Midnight at the Wandering Vineyard

by Jamie Raintree

  “Shall I?” I ask.

  He smirks, putting his coffee on the island counter so he can give me his full attention.

  “By all means.”

  I look him over, pretending to consider it. In reality, I’ve already put ample thought into who I believe Sam is.

  “You put a lot of stock in how you appear to others,” I say. I start off easy, with the obvious.

  Sam tilts his head to the side, lips pursed in concession. “You and I both know, in business, appearance is everything.”

  “If there’s a strong commodity to back it up,” I retort.

  “As there is,” he assures me, the one thing I already know for sure. “Next.”

  “All you care about is money,” I say.

  He tilts his head side to side, contemplating. “I do like money. Who doesn’t? But it isn’t all I care about. It isn’t even what I care about most. And really, it’s what the money can do for me that I’m looking for. Nice car, nice clothes, travel, freedom.”

  “Do you really feel free?” I ask him. Is this the secret I’ve been missing all along? Because around the vineyard, money was the cause of so much stress, so many headaches, so many lost memories, it didn’t seem worth it.

  “I took a week off to come here. Last-minute notice. No boss to ask for permission. No bills to worry about when I get back home.”

  Thinking about my own apartment, his explanation doesn’t sound half-bad. I don’t know if I’d call it freedom—he still has to earn that money at some point, just like the rest of us—but I can certainly see how it would make life easier.

  “Your fancy cars are compensating for something,” I say, shooting him with the next one, admittedly below the belt in more ways than one.

  He laughs and raises his eyebrows, all confidence.

  “C’mon now.”

  My cheeks heat. Sam and I never went past kissing, but I have to concede, the times we were close to each other, I never got that impression.

  To shake off my discomfort, I jump to the next one.

  “You think your privilege makes you better than everybody else.”

  Sam’s confident grin falls so quickly, I can almost hear it drop. His shoulders sink and for the first time ever, I can picture him as a little boy, innocent and openhearted. No facade, no armor.

  “Is that what you think?” he asks.

  My bravado wavers. I take a step back, putting distance between us. “We’re talking about my friends,” I say, but I can hear the lie in my voice. He stares at me with those eyes for a long few seconds.

  “No,” he finally says. “It’s a common misconception when people are private.”

  He doesn’t clarify whether this is a misconception he runs into personally, but I don’t think he’d tell me if I asked, so I don’t.

  “And I don’t like that word. I may have been born to a wealthy family, but I’ve made my own way.”

  I nod. I believe that.

  “Next,” he says, nothing in his demeanor still playful.

  Suddenly, I don’t want to play this game anymore. “I don’t think—”

  “Next,” he pushes.

  I clear my throat, my voice low when I say, “There’s more to your relationship with your dad than you talk about.”

  This assumption is mine alone. I see the ripple of Sam’s jaw as he clenches it. He’s still for a long moment, then he grabs his mug and raises it in farewell. “I should find Rich,” he says.

  “Right,” I say.

  I feel a pang of guilt as he walks out the back door. Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything, but he asked. I didn’t expect him to take it so personally—didn’t think he could. But as determined as I am to keep my distance, it has me wanting to know more than ever just who Sam really is and what’s going on behind his eyes.

  * * *

  Later that morning, Kelly brings home my car and we take Dad’s truck to pick up rental chairs for the party that is only a couple of days away. After making it clear that I should have no expectation of renewing our friendship, Kelly is more conversational but we stick to safe topics. We talk like I’m a customer at the coffee shop, catching up on small-town gossip.

  Afterward, Kelly has to work so I drop her off, sticking around for a plain latte. As I watch her work, it’s clear she has become a fixture in the community—everyone who comes in updates her on what’s going on in their lives, even if it’s been only hours since they came in last. And it’s easy to see why.

  Though I know she’s in pain, she wears an easy smile and is present with everyone who walks through the door. It’s a side of her I haven’t seen before. A new side. She asks them questions as she steams milk and wipes down machines. They open up to her in those few minutes and appear lighter on the way out than when they came in. If only she could see how much more she could help people. Maybe if she had the opportunity to serve people in a new way, a way that’s closer to her heart.

  When I get home, Sam’s car is gone and Dad seems to have gone with him, so I decide to take Midnight for a ride before the heat becomes unbearable for either of us. As I pass by the stable office, though, Mom is sitting at the dilapidated computer when she would normally be at work. Her hair is pulled into a messy bun on the top of her head, the standing fan whipping loose tendrils around her face.

  “Hey,” I say, leaning against the door frame. She startles, then smiles when she sees me.

  “Hey, love.” Her eyelids are heavy with computer fatigue. I recognize it immediately as the nearly permanent state of my coworkers.

  “What are you doing out here? Why aren’t you at work?”

  “I took the day off to finalize the guest list for the party. The caterer needs the final numbers and I want to make sure we’ll have enough seating.”

  “No problem there,” I say. “Kelly and I brought back enough chairs to fill a football stadium.”

  I slide into the office and plop down in the chair across from her. Holes have been rubbed into the chair’s fabric and the vinyl bites into the backs of my legs now.

  I used to sit cross-legged in this chair and line up my plastic ponies along the desk while Dad made phone calls and talked over my shoulder to the vineyard hands. For all my teen years, I couldn’t wait to get out of this tiny wine town, but looking back now, those are the best memories of my life. Funny how time changes perception.

  “Why are you handling the guest list?” I ask. “Can’t Dad or Kelly do it?”

  Mom shrugs. “Your dad never has the time or focus to be in the office and Kelly works a lot of hours at the coffee shop. She’s been using any free time to sort through and collect all the event supplies.”

  “Couldn’t you guys afford an office manager now?” I ask. I pluck the list off the desk and scan over it. I recognize many of the names. But there are a lot of new ones, too.

  “Yes,” she says hesitantly. “It’s something we’ve been talking about lately.”

  “You don’t have the time to go through the hiring process?”

  “Actually...your dad wants me to do it. Full-time.”

  “He wants you to quit your job?”

  She shrugs, not as excited by the prospect as I would expect her to be. I can’t remember a time when Mom wasn’t entirely involved in her work—evenings, weekends, holidays. Growing up, I would sometimes fantasize that we sold the vineyard, moved into a tiny house on one acre at the far end of our land, and spent all our time together, gardening and riding horses that didn’t need stalls and survived solely on love. Nothing in our lifestyle would cost us any money because money was the only thing my parents ever argued about. Money, or the lack thereof, was what created the bags under their eyes, what kept them working at all hours of the day and night. It was all they ever seemed to think about. Often to the detriment of quality time together.

  “I would have thought this i
s what you’ve always wanted,” I say, reading the map of skepticism on her face.

  She gives me a tired smile. “That’s exactly what your dad keeps saying.”

  “Aren’t you tired of working so much? Wouldn’t you rather be home?” I set the guest list back on the desk and lean back in my chair.

  “No,” she says. The word comes out more like an apology than a denial.

  “Oh,” is all I can think to say.

  Mom shuts off the computer screen and rests her elbows on the desk.

  “The vineyard has been doing pretty well for a while, Mal.” She picks up some stray papers from the desk and begins to file them. “It’s not like we’re sleeping on piles of money or anything, but I could have quit a couple of years ago.”

  “You don’t want to quit?” I ask, still trying to understand. “I thought—”

  “I can see why you and your dad would think that. When I first started working at the law firm, it was definitely for the money. It was for the money for a long time. I don’t think we were ever very good at hiding how much we needed it,” she says with a frown. “But over time...I really fell in love with what I do. I like helping families through their hard times. It feels like what I do means something.”

  “I’m sure it does,” I say, though I’ve never really thought about it. I don’t know why I haven’t. Maybe because she’s never before said anything along these lines. But more likely because I’ve never thought of anyone being happy in an office atmosphere. I’ve spent so much time with Dad, Tyler, the vineyard hands, and the other vintners in town that working outside with one’s own hands feels like the true normal.

  Realizing this, I question my own motives for going into marketing. My parents may have encouraged my success but they never told me what it should look like. I’m the one who decided on the vision. If I believe no one could be happy in an office job, why have I been pursuing a career that could only ever end in a cubicle?

  “I’m sure it does,” I repeat.

  Mom must see my internal debate because she laughs. She finishes filing the papers, stands, and comes around to sit on the desk. She takes my cheeks in her hands and smiles down at me.

  “I know you and your dad could never really understand,” she says. “You’re both such hands-on people.”

  “Then why did you push me to go to college?” I ask. I’m not blaming her, but if she knew it wasn’t the best fit for me, I’m surprised she would encourage that path.

  “I wanted you to have options, baby. I didn’t want you to ever struggle for money like we have.”

  If only she knew.

  “I love my job, Mal. I love being here, too, and I could get swept up in taking care of the place and taking care of your dad, but I like having something that’s just mine.”

  This is so much new information. I struggle to process it. I feel like I’ve been missing this giant piece of who my mother is.

  At the mention of taking care of others, I think about Kelly.

  “What’s wrong with Shannon?” I ask. “Really?”

  No one seems to want to reveal the depth of Shannon’s illness, but if Mom has been regularly taking food to her and Kelly has opened her home to help, her health must be more dire than what everyone is letting on.

  Mom frowns.

  “Shannon had a quadruple bypass a few months ago,” she says.

  All the breath leaves my lungs. “What?” I ask.

  “She had another heart attack at the end of last year and the doctors decided it would be best. It’s been a hard recovery for her but she seems to be coming around.”

  I shake my head involuntarily as I imagine how hard that must have been for both of them.

  “We’ve done as much as we’ve been able to,” Mom says, placing her hand on mine to soothe me. It doesn’t. Because I haven’t done as much as I can and even if Kelly forgives me, I don’t know how I’ll forgive myself for that.

  * * *

  On Thursday morning, everyone at the vineyard is up early and crammed into the kitchen at five o’clock in the morning, waiting for the coffee to finish brewing. Mom and Kelly took the morning off work, and Dad had his four vineyard hands come in early. Tyler volunteered to help, as well as Sam, and there’s a buzz of energy as we wait for the vines to arrive. Today we place the vines in preparation for the planting party on Saturday, when our guests will dig holes and lower them into their new homes. Once the truck pulls in, we’ll have just a few hours to unload all the plants, and for six acres, there are a lot of them.

  Sam came in this morning dressed in jeans and a designer T-shirt, which was surprising and kind of sweet, seeing him more relaxed and making an effort to fit into this lifestyle...as much as he ever could. I try not to look at his sleepy eyes, which are more vulnerable than usual and remind me of the ache I saw in them yesterday. He sits with Dad and the vineyard hands at the table, no doubt asking them a thousand questions about the planting process. Sam is insatiably curious.

  I stand in the corner, taking it all in. I try to understand how at the office, I’m surrounded by twice as many people every day and all the talk sounds like empty noise. And yet here, with this little family we’ve made our own, the same noise sounds like love.

  Knowing I will soon leave all this behind again, for who knows how long, weighs on my chest. I’m distracted from my worry when I notice Kelly and Tyler are speaking tensely in the corner, Tyler wearing a guilty and guarded expression, just like the one he wore the other night at the bar when I asked him about Kelly. Clearly there is more going on between them than either one is telling me. I don’t have time to decide how I feel about that because just then the sound of a semi engine growls closer, calling us outside.

  Quickly, we abandon our coffee mugs on the counter in a chaos of clattering ceramic and scraping chair legs to huddle on the back porch.

  The morning is so hot we begin to sweat as Dad guides the semi around the stables, over to the freshly cleared land. The sun beats down on our skin like a punishment. When the engine shrieks and then falls silent, we hustle to the back of the truck where Dad hoists himself inside to examine his new babies.

  He looks them over carefully and we hold our breath. When he gives his approving smile, we jump into action, grabbing the burlap-sack-wrapped vines one by one and head for the trellises.

  “Two feet apart,” Dad calls to us. “And don’t forget to soak the bag.”

  Dad placed a horse trough filled with water at the edge of the new acres for just that purpose, which will hydrate the plants and keep them healthy while they wait to be planted.

  As I break out into the field, bag dripping down my leg, Kelly trails behind me. Out of coincidence or habit, I don’t know. Despite all the hurtful things she said the other day, I want to invite her to walk with me. But I’m still embarrassed. I’m angry. I’m hoping I misunderstood somehow.

  Then she calls my name and my heart jumps stupidly. I sigh and slow down. I should know better than to ignore the warning signs that a relationship is doomed, but I can’t help myself. I’m an idealist, an optimist, and even if I wanted to change that about myself, it’s pretty clear I’m not very good at changing.

  “Hey,” Kelly says, breathing heavily with the weight of the vine. She’s quiet, too, weary in a way that has nothing to do with the physical weight.

  “Hey,” I say.

  We’re walking shoulder to shoulder, but the thick silence between us conveys all the distance we’ve created with our thoughtless words. There’s an invisible wall we can’t seem to break through, no matter how much I claw at it with my bare hands.

  “So listen,” I say, “I know you don’t want to talk about it, and you’ve made it clear that you don’t want to patch up our friendship, but I can’t leave here feeling like I didn’t get to give you a real apology.”

  There’s a hitch in Kelly’s step but she recove
rs quickly. “It’s really not necessary,” she says and I can tell she means it. I guess, after the things she said on the way to the Libations party, we’re even now.

  “I just want to make sure the air is clear so we can really put the past in the past. I don’t want there to be any hard feelings between us.”

  “I was pretty hard on you,” she says reluctantly. “It was hard for me to see past my own anger to try to understand your perspective.”

  Her response is gracious but the tension in her body proves that the anger is still there. “Maybe. But you were right about what you said the night of the tasting room party,” I say. “I had become a different person. Because of Sam, sure, but also because of my insecurities. I didn’t feel good enough for him and it made me question myself. I did things I wouldn’t normally do because I thought if I could be a better version of myself, maybe he would notice me.”

  “Do you really want to be with someone you would have to change for?” she asks me, like she can’t help herself. Whatever choices I make from here on out are none of her concern, but her psychology degree must be getting the best of her.

  I stop and stare at Kelly, swallowing hard. “No,” I say. “I don’t.”

  Her gaze shifts to her feet and she lets out a slow exhale. I begin to walk again.

  “I’m sorry about what I said the other night,” she says, catching up again. “It wasn’t fair. And it wasn’t true. You know that, right?”

  “I don’t know, Kelly,” I say, exhausted by the back-and-forth. “I feel like I don’t know anything anymore. Not when it comes to you. I thought after all this time you would know that deep down, no matter how stupid I was, I loved you and I never meant to hurt you. I thought I would come back here and we could pick up where we left off. But it’s clear things have changed. For both of us.”