Chapter 6: Reconstruction

"What do you think will happen?" Mary asked as Donald and Gus sat on the back deck.

"If we're lucky," Donald said, "the trees will be disease free and we can get them properly tagged. If not, the Ag people will take them and destroy them ... at our cost."

"I'll freeze any payables to Tuscany," Mary said. She'd been through problems with suppliers before.

"Maybe that will offset the testing costs," Gus offered sourly. "Do you want to call Morley Koshevoy in the morning, Dad? We need to find out more about Tuscany Landscaping."

"I'll look after that, Gus," his father said, nodding. "After watching Tatya this afternoon, she's very upset about this whole affair. I think you need to talk to her tomorrow as well. We've got too much invested in her for her to quit on us. This was a mistake that could have happened to anyone. It was just her bad luck that it happened to someone she recommended."

Gus was nodding. "I must have passed those trees two or three times a day without noticing, not to mention the ones that were already planted. She's very angry with herself, but nothing compared to the strip she tore off Molinari when she confronted him. To her, this was personal. The guy never said a word or tried to defend himself once she got started. I was worried she was going to physically attack him," he chuckled.

"He wouldn't have stood a chance," Mary giggled.

"Well, looks like we have our work cut out for us tomorrow morning," Donald said. "I expect it will be at least a week before we will see a report from the lab in Victoria. In the meantime, make sure we move those trees to the far west side of the property and keep them well away from anything. Have our people tag them, but check them yourself, Gus. We don't want any slip-ups now."

"Right. I'll look after it myself."

"I feel so sorry for Tatya," Mary said. "It must be very hard for her to deal with this. She is so driven to be the best. I wonder if she's ever had something like this happen before."

"When she was screaming at Rocco this afternoon," Gus answered, "she said something about this being the second time he'd done something to her. It would be interesting to find out what that was."

"Don't press her too hard, Gus," his mother warned. "She's going to be very hard on herself. You don't need to add to that."

Gus nodded. His mother was no doubt right. He knew Tatya well enough to know that she would be her own worst critic.

-0-

When Gus walked into the office the next morning, Tatya was already at her desk.

"Good morning," he said. He gave her a smile as she looked up.

"Good morning," she replied in a less than upbeat tone. "Can we talk?"

"Of course. Let me get a coffee first."

He checked her cup and seeing it almost empty, picked it up and looked after both hers and his. He placed her cup on the desk in front of her and took a seat at the corner of her desk.

"I don't know how to begin to tell you how sorry I am for what has happened," she began. "It is entirely my fault. I will phone my boss this morning and request a replacement for me. I will tell him what I've done and the damage I've caused."

She'd only got halfway through her statement when Gus's head began a side-to-side shake.

"No ... no ... that's not the answer, Tatya. There are a whole bunch of reasons why. First of all, as I said to Dad last night, I must have driven past those trees, both the planted ones and the inventory, dozens of times and didn't notice the lack of tags. Secondly, it wasn't your responsibility to check that Tuscany was operating within the law. We trust our suppliers to do that. That's one of the reasons we use the same trades, over and over again. We know them and we trust them.

"Thirdly, if you quit now, how long will it be until we can get a replacement? And how long after that before they can get accustomed to the job? That's my task, so it takes me away from doing what I'm supposed to be doing. So, unless you have a compelling reason to quit, I'm not accepting your resignation."

"But, Gus. I've let you down. I've let you all down." The look on her face was one of abject misery.

"Have you never made a mistake before?" Gus asked.

"Of course. Plenty of them. But nothing like this. This was stupidity, trusting that scumbag when I knew he shouldn't be trusted."

"How did you know that?"

She was silent for a few moments before answering.

"At college, we had become friends ... lovers actually, during his senior year. We were in a class on environmental design together. Near the end of the course, we had to write a term paper on merging commercial space with environmentally responsible land use. We often studied together and I had been working on my paper for two months already. I assumed Rocco had been working on his as well.

"Everything fell apart when a girlfriend of mine asked me when Rocco and I had broken up. I didn't know what she was talking about. She told me she saw Rocco and another woman in what she called 'very close contact' the other day. Very close contact meant he had her in a clinch, kissing her and stroking her ass as he did so.

"I confronted him about it and he denied it at first. Just like he did when we nailed him about the dogwoods. I wanted to believe him, but I was suspicious. Anyway, I was in his dorm room a couple of days later. He was out getting something for us to eat and I was looking at his term paper. Then I saw a printed copy of my term paper. He'd downloaded it from my computer and was using it to write his paper. He knew he wouldn't get away with a direct copy, so he was changing it to look different. But it was my research and my point of view.

"Well, that tore it. Again, I confronted him and this time he said he'd got behind the eight ball on the paper and needed to hand something in or he couldn't graduate. He assumed I wouldn't mind since it wouldn't affect me. Can you believe that? That was the end of our relationship. I was sure then he had some other girlfriend to console him, based on what my friend told me.

"When he showed up here a month ago, I let my hormones rule my brain and fell for his slick line once more. You know the rest," she concluded.

Gus was nodding as she finished. "He's a real piece of work. I've been around a couple of guys like him. No morals. No idea that they're doing anything wrong. They just do what they have to do to get what they want. You're a very beautiful woman and he obviously wanted you."

"But Gus, I knew what he was like and still I fell into his trap," she cried.

"Tatya, how many real, serious boyfriends have you had in your young life?"

She looked at Gus, trying to assemble an answer.

"I don't know. I didn't date much in high school. I wasn't the most popular girl and I was pretty big compared to a lot of guys. So, I guess Rocco was the first serious one. I mean, I did have other boyfriends ... a couple of them, but they weren't keepers. Then you came along until I screwed that up."

"So aside from Rocco and possibly me," Gus summarized, "you didn't really have a lot of experience."

"No, I guess not," she agreed.

"Not much to go on, was it?" he suggested.

She shrugged.

"Okay, so now that I've conspired to get rid of my only competition," Gus grinned, "do you suppose that we can go back to being friends? I'll let you decide just what kind of friends."

"Why would you want to?" she asked in surprise. "After what I did to you, I'm amazed you can stand to be around me."

"Maybe I've got a thick hide, or maybe you're worth the effort. We all make mistakes, Tatya. It's what we learn from them that counts."

"How are you going to be able to trust me?"

Gus sighed. "I guess we'll have to find that out, won't we. I can't answer that right now. We can't see far enough into the future to know if it might happen again. We learn from our experiences. You've been hurt by yours. I'm guessing that you'll remember that hurt. But ... that's just a guess on my part."

"Can we start slowly ... like we did in the beginning?" she asked.

"I think that's smart, but not easy. We know a lot about each other. We've been intimate. It's hard to step back from that. So ... all we can do is try."

She smiled for the first time in a long while. It wasn't one of her lovely, beaming smiles, but it was a start.

-0-

Mary had hugged Tatya to her when the young woman arrived at the house for dinner on Friday evening. There was an emotional connection between the two and Gus thought it was something quite intense. It was also obvious that Tatya responded to his mother's genuine warmth. Mary offered no excuses for her blatant matchmaking. In her opinion, it was past time that Gus had married and begun producing grandchildren.

"Your mother is a lovely woman," Tatya said when they were alone for a few moments.

"I think the feeling is mutual," Gus smiled, giving her hand a squeeze.

"When are you going to the mainland," she asked. "I remember you saying you had something to do there."

"Before Labour Day, I hope. Did you want to come with me?"

"Yes. I'd like you to meet my mother. I've told her a lot about you and your parents. She said she would like to meet you."