by Laura Dave
“I haven’t been able to figure out what it is about the painting, exactly. And I’ve tried,” he said. “At first I thought it was because my mother painted it, but everyone seems to focus on it. So it must be something. There must be something there.”
He turned from the painting and we made eye contact for the first time.
“It’s you,” he said.
“Excuse me?”
“The bride. From the bar.”
That threw me. I looked at him, confused.
“I almost didn’t recognize you because your hair was up in that bun.” He paused. “Falling out of that bun . . .”
I reached up and touched my hair, which now cascaded over my shoulders, moving from its Los Angeles straight toward Sonoma curly. “What are you saying, exactly?”
He cocked his head. “It looks much better like this.”
He motioned toward the top of his head—his own thick hair—as if he were waiting for me to return the compliment. Instead, I pulled on my T-shirt, wishing I had worn something more lawyerly. He didn’t seem to notice, though. He was still stuck on my wedding dress.
“I was there when you came in last night at the small table by the fireplace . . .”
He made a triangle sign with his hand, trying to demonstrate. He pointed to the index finger to show where I was, and the opposite thumb to indicate himself.
“You know what? Reverse that. I was there with my girlfriend. She was talking about chia. She loves chia. She puts it on everything. Salad. Oatmeal. Pasta. Apparently it’s good for you. Did you know that?”
I nodded, slimy chia a staple at trendy Los Angeles restaurants. Still, this was not the way I wanted this conversation to start. This guy, somehow, in control.
“Anyway, I didn’t want to try the chia, so I was looking around the bar, and then you appeared. And now you’re here. That’s so weird. Don’t you think that’s so weird?”
“No,” I said.
Though, honestly, I thought it was. Who was this person? What was he doing in my brothers’ bar fifty minutes away from here? And why did it seem odd that he remembered me? After all, I was dressed slightly more formally than everyone else.
“Why did you walk out on your wedding?” he said.
I looked at him, completely taken aback. “I didn’t walk out on my wedding.”
“I did that once,” he said. “Or, actually, I guess I had that done to me. If we are being precise about it.”
I put my hands up, trying to halt this conversation. “I didn’t walk out on my wedding, okay?”
He held up his hands in surrender. “Okay . . .” he said. “I get it. You didn’t walk out on your wedding.”
“Thank you.”
“So why exactly were you in your wedding dress then?” he said, confused.
“I walked out on my final dress fitting. That’s not the same thing.”
He nodded, like he was contemplating that. “I guess that’s different.”
“It is.”
“Right. For one thing, you aren’t humiliating anyone on what is supposed to be the happiest day of his life. For another, you can get the deposits back. On most things.”
“On all things,” I said.
He paused. Then he tilted his head. “Well . . . probably not on that dress.”
“Look, I’m actually just looking for Jacob McCarthy,” I said.
He looked around the empty office, empty except for him. “Apparently I’m Jacob McCarthy.”
I hated the way he said his full name, so proud of himself. I wished that Jacob McCarthy had an idea that I was a serious lawyer as opposed to someone he met in her wedding dress, not on her wedding day.
“What can I help you with?” he said.
“I want to talk to you about The Last Straw Vineyard.”
He motioned toward his office. “Then come in,” he said.
He stepped out of the way, so I could walk inside. I did so reluctantly, clutching the contract closer to my chest. The actual office—his actual office—was nice. It was designed with soft white couches and an enormous antique desk, and another painting—this one of a giant red tomato—behind his desk.
“Also my mother’s,” he said, pointing at the painting. “She has a thing for fruit.”
“That’s so nice for her.”
He smiled, ignoring my tone, sitting on the edge of his desk. “What’s your interest in The Last Straw? Besides the obvious?”
“What do you mean?”
He shrugged. “It’s great wine.”
I folded my arms across my chest, not letting that throw me. “It’s my family’s vineyard,” I said. “And I’m concerned about the sale. We all are, quite frankly. Some of us just aren’t aware of it yet.”
“Georgia. Of course. The family resemblance, right around the mouth.”
He motioned around his own mouth.
“You’re definitely your father’s daughter. It’s nice to meet you. You have a great family. I love your family.”
“You don’t know them.”
“I disagree.”
Then he reached over for a glass jar on his desk, full of long pieces of licorice, and held the jar out to me.
“Are you serious?” I said.
“Why wouldn’t I be serious? Licorice is the best candy there is, and, as an added bonus, it has been used since ancient times for a variety of medicinal purposes. Including the relieving of stress.”
“Still going to pass,” I said.
He took a piece out of the jar, then took a huge bite. “Your choice,” he said. “Though not the right one.”
“I’m not interested in this,” I said. “Whatever you’re trying to do here.”
He smiled. “And what am I trying to do here?”
“I don’t know. Charm me.”
“Why would I want to do that?”
“Because you know this contract is rife with error and it’s not too late for me to nullify it.”
“You sound like a lawyer.”
“I am. And I negotiate sales much larger than this on a daily basis.”
“Well, you probably have one up on me, then . . .”
He pointed to his degrees on the wall, mounted in fancy frames. Proof that he was a jerk, those degrees in such fancy frames. Cornell University College of Agriculture, Cornell Law School.
“I went to law school, but I never practiced,” he said.
“How about viticulture? Did you practice that?”
He smiled. “I can assure you, your father is getting a great deal.”
“That’s beside the point.”
“What is the point?”
I was honest, as hard as it was to say it out loud to a stranger. “My father’s going to regret it.”
He looked at me. “You think so?” he said.
And, suddenly, it looked like he cared. His eyes went soft, and the smirk disappeared.
I nodded, meeting his eyes and trying to impart my true feelings about how much my father was going to regret this. “I do.”
He nodded, like he’d heard that.
“Hmm. I don’t,” he said.
Then he started rummaging through papers on his desk, my hope of him being a reasonable and kind person deflating.
I pointed at him. “Escrow hasn’t closed yet. You don’t take possession until after the new year.”
“I believe that was so someone could get married on the property,” he said. “Isn’t that next weekend?”
“Don’t insult me.”
“I’m not insulting you. I’m just letting you know that all the contingencies have been met. Your dad requested that we not transfer ownership until after your wedding. Until they’re able to close up the house.”
“I intend to contest this sale, Mr. McCarthy.”
He shot me a look.
“No one’s called me Mr. McCarthy. Like ever.” He paused. “I don’t like it.”
Which was when my phone buzzed. Suzannah appeared on the screen with a text message.
Ben called me and told me what was going on!!
Where are you? Call me already, so I can tell you what to do. After I yell at you for sticking me with this case. (Still at work and furious btw.)
Jacob was staring at the phone. “Who is Ben? The jilted groom?”
I put my phone away. “I’m just here to talk about the sale,” I said.
He laughed. “Then there’s nothing to talk about,” he said. “That isn’t your business.”
“My father’s well-being is my business.”
He nodded. “So you should know that the contract has been signed and notarized. His business is now . . . my business.”
Then he smiled—a smug, assured-of-itself smile, his going-out-on-a-limb-for-no-one smile. Which was when I decided it. How much I couldn’t stand him.
“Good of you to come by. Though I think we should probably end this conversation,” he said.
“I couldn’t agree more,” I said as I headed out the door.
A Guy Named Mark and a Guy Named Jesse
When I got back to the house, the sun was setting over the vineyard. The magic hour, as my father would call it. So much of what my father did at the vineyard, he did after the sun was down. The magic hour, the time before he went to work, involved respecting where the vineyard had gotten to in the daylight. After dark, when the grapes were on the vines, he’d help pick. If they were off, he’d help care for the soil, or care for the wine.
My father also thought it was the magic hour for another reason. The sky turned an odd shade of yellow, which he swore it never had before he started working the land. He said it was reflected that way because of the land—how lush and vibrant the land had become.
I was too exhausted to get into it with anyone. But Finn was sitting at the kitchen counter, wearing his backward baseball cap and running shorts, looking like the little-boy version of himself, back from pitching practice. He was eating an enormous piece of my mother’s famous lasagna, straight from the baking pan.
This was the big joke of the lasagna. We all loved it. Never once did it actually make it to the kitchen table for dinner. No matter how pissed we were at each other—all of us would sit at the counter and eat it as soon as my mother took it from the oven to cool. Burning our tongues on it.
She made the lasagna with olives and tomatoes from the vineyard, spinach, five cheeses, and something else she wouldn’t ever confess to. Finn swore he’d walked in once and seen her adding chocolate chips to the bottom layer of noodles. We had spent years, cumulatively, searching for a sign of them.
Finn looked up as I walked into the kitchen. “I was bribed,” he said.
“I can see that.”
He took a large bite as I climbed on the stool across from him and put the contract down on my lap. It was a reminder—as if I needed one—that if I didn’t figure out what to do, this could be the last time I’d be sitting in this house with Finn, eating our mother’s lasagna, staring out at a vineyard that we would soon have to say our family used to own.
Finn puffed his cheeks out and tried to cool the lasagna already in his mouth. Then he shoveled more inside. “Mom didn’t want to be alone with you,” he said. “She called in reinforcements.”
“So she told you about her and Dad?”
He nodded. “She told me.”
Finn handed over a fork. I dug into the middle of the large pan. Finn’s look of sympathy turned to annoyance, always annoyance when I took lasagna from the middle of the pan, even though he liked the edges.
I stopped caring as soon as I took a bite. The gooey, cheesy mess, sweet and salty with the first taste. The tomatoes as sweet as strawberries, the whole-wheat noodles buttery tender. It reminded me how hungry I was. It reminded me that I had failed to eat anything all day. Licorice included.
“I already knew, really.”
I stopped chewing and looked at him. “How?”
He shrugged. “Mom has no poker face. And when I showed up unexpectedly for dinner last week, she panicked. She said Dad was at the Science Buzz Café. But it wasn’t Thursday. Then she made me chocolate cake.”
“Great. I get a naked man, and you get cake.”
“It was pretty good too,” Finn said.
Then he motioned toward the vineyard, where our parents were walking together. They were walking the way they normally did, except there was distance between them. My father’s hands were behind his back; my mother’s hands by her side.
It hurt to watch them. I went in for another bite, but he knocked my fork out of the way.
“Slow down on the lasagna,” he said. “Don’t you have a wedding dress to fit into?”
I knew he didn’t mean it. My mother’s lasagna made him do crazy things. To make amends, he cut a small square, moved it toward my side of the pan.
“Make it last,” he said.
“What are we going to do about Mom and Dad?”
“What can we do? I mean, it’s their life.”
“And ours.”
We each took a bite, quietly. Then I moved the contract over, so he could see it for himself.
“It’s been a great day for you, huh?”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
He shrugged. “It was Dad’s information to share.”
My head was spinning thinking about all the things people in this family knew. And the things that people were leaving out.
“He only told me to make sure I didn’t want the vineyard, which I assured him I didn’t.”
“Why did no one ask me? What if I had wanted the vineyard?”
“You don’t want the vineyard.”
I was moving to London in twenty days and joining the new London office of my law firm. London, a city I had been a little in love with since the first time I’d visited for a friend’s wedding after we’d graduated college. After the reception, I decided to walk the city, winding my way down the cobblestone streets outside Chelsea, heading toward Pimlico. I dreamed of walking those amazing streets late at night, lantern-lit streetlights leading the way toward a tiny bistro famous for their rosemary potatoes. I couldn’t believe that bistro was about to be my neighborhood bistro, those streets about to be my streets. Even if my relationship was in shambles, I was excited for those things.
Finn shook his head. “Honestly, Dad knew you don’t want the vineyard any more than I do,” he said.
“That’s not the point.”
“It should be,” Finn said. “Besides, you made me and Bobby sign a contract your second year in law school that said we’d never take over the vineyard. And we would stop each other from doing it. Remember that?”
I did remember. I remembered why I had wanted us to sign it. I’d been having a hard time in law school, and part of me had wanted to come home and quit. But that was what coming home felt like to me. Quitting. Giving up on my dreams to build a life away from here, a life that was more stable than a vineyard felt. And I hadn’t wanted to give up. I hadn’t wanted Finn and Bobby to give up either.
Finn shook his head. “Bobby still fucking has it, I’m sure . . .” he said.
I pointed my finger at him. “What was that? And what is this about you moving?”
He shook his head. “I think you should probably stay out of it,” he said.
“I’d like to, but you both keep dropping hints, and it’s making it pretty hard to ignore.”
He stuck his fork in the lasagna, like he was putting a stake into the ground, blocking off his portion.
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll tell you. But I don’t want your judgment.”
“Of course.”
“No, don
’t say of course. You won’t mean it. Not when you hear the details. Because the details are going to make you think that you understand what I’m dealing with. And you don’t understand what I’m dealing with.”
“Why? What did you do?”
“Is that a good place to start?”
I put my fork down, moving the pan physically toward him like a peace offering.
“So I think it’s best, for impartiality, if we just talk about it like we’re talking about other people. People you don’t know. People who aren’t your brothers. A guy named Mark. And a guy named Jesse.”
Did Finn see himself more like a Jesse or more like a Mark? I’d guess Jesse.
“I see what you’re doing. Don’t try to guess which one I am,” he said.
“Any other players I need to know for your story?”
“Just Daisy,” he said. Then he sighed, Finn actually sighed out loud. “Daisy is this woman that Jesse met when he was really young. Daisy. And he loved her since he was very young. But he’s a guy. And guys are stupid. Sixteen-year-old guys are so stupid they don’t know yet what stupid even means. So he decided he shouldn’t have anything to do with her. He met someone else . . . Lana.”
“Bobby is cheating on Margaret?”
“How did you get there?”
“It’s obvious.”
“Except you’re wrong.” He looked at me. “I’m Jesse. Bobby is Mark.”
“And who is Lana?”
“Lana is Annabelle Lawrence.”
I looked at him, confused. Annabelle Lawrence was a girl that Finn had dated in high school. She was short, with tons of freckles and a big laugh, the kind of laugh that made you want to be around her all the time. I cried when Finn broke up with her. And I remembered what he’d said. He’d said there were going to be many Annabelles. He hadn’t been kidding.
Finn picked up his fork, taking two big bites in quick succession. “I can’t help how I feel and I can’t do anything about it. And that’s not new.”
“What is?”
“She has feelings for me too.”
Which was when I knew what he was saying. I knew the people who were in love here and who were being kept apart. “Margaret.”
