Once Upon a Wine

by Beth Kendrick

  “The problem is, I don’t know if I still love him.” Kat’s whole body trembled. “I don’t feel anything. I want to, but I don’t.”

  Cammie didn’t know where to start, what to ask. “How long?”

  “The past six months? I’m not sure. And the problem is me—I know it is. I used to be this badass boarder with my own identity. I had tournaments and sponsors and a publicist. I did photo shoots and speaking gigs. I had a life, you know?”

  “You still have a life.”

  “Yeah, but now I’m just another wife living in the suburbs, and I hate it.” Kat lifted her head, her eyes both furious and glinting with tears. “I hate it.”

  “Okay.”

  “All day long, I do stuff like go to the grocery store and the dry cleaner. I go to events at the university, and I’m just Josh’s wife. It’s like the past fifteen years never happened.”

  Cammie nodded. “I’m sure that’s hard for you, but it’s not Josh’s fault.”

  “I know. I know!” Kat threw up her hands. “He’s so great and supportive, and I know he deserves a wife who’s crazy about him.”

  Cammie planted her hands behind her and leaned back. “But . . . ?”

  “But I’m not attracted to him. At all. I don’t want to kiss him, let alone have sex with him.”

  Cammie blew out her breath. “That is a problem.”

  “I’m just going through the motions with the marriage.” Kat paused. “With my whole life right now, really. I’m just . . . empty.” Kat hung her head again. “And now he’s here. With my dream dog. Like the perfect husband he is. And I don’t want to deal with him.”

  They both pondered this in silence for a minute.

  Finally, Cammie ventured, “Don’t you think some of this should be expected after a big career transition?”

  “Yeah, but knowing that doesn’t help me. I want to be in love with him, Cammie. I want the butterflies so badly.”

  Cammie was surprised by the depth of her response—she felt angry and almost betrayed. “But you guys are great together! You’re the couple I thought of as my role model.”

  Kat laughed drily.

  “That’s how I survived the dating scene in Los Angeles—every time I went out with a guy who left me at the bar with the bill or spent the whole time talking about his ex-girlfriend or said he’d call but didn’t, I’d tell myself, Don’t give up hope. There’s a guy like Josh out there for you, too.”

  “Why are you telling me this?” Kat asked. “I already admitted I was wrong. I know I’m a shitty wife, but I can’t change my feelings.”

  “Try,” Cammie urged her.

  “We don’t have kids.” Kat heaved a heavy sigh. “He’s young enough that he could go find someone else and start a family.”

  “Do you want kids?”

  Kat nibbled her lower lip. “I thought I did. Someday. When I was done with the whole boarding thing. But now that I’m done and there’s nothing to stop me from getting pregnant, I couldn’t be less interested. Hell, I don’t even want the dog right now.” She turned to Cammie with dark, hopeless eyes. “Something’s wrong with me. I’m broken.”

  “You’re not broken,” Cammie assured her with more confidence than she felt. “Let me ask you this: If you don’t want the dog and you don’t want Josh, what do you want?”

  Kat closed her eyes. “I want everything to go back to the way it was.” Another pause. “Do you think the strawberry wine’s ready?”

  “No. Ginger says she has to mash it again and then drain the berries and throw the yeast in there. I think the whole thing takes, like, two weeks.”

  “Two weeks? I need a drink now!”

  “Mimosas with breakfast?” Cammie suggested.

  “Kat!” Ginger called from downstairs.

  “Coming!” Kat hollered back. She got to her feet and walked toward the stack of suitcases next to the dresser. “I’d better get dressed. Hey, do you want to come with us?”

  “To a breakfast date with you and your husband? I’ll pass.”

  “Please? I need someone to take the pressure off.”

  “No way. While you’re off having breakfast and your mom is babysitting her grandpuppy—”

  “That word is officially forbidden in this house.” Kat grimaced.

  “—someone has to get to work figuring out how to grow grapes. And that someone is me.”

  “How about this?” Kat winced as she stubbed her toe on the dresser. “I’ll go ten rounds with the irrigation system, and you go have French toast with Josh. Sound good?”

  “Sounds great. But it’s not going to happen.”

  “Kat!” Ginger called again.

  “Just a minute!” Kat yanked off her T-shirt and donned another clean shirt that was nearly identical.

  “The man drove all the way from Maryland,” Cammie said. “At least pretend you’re excited to go out with him.”

  “Fake it till you make it?” Kat shrugged. “I’ll try anything at this point.”

  “That’s the spirit.” Cammie headed for her room. “And have a mimosa or three for me while I’m out there in the fields.”

  • • •

  Seven years before, when Ian had asked Cammie to stay, Cammie had worried she’d made a mistake. She’d wondered if maybe, perhaps, she had an undiscovered penchant for working the fields and relishing the feeling of dirt on her hands. Maybe she’d given up on farm life too soon.

  Today, sweating and swatting at bugs under the merciless summer sun, Cammie knew she had made the right choice. She no longer wanted to find her inner farmer. All she wanted was to go watch Netflix in a dark room with the air-conditioning on full blast.

  “Farming sucks,” she said aloud, smashing yet another bloodthirsty mosquito against her forearm.

  While Ginger washed the breakfast dishes and prepped the strawberry wine in the house, Cammie walked along the rows of vines, searching for clogged sprinkler lines and any sign of blight or disease. After only five minutes, she was covered in sweat and dust. She knelt in the dirt, attempting to dislodge a tiny rock from the irrigation line. Her fingernails looked like they were covered in crude oil.

  As she swore softly and peered down at the rock, a black nose and a pair of bright eyes appeared next to her. Jacques the French bulldog sniffed the irrigation line thoroughly, then turned to her expectantly.

  “Aw, that’s so cute.” She patted him on the head. “Someone thinks he’s a working dog.”

  Though Cammie failed to locate her inner farmer, Jacques seemed to have found his inner farm dog with no problem. He stayed right by her side, wheezing slightly and looking concerned while she wrangled the irrigation lines.

  But even after she vanquished the clog, she realized that she was too late. The young, delicate vines had been subsisting without water for too long, and at least three dozen plants at the far end of the field had died. The leaves had fallen off, leaving a snarl of dried brown twigs under the brutal summer sun.

  She had to keep the remaining vines healthy. Everything depended on the grapes, and the grapes depended on her.

  She pulled out her cell phone and searched for an app that would tell her humidity levels and hourly forecasts. And then she froze, her finger poised over the screen.

  This is the first step down a slippery slope. Next thing you know, I’ll be buying the Farmers’ Almanac.

  She hit “install.” Jacques snorted with approval.

  Gazing around at the vines, with only a cell phone app to assist her, Cammie decided that a little nervous breakdown was in order. She had no idea what to do or how to do it. She wanted to cry. She wanted to scream. Instead, she located a shovel and tried to dig out the dead vines. Even as she did so, she knew that this was futile. All her hard work and effort weren’t going to make a difference. Not in California, not in Delaware.

 
After an hour of hacking away at the dirt, she conceded defeat. A shovel was totally inadequate for this job. So she returned her attention to the live vines. They looked like miniature trees at this stage of growth, with bare, twisted trunks on the bottom and a profusion of green leaves at the top. If she watered them too much, the grapes would bloat and the wine would be too thin. If she didn’t water them enough, the grapes would shrivel and the wine would be too sweet. Too much heat, cold, bugs, birds, or even excess fruit could also ruin the grapes. Ian had been right all those years ago when he sliced away the first fruit from the strawberry plants: Judicious pruning and water deprivation in the early stages could result in better-quality fruit. But she didn’t know how much to prune, or how much water to provide.

  How could Ian love this? How could anyone?

  When she finally trudged back to the house, sunburned and exhausted, Ginger greeted her on the porch with a cold glass of lemonade.

  “Thanks.” Cammie downed most of it in one gulp.

  “Well?” Ginger prompted. “How’s it looking out there?”

  “I fixed the sprinklers.” Cammie headed inside. “But a bunch of vines are dead.”

  “Dead? Oh no.”

  “Yeah, they got dehydrated. I think. I hope.”

  “What do you mean, you hope?”

  “Well, if they didn’t get dehydrated, that means they have some kind of disease that can spread to the other plants.” Cammie hated to say this out loud.

  Ginger looked aghast. “We need to take them out.”

  “I’m working on it.” Cammie walked back to the kitchen and stuck her head into the freezer, savoring the arctic blast. “One thing at a time.”

  “You’re doing great, honey! Just look at you.” Ginger gestured to Cammie’s filth-covered body and the mud-caked little dog beside her. “And look at Jacques. I almost mistook him for a border collie! Remember what I always used to tell you girls: The beginning is the hardest part.”

  Cammie had to smile. She did remember her aunt saying that. She turned to her canine sidekick and asked, “When do we get to the easy part?”

  chapter 9

  Kat and Josh were gone all day. After another few hours of watering the fields, Cammie and Ginger drank some awful iced wine, cleaned the house, made fruitless attempts to teach Jacques to sit, had dinner, and went to bed while the sun was still high in the sky. Cammie’s last coherent thought as she passed out was, I hope I find my inner farmer soon. And I hope she’s a morning person.

  Five hours later, she awoke as Kat climbed into the queen-size bed.

  “Hey,” Kat said directly into her ear. “Are you awake?”

  “It’s the middle of night!” Cammie mumbled.

  “No, it’s not. It’s barely ten o’clock. Why are you guys asleep?”

  “Go away.”

  “Move over.” Kat shoved Cammie out of the center of the mattress.

  Cammie kicked in Kat’s general direction. “When did you get home? Why aren’t you in your room?”

  “Move over and I’ll tell you.” Kat stole one of Cammie’s pillows and helped herself to most of the covers. “It’s the dog.”

  “The cute little French bulldog that you always wanted?”

  “The cute little French bulldog that won’t shut up,” Kat corrected. “He snores like a bulldozer.”

  “You’re exaggerating,” Cammie said.

  “Am I?” Kat huffed. “Listen.”

  They both froze for a moment. Sure enough, Cammie could hear the faint but unmistakable sounds of snores drifting down that hall.

  “That’s Jacques?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Damn.” Cammie paused. “Where’s Josh?”

  “In the bedroom. He could sleep through a typhoon.” Kat yawned. “Now go back to sleep. Pretend we’re sharing a room like when we were kids.”

  “What are you going to tell Josh when he wakes up tomorrow and you’re in here?”

  “I’ll tell him that he shouldn’t have bought a dog without consulting me.”

  Cammie struggled to wake up enough to carry on this conversation. “How was the breakfast date?”

  “Um, pretty good.”

  “You guys were gone all day.”

  “Yeah, we had to go buy stuff for the dog.” Kat slowly, slowly, started stealing the fluffiest pillow.

  Cammie tightened her grip on the pillow. “Yeah, well, you should know that he thinks he’s a farm dog. He walked the fields with me all afternoon.”

  There was a long silence, during which a land war ensued over the pillowcase.

  “I wish . . . I just wish he didn’t love me anymore.” Kat sounded absolutely despondent. “Because then I could stop feeling so awful about not loving him.”

  • • •

  “Good lord, what was that racket last night?” Ginger had already whipped up a stack of pancakes by the time Cammie and Kat came downstairs. “It sounded like a rock tumbler in your room.”

  “That was Jacques.” Kat yawned and grabbed the carafe of coffee.

  “It was? Good heavens.” Ginger looked appalled. “Is he ill?”

  “No, that’s just what French bulldogs do,” Kat said.

  “Yes, it is.” Josh’s voice startled all of them as he walked into the kitchen. Jacques trotted along behind him, sniffing the air before sitting next to Ginger’s feet.

  “Well, we need to do something about that.” Ginger picked up her spatula. “I’ll die of sleep deprivation.”

  “Don’t worry.” Josh cast a pointed look at Kat. “Jacques and I are going back home today.”

  “You are?” Kat’s expression and tone were oddly flat.

  “That’s what you want, clearly.” He crossed his arms and leaned back against the cabinet.

  “Who wants to help me weed today?” Cammie asked, feigning fascination in the steady drip of the coffeemaker.

  “Oh, that sounds lovely,” Ginger said loudly. “Count me in.”

  “Great. Want to join me out on the porch?”

  “Why, yes, I’d love to.”

  The two of them hightailed it out of the kitchen. Cammie blinked in the bright morning light as they stepped onto the porch. She followed Ginger across the driveway to stand in the shade of a huge tree.

  Her aunt sighed and shook her head. “I’m afraid Kat’s making a very big mistake.”

  Cammie remained silent, determined not to get involved. Two seconds later, she caved. “She can’t help how she feels.”

  “No, but she’s a fool to be dictated by emotion. Love ebbs and flows in a marriage. You can’t expect to feel head over heels every day. I thought she understood that.” Ginger clicked her tongue. “This isn’t about Josh at all; this is about Katherine having some kind of early midlife crisis because she can’t skate anymore.”

  Cammie couldn’t argue with that.

  “If she lets him go, she’s going to regret it later,” Ginger predicted.

  “Yeah, but you telling her that won’t change anything. She has to see that for herself. And speaking of regrets . . .”

  “Go on.” Ginger kept a close eye on Jacques, who stumbled down the porch steps and sniffed a patch of flowers by the fence post.

  “How are you feeling about the whole vineyard purchase now that we’re actually here?”

  “Why do you ask?” Ginger’s eyebrows shot up. “Are you suggesting that I’m having some sort of late midlife crisis?”

  Yes. “No. But sometimes the reality doesn’t live up to the daydreams.”

  Ginger surprised her by giving her a big, warm hug and kiss. “Oh, honey. I know you had your own life going on in California. You girls are so good to come out here and indulge an old lady’s folly.”

  Cammie frowned. “What? That’s not—”

  “That’s exactly what this is, and w
e both know it. The sensible thing to do would be to sell this place to someone who knows what they’re doing. Someone who has the time and money to make a real go of it. And I’ll do that. I will.” She lifted her chin. “Eventually. But I need the summer here. Just a little bit more fantasy before we all go back to reality.”

  Cammie understood exactly how her aunt felt. “I get it. But if we’re planning to resell, we need to keep everything in good condition. We need to maintain. We need to produce.”

  Ginger nodded. “I’ll help. Weeding, watering—whatever you need.”

  “Thank you, I appreciate that.” But it won’t be nearly enough. “I was thinking we could rent out the space for events. We could do weddings, bridal showers, maybe wine tastings for the tourists.”

  “You’re so clever!”

  “The first thing is, we should probably update the website.”

  Ginger frowned. “What website?”

  “The vineyard’s website.”

  “We have a website?”

  “Well, I’m assuming . . .” Cammie trailed off when Josh and Kat strode out of the house, both of them visibly upset. Jacques raced over to them as fast as his stumpy legs would carry him, snorting with joy.

  “Josh! You don’t have to go.” Kat pulled back her hair in frustration.

  “Why would I stay here when you’re acting like this?” Josh opened the car door.

  “I’m sorry.” Kat reached out her hand. “I’m trying. I’m working on it.”

  Josh reacted as if she’d slapped him. “Don’t try, Kat. I don’t want you to try.” He slammed into the car and peeled out, sending a spray of gravel toward the grapevines.

  Kat turned to Cammie and Ginger and tried to pretend the whole thing hadn’t happened. “What’re you guys doing out here?”

  “Just talking about our website,” Ginger trilled with forced cheer.

  Kat perked up. “We have a website?”

  • • •

  “We don’t have a website,” Cammie confirmed a few minutes later as she scoured the Internet on her tablet.

  “That would explain why I couldn’t find out anything about this place online.” Kat popped a handful of chocolate chips into her mouth. “Mmm. The only good thing about being forced into retirement is that I can eat candy with wild abandon.”