Serial: Down the River – Chapter Sixty

I’m finally revisiting the characters from The River City Chronicles nine years after their original timeline. I’ll be running the series weekly here on my blog, and then will release it in book form at the end of the run. Hope you enjoy catching up with all your faves and all their new secrets!

Today, Marissa and Ainsley make some major life changes…

< Read Chapter 59

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Chapter Fifty-Nine
New Beginnings

“I want to come back.” Marissa stood before Matteo, grasping the podium at Ragazzi with both hands. It felt right to be back there. You have to let me come back.

He glanced at her. “Oh, hi there. Let’s see, for tonight? I think I still got some room…”

“No, that’s not what I mean.” She’d spent the day before closing out things at her old job. She offered to stay for two weeks, but they’d surprised her. The office was apparently looking to cut staff, and her announcement had actually been taken with some relief. Which bothered her, but that was something to worry about later. “I want to come back to work here.”

He looked up at her and frowned. “You want to work here? Don’t you have a job?”

She sighed. “I haven’t been happy there for a long time.” She looked around at the place, still as warm and welcoming as it had been when she’d first come here as a teenager on Brad’s internship program. They’d repainted, and the bar was new since the pandemic, but the heart and soul of the place was still the same.

 “I see.” He scratched his temple. “Well, I can’t pay you very much. You’d start out as an expediter—”

She shook her head. “I don’t wanna be a waiter. I want to work in the kitchen.” Those times cooking at Ragazzi had been some of the happiest days of her life.

“Diego, get out here!” Matteo called out over his shoulder. “Just a second.”

“Of course.” She scratched her arm absentmindedly, then straightened up, wanting to put her best foot forward.

“Eccomi.” Diego appeared from the back, his hands and apron covered in flour. “Ciao Marissa!”

Matteo pointed at her with his thumb. “Marissa here wants a job.”

Diego’s brow furrowed and he frowned, a mirror image of Matteo’s just a moment before. 

“But you already have a job.”

“She’s not happy there.”

“Ah.” He scratched his head, spreading some of the flour into his hair. “We has one job for an expediter. Hank left last week.”

Matteo shook his head. “She doesn’t want to be a waiter. She wants to work with you, in the kitchen. She wants to cook.”

Marissa stifled a laugh. It was like watching Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum.

Diego’s face lit up with delight. “Che belle notizie! I understand now. How do they say it? You have a bug.”

Marissa laughed. “I think it’s ‘the bug.’ But yeah, I do.”

Diego scratched the back of his head, spreading flour to his neck too. “I don’t have anything open right now…”

Marissa swallowed hard. You have to let me work here. “I’ll do it for free. Anything. I’ll scrub pans, go to the Farmer’s Market at six in the morning, take out the trash. Anything! Diego, Matteo, I really want this.” She had some savings—she could weather things for a while. She and Ainsley would figure things out. And we’ll be working together when she’s not with Jun Seo.

Matteo shook his head, and for an instant, her heart fell. “Nonsense. You are family. We will find a way to make it work.”

“Really?”

Matteo looked at Diego, who nodded.

“Welcome home.”

She squealed, and reached out to hug them both. “Thank you so much. I’d forgotten how much I missed it here.”

They were right. She was coming home.

#

Ainsley got out of her father’s car—the older olive-green Volvo he’d agreed to loan her until she could find transportation of her own—and stared at the wide blue bowl of sky above her.

Jun Seo’s rented ranch was in the heart of Amador County—Ainsley must have passed half-a-dozen wineries on the way there. The foothills shone golden, dotted with old oak trees and black outcroppings of rock, and the air smelled fresh and clean, redolent with the smell of oak trees and wildflowers.

A beaten dirt path led though the yellowed grasses to a small, trim, white farmhouse. A little farther on, there was a rustic barn, once a bright red but now faded so that it almost looked like it had sprung up from the ground in place.

She grabbed her knapsack from the back seat. She’d brought everything she could think of that she might need—her grandfather’s bamboo brushes, pastels, colored pencils, watercolors, a level, and a tape measure—and had stuffed them all into the old green and beige pack she’d picked up at a surplus store. “Here we go.” Taking a deep breath, she started down the new path like she was on a mission.

She’d had to put the artist off for a day to give her time to put in her paperwork at school. It was a temporary withdrawal—she could still come back the next year, if she wanted. But she really hoped she wouldn’t need to.

She mounted the three steps to the front door of the farmhouse and rang the bell.

It was an old building—the style, popular in the early twentieth century, and the wear on the wood paneling told her that much. But it had been refreshed with a fresh coat of paint and new hardware on the door, and a Ring camera looked at her from the doorbell.

There was no answer.

She cleared her throat. It was a bit scratchy—she’d forgotten to get something to drink to bring with her. “Hello?”

Still nothing.

She tried knocking on the door. “Anyone in there?”

“Over here!” The voice came from the barn.

That’s curious. She hopped back down the stairs and strolled over to the huge structure. The barn door was ajar a couple feet. She slipped inside, and stood there for a few seconds to give her eyes time to adjust to the cool, dim interior. When they did, she gasped and dropped her knapsack.

“Welcome!” Jun Seo was fifteen feet up, standing on scaffolding next to the biggest canvas she had ever seen. It had to be twenty feet tall by thirty feet wide.

“Hi.” Ainsley tried to take it all in. There was no paint on it yet—so far, there were only black marks—maybe from a charcoal pencil?—creating some sort of design. “What is this?”

They slid down the ladder to appear at her feet, a big grin plastered across their face. “It’s my biggest work yet. A commission piece for the San Francisco Opera House. What do you think?”

She took a step closer. The seemingly random lines resolved themselves into waves, and a rocky shore. A tiny Korean village nestled there above the rocks, and in the distance, a great mountain overshadowing it all. “I think it’s going to be breathtaking.”

They bit their lip. “I hope you’re right. Some of my critics have said I’m not thinking big enough. Maybe this will prove them wrong.” Their eyes twinkled. “Come on. I hope you’re not afraid of heights!”

< Read Chapter 59

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Like what you read? if you haven’t tried it yet, check out book one, The River City Chronicles, here.