The Vineyard

by Barbara Delinsky

  There was another silence. Then Natalie said, “Stay on here, Olivia. Stay on after the wedding.”

  Olivia looked up. “Excuse me?”

  “Tess can go to Braemont, and you can be my assistant.”

  Pretending can be counterproductive. “You don’t need an assistant. Not after the wedding, not once the book is done.” Olivia still hadn’t gotten Natalie’s verdict on the work so far. She was almost afraid to ask.

  “But I want an assistant. I can find plenty to keep you busy.”

  “You don’t need me here.”

  “That’s not the point. I want you here.”

  Olivia should have been ecstatic. Not so long ago she had dreamed something like this would happen. But now she was trying not to get embroiled in dreams. That was what her mother’s death had taught her.

  “I’ve been offered a job in Pittsburgh.” She told Natalie about the museum job.

  Unfazed, Natalie smiled. “Now you’ve been offered one here, too.”

  “But the one in Pittsburgh involves restoration work. I’m good at that.”

  “The one here is handling people. You’re good at that, too.” The older woman’s smile faded, her expression grew earnest. “I need you, Olivia. I like knowing you’re here. I’ve never had a personal assistant before. Not a personal one. But look what you’ve done for me.”

  “I didn’t do much. I’m not really the best writer.”

  “Excuse me? I’ve read what you’ve written.”

  Olivia tried to be casual. “You have?”

  “Of course. Did you think I wouldn’t? I’ve read it at every stage of the writing.”

  “I didn’t know that.” She held her breath, searching Natalie’s face for approval.

  All she saw was surprise. “I didn’t tell you? I thought I had. I guess I’ve been busy. I’ve had a lot on my mind.”

  It occurred to Olivia that this was what Susanne and Greg had experienced. But she wasn’t blood kin, and she wasn’t waiting a minute longer. “Well? What do you think?”

  “I think it’s wonderful,” Natalie said, still seeming surprised. “Did you doubt that?”

  “Yes, I doubted it. I’ve never written anything like this before, never even come close!”

  Natalie smiled. “Well, I love it. It’s clear and eminently readable. It captures the time and captures the emotion. I can’t imagine anyone doing a better job.”

  Olivia felt giddy. “Really? Thank you. You’re no doubt being kind, but I like hearing it anyway.”

  “I am not being kind. I’m being honest. No one could have done better, not with my book, and not with all the other things you’ve done for me. I’m not getting younger. I like having someone to keep track of the details, and you’re good at it. You could work here or over at the office. We always need help there. Or at the winery. We actually need a liaison between the winery and the office.”

  Aching to believe and fighting not to, Olivia tried to make light of the offer. “Now that’s a stretch.”

  “Not at all. Your problem is that you don’t understand your worth. You don’t realize what you’ve done, how much easier you’ve made things for me. I’m seventy-six. I want help. You give it without making me feel like I’m halfway to the grave.”

  “You’re not. Anyone with half a brain can see that.”

  “I’m serious about this, Olivia.” Her face showed it. “I wanted my children to be involved with Asquonset, but although they ought to care about the place, they don’t. Neither do their children, as you can see from the number of times my grandchildren have visited this summer, which is exactly none. You’ve been here, and you care. I want you to stay.”

  “I can’t,” Olivia said.

  “Why not?”

  She couldn’t explain it. How to explain being terrified of something that sounded ideal?

  Natalie sighed. “Well, think about it. I have to go over to the office, but I won’t let this go. You’ve been good for me. You’ve poked and prodded. You’ve made me talk about hard things. I needed to do that.”

  “The door to Brad’s room is still closed,” Olivia said, and Natalie drew back.

  “I don’t follow.”

  “Nothing’s changed. So I haven’t done much after all. Susanne and Greg are still upset, and that door is still closed.”

  Natalie looked away.

  “Why is it closed?” Olivia asked. She had never been quite so bold before, and wasn’t sure whether she wanted to hurt Natalie, or anger her into withdrawing her offer, or simply put her approval to the test.

  Whatever, Olivia would rather talk about Natalie than herself any day, and Brad was unfinished business. “Is everything inside the way it was before he died?”

  Natalie nodded.

  “Do you go in there much?”

  Natalie pursed her lips. The gesture accentuated wrinkles that were usually camouflaged by optimism. “Once in a while.”

  “Is there more to his story than you’ve told me?”

  The older woman put a hand to her mouth, moving her fingertips over those wrinkles as though she would iron them out, and indeed, when she lowered her hand to allow for a sad smile, they were gone. “There’s always more to the story of a child whose life was cut short. But that story isn’t for this book.”

  • • •

  BY LUNCHTIME, everyone in the kitchen ringed the television more closely. The time for procrastination had passed.

  A reporter was standing on a beach in nearby Newport. “As you can see,” she said with a glance over her shoulder, “the surf looks normal, but every indication is that this will shortly change. Chloe is battering Bermuda and holding to a north-northwest path. As of this hour, a hurricane watch is in effect for the southern New England coast. Latest estimates have her making landfall by noon tomorrow. She is a large storm. We expect to see the first of the cloud cover moving into this area by later today. Those of you who remember hurricanes Gloria in 1985 or Donna in 1960 know the drill. For others of you who are wondering how to prepare for this storm, we take you now to the headquarters of the local Red Cross …”

  Natalie lowered the sound and turned to the others. “I remember Gloria. I remember Donna. I also remember Carol and Edna in ‘54, one right after the other. Typically, we lose electricity. We do have flashlights and hurricane lamps, but we need to make sure they’re working. Greg, we’ll need spare batteries and lamp fuel. Will you handle that? If there’s flooding, it may contaminate our wells, so we’ll need plenty of bottled water. Susanne? And powdered and canned goods, if the refrigerator goes—and speaking of the refrigerator, turn the settings to the coldest and open the doors as little as possible. The windows have shutters, so we don’t have to board up, but the furniture has to come in from the patio. Mark?”

  “Done,” Mark said with the ease that was his way.

  Neither Susanne nor Greg had that ease, at least, not around Natalie. Olivia half expected one of them to accuse her of blowing the storm out of proportion. When neither did, she was unsettled. Apparently, they knew what it meant to be hit by a hurricane here. Either that or they were tired. Neither reacted with anything but nods. Susanne busied herself making chicken sandwiches. Greg and Mark left the room.

  “What can I do?” Jill asked Natalie.

  Natalie wrapped her arms around her daughter-in-law. “You,” she murmured, apparently having been brought into the loop regarding the baby-to-be, “can take care of yourself. Sit. Eat lunch. Watch television and tell us if anything changes.”

  “What about me?” Tess asked. “I want to help.”

  Natalie cocked her head and frowned. “You can be the runner between Simon and us. He’ll be monitoring the storm in his office. He gets bulletins on his computer. You can relay any new information.”

  Olivia wouldn’t have given Tess that particular job. She would have kept her as far from Simon as possible, and it wasn’t Simon she was worried about.

  “Simon’s taking me sailing,” Tess told Natalie.<
br />
  Natalie looked momentarily startled. Then she smiled. “Not today, he isn’t.”

  “Why are hurricanes named after girls?”

  “They aren’t always. Not anymore. Beau was the one right before Chloe. They started using men’s names in the seventies. Now they alternate, boy, girl, boy, girl.”

  “Who is ‘they’?”

  “I don’t know. Simon would. Ask him.”

  “I know,” Carl said, catching the question as he came in from outside. “There’s a committee of people from the Caribbean islands. They have names ready to go for an entire year. The list repeats itself every six years, unless there’s a bad hurricane. Then they retire the name.”

  “Hel-lo,” Natalie sang with a smile and put up her cheek for a kiss.

  When Carl gave it and slid a gentle hand around her waist, Olivia nearly sighed aloud. They were a wonderful couple to watch.

  “I stopped at the club,” he said. “The boat’s as secure as possible, short of taking it out of the water.”

  Tess was at his elbow. “Why do people in the Caribbean get to name the hurricanes?”

  Carl put a gentle hand on her head. “Because hurricanes in the Atlantic basin most often hit there, so the people there get first dibs on names.”

  “Do hurricanes hit the vineyards in California?”

  “No. They don’t usually hit California at all.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because they move east to west. We get hurricanes here that come from storms off Africa. They have a whole ocean to build over. California only has land to its east. A hurricane won’t build over land.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it needs water, preferably warm. That’s why most of our hurricanes hit in August and September. The Atlantic is warmest then.”

  “What’s the word from town?” Natalie asked him.

  “They’re battening down the hatches.”

  “What does that mean?” Tess asked.

  Olivia stepped in. “Nailing things down so they won’t blow around. Come on, sweetie. Time for lunch.” She turned to Natalie. “How about me? What can I do?”

  Closing one eye, Natalie looked to be running down a list in her mind. “You can call the landscapers. I want our name at the top of the list for cleanup after the storm.” She made a tiny sound. “I do miss Joaquin. This service, that service—they’ll all be swamped with calls, but I can’t have leaves and whatever strewn about for the wedding. Get a promise, get a guarantee that they’ll be here. Oh, and please call the caterer and the florist, just to make sure they don’t mess something up in the to-do with Chloe. And the calligrapher.”

  “I faxed her the seating plan yesterday,” Olivia said. “She’ll have the place cards done in a week.”

  “Good.” Natalie pressed her forehead. “Now, have I forgotten anything?”

  BY MIDAFTERNOON, the surf had kicked up. Tess’s sailing class was canceled, along with everything else at the yacht club. A lecture at Pindman’s on canning vegetables that was supposed to be held that night was postponed so that people could prepare for the storm. Same with a potluck supper at the church.

  The television reporter, at Narragansett pier this time, was holding her blowing hair off her face. “The hurricane watch has now been upgraded to a hurricane warning, with Chloe expected to make landfall in less than twenty-four hours. The governor has announced that state offices will be closed tomorrow for all but emergency personnel. The national guard has been put on alert. Many businesses have also closed. We will be running through a full list of cancellations later in this broadcast.”

  The screen door closed noisily. Tess ran into the kitchen, leaned against the counter, and breathless, reported, “Simon says the eye will just miss us. He isn’t happy about that.”

  Carl grunted. “No. He wouldn’t be. If you’re sitting in the path of the eye of the storm, you get a small breather between blows. The point of greatest force is often sixty-some miles from the eye. If you happen to be sitting in that path, you get hit bad.”

  Tess pushed up her glasses and looked up at him. “Will we be hit bad?”

  “Nothing we can’t handle,” he assured her.

  “Simon says some people are evacuating.”

  “Those’d be the ones who live right by the sea. A hurricane like this, you worry about the storm surge.”

  “What’s the storm surge?”

  “Seawater that rises because of the hurricane blowing on the ocean.”

  “How high does it get?”

  “That depends on the storm. Simon’d know about the predictions for this one.”

  “I’ll go ask,” Tess declared, but Olivia pointed her to a chair. The child had been back and forth to Simon’s office more times than she could count. The poor guy deserved a break.

  “Susanne needs corn shucked.” Olivia took a big brown paper bag from the counter and set it down in front of Tess. “You are the best at that. I’ll go ask Simon.”

  Olivia let herself out the kitchen door into a late afternoon that was eerily dark. The air felt dense and heavy, filled with moisture. Cutting behind the house, she jogged along the path to the shed. A second-floor light was on, glowing as it wouldn’t do on a sunny day. Slipping inside, she ran up the stairs and followed the light to the room at the end of the hall.

  Simon sat at his computer with his chair tipped back as far as it could go. His hands were folded behind his head, and one knee was crossed. He was waiting, not necessarily for her.

  “Hi,” she said and went up to the computer screen. “Whatcha got there?”

  “Radar pictures.” Unfolding his hands, he lowered one to her back. “The National Hurricane Center posts them. It doesn’t look good.”

  Olivia studied his face. She knew his features well enough now to see that his eyes were more deep-set than usual. “You’re exhausted.”

  Snorting, he shot her a look. “This is only the start.”

  His hand moved the smallest bit on her back. She wanted to think she brought comfort. That was why she was here. She was a friend. “What kind of damage can she do?”

  He shrugged. “That depends on her strength when she hits. If she weakens between now and then, the damage could be negligible—a few leaves, a vine or two. Anything more and the cost rises.”

  “Worst-case scenario?”

  “She hits us with winds greater than one-fifty an hour and wipes us out.”

  “Wipes us out?”

  “Snaps vines in two. That kind of wind is ferocious. Vines aren’t made of steel.”

  “But I thought hurricanes lose strength over land.”

  “Yeah. After a few hours over land. We’ll be getting her straight off the water. That’s full force. And it isn’t only the wind, it’s the rain. Torrential rains soak soil. If the vines absorb too much too fast, the grapes swell and split. If they split, they rot. If they absorb too much water, the juice is diluted and the vintage is weak. Either case sucks.”

  Grasping at straws, Olivia said a weak, “She may still veer away from the coast.”

  Simon didn’t look hopeful. “She may, but if she doesn’t do it soon, we’ll still feel her winds. She’s a big fat thing. Look at this.” Tapping a few keys, he brought another image to his screen. This one showed Chloe looking like a typical hurricane—windmill-like, with a hole in the middle.

  He pointed to her width. “This mama is nearly three hundred miles wide.”

  Olivia had no basis for comparison. “That’s big?”

  “It’s big.”

  His computer made a small dinging sound. Taking his hand from her back, he sat forward and clicked on his e-mail icon. Seconds later he had a new message on the screen.

  Olivia read along. “Who is Pete G.?”

  “A friend with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.” He typed a fast answer and sent it.

  “What did he mean, the right-left differential?”

  “The winds on the right side of the eye are stro
nger. Right now, Chloe is blowing at one twenty right and one ten left.” He shot her a dry look. “Any way you cut it, that’s a powerful storm.”

  Olivia leaned against the desk. She wished there were something to be done. “I’m sorry, Simon.”

  He smiled. “Not your fault.”

  “It isn’t fair. The vineyard had finally dried out. The sun was shining. Things were looking so good.”

  “Things were looking great,” he corrected. “The sun’s been making the grapes sweat. It’s like boiling down syrup. The more excess fluid you lose, the more intense the remaining flavor. But hey, this is old hat. The crucial part of the ripening season always coincides with hurricane season. Happens every year.”

  “Is there nothing you can do?”

  “Nothing.”

  “We’ve put men on the moon. Why can’t we tame a hurricane?”

  “Oh, we’ve tried. We’ve dropped silver iodide into the eye—there’s a whole scientific theory why it should work, but it didn’t. We developed a liquid cover to put on the ocean under a storm so that it can’t feed off the water, but the damn cover comes apart in the waves. We’ve talked about dropping nuclear weapons into the eye, but forget that. Can you imagine the fallout?”

  He let out a breath and, seeming calmer, caught her hand. “That’s what this life is about. Farmers are gamblers. Didn’t you know?”

  She shook her head, lost—positively lost—in his eyes. Cold and hard? Is that what she had thought once? There was nothing cold and hard about them. They were the deepest blue imaginable. They were rich and knowledgeable, warm and compassionate. They were gentle, kind, worried, and she was nearly in over her head.

  She felt terrified, just as she had when Natalie offered her a job.

  He gave her hand a little shake. “Don’t look at me that way.”

  “I’m not looking at you,” she said, rising to the challenge. “I’m looking through you. Know what I see?”

  He smiled, shook his head. “What do you see?”

  “The reflection of a computer screen. That’s what happens when you sit in front of one of these things too long. It starts to glow on the back of your skull. I mean, there’s a reason why we use screen savers. Come on over to the Great House. You need a break from this.”