The Vineyard

by Barbara Delinsky

  Carl ran a hand over his mouth. His eyes fell to the floor. Then, seeming puzzled still, he looked at Susanne. “I learned to distance myself,” he said, sounding faraway even then. “I had to. When I learned that your mother had married someone else, I—my whole world fell through. For a while, all I did was fight. Helped the country in the war effort, that’s for sure,” he added, but without any hint of a smile. Rather, frowning again, he put a hand on the back of his head. “Then I came back here and had to see that ring on her finger every day. Had to see Brad and you every day. I learned to tell myself that that’s just the way it was. Couldn’t change it. All done.”

  “How could you stay here?” Greg asked with what Olivia was relieved to call compassion.

  Carl’s eyes cleared. “How could I stay? you ask. How could I leave? She was alone. Her husband was still over there, and she had two children, a sick father, and a farm that needed tending. I told myself I’d stay until Alexander got home, but it was clear right from the start that farming wasn’t his thing, and then I couldn’t leave Natalie alone with the work any more than I could before.”

  “How could you look my father in the eye?” Susanne asked.

  Carl stood straighter, seeming challenged now. “Why would that have been a problem? I never compromised his wife. Any romantic involvement I had with her ended with her marriage. I had nothing to hide, nothing to be ashamed of.” His gaze went to Natalie. “I had no idea Brad was mine. Maybe if I’d known it, I’d have done something. Maybe I’d have had trouble looking Al in the eye then, but I didn’t know a damn thing. I was off in Europe fighting a war, catching what little sleep I could by dreaming about coming back here and marrying the love of my life. Then I was cut off cold. I was the last one to know about the marriage. And about Brad?” The pain was in his eyes again. He blew out a sharp puff of air.

  It was followed by a sharper sound, though, when the outer door flew open and Simon came in from the storm. He was windblown and wet, but there was a look of relief on his face.

  “The wind is down. Let’s go.”

  Twenty-nine

  SIMON WAS VAGUELY AWARE that the tension in the kitchen was too intense to be caused by the storm alone, but that wasn’t his worry just then. The grape leaves were. Every minute counted.

  “Is anyone helping?” he asked in dismay when five pairs of eyes regarded him dumbly.

  Natalie was the first to react, rising quickly from her seat. “Oh my God, yes. Where do you want us to start?”

  “We’ll work from top to bottom, starting with the Cabs. Donna’s already out there. She’ll set everyone up.” He pulled a piece of paper from his pocket. It was damp and wrinkled, but ballpoint pen ink didn’t smudge. He would rather Natalie stay inside making calls. It was gentler work. “These people are waiting to help. They need to be called.”

  “Olivia will make the calls. I’m going outside.”

  Carl was suddenly there with a gruff, “Let Olivia do the physical work.”

  Natalie rounded on him. “I may have made other mistakes in my life, but giving the vineyard my all was never one of them. I’m going out there, Carl, and if I die washing those leaves, it’s God’s will.” She passed Simon and went out the door.

  “What was that about?” Simon asked Carl.

  Looking cross, Carl merely followed Natalie out. Greg left seconds later.

  “I’ll get Mark,” Susanne murmured and went in the other direction.

  That left Simon and Olivia.

  He pushed both hands through his hair, then wiped them on his shorts—but shorts, hands, hair were all as salty and wet as the vines. “Did I miss something?”

  “Nothing you can’t hear about later,” Olivia said. “Are you okay?”

  He felt a tiny pang in his chest. It had been awhile since anyone had asked him that. “Just tired,” he said, managing a slight smile. “I didn’t sleep much last night.”

  “How long will it take tonight?”

  “Can’t take more than a few hours, or the damage is done. Adrenaline will keep me going that long.” He handed her the list. “Start with the fire department. They’ll bring lights. Where’s Tess?”

  “In the den. I’ll wake her when I go out, so she won’t panic if she finds no one here.”

  “Bring her,” Simon said, and suddenly, it was as important as the vines. The vineyard was his baby, but Tess was Olivia’s, and Olivia mattered. They both mattered.

  The doubt on Olivia’s face reminded him what a bastard he’d been when they had first arrived. He still needed to absolve himself for that.

  “She can help,” he said. “It isn’t dangerous, just tedious, but she’s smart and she’s strong. Every helping hand gives the grapes a better chance.” When Olivia remained unsure, he said, “I’ll keep her close.”

  Close to the house? Close to the others? Close to me? The words were vague, even to Simon.

  Whichever Olivia chose, it was apparently enough to convince her. When she nodded, he smiled, feeling pleased for the first time that night.

  “I’ll get her,” Olivia said.

  But Simon wanted to do it himself. He remembered what it was to give to a child and see glee in return. Tess wasn’t six, and it wasn’t Christmas morning, but if he had learned anything about her this summer, he suspected she would be pleased to be asked. He wanted to be there to see.

  “I will,” he said, heading for the den. “You start on that list.”

  NATURALLY, OLIVIA FOLLOWED HIM to the den. If she hadn’t already been in love with him, she would have fallen the rest of the way when she saw how gently he freed Tess’s head from the afghan and brought her awake. Thinking that, realizing it, admitting it for the very first time, she felt hard palpitations in her chest. Well, she did love him. There was no point in denying it. Everything about him appealed to her—body, mind, and manner. And now there was Tess. That was a vital part of it. Tess was the center of her life. Olivia could never love a man who didn’t understand that, or agree, or feel the same, and it looked from where she stood at the door to the den that Simon did. She couldn’t make out distinct words in the low murmur of his voice, but she could have sworn she heard an element of excitement. She certainly saw it on Tess’s face when the girl pushed the afghan aside and came to her feet—wide awake in an instant, looking more enthused than she had for anything in months.

  Actually, that wasn’t so. She had been just as eager to go sailing with Simon, but this was a more realistic activity. If the vines were saved, Olivia wanted Tess to know she had helped. It would bring closure to the summer.

  The danger, of course, was that Tess would grow more attached to Simon. Olivia’s heart was already lost, but she would have liked to spare Tess that. How to do it, though, with Simon taking Tess’s hand and leading her back to the kitchen, snatching a dry dish towel from the drawer and making her tuck it in the waistband of her shorts? For your glasses, he said. I know how this is. If Olivia might have custom-ordered a father for Tess, it would have been Simon.

  Clutching the phone list, she watched them together. Her heart followed them right out the door, leaving a hole in her chest that would take a long time healing, she knew. But she could handle it. She would have to. She had no choice.

  And Tess? If the connection with Simon strengthened after this, what then?

  Reasoning as only a mother could who wanted her child to aim high, Olivia decided that given the choices, she would rather Tess know that men like Simon did exist than not.

  SUSANNE’S NATURAL INSTINCT was to stay in the kitchen perking pot after pot of coffee on the gas stove, since the big electric urn wouldn’t work. Her instinct was to make sandwiches and other goodies, and put out a spread for the people who would be coming to help.

  But she had to get out of the house, for a little while at least. She had to breathe fresh air, had to stretch her arms and legs. Once Donna had set her up on a row of vines with a hose attached to the irrigation pipes, little concentration was required beyond k
eeping the wind at her back. More than anything else, she needed time to air out her mind.

  Mark worked on the next row. She couldn’t see him at first in the dark, not until the fire trucks arrived and set up huge floodlights, and then there was more to see than just Mark. The vineyard was suddenly a world of sparkle that could give Fifth Avenue at Christmas a run for its money. Spray from gently pressed nozzles arced softly over the uppermost leaves, shimmering and refracting in the light. The wind was gentle now, more a breeze than anything. With so much spray around, she inevitably grew wet, but the air wasn’t cool enough to chill her, and the sight of the vineyard was compensation enough.

  Working this way, fighting to save something that mattered more to her than she wanted to admit, she felt energized. It struck her, though, that much of the energy came from the thought of her mother working out there in the mist. Something had happened back in the kitchen. Susanne had read Natalie’s book and managed not to be touched, but seeing Natalie in pain, with Carl angry and the spectre of Brad hovering and Greg needing answers as much as Susanne did—something had opened up inside her. For the first time in her life, she saw that Natalie was human. She was human, and she was flawed. That realization diffused Susanne’s anger, allowing her to look back over the story of Natalie’s life with the same honesty they had demanded of her, and acknowledge that the woman had been quite remarkable, faults and all.

  Susanne wanted to reread that book. She wanted to get to know this other woman her mother had been, wanted to get to know the person who had made her share of mistakes but had surely built something of value.

  Asquonset really was a beautiful place. Susanne had forgotten just how much so. Standing here now, smelling the wet earth and the fresh river water that came through the pipes and washed the leaves, thinking about her mother, who was seventy-six and vital in ways Susanne wanted to be when she was that age, she felt inspired.

  GREG FELT LIKE he was holding three hoses. Only one sprayed water. The other two sprayed thoughts—one of Natalie, one of Jill—and they kept crossing each other, spilling back on him, flooding his mind. Then a rescue truck arrived from Huffington and set up a floodlight beside the Gewürztraminer vines, where he was. He caught sight of his wife in the next row, and suddenly the flooding eased and clear thought returned. Yes, he felt possessive; that wouldn’t change soon. But he also felt protective, which seemed a far more honorable trait.

  Dragging the hose with him, he shimmied under the vines on his stomach, as Carl had taught him to do to keep from hurting the grapes, so many years before. Coming up near Jill, he continued spraying his row from her side. He had to speak loudly to be heard above the water’s sibilance. “Want me to take your hose for a while?”

  “No,” she called back. “I’m fine.”

  “Are you sure this is all right for you to do?”

  “Do you think I’d do anything to harm my child?” she asked sharply.

  He pulled back. No. She wouldn’t do anything to harm her child. He knew that. He also knew not to state the obvious and say that the child was his child, too. As angry as he was at Natalie for telling him how to handle his wife, he knew that things had to change if he was going to be any kind of a father to the child.

  He could be a good one. He could be as good a father as Alexander had been—no, a better one, because he could be the breadwinner. That would allow Jill to be around for their kids as Natalie hadn’t been around for hers.

  Granted, Jill said she wanted to work. That would take some figuring out. Same with Greg’s time. He couldn’t be much of a father if he continued to travel the way he’d been doing. Couldn’t be much of a husband, either—though he wasn’t telling his mother that. If he cut back his hours and traveled less, it would be because he wanted to be with Jill, not because his mother had told him what to do. Natalie had no right to do that. She was no saint. He had to confess that he’d found satisfaction in her discomfort there at the end.

  That said, he still felt the sting of her rebuke. She hadn’t ever talked to him that way. Hadn’t ever criticized him like that. When he had been growing up, her distraction had been disapproval enough.

  He wondered if he’d been wrong, wondered if it hadn’t been disapproval at all, if she had just been … busy … like she’d said.

  In the spirit of the honesty he had accused her of lacking, he did have to concede that she had built something quite nice here at Asquonset. There were many more vines now than there had been ten years before. The scope of the current cleanup attested to that.

  “Have you seen the front drive?” he called to Jill. “It’s lined with cars. It looks like half the town’s come to help.”

  “That’s a tribute to your parents,” she called back, surely assuming it would annoy him, but it didn’t. It just made him think, again on an honest vein. He had been wrong about some things.

  “It may be a tribute to Natalie. And to Carl. Not to my dad, though,” he said. “Sounds like he didn’t do as much as I thought.”

  “Of course he did,” Jill scolded. “He just did different things from what you thought. If someone wasn’t out there selling our wine, Asquonset would have gone right down the drain!”

  She moved down the row to spray more vines.

  He followed, taking strength from what she said. They were side to side, facing in opposite directions, and he paid attention to what he was doing, but his thoughts were back in Washington, back nearly eight years to the Jill he had first met. The one here now, in Asquonset, was like that old one. She was assertive. She wasn’t afraid to speak up to him.

  Marriage had muted Jill.

  No. He had muted her. He had cut her short and put her down. He had taken their differences personally. He had wanted her love to be unconditional in ways that his mother’s hadn’t been.

  Ohh, I loved you. I loved you both. Natalie’s words came back at him along with a light spray from the dying breeze. He heard the breathy way she’d said them and saw, again, the tears in her eyes. He had never seen his mother quite that way before. It made him want to believe her—made him wonder whether he would view her as a parent differently once he was a parent himself. The issue of Brad was now put in a whole new context. He wondered what he would have felt had he been in Natalie’s shoes.

  He wanted to talk with Jill about that. He wanted to talk about how they would be as parents, because that suddenly seemed more important than any professional polling he might do. But talking wasn’t easy, not when it was about substantive stuff, not when it was about personal stuff. In the end, he might not like what Jill said. There was that risk.

  Everything good involves risk. Natalie had said that, too, and he couldn’t rule it out.

  He took risks at work. He had fought to make the business succeed and had earned the respect of his clients and peers.

  The question was whether he could take those skills and direct them homeward.

  OLIVIA WOULD HAVE SENT Tess to bed at two in the morning if she had thought the child would go, but Tess was totally into the mission. Somehow, in the jungle of grapevines, river spray, and floodlights, she had found Seth and a boy from her sailing class, both of whom had come with their families to help. The three were taking turns with the nozzle, relieving one another when their hands tired, moving down one row and on to the next, keeping right up with the adults, even with the occasional squeal of laughter.

  It wasn’t until shortly before dawn that Olivia knew things were working. She saw the relief in Simon’s tired eyes, saw the vigor of the handshakes he gave the friends who, one by one, coiled their hoses and returned to their cars. Floodlights were shut down. Fire hoses were disconnected. Simon and Donna sprayed the last of the vines themselves, then Donna and her family left, too.

  By the time the sun had risen enough for its first long rays to expose the damage Chloe had done, the only ones not in bed were Olivia, Simon, and Carl. They stood on the porch of the Great House taking in the scene. The front drive was strewn with debris,
and though much of it had come from the peripheral maples, oaks, hemlocks, and pines, there were more than a few vinifera limbs in the mess.

  Not knowing where he found the energy, Olivia watched Simon trot down the steps and jog toward the Riesling block. Random blank spots marred the perfect order that had existed there the day before.

  “How bad is it?” she asked Carl.

  He drew in a tired breath. “We’ve lost some. It was inevitable, with a wind like that. But we didn’t lose anything to the salt. All said, it could have been worse. We’ll replant. We’ve done it before.” He barely paused. “Can I ask you something, Olivia?”

  Simon turned down a row. Only then did Olivia turn to find Carl studying her. His eyes were Simon’s, plus forty years, brimming with exhaustion and hurt.

  “Did Natalie tell you about Brad?” he asked in a voice that was more gritty than ever. “While you were writing. Did she say that he was … mine?”

  Olivia’s heart ached for the man. “No. She didn’t.”

  He looked out toward the vines. “Did you guess it?”

  “No. I knew there was something about Brad that wasn’t being said. But I didn’t guess that.” She paused. “Did you guess it? Did you ever wonder?”

  Carl didn’t answer. Olivia wasn’t even sure he had heard the question. He continued to look out over the field, but blindly now. Even from the side, she could see tears in his eyes when he finally turned and entered the house.

  CARL WANTED TO BE ANGRY. He wanted to lash out at Natalie for the years he’d had to live without her, the years when he’d had to play second fiddle to Alexander in her life, the years when he had truly believed that Brad was another man’s son.