by Laura Dave
I wanted to empty out my bucket, all over Bobby’s head.
“Jacob isn’t turning The Last Straw Vineyard into a household name,” my father said. “He wants The Last Straw as a showcase property, a model for his other wineries on sustainable practices.”
“Until he doesn’t,” I said.
“Easy,” he said.
My father didn’t like to be pushed, especially by one of his children. Even if he knew I was correct. He knew it better than I did. Which might be why he stepped back and turned the focus on me.
“Is everything okay with Ben?” he asked.
I laughed, unsure how to answer that. Was I slightly on edge because my fiancé was a liar? Maybe. But did it discount what I was saying to my father?
I looked out at the vineyard, everything my father had spent his life building. I never felt more peaceful than when I was out there with him. It wasn’t just about the grapes, the wine. It was about the land he had kept safe to make that wine. It was about the farm and the house and how proud he was of what he had built here. And it was about the people he was giving that to—the last people who would appreciate it.
And that wasn’t even touching on the most tragic part of what my father seemed to be giving away. What my parents both seemed to be giving away—each other.
“Dad, it just seems like a bad time to be making a big decision.”
My father met my eyes. It was the first acknowledgment between us about my mother and Henry.
He shook his head. “You’re out of line, kid,” he said.
My father looked angry, something he rarely was.
“Dad . . .” I said. I started to apologize, but my father was already up and moving in the direction of one of his workers.
“Keep it up over here. I’ll be right back,” he said.
But he wasn’t coming back. He was going to help them load the final grapes from their shift onto the receiving table. He was going to study those grapes to see what they had to tell him.
I watched him go, wanting to call out after him now that I knew what I wanted to say. Which was, I love you and I’m here for you. Who doesn’t start with that?
“Nice,” Bobby said, glaring. “You need to learn when to back off.”
I looked down at the bucket of grapes, angry at myself. I had pushed my father too far because I didn’t know how to push him in the way he needed pushing—toward my mother.
“Is this because he didn’t ask you if you wanted the vineyard?”
I met Bobby’s eyes, hurt that he thought I was thinking about myself as opposed to our family.
“’Cause you’re moving to London with Ben. You can’t do this thing long distance. I don’t want it. I have Margaret and the kids. Margaret is talking about going back to work. And Finn . . .” Bobby shook his head.
“What is going on with you two?”
He wiped his hands, reached for the water. “You’ll have to ask him.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you’ll have to ask him.” He shrugged. “He’s acting like a dick. And he doesn’t want to talk about it with me, which is probably my fault. I’ve been a little judgmental.”
“About what?”
Bobby chugged his water. “All the women he’s been messing around with.”
“Finn always is dating someone.”
“This is different. He’s dating everyone.”
Bobby put the water down.
“And he says he wants to move to New York to go work for his buddy Sam, who has a new restaurant. He’s talking about selling me his share of the bar. I only bought the bar so he could run it. Now he’s leaving me with it.”
Bobby crinkled his forehead. He looked hurt that Finn was freezing him out—when they never froze each other out. Hurt that Finn would want to move away from him.
They were truly best friends—my good brother, my bad one. They always had been. I was the little sister they took care of in different ways: Bobby tutoring me in algebra, Finn sneaking me out for two-for-one pizza and a drive-in movie the night before the algebra test. But their relationship with each other was reciprocal, the two of them always sticking by each other’s side. Until, apparently, now.
His cell phone rang. He reached into his pocket, a smile returning to his face.
“Hey, pal.”
Then he held out the phone so I could see who it was. Ben, complete with a smiling photo, beckoning. Bobby put the phone back to his ear, happy to be talking to him.
Bobby loved Ben, though he loved him for the wrong reasons. He loved him for being an impressive architect, an upstanding member of society, a member of Soho House. All the things Bobby valued these days.
“You coming up?” Bobby said, into the phone.
I shook my head and whispered to Bobby, “Tell him I’m not here.”
“Sure,” Bobby said. “She’s right here.”
He handed the phone over.
Instead of putting the phone to my ear, I ended the call. And handed the phone right back to him.
Bobby looked down at the phone in his hands, confused.
“What the hell?” he said.
“Don’t look at me like that. I wanted to finish our conversation.”
“You could have told Ben that,” Bobby said.
I felt my face start to turn red.
Bobby registered it. “Oh no.” He paused. “Are you blowing this with him?”
“No, but thank you for the support.”
“That’s why the obsession with the vineyard. So you don’t have to admit that you’re blowing this with him.” He shook his head. “Why am I the only one in this family that has a clue about being a grown-up?”
“Has it even occurred to you that you don’t know everything that’s going on with me? Let alone with Mom and Dad? If you did, you’d understand that selling the vineyard isn’t about selling the vineyard.”
He smirked, unimpressed. “Is that so?”
I looked at him confused. Did he know about Mom and Dad too?
“Bobby, they’re running away from the thing they care the most about because it feels too hard to stay. We can’t let them do that.”
His phone rang again, Ben on the line again.
“Well, we’re going to have to,” he said. “Because it’s already done.”
Then he turned away and picked up.
Sebastopol, California. 1979
The word the real estate agent used to describe the land was bucolic.
Bucolic, Dan knew, was generous. The dirt was dusty, muddled. There were dozens of stumps he’d need to dig out by hand.
“Tons of possibilities here,” she said.
Possibilities. Bucolic. Real estate speak. She was, after all, a real estate agent who was trying to convince him to buy ten acres of land in an area where no one was buying ten acres of land. Not for what he wanted it for. Not for making wine. They were doing that an hour east and south over the winding, trepidatious climb of CA-116, leading you to a different world, to Calistoga and St. Helena, the tony world of Napa Valley.
That was a world Dan had only visited, a world still rejoicing from their win in the Judgment of Paris a few years earlier. The victory had been a big deal in the wine world. Eleven judges, graded tastings, California wines rating best in each category. Beating out the French, beating out the world. A French judge had demanded her ballot back, but it was too late. She had already spoken. Napa Valley was the winner.
Sebastopol wasn’t Napa Valley. It wasn’t obvious for growing grapes—this wedge-shaped hunk of land separating the Russian River Valley from the Petaluma Gap, all sloping land and overgrown trees, winding roads like obstacle courses.
This was Western Sonoma County. It was rolling country, a land of apple orchards. This very acreage had been an apple orchard, the real estate ag
ent told him. Now it was dehydrated, empty.
But he wasn’t only looking at the land. He was looking at the rest of it. Sebastopol’s prevalent but predictable weather patterns. Mornings always warm, especially when the fog burned off. Evenings always cold. The elevation here keeping the land above the coastal fog.
He had been a scientist by trade until he felt compelled to do something else, until he felt he had to be standing here. He had been standing on the top of the hill—the high point that looked over the acres—every morning this week. He had been standing here for two hours at a time, as he clocked how the sun came up, how the wind felt. He thought he could work with this. And, if he managed, he would be the first to succeed.
He would have to try. He couldn’t afford a piece of land in Napa Valley. He could barely afford this land, in the middle of nowhere. But that wasn’t the only reason. Maybe if he honored the land—if he honored the elements that made it the strange and unique way it was—he could make a different type of wine. He could do something worth doing.
The real estate agent was trying to be patient. She had been standing on the top of the hill with him every morning this week, standing over him as he reached down, his hands grabbing soil, studying it.
He knew if she had any other potential buyers, she wouldn’t be here. She knew that he knew this.
He tried to ignore her, but she followed his eyes out to the empty land. She looked at his empty ring finger.
“Are you going to build a home here?” she asked.
“A vineyard.”
“Really?” She tried to recover. She did a terrible job. “Very exciting!”
He was looking straight ahead.
“Are you a winemaker?”
“No.”
She looked at him, perplexed. “Do you have someone to help you?”
He shook his head. “Not yet.”
He was twenty-five years old. He had no family, no money, two classes so far in viticulture. Fourteen more classes to go.
He had no business doing what he was about to do.
“I’ll take it,” he said.
And he looked out at nothing. The beginning of his life.
Mr. McCarthy
After we left the vineyard, I went back to the house and showered. When I got out, I checked my phone for the first time that day.
There were two messages from Suzannah in my office. Suzannah Calvin-Bernardi (Savannah-born, former homecoming queen, current spitfire), who in addition to being a co-associate at my law firm was one of my best friends in Los Angeles. She managed to make it all seem easy. She was raising a child and eight months pregnant with a second (both with her homecoming king), kicking all kinds of ass at work. Taking no bullshit from any of them. Her kid, her colleagues. Herself.
But in my attempt to get out of town as quickly as possible, I’d done something unlike myself. I’d saddled her with the case we were currently trying to close. I never saddled her with anything—never left a deal unsigned, worked late into the night so that she didn’t have to—especially now that she was pregnant. Which made me scared to listen to her message. Her tone firm and fast.
“Hey . . . this is work Suzannah. Remember when you were stepping out of the office for your dress fitting? Call me when you get this. I hate you.”
Then there was Suzannah’s second message. Her tone soft and melodic.
“Hey . . . this is friend Suzannah. Remember when you were stepping out of the office for your dress fitting? Call me when you get this. I love you.”
As I clicked over to phone her back, I got another call. I thought it was going to be Ben—who had left several messages of his own. But it was Thomas Nick, Ben’s business partner.
Thomas was in London, setting up the office. He wanted everything to be up and running by the time he flew to the States for our wedding.
“Georgia,” he said. “How’s the move going?”
The move. I sat down on the edge of my bed and wrapped the towel more tightly around myself. Ben and I were moving today. In the chaos, I hadn’t even considered that. All of our stuff was leaving our house in Silver Lake, heading in a van and then a plane to our new home in London, on the edge of Notting Hill. It was my dream house, situated on a pretty cobbled mews near Westbourne Grove, arguably the coolest street in London. The house was a knockout. It had lovely natural light, white bookshelves lining the living room, large windows throughout the kitchen. And maybe the greatest thing of all was the front door, a red door, reminding me of my parents’ door.
“I’m standing in the town house now. It’s lovely. Lovely but empty. You’ll need to come in here and make it homey. It needs the Georgia touch, if you know what I’m saying.”
Thomas was just being nice. Ben was the one who made things beautiful. He could take any room and turn it into a place no one wanted to leave. When he moved to Los Angeles, he moved our bed to the back room. It was a library that wasn’t supposed to be a bedroom, but he knew how good it’d feel to wake up under the large bay window. Was it yesterday that I’d woken up there beside him? My heart hurt, thinking of it.
“Thomas, I’m in a bit of a rush.”
“Sure thing, but I’m actually just trying to reach Ben. We have an issue with the Marlborough Project. I need a quick answer from him so I can handle it,” he said. “Is he with you?”
“No.”
He paused, my short answer confusing him. “Okay, do you have any idea where Ben might be?”
“Did you try the mother of his child?” I said. “Maybe he’s with her?”
“The mother of his child?” he said.
The world slowed down to a crawl, hearing him repeat those words. And I realized how deranged I sounded.
Still, instead of explaining, I hung up the phone.
I always understood how deeply my father loved the vineyard, but I experienced it firsthand when my mother took Finn and Bobby to visit her parents, and I spent the week at home with my father. In biodynamic winemaking, you plant and root based on the position of the moon and the stars, and that week, I learned what that involved. I couldn’t have been older than five, but he woke me at midnight and handed me a cup of hot chocolate, and I followed him as he planted and sowed and rooted. He was so focused on each and every step—as if what he did, what he didn’t manage to do, was going to change everything. I had never seen anyone concentrate like that on anything. It was like watching love.
I threw on a T-shirt and jeans and got into my car. I headed down CA-116—the winding road that would take me from one world to the other, from Sonoma into the heart of Napa Valley.
Napa had the fixings of a big city. It had entertainment, fancy hotels. Fancier restaurants.
For my twenty-first birthday, I’d come home from college so the five of us could have lunch at the fanciest restaurant—up the road in Yountville. The French Laundry: named after the actual French laundry that had occupied the countryside house before the restaurant did. This restaurant, among the best in the world, served you nine courses and the best wine you’d ever tasted. We weren’t just celebrating my birthday, that day. The French Laundry had recently added my father’s wine to their extensive wine list. Block 14. Estate Pinot Noir. 1992. My father’s favorite Pinot. It was still grown exclusively on those initial ten acres, and we were giddy seeing it on the menu, knowing people from all over the world would be drinking it. For two hundred and fifty dollars a bottle. My father ordered two bottles in the hopes it would help it stay on the menu.
As I passed The French Laundry, I shifted back to that special afternoon. Bobby had announced that he was going to ask Margaret to marry him. Finn had screamed that no matter how beautiful she was, he was crazy to get married when he was barely able to legally rent a car. Bobby then announced that Margaret was pregnant. The two bottles of wine hadn’t helped anything.
Ben and I planned to take my famil
y to the restaurant as a thank-you to my parents for hosting our wedding at their home. Was that one more thing that wasn’t happening? First the thank-you meal, then the wedding?
I took a left off of Washington Street onto the side street housing Murray Grant Wines, parking in one of only two spaces available out front next to an old Honda.
I looked at the contract I’d swiped from the winemaker’s cottage to make certain I was at the correct address. It didn’t feel like I was. That was the thing about wine country in Northern California. It was a small world, but with two distinct factions. There was rural and peaceful Sonoma County in one corner, commercial Napa Valley in the other. Some would argue that the divide was diminishing—Sonoma County was industrializing their wine, the same way Napa Valley had, decades earlier. For now, the divide still existed, small Sonoma producers still the David to the Goliath of corporate conglomerates like Murray Grant.
But, surprisingly, the offices of Murray Grant Wines were hardly an evil, intimidating complex. This place looked as though it belonged in Sebastopol: the hidden second story at the back of a small courtyard, with vines lining the staircase, and red, yellow, and orange plants in every window. Bright green shutters. It looked less like a corporate office and more like an artist’s apartment.
I knocked on the screen door, to which I got a distant reply of, “It’s open.”
I walked into the waiting area, which had no chairs, no sofa, just an empty receptionist desk, and a very nice painting of a pear behind it. For some reason, I kept staring at it. The pear. Its bright green hue pulled me in, slightly magical.
“It’s mesmerizing, right?”
I turned to see a man in the doorway of the office, looking at the pear with his head tilted to one side. He was wearing jeans and one of those zipper cashmere sweaters with a tie sticking out from beneath it. He was good-looking, in a way, but nowhere near as good-looking as he thought he was, standing there in that brazen East Coast way that reminded me of some guys I’d met at law school. The Masters of the Universe guys. This guy carried their vibe. Brandishing a half smile.
