by Vivian Lux
"Jesus, I can't believe you have to put up with this," I exhaled, shaking my head.
"It's a living, and I need the money," she sighed. "You do what you gotta do for your kid, you know?"
I had no idea. I was only just starting to figure out how to make my own way in the world. I couldn't imagine having to figure this all out with a kid in tow as well.
I turned and jammed my dolly underneath my prepacked boxes. My movements were not nearly as clumsy as they were the first time I did this.
It seemed I really could take care of my deliveries all by myself.
But it sure was nice to have Charlie's help.
We worked side-by-side for a moment, in perfect teamwork, until suddenly I heard a buzzing sound.
"Is that your phone?" I asked.
Her eyes went wild with panic. "Shit," she called, yanking it from deep in her apron. "It's my mother. Shit. I have to take this." She waved her hands at me. "Cover for me!" she hissed. "If Spiro sees I'm taking a personal call at work, he'll have my ass."
I deftly stepped front of her, blocking the view of the door as she darted around the side my truck. "Mom," I heard her say. "I told you not to call me when I'm at work. Use the restaurant number..."
Then she fell silent. I looked over at her, and saw her face go white. "Where are you?" she asked, sounding desperate. Then she nodded. "Okay," she said. "Okay, I'll try though, but remember you drove me in this morning?" She fell silent again. "I will though," she said. "Just hang on, okay?"
She hung up her phone, and sagged against my truck. "Shit," she breathed.
"Are you okay?" I ventured.
She shook her head, her blonde curls bouncing wildly around her face. She blinked rapidly then wiped her eyes savagely with the heel of her hand. "Fuck," she hissed, banging her head on the side of my truck.
"Hey, I can help," I told her. I had no idea how, but suddenly I knew I needed to.
She shook her head. "No, I don't think you can," she said bitterly. "My mom has Malcolm at the town park, you know that playground that just opened? And he fell."
"Oh God, is it bad?" I asked.
"I don't know," Charlie said, shaking her head. "My mom is not good in emergencies. She was pretty much hysterical." She pressed her the heel of her hand to her forehead. "I need to get over there."
"Why doesn't she just call an ambulance?" I asked.
She gave me a withering stare. "I don't have the money for an ambulance ride," she said shortly. "I'd drive him myself, but my car's on the fritz. My mom drove me in this morning."
Suddenly it all clicked into place. "I'll take you," I said eagerly. "The town park? That's right near the waterfront where my store is."
Charlie darted a look over her shoulder. "I'm not... I can't leave..."
Then her eyes suddenly flashed angrily. "I have to leave don't I?" she asked the air. "My little boy..." And then with a sudden straightening of her shoulders, she yanked open the passenger side door and hopped into my truck.
I shelved the dolly back into the back of the truck, grabbed my keys, and got ready to help my friend.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Finn
"Hey Kyle?" I called across the restaurant.
My baby-faced general manager appeared out of nowhere with a hugely eager grin on his face. "Yeah boss?" he asked.
I rolled my eyes, sick and tired of his over the top deference. "The wine list needs to go to the printers. I need a list of what we have available for opening night."
Kyle's eyes widened a fraction. "Can I get that to you later, boss? Kind of in the middle of something right now."
I shrugged. "As long as it's today, no problem.
I turned in my chair and leaned over my computer, tapping my pen against my desk.
No. It really did need to be done right now. The printer had a deadline and the last thing we needed was to open without a readable wine list.
I scraped my chair back across the floor. I could do it. Better to have it done and crossed off my list than have to constantly have to double check if Kyle was done yet.
I made my way through the gleaming kitchen. The lowboy refrigerators at each cook's station were being installed today. Jackson hated the time that was wasted by having to walk back to a centrally located walk-in fridge, so he'd designed workstations where each line cook could gather what they needed for the day's service and store it in their own personal refrigerators right at arm's length. It was just one more thing he'd tweaked that made me realize he actually was the genius he claimed to be. It was the kind of shit that made me feel lucky to have him as a business partner.
And hell, a friend too.
Our wine cellar was a state of the art, glass-enclosed room, completely sealed off from the rest of the cellar to maintain the perfect temperature. I hit the code on the keypad and pushed my way inside.
The air was cold and dry and heavy with the scent of the wines. The best smell in the world.
I grabbed my notepad and began ticking off the whites in order from driest to sweetest. The Chardonnays were all in a vertical row along the far wall. Next came the dry Rieslings, a specialty of the area. I ticked down the bottles one at a time... until I got to the place where the Jasper Hill Winery shipment belonged.
"Huh," I said aloud. The bottle I'd been looking for at dinner was still missing. "Guess we haven't found it yet?" I checked my notes. But we'd definitely been charged for it. "Maybe it's misshelved." I slid my finger down the row of Gewürztraminers and paused to flick through my notes again. "There should be twelve," I muttered, flicking back and forth between my inventory notes and the invoices I'd paid.
As I ran my finger down the rows, I saw the same thing for each type of wine. Rieslings, Traminettes, Cabernets and Merlots, even the small selection of ports. All of them were missing one or two bottles.
Not enough that I would have ever noticed unless I'd come down and counted them myself.
Hot blood thundered in my ears and I rushed back upstairs two at a time. "Hey man what's the...?" Jackson's voice faded as I ran into my office and slammed the door.
"Thank you for calling Jasper Hill Winery!" A perky female voice chirped.
"Yes, hi, I need to talk to," I flicked through the order slips. "Mike?"
"Who may I say is calling?"
"This is Finn Walker," I snarled. "The man who is paying him a shitton of money for deliveries he keeps shorting?"
"Um, right away sir," the receptionist quavered.
I tapped my fingers on my desk, aching to wrap them around someone's neck. Fucking cheat thinking he could screw the out of towner. I'd show him what happened when you messed with a guy like me. He'd be fucking lucky to ever get a bottle contract...
"This is Mike," a gruff voice answered.
I swallowed down my murderous thoughts. "Mike. Finn Walker here. Mind explaining why you're fucking me over?"
Mike paused for a long moment. "I'm doing what now?" he finally said.
"Shorting me. On pretty much every delivery. I was just running through my inventory and my stock does not match when you charged me for."
"Oh, it's all there Mr. Walker," Mike broke in. "I'm not sure I know what you're referring too."
"Listen," I snarled, trying and failing to keep my temper in check. "I'm telling you, my general manager checked this inventory in himself." I ran my fingers across my forehead, trying to massage away the tension headache that was starting to bloom. "And about twenty percent of the bottles I ordered are missing from the shipments."
The voice on the other end went silent, and I heard the rifling of papers. "I'm sorry," Mike said. "But I don't see how that's possible."
"It's entirely fucking possible," I exploded. Then I pressed my lips together and counted backwards from ten. "This is ridiculous," I said, sounding, if not feeling calmer. "Not one of the shipments we've received from you have been complete. I'm opening a restaurant in less than two weeks, and I don't have the full wine cellar that we need."
&n
bsp; "Everything you ordered has been accounted for," the vineyard owner repeated, testily.
"Look," I finally said through gritted teeth. "I'll make this easy. I'm not accepting today's shipment until you fix this."
"Your general manager signed for it," the vineyard owner said, sounding pretty pissed off himself. "I've got his signature, right here on the slip."
"No, I know that it was signed for," I seethed. "That's not my point. My point is that I'm opening in two weeks, and my wine list has holes in it like Swiss cheese because of these shipping screw ups. Fix it."
Then I slammed down my phone.
I looked up to see Jackson standing there in the doorway, clearly eavesdropping.
I shook my head. "I double and triple checked," I told him.
"I know you did. I saw you losing your goddamned mind," Jackson said, sounding slightly amused.
I glared at him. "This is so fucked."
"You'll figure something out," Jackson said encouragingly.
I threw my hands up. "I've got nothing. We're hemorrhaging money like a leaky faucet, and still we are missing twenty percent of the orders that should be there. I don't know what the hell to think other than this guy screwing with me."
Jackson stood there for a moment, tapping his fingers against my newly installed doorframe. "I have an idea," he said. "Grab your keys."
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Jackson
As we pulled out of the back lot, and climbed the hill up from the waterfront, I glanced over to my side mirror and inhaled sharply to see the shimmering lake falling away behind us.
"Geez," I said. "I forget how pretty it is here sometimes."
"Right?" Finn sighed, rubbing his eyes. "Feels weird to even be out and about in the daylight hours. Look how different everything looks."
We rolled slowly through Main Street, stopping at each stoplight in turn. There were pedestrians, tourists mostly, ambling along the wide sidewalks, taking their time as they poked through the shops and cafes. I took in the tidy brick storefronts of the Victorian buildings that lined the wide street, standing tall and proud in ordered rows. Shady trees stretched out their limbs from the center median, and the sun flickered in and out of their branches, casting shadows across the street like it was playing peekaboo.
After the last light, the shops sort of fell away, dribbling out in a series of low stores and less tidy looking houses. But just as the Main Street shops fell away, the countryside opened out into rolling farmland. At the junction a half-mile out of town, Finn took the right fork, turning away from the line of cars heading up to the falls in a slow motion parade.
The road began to climb up the side of the western ridge, doubling back on itself so that we rose above the valley we'd just left. I looked down to see a bird's eye view of Main Street now looking like some tiny little miniature village nestled snugly along the shores of the lake.
Ahead of us, facing north, that same lake stretched out to the horizon, long and narrow, like some kind of silvery fish swimming between the two mountains.
"I mean," I elaborated, catching my breath a little. "It's really really fucking pretty here."
"You haven't even been to the winery yet, have you?" Finn asked, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. "Wait 'til you see it."
He made another turn, switching back again so that we were headed south now, driving along a ridge that was almost alarming in its steepness. Reckless Falls was nestled so snugly in the valley that I hadn't even realized how wild the country was that surrounded it. High pines topped the mountain above me, stabbing the sky like the skyscrapers of Manhattan that I'd left behind. The trees all around us were an ocean of green, undulating out into the horizon in rolling waves. "Damn," I said.
"I told you," Finn said with a know-it-all grin.
"Your family vacationed here when you were a kid?"
"All the time. I told you," Finn said. "We'd get the same house every time too, so that it felt just like a second home." He tapped his finger on the steering wheel. "I sort of figured it'd feel like that again once we moved here but..."
"But we've been a little preoccupied," I said, finishing his sentence.
He nodded, still tapping his finger. "But I promised you. This'd be a good place for you to make a fresh start."
The image of Bee, naked and writhing underneath me suddenly popped into my brain. "Yeah, uh, I'd say you made good on that promise."
Finn turned his head sharply. "You mean that?"
"Hey fucker, eyes on the road!" I hissed.
"Sorry." He jerked the wheel back over and we lazily drifted back into our lane. "But seriously. You think I made good?"
This time it was my turn to tap my fingers on the dash. A strange wash of guilt flooded through me and I glanced at him, feeling slightly chagrined. "Have I not said that aloud?"
Finn chuckled. "Not exactly, no."
"Well, shit."
"I just want to help, dude." There was a plaintive note in his voice that I rarely heard. Finn wasn't one to make himself vulnerable.
I swallowed and took a deep breath. "Well, you did," I said, haltingly. My voice cracked, the way it always did when I tried to say something more significant than casual insults. "I was in a pretty bad fucking place."
"I know."
"And you took me to..." I spread my hands to take in the beauty of our surroundings... and the restaurant we were opening, and the woman we were... sharing. "A pretty fucking good place."
Finn shot a glance at me, his mouth twisted oddly. Then he nodded once, seeming to try to find words and then failing. When he finally did speak, his voice was rougher than normal.
"Well good," he said gruffly.
Then he turned right, sending us bouncing along a dirt road, clouds of dust falling like a curtain over our car, obscuring the view so that for a moment we were driving completely blind.
But when he parked, the curtain of dust gradually settled to reveal the slopes of winery surrounding us.
The vineyard clung to the side of the mountain, with the vines marching down the side in orderly rows of red and green. The air was warm and heavy with the smell of grapes. There was no sound other than the sigh of the wind and the occasional faint buzz of the bees.
I leaned forward. "Oh, now this is pretty as fuck," I commented.
Finn leaned forward, grinning. "You always were an eloquent motherfucker," he teased with a grin. "But you're right. It really is pretty as fuck."
"We should bring Bee here," I blurted. "She'd like it."
"You think?"
"Yeah," I said with a shrug. "She needs to relax more, and it's pretty relaxing here."
Finn nodded slowly. "Pack a lunch and come up?"
"Absolutely. But let me do the packing. Your picnic lunches are pathetic."
"What? I like peanut butter and jelly."
"Right. You have the palate of a child."
"God you're an asshole," Finn sighed. "Fine. You pack the lunch. But we we're here on business right now."
"I'm really fucking sick of business," I complained. I looked out across the vineyard to the view that swept around us. Not having Bee here right now felt very, very wrong.
I missed her. I wanted her to share this with me.
With us.
"This way," Finn said, interrupting my thoughts. "We are looking for Mike."
I nodded, feeling the sun on my shoulders. It had been ages since I'd been out of the restaurant, out in nature again. I never was one for the countryside. But this was my home now, and it was feeling like it more and more every day.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Bee
Although I was driving as slowly as I possibly could, Malcolm still whimpered when I hit the bump.
"Shh," Charlie soothed, rocking her son gently back and forth on the floor of my delivery van. "It's okay, baby. Mama's got you. Mama's got you."
"My sweet little boy," Charlie's mother cooed from the passenger seat. Her hands fluttered to her purse to close
around her pack of cigarettes, but when she caught me looking at her, she slid them back in again. "I don't know how he did it," she repeated. She'd been saying the same refrain since we'd pulled up to the town park and collected her and her grandson. "He just climbed up to the top, just as quick as you please. I ain't never seen him move so fast before."
I pressed my lips together. Charlie wasn't blaming her mother, so I tried not to either. Instead, I pressed the accelerator just a bit faster. The hospital was on the outskirts of town, and it seemed like it was taking forever to get there.
Malcolm whimpered again, and I heard Charlie kissing him. "Shh, baby," she murmured.
"Charlotte Grace, don't you let that baby fall asleep now," her mother barked. She twisted around. "Pinch him."
"Mom!" Charlie gasped, snatching him away.
"You can't let him fall asleep, baby. Not if he has a concussion."
Malcolm whimpered. "There's my handsome man," Charlie cooed, and I glanced down to see that his eyes were at least open, if a little glazed.
"I'm gonna lose my job," Charlie whispered to herself. But when I glanced in my rearview mirror, I saw her brushing her son's hair back from the swollen bruise on his forehead, and holding him tight.
"It'll work out," Charlie's mom declared. "I'm sure your boss'll understand it. You being a mom and all."
Charlie said nothing. I glanced down again to see her staring angrily at a fixed point on the floor. I had a feeling that this was a frequent topic of conversation between the two of them.
"How's the little guy looking?" I asked, tapping my fingers on the steering wheel. "I'm sorry, these tourists, they think the rest of the world's on vacation too."
The crush of Main Street visitors in midday was something I was completely unused to. I was used to rolling through the deserted pre-dawn streets, the traffic lights still set to blinking yellow.
"He's doing just fine," Charlie murmured, kissing her son's hand. "He's a big, strong, brave boy and Mama loves him so much."
