The Vineyard

by Barbara Delinsky

  In time, she raised the camera. The view through the lens, however, wasn’t as whole as the one in real life. The camera couldn’t capture the sound of birds waking up to the new day. It couldn’t capture the crystal stillness of a dewy vineyard, or the gentle movement of clouds, or the smell of lilacs and damp earth, or the sound of a distant foghorn.

  Enchanted, she returned the camera strap to her shoulder and went down the stone path that led away from the house. Low-growing greens framed it—a nubby tableau of juniper, cypress, and yew. Eventually they gave way to grass and the open space so precious to the vines, space that they needed to breathe. She had heard enough the night before to understand why.

  Putting her shoulders back, she lifted her head, laced her fingers behind her, and filled her lungs with the morning air. In that instant, she felt strong. She felt confident that she could do Natalie’s job. She felt proud of herself for having gotten herself and Tess to such an incredible place. She felt defiance toward all those who had given up on her in the past. She felt fresh and renewed.

  “That’s quite an outfit.”

  She turned with a start. Simon stood behind her, holding a steaming mug. His hair was damp, newly washed, but his beard was an even darker shadow than it had been, and his eyes matched. Or maybe it was just an effect. Perhaps the last trace of night obscured color. Or maybe it was the tight muscle of his upper arm, bare where his sleeves were torn out. Or those heavy work boots. Whatever, he looked menacing.

  But Olivia wasn’t being menaced out of her Eden. Nor was she playing the coy maiden. She had been caught outdoors in a perfectly respectable nightshirt. There was no harm in that.

  She stood her ground. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

  “I work here,” he said with what was either a small smile or a twitch. “I live here.”

  She knew that was not exactly true. He had a place of his own several acres over, though Natalie did say that he was in and out of the Great House all the time.

  “I meant,” Olivia clarified her statement, “that you’re not supposed to be up this early.”

  Those dark eyes didn’t blink. “I’m always up this early. This is the best time of day to work.”

  “In the vineyard?”

  “Sometimes. Today, in the office. I have e-mail to send. I need advice.”

  “About mold?”

  “Fungus. Yes.”

  “It was confirmed, then?”

  He nodded. “No surprise there. The season’s been cool and wet. We need more sun.”

  “Looks like you’ll get it today,” Olivia said with a glance at the glimmer of gold that was starting to touch the tops of the trees.

  He shrugged in a way that said maybe yes, maybe no, and took a sip of his coffee. His eyes held hers over the mug, which was a chunky ceramic thing that she imagined was his and his alone. He lowered it, holding it easily in one large hand.

  Olivia would have gone inside to dress if he hadn’t been blocking the way. She kept waiting for him to move on, but he continued to stand there, just where the path to the patio began, looking big and very male, with his weight on one lean hip and his eyes on hers. Well, she wasn’t looking away. She refused to. If the game was about who would blink first, she could play as well as he.

  Finally she won. After a long minute, his eyes moved off.

  She felt oddly deflated. “Is something wrong?” she asked.

  Gazing out at a distant point, he drank more of his coffee. Then he looked back. “That depends on you. If you’re here for more than Natalie’s project, there’s definitely something wrong.”

  Olivia was indeed there for more than Natalie’s project. She was there for the money, the sun, the fun, the escape, the possibility of finding a family connection. But Simon couldn’t possibly know any of that.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t follow.”

  “If you’re here to find a husband, you’re barking up the wrong tree.”

  Olivia’s brows rose. She nearly laughed, he was so far off the mark. “A husband. If I wanted that, I’d be in a place full of people. Sorry. No. That’s not why I’m here.”

  He didn’t relent. “Natalie fancies herself a matchmaker. She wants to see me married.”

  Olivia had been slow in making the connection. Appalled now, she flattened a hand on her chest. “You think she’s …” She wagged a finger between them.

  “Yeah, I think she’s …” He mimicked the motion.

  “Oh. No. Definitely not.” She gestured to that effect with both hands. “Natalie wouldn’t do that. I’m not the kind of person people think about that way.” She was thin and pale. She had a ten-year-old child, a history of romantic defeat, and hair that was too short and spiky to be the least bit alluring. Feeling self-conscious about all of it, she grew defensive. “Natalie has good reason to want me here, but it has nothing to do with you. Besides, you’re not my type.” She liked his legs, but she was done falling for a single feature. Nice legs did not a relationship make. Everything about Simon Burke was hard. “Absolutely not my type. And what’s wrong with you that you can’t find someone yourself?” It was not something she would have asked if he had been ugly or weird, but even above the legs, he was handsome in his way. Hard, but handsome.

  “I’m not interested.”

  It was a moment before his remark registered. Then she blurted an involuntary, “Oh dear.” She might have guessed it. “I’m sorry.” Wasn’t it often the case with the best-looking men?

  He shot her a disparaging look, but it quickly yielded to something so lacking in emotion as to be frightening. “I was married. I loved my wife. She and our daughter died in a freak accident while they were sailing.”

  Olivia caught a breath and reversed her thoughts. She hadn’t expected that. “How awful. I’m so sorry.”

  “Being sorry doesn’t bring them back.” His voice was flat. He wasn’t criticizing her, but simply stating a fact. “Not a day goes by when I don’t think of them.”

  “How long ago did it happen?”

  “Four years.”

  “What were their names?”

  “My wife was Laura.”

  “And your daughter?”

  One eye flinched, the smallest sign of pain. “Does it matter?”

  “Yes.” Olivia was an expert at making up stories, but if the facts were there, she wanted them. She wanted names to put with faces when she thought about Simon.

  “Liana.”

  She allowed herself to breathe. “Laura and Liana. Very beautiful.”

  “Yes.”

  “How old was Liana?”

  “Six when she died.” His eyes held accusation. “That would make your daughter just about the age mine would have been, had she lived.”

  Olivia couldn’t imagine losing Tess. Couldn’t imagine it. She knew also that if she were Simon, she would feel excruciating pain seeing Tess. “And there,” she declared, “is ample proof that Natalie did not bring me here because of you. The coincidence is too much. She wouldn’t have knowingly done that. It’s too cruel.”

  “Cruel things can be done with the best of intentions.”

  “Not this time,” Olivia insisted. “I’m here to work.” She needed to believe that Natalie had picked her for her love of the past and the job she had done for Otis. Natalie hadn’t asked about her history with men, which she would surely have done prior to fixing her up with her stepson-to-be. She hadn’t even asked for a picture. “Do I look like Laura?”

  “Not in the least.”

  “I rest my case.”

  He snorted. “Make your case, is more like it. She didn’t dare get someone who looked like Laura.”

  Olivia had no idea what Laura had looked like, but in that instant she felt ugly by comparison. A wall came up. “Listen, this is all beside the point. Even if you were interested, I’m not. I have challenges enough in my life right now, thank you.”

  “Good. Just so we understand each other.”

  “We do. Perf
ectly.”

  “As long as everything’s out on the table.”

  “It is.” But it wasn’t, of course. She kept thinking about his wife and daughter, about the sudden horrific loss. “Were you with them when it happened?”

  He didn’t pretend not to follow. “No.”

  She wondered if he regretted that. “Could you have saved them if you were?”

  “No.”

  “Was Laura a local girl? Someone you grew up with?” His childhood sweetheart? The one he had waited years for? The one he had built dreams upon? The only one he had ever envisioned marrying?

  He looked suddenly annoyed. “Is there a point to these questions?”

  “Just curiosity. How can you stay here after all that? Isn’t it too painful?”

  His annoyance faded as quickly as it had come. His eyes went toward the ocean. It wasn’t visible from this spot, nor was there an echo of surf, but they both knew it was there.

  “If it were me,” Olivia said, “I’d go somewhere totally different.” It was something she had done more than once, picking up and leaving places that didn’t work for her anymore. The seven years she had spent in Cambridge was a record. She was definitely her mother’s daughter.

  And apparently, Simon was his father’s son. “I’ve lived here all my life,” he said. “I can’t leave. The vineyard is who I am.”

  “There are other vineyards.”

  “Not like this one.” He turned to leave, sparing her a final, disdainful glance. “If you learn anything this summer, let it be that.”

  • • •

  SIMON RETURNED TO THE HOUSE to make himself breakfast as he always did, alone and in silence. Laura had loved the early morning silence, too. She had filled it with her appreciation of the dawn and of him, and he had never once, through all that stillness, felt alone. Now, and for the past four years, he had felt nothing but alone. Still, he treasured the silence.

  This morning, though, he felt unsettled and not particularly hungry. So he refilled his mug with coffee and, with shaggy Buck in tow, set off for the shed.

  The shed. It was an unassuming name for what was actually an impressive place, albeit in his biased opinion. Located on an open piece of land to the east of the Great House, it was large. What had housed a single tractor when Simon’s grandfather had come to Asquonset in the 1920s was now four times that size and held not only a tractor but a hedger, a sprayer, a ripper, and miscellaneous small equipment. Moreover, with its long shingled walls and double-hung windows, it was more refined than a shed. What clinched it, though, was the second story. It had been added six years before, one of Carl’s final dictates as vineyard manager. Under a gabled roof reminiscent of the Great House’s, it now housed Simon’s office.

  That was where he headed. Setting the coffee mug on the desk, he fed the cat a handful of treats while he booted up the computer, then he read through his e-mail. There was plenty of it. He might have become something of a social hermit in the last four years, but he had friends in the viticultural world, colleagues with whom he was regularly in touch. Many were from his years at Cornell, now teaching at other universities and working at other vineyards. Others were contacts he had made at government agricultural agencies. Rarely did a week go by, for instance, when he wasn’t in touch with the research station in Geneva, New York. He wanted to be on top of the latest thinking.

  Grape growing was far from an exact science. There were too many variables. From vintage to vintage, grapes were like snowflakes—no two were ever alike. That factor made it interesting, made it challenging, particularly in Rhode Island. Grape growing here was different from what it was like in other parts of the world. The soil was different. The weather was different. There were also fewer vineyards here and, therefore, fewer colleagues with whom to compare notes.

  At his computer now, with Buck rubbing against his leg, Simon weighed the advice offered by half a dozen friends in the field on battling Botrytis cinerea. It was one of the most common of the fungi that appeared in humid microclimates such as Asquonset’s, and he had hoped for a consensus. But the suggestions ranged all the way from doing aggressive spraying to doing nothing at all.

  Kicking back in his chair, he retrieved his coffee and stared out the window. From this height, he had as beautiful a view of the vineyard as any, but his eye went to the horizon, where a wavy line of gray marked the ocean. His chest tightened. His girls had breathed their last out there. It was a thought as dark as the clouds moving in. Clouds were the last thing he needed. The grapes finally were starting to dry, but the early morning sun wasn’t anywhere near as strong as what it would be at midday, and from the look of those clouds, it would be raining by then. He didn’t need the National Weather Service to tell him that.

  He weighed his choices. He could apply another coat of sulfur dust, but he had done a routine spraying just the week before. Too much and the wine made from these grapes would smell foul. On the other hand, if he did nothing and the rot spread, he might lose the whole block.

  No. Doing nothing wasn’t an option.

  What he really wanted to do was to ask his father. Even without a drop of formal education, Carl was the most knowledgeable person in Simon’s circle of friends. He had read nearly everything worth reading about grape growing, and even now attended conferences when Simon backed out. Jeremiah Burke might have watched over the first grapes at Asquonset, but it was Carl who had put the place on the map. He understood why some grapes grew well here and some didn’t, and had cultivated the former. He had instituted the trellis system that Asquonset still used, and was one of the first on the East Coast to tout integrated pest management as the most ecologically sound method of pest control. In his years at the helm, he had produced one remarkable vintage after another.

  Carl would know what to do now. He was definitely the one to call.

  But he was probably still sleeping. Probably sleeping with Natalie. She wouldn’t let him formally move into the Great House until the wedding, but Simon had seen Carl slipping out a side door on more than one foggy dawn.

  But hey, Simon wasn’t finding fault. Carl had paid his dues. He deserved this pleasure. Besides, if sleeping with Natalie—if marrying her—lengthened Carl’s life, Simon was the beneficiary. He wasn’t ready for another loss so soon.

  Four years. His chest tightened again. He rubbed the pain away with the flat of his hand.

  Draining the last of his coffee, he set down the mug and came out of his chair. “Don’t get up,” he told the cat and stepped over its plump body. At the foot of the stairs he left a note on the large chalkboard for Donna Gomez, his assistant manager and—frighteningly—now his only other staff member. He was still reeling from the losses. Losing Paolo would be especially painful. He had liked Paolo. The man hadn’t needed Simon looking over his shoulder. He knew grapes.

  But it was done. Hours of trying to change the man’s mind hadn’t worked. He was gone, and Simon would survive.

  The grapes were something else. Whether they lived to swell and sweeten was now entirely up to him. Actually, that wasn’t true. It was up to God, but that thought gave Simon no solace at all. God could be cruel. It was up to Simon to do what a mere mortal could to thwart any malice that might be aimed at his grapes.

  Heading for the Cabernet block, he began at the first of the forty rows and studied the tiny bunches of hard little peas that hopefully would grow into grapes. When he spotted upper leaves that threatened to block the sun, he gently worked them around the trellis. When he spotted lower leaves posing the same threat, he carefully removed them. There were no rules here. If he picked too few, the leaf canopy would shade the grapes and prevent them from getting the sun they needed to ripen. But leaves were crucial for photosynthesis, which turned carbon dioxide into sugar. If he picked too many, the sweetness of the grapes would be at risk. How many he picked and where depended on the variety of grape, its location on the vine, and the weather. It was strictly a judgment call on his part

  Mov
ing from one vine to the next now, Simon made that call gladly. He had been hand-leafing for as long as he could remember, and he loved the process. There was a rhythm to it, an art. The finished product had to feel right. It was an instinctive thing.

  This morning he slipped easily into the rhythm, as much to escape the unsettled feeling in the pit of his stomach as to help the grapes. His boots anchored him in the moist soil. The creaking of the vines had a calming effect.

  He didn’t look at his watch as the morning progressed, didn’t look at the thickening clouds, but worked his way slowly down one row and up the next. Buck materialized at one point, sat down, and watched. When Simon turned a corner into a new row, the cat simply crossed underneath. Simon found him good company, silent and undemanding.

  Other than a brief pause when Donna tracked him down, Simon kept his mind on his work and his eye on the vines. One minute he was hunkering down, working in the area of the grapes, the next he was standing to train the vine around the first of three trellis wires. The topmost of the leaves were barely chest-high to him now. In another two months, they would be eye-high and on the uppermost of the wires.

  He picked off a low leaf that grew just above a cluster of nascent grapes, studied the resulting configuration of fruit and light, then plucked off another. Satisfied, he moved to the next bunch.

  “What are you doing?” came the voice of a child.

  He looked up. Olivia Jones’s daughter stood halfway down the row, staring at him through glasses that made her eyes look too large in comparison to the rest of her, which seemed small, enveloped by a neon green rain slicker. She had the hood up, but frizzy wisps of brown hair stuck out at odd spots.

  Simon hadn’t realized it was misting until he saw her push the back of her hand over her glasses.

  “That makes it worse,” he told her, wondering how she could see with her glasses all smudged. He gestured her away from the vines. “You’re standing too close. The grapes need to breathe.”