Season of Change

by Melinda Curtis

  She called a few friends, putting feelers out for someone with diverse skill sets willing to relocate. She called some equipment suppliers on her cell phone and emailed a few more for bids. Slade had only collected ballpark estimates for equipment. They’d need companies to come out and measure their space, and provide a more detailed and precise bid, as well as timelines for installation. At this point, twelve or fewer weeks until harvest, she’d only approve purchases if they could guarantee delivery and setup.

  She also got in touch with someone she knew who built wine caves to ask some initial questions. She was willing to make compromises to find wine-storage solutions locally, but long-term, she wanted a state-of-the-art facility in Harmony Valley.

  She texted Slade: Who did you arrange to harvest the grapes?

  If this heat wave lasted through July and into August, as it was projected to, they’d need to harvest earlier, rather than later.

  His reply: Make arrangements with whoever you want.

  “Are you kidding me?” Wineries arranged for harvesters up to a year in advance.

  Christine made another round of calls and sent off more emails looking for a company available to harvest in their remote location. Initial response wasn’t good. No one wanted to talk to her after learning where they were based.

  For the second time that morning, Christine wondered if she’d strayed too far from traditional wine country.

  She texted Slade again: Will need a work crew tomorrow at the vineyard.

  His reply was predictably prompt: Hire however many bodies you need.

  She laughed the kind of evil laugh that Slade would have known, had he been here, meant trouble for him: I choose you and Flynn and Nate and Grace and Faith and Truman and whoever else you can find. Bring pruning shears, hats, and sunblock. 6 a.m.

  He didn’t answer right away. And when he did, it was an anticlimactic Okay.

  * * *

  THE NEXT MORNING Slade and his crew reported for work, as Christine requested.

  Slade knew the heat would make him miserable, but he still wore black slacks, a blue long-sleeved shirt, and tie.

  Slade sought out his girls. At least the twins were dressed appropriately for the temperature in cutoffs and matching royal-blue tank tops. Each had her hair in a ponytail that swung through the hole in the back of a royal-blue baseball hat.

  Christine was prepared for them with thermoses of coffee and hot chocolate, as well as a cooler full of water bottles, and her grandmother’s banana-nut bread. She also had a box of old work gloves and pruning shears. She, too, was dressed for the heat in canvas shorts and a canary-yellow T-shirt featuring another rock band. Her hair was braided tightly so that only pigtails peeked out from either side of her floppy white hat.

  Standing next to her, Slade felt more overdressed than he had in years. His tie felt too tight and heavy. Before he’d been able to talk to Will, he and his fiancée, Emma, had left for San Francisco a few days ago for a series of art-gallery openings featuring Emma’s paintings. Slade was starting to think it’d be better to iron out the budget with Christine first. At least then he wouldn’t be talking in generalities. He’d have hard figures to present. Will and Flynn were sentimental about Harmony Valley. They let it cloud their judgment.

  “I know I asked you to, but you didn’t have to bring the kids,” Christine said to Slade as he poured himself a cup of coffee.

  “I don’t expect them to work much.” Slade didn’t expect them to do more than run around and have a good time. “It’d be nice if they felt useful before the real work starts.”

  Christine reached over and squeezed his shoulder, as if they were old chums. “That’s so doable.”

  “I’m feeling guilty that we did nothing to the vines since we bought them.” Flynn wandered over, tugging on a pair of gloves. “To Christine, it must be like ignoring your children.”

  Slade set down his coffee. It was too hot for what already promised to be a hot day. “It’s not like that at all. We bought the property and didn’t get rezoning approval for months. It wasn’t as if we knew we’d be harvesting grapes this year.”

  “Are you going to be okay in this heat?” Christine pulled lightly on his sleeve. “Please go home and change.”

  “He won’t be caught dead without the tie. I lived with the guy for five years. Trust me,” Flynn said. “It’s a fetish.”

  If there was a possibility Slade could ditch the shirt and tie, he would have. Instead, he unwisely took inventory of the rest of the crew. The guys wore shorts and T-shirts. Only Abby and Slade were overdressed. And Abby, being a dog, had no choice but to wear a fur coat. Soon, Slade would be panting just as loudly as she was.

  Slade rolled up his shirtsleeves. “Don’t worry about me.”

  “We’ve learned not to.” Flynn grinned.

  “Let’s start before it gets unbearably hot.” Christine stood next to a row of grapevines and shook a baggy full of what looked like short wires. “We’re going to use twist ties—yes, just like from a loaf of bread. I know, highly technical stuff here. We’ll use twist ties to fasten the load-bearing shoots to one of two support wires on the trellis system.” She showed them how two wires were strung at two different heights from a post at one end of the row to the other end. “Too many clusters on the vine dilutes the flavor of all the grapes, so we’ll want to thin the secondary clusters. That way, the primary clusters will be bursting with flavor.”

  Slade bent over for a closer look. There were a lot of clusters on the vine. “By thin you mean...”

  “Cut back and toss in the bin.” She gestured to two large containers with wheels. “You’ll also be cutting back the tendrils that you can’t tie, the ones that get in the way of the corridor between rows.” At the group’s blank looks, she added, “Imagine driving between the rows. If anything would brush your car’s fender, cut it back.”

  “Shouldn’t we hire experts to do this?” Slade would pay good money to be sitting in front of an air conditioner about now.

  “Normally, I’d hire a crew.” Christine gazed out over the vineyards. “But this should have been done months ago and I’m finding that no crews want to come out this far to work. Besides, it’s not rocket science. These are plants. If you make a mistake, they’ll grow back.”

  “But what if the cluster I cut off is the best cluster?” Slade’s muscles knotted with stress. Anything he did, he wanted to exceed expectations. “What if we mess this up?”

  Christine put a hand on his shoulder and smiled up at him. It was a sparkly smile, one that said, Have no fear. “At this point, there is no best based on taste. The ripening process hasn’t shifted into full swing. We’re doing damage control, which means damage will be done, but more good than harm.” She stepped closer, bringing the coconut smell of sunscreen and the light scent of vanilla. “Just think, this is only five thousand cases worth of grapes. You want to bottle eighty.” And then, grinning, she pushed him forward and they got down to business.

  She paired them up—Flynn and Nate, Slade and Christine—and they started down two parallel rows. One person cut. The other person tied off vines. She assigned the children to clean up. Faith and Truman with Flynn. Grace with Slade.

  The children pushed the bins, darting in to grab cut vines and grape clusters and shoot them into the bins like writhing basketballs. Abby darted back and forth beneath the trellises to see how everyone was doing.

  “Did I fail a test?” Slade grumbled, his shirt clinging to his back, sweat trickling down his spine.

  Christine knelt a few feet ahead of him, cutting clusters. She glanced back, her furrowed brow barely visible beneath that floppy hat he was starting to envy.

  “I got paired with teacher,” he clarified.

  That made her laugh. “You seemed stressed out about the work. I thought you needed reassurance. Go with
the flow. Trust in nature.”

  “I do trust in nature. I just don’t trust in me.”

  The gloves made his fingers clumsy. Grace watched him struggle to wrap a twist tie around a vine, undoubtedly thinking her father was a huge dork.

  “You’ll feel more comfortable when we get to the end of the row. Then we can switch.”

  Slade’s twist tie dropped to the ground.

  Grace darted in to retrieve it. “Can I?” she whispered.

  Rescued by his daughter, Slade felt loved. He held the vine in place for her.

  Her smaller fingers were more dexterous than his. In no time, she had the wire and paper tie wrapped around the vine.

  “I’ll hold the vine and you tie it up,” he offered.

  Grace nodded, grinning as if she’d just won the seventh game of the championship series.

  They worked efficiently until about halfway through the row when Truman called, “Grace, break time!”

  Grace didn’t have to be asked twice. She whooped and scampered off.

  “That brings back memories.” Christine was twenty feet ahead of him, the snap of her clippers his cue to get back to work.

  “Spent a lot of time in the vineyard as a kid, did you?”

  “It was the only place I felt normal.” He couldn’t see her face, but knew she was smiling. It was there in her voice. He’d never met anyone who smiled as much as Christine, not even Flynn. “Kids running through a vineyard. You can’t buy that experience at an amusement park.”

  Silently, he agreed. “Should I remind you I had to buy the vineyard?”

  She chuckled, her enjoyment giving him respite from the hot sun. “Too bad days like that don’t last.”

  “What? You grew up too soon?”

  “No. My dad was always moving on. Somehow the kids I made friends with didn’t stay friends when my dad no longer worked for their family.” She paused in her cutting, her gaze wistful. “And I wasn’t one to make friends easily in school.”

  “How could anyone resist that smile?”

  “When you’re younger than everyone else and earning scores that skew the grading curve, you have to develop survival skills. Like smiling. And when that failed, I became good at blending in with the crowd and being a good listener.” Her customary sparkle didn’t reach her eyes. She blinked and glanced away. “You’ll have to master the twist tie now that you’ve lost your partner.”

  He tried, but his mind kept drifting to the image of a young blonde girl carrying a big stack of books while she walked the school halls alone. Soon he experienced misery of another kind. His shirtsleeves were streaked with juice from broken foliage. His face felt grimy. His loafers were encased in dirt and scuffed from when he slipped on some drainage rocks. The back of his shirt was wet and clung to him uncomfortably.

  At the end of the row he gladly traded jobs with Christine.

  She looked him up and down, an impersonal perusal that felt personal nonetheless. “Go home and change.”

  He shook his head.

  “Not even blue jeans and sneakers? I’ll let you keep your dress shirt and tie, although I’m telling you, even though you might win the best-dressed award, inside I’m crying over the certain loss of what looks like a fine Italian tie. Azure-blue basket weave.” She removed one worn glove and reached over to stroke his tie. “It is Italian,” she said reverently.

  The image of her palm anywhere near the evidence of his horrendous mistake ignited a flash fire of fear in his gut. Could she see the truth? That his success was a facade? That his failures had sent his dad over the edge? Nearly dragging him into the chasm with him?

  Her innocent blue eyes widened as if recognizing he was upset. She touched his biceps gently. “Have you always lived here?”

  “No. I went to school on the East Coast and worked in New York until my dad died.” He shifted closer to the bushy vine and the slim bit of shade it offered. “My marriage fell apart at the same time.”

  “You moved back then?”

  He shook his head, surprising himself by admitting, “I kind of lost myself for a while. I drove cross-country from New York, intending to come here. It took longer than I planned.” Three years. He’d worked odd jobs along the way, never staying in any one place too long. “The day I made it here—” he didn’t say home “—I met up with Will and Flynn.”

  He and Christine stood there looking into each other’s eyes—he fighting the need to confess more, she with a calm acceptance of whatever he chose to share. Telling his story would wipe that compassionate look from her eyes. He didn’t need compassion from an employee, but he did need an employee. He had to keep expectations in his personal life low and his tie knot high.

  He stepped back, tucking the end of his tie between two buttons. To speak, he had to drink some water and douse the fear. “My shoes might already be unsalvageable. Everything else I can clean.” He desperately needed to change the mood. “Twenty bucks says my tie lives to see another day.”

  “You’re on.” She laughed, flashing that smile that said her wineglass was more than half-full, no matter what life threw her way. She moved on to the next row to check on Flynn and Nate.

  And that was when he realized he didn’t want her to walk away, he didn’t want her to look at him the way Evy did. He wanted to be with someone—an acquaintance, a friend, a lover—and pretend the horrendous mistake hadn’t happened, didn’t matter.

  Idiot.

  Satisfied with everyone’s progress and quality of work, Christine started down the next row. On leaden feet, Slade dragged himself after her.

  It wasn’t long before Christine was back to asking questions. “So, when did you develop a tie fetish?”

  “At Harvard they taught us to live the leader look.” Slade clipped away, taking out his frustrations on the vines. A tendril, a cluster, a branch holding a cluster. Looking back, he could see his progress. Finally, something was going right. “How did you know my tie was Italian?”

  “I have an appreciation of everything Italian—wine, shoes, fashion, food.” She was quicker than Grace with her twist ties, practically breathing down his back.

  “I would never have guessed.” He glanced briefly at the rock-band logo over her chest, forcing his gaze away to a safer zone. The sleeve of her T-shirt had a hole in it. He fingered the yellow cotton, then froze, staring at his clumsy, gloved fingers, before yanking them out of her personal space.

  She didn’t seem to notice. She kept on picking out vines and tying them up. “Come on, you couldn’t tell I liked Italian? Not even when I interviewed in an Italian suit and heels?”

  He’d almost forgotten that image. It came thundering back, especially how her slender neck had been bare, the skin pale, smooth, and unmarred. “As your boss, I refuse to judge you by the clothes you wear.”

  She found that far too funny. “I don’t see why not. Most people in Napa do.”

  “You’re not in Napa anymore, Toto.” Slade concentrated on trimming the vines back, trying to trim back his overactive imagination in the process.

  Truman ran up to him, trailed by Abby and the girls. “I’m sorry.”

  “What happened?” Abby had her tail down and the girls were teary eyed. Slade dropped his clippers at the base of a grapevine and rushed to meet them. “Is anybody hurt?”

  Faith drew a shuddering breath and shook her head. Grace clutched her sister’s arm.

  “Then what...” Slade nearly gagged, stopping and covering his nose. “What’s that smell?”

  Truman dug his toe in the dirt. “We found a skunk. In the barn. Abby cornered it and...” He sighed dramatically. “Everyone got sprayed but me.”

  * * *

  THE APOLOGIES WERE wearing thin. The skunk smell was not.

  Christine apologized to Slade for the skunk spraying his da
ughters, to his daughters for the skunk spraying them on winery property, to Flynn and Truman for the skunk spraying their dog. Slade and Flynn apologized to Christine for not being able to help in the vineyard anymore, as they had to de-skunk children and pets.

  Nate was the only one who didn’t apologize. Instead, he found a list of ingredients for ridding skunk smell online and drove to Cloverdale for supplies. Enough supplies to rid the skunkiness from two girls, one dog, and an empty winery.

  In hindsight, Nate was the smartest of them all for getting out of town.

  While waiting for Nate to return, Flynn and Truman took Abby down to the river, planning to throw a stick for her until she tired out and hopefully rolled in the mud.

  Slade walked the girls home, planning to have them sit in the bathtub until Nate returned. Christine hoped he trash-bagged their cute outfits before they sat on anything.

  After everyone had dispersed, Christine tentatively entered the barn.

  And then she backed quickly out.

  Between the heat and the smell, it was stifling inside. She whipped out her phone, looked up the nearest pest-control company, and gave them a call. They agreed to come out and set skunk traps two days from now.

  Nothing left to do but continue the vineyard work.

  Christine went back to it, falling into a rhythm. Ten feet of tying up, backtrack, ten feet of thinning.

  Her cell buzzed: Taking the girls for some TLC after the remedy arrives.

  She didn’t answer Slade, maybe because she was thinking how nice some tender loving care would be for her. So the girls had been sprayed by a skunk and lost an outfit? She was sure they had outfits to spare. There was work here that needed to be done.

  Way to show sympathy, Christine.

  They were just kids, after all. Slade was being a good papa bear. And she was succumbing to stress.

  Maybe having Flynn and Slade work in the vineyard this morning would make them realize that their growth plan was overly ambitious. Growing grapes and making wine was a meticulous business, and if they couldn’t get field-workers, harvest companies, or other winemakers this far out, they couldn’t possibly expand and uphold Christine’s quality standards.