran, my chest heaving, all the way to Mamma, who was waiting for me in the kitchen.
Did a fox get her, Mamma?
I m afraid not, Mamma said.
I laid the chicken on the sideboard.
Mamma sat at the table sewing. She set her work aside, pulled me close, and placed her arms around me. She looked right up into my face. I knew by the set of her mouth that whatever she was going to tell me was not only going to be the truth but was also going to be one of those awful lessons about life that I didn t want to hear. Why couldn t I have been born a for-real angel?
Mamma told me how life was paradise on earth. But I was beginning to learn that an earthly paradise is a canvas splotched with the color of sadness.
Listen, sweet one.
Oh, now I knew for sure it was going to be hurtful.
Sometimes life doesn t turn out the way we want. It has a way of presenting us with trials to deal with right then and there.
Mamma!
That chicken has given us many healthy eggs, and we are grateful to her, but now her time of egg-bearing has finished.
For good.
She died because she wasn t supposed to have any more. She s what we call egg-bound. The egg was either too big and she was too tired to push it out, or it might have been twisted or even cracked and the yolk
Mamma looked at me the way she did when I was supposed to have understood what she was saying, only I wasn t quite sure if I had.
Do you understand, Angelica?
She shook me gently by the shoulders and I answered, Maybe, except for the breaking Could this happen to a woman?
She smiled and hugged me.
I d gotten it right, but it vexed me all the same, Mamma pointing out life s cheerless possibilities. My throat burned and clogged with something that felt egg-sized. I wriggled out of her grasp and ran out, grabbing my chicken from the sideboard.
I didn t stop running until I passed Pap s wine shed. I fell to my knees and cried, venting the sorrow that overcame me, shedding tears I couldn t when I d first discovered my chicken-perhaps because I d been so shocked by her death. I cried and rocked my dead chicken till I heard my mother s voice call me for supper. If I buried my chicken, Mamma might get angry. She never wasted anything, and probably had intentions of using that chicken, stuck egg and all, for soup. But I knew I could never eat Cluck, and the thought of cooking her was so horrific to me that I chanced Mamma s anger and dug a deep hole with a shovel from the shed. Good or bad behavior? I tried not to think about it.
Mamma always said I was good, but that didn t mean I didn t love to play hard and take risks. Somehow knowing I had such a strong presence around me made me, well, not quite invincible, but able to take chances because I knew I was safe and protected. This invisible shield felt marvelous. I did things-some of them crazy and wild-with a sense that there was no danger. In fact, to me, there was little peril in doing things like jumping from the hayloft and landing smack on the mule s back.
Our property was extensive, not quite a latifondo. Fenced in from the road, the land could have been mistaken for a monastery. One hundred meters from our house, built into the side of a cliff, was a barn where we stabled horses, a donkey, and a mule. There was a pigpen, a chicken coop, and a hutch for rabbits, whose cages were always filthy. The day before, I d cleaned them, but hated the task because of one fierce buck. He looked sweet but was mean as a snapping crab in a tide pool.
The arbor was a short walk of a few meters from the house. That s where Mamma canned tomatoes, though I don t know why it was called canning because we always used bottles. In the arbor was a huge stone sink and a marble table big enough for twenty people. One summer we went through one hundred kilos of tomatoes. About half were conserved whole and peeled in widemouthed glass jars while the rest we passed through a sieve. We poured the smashed pulp and juice through a funnel into wine or beer bottles. Even though it was summer, we made huge fires and wrapped the bottles in old newspapers, cooking them in boiling water. We couldn t touch the cooked bottles till the next morning. We always lost some. A few broke in the water; others burst when we took them out, especially if the morning air was cool and the bottle still hot.
Our land was covered with fruit trees. We had a mandarin tree and other trees like walnut and cork, the bark of which had many uses. Our lemon, orange, and almond groves were far from the house, and so was Pap s olive orchard, which some years he would rent out. Even the alley down the orto was lined with wild asparagus. But the figs were my favorite. Sometimes when picking figs I could see raspberry apricot cloudlets perched between other trees, overspread and dense. Whenever my father found a ripe black fig pinched off at the honeyed end, he d ask, Angelica, who could have done this? As I opened my mouth to answer, he d say, A bird perhaps? He would then pick the fruit and bring his arm way back over his head, ready to hurl it, and say, Shall we let the birds have it? Then I d grab it from his fingers and shove it in my mouth. When I finished chewing I d say, No use wasting a good fig, Pap . I was the little bird, but he always pl