Too Close to the Sun

by Dempsey, Diana

  Max cleared his throat "Mom, I'd like to talk to you about something."

  Ah, the moment of truth has arrived. Ava couldn't resist needling her son a little. "Didn't you come to Paris just to see me?"

  "Well, I need to talk to you about Suncrest, too."

  So there was trouble, and it must be serious if he'd come all this way to tell her about it in person. Ava shook her head. She had so hoped that by now Max would have a grip on managing the winery—both for his sake and for hers. It hardly fit into her plans to have to play a more active role. "What is it?"

  He looked her right in the eye. "I've decided that I want to sell it. That I want us to sell it. I really think it's the best thing to do, for a number of reasons."

  Her son's words hung in the stale, unmoving summer air. Ava was stunned. My God. He's given up already.

  She rose from the sofa and half stumbled toward the fireplace, reaching out to grasp the cool marble mantel to steady herself. She'd feared from the first that Max would lack the stamina to run Suncrest for long, especially once problems cropped up. She knew only too well how grueling, how taxing, often how boring managing that winery could be. But to give up in two months? How would that look? Her son would look ridiculous to everyone in Napa Valley. And as his mother, so would she.

  "You're not saying anything." Max's voice came from behind her. "Are you really surprised? I know you talked about this with Will Henley."

  "Quite the contrary. Will Henley talked about this with me. There's a difference."

  "You told me you thought he made some compelling arguments."

  She spun on her heels. "What I told him was that I would not sell him the winery. And that's what I'm telling you, too."

  God, why couldn't this child ever do what she wanted? It was the most perfect thing in the world for Max to take over Suncrest! The father builds a business, and at the appropriate moment the son takes it over. It was a Hollywood story if ever there was one. If only the lead actor wouldn't blow his lines.

  "But Mom, I don't want to run it anymore." Max's chin jutted out stubbornly. It was if he had suddenly been thrust back in time to the terrible twos. "I've tried it and I don't like it."

  "But don't you understand that Suncrest is your father's legacy? How can you be so willing to just abandon it?"

  "I'm not abandoning it!" His voice rose. "Henley's company will make it better than it's ever been. I bet if Dad were still alive, he'd want to sell it to them."

  Ava shook her head. Porter would just as soon have sold her into white slavery as part with Suncrest. But clearly Max didn't share that view. In this as in everything else, the son was the diametric opposite of the father.

  She tried to calm herself, marshal her arguments. "Max, for the last month you've been telling me you're making long-term grape deals, you're planning to add varietals, you want to take Suncrest to the next level. You've been so enthusiastic. Don't you want to make those things a reality?"

  Now it was his turn to sigh. "Mom, don't get mad at me." He rose from the sofa and walked toward her, his voice persuasive, placating. "I know this isn't what you planned, but I really do think it makes sense. For both of us."

  "Why? Because you're already in trouble? Because the sauvignon blanc isn't selling like it should?"

  He flinched. She had a fleeting memory of walking into the kitchen when he was a toddler to find him teetering on a stool, trying desperately to hoist his chubby body onto the counter so he could sneak one of Mrs. Finchley's gingerbread cookies, cooling on a rack. The look he gave her then—Oh, no, Mom! You caught me!—was so like the expression he wore now that she had to stifle the laugh that rose in her throat.

  "I know about the rebottling," she told him, and watched his shock grow. "You don't think I have people who tell me things?" The faithful Mrs. Finchley for one, who rivaled Ian Fleming's M when it came to spying. "Don't give me this best-for-both-of-us story, Max. You want to sell Suncrest because you've already made a mess of it and don't want to be stuck cleaning it up."

  "I take full responsibility for deciding to do the rebottling. But it's not my fault it didn't work right. Gabby DeLuca—"

  "I don't want to hear about Gabby DeLuca!" Ava let her voice rise, like a diva launching into the aria that had made her a household name. "This is exactly what I was afraid of, that you wouldn't be able to manage Suncrest. Max, this is your father's legacy. You can't just sell it the minute running it gets tough."

  Her voice bounced off the red walls, poured out into the silent garden. It was exactly what she hated to do—rail, nag, harangue. Yet even after her diatribe, her son said nothing. She watched his shoulders droop, his head hang. He slunk to the sofa, where he slumped onto the cushions and let his head fall into his hands.

  Gradually, her anger melted into exhaustion. And guilt. All those doubts about what a haphazard mother she'd been—sometimes there, often not—rose and jostled in her mind as she regarded the dark-haired young man on her leased Paris sofa.

  Maybe it's not his fault he is what he is. Maybe it's mine. For he was a spoiled child, Ava knew, a rich child who didn't understand responsibility. Before Suncrest, he'd never really had any.

  She remembered the puppy she and Porter had given him when he was nine. She'd feared for that dear creature, too. A sweet yellow Lab, all wet nose and brown eyes and gangly paws the poor thing never had a chance to grow into. How many times had she warned Max not to toss the ball near the drive that led up from the Trail? Did he listen?

  Yet, really, whose fault was it? The mother's or the child's?

  She joined her son on the sofa, laid her hand on his knee. This time her voice was soft, as she wished it had been more often in the past. "Max, do you realize you'll never succeed in life if you don't give things time? You haven't even been running Suncrest for two months. Do you know what would have happened if I'd left Hollywood after two months? I never would've gotten a single role."

  He raised his head. She saw tears on his cheeks, felt their tracks on her own heart. But even at that moment she wondered if perhaps they were just another of Max's manipulations, another wily attempt to push her maternal buttons.

  "Mom," he said, "let me ask you this. Whose dream were you pursuing in Hollywood?"

  "What?"

  "Whose dream? Yours? Or your parents?"

  It was so much hers that the question seemed too absurd to answer. She remembered to this day what her upright Methodist parents had called her fledgling modeling and acting career: "a foolish escapade." They'd wanted her to march right back to SMU and make a show of studying while doing the real work of finding a doctor or a lawyer to marry. Not until she became a Breck girl did their objections flag. After she snagged a soap role, their grousing quieted. Her first movie shut them up for good. But she wasn't fully restored to their good graces until Porter's three-carat diamond engagement ring graced her ring finger. And her acting career fell by the wayside.

  "You went to Hollywood for yourself," she heard Max say. "That's why you stuck at it for so long. It was you who wanted it, nobody else."

  "Don't you want Suncrest?"

  "No." He shook his head. "I thought I did, but I don't really. It was what Dad wanted, but not me. Not you either, I bet."

  That was so true, she had to turn her eyes away. She stared at the faded Oriental carpet, with its mesmerizing weave of crimson and gray and brown.

  She'd wanted to stay in Bel Air. She'd wanted Porter to continue as a developer. She'd wanted their carefree life where she enjoyed wealth and comfort, friends and attention, and didn't have to raise a finger to get them. A new winery in Napa meant work and dirt and trial and error. And in those days, before California wines challenged France's great vintages, not much glamour at all. She'd nearly left Porter over it. But his excitement over what he was building, his passion, had won her over. He was a man nearing fifty who wanted one more stab at building something big and new. Who was she to tell him no?

  Now she had a son who wanted exactly th
e same thing. And once again she was the obstacle.

  The truth was, she empathized with Max. Though it made her feel like a traitor to Porter, she didn't want to run Suncrest, either. She didn't mind in the least it being an ocean and a continent away. Her desire to return to Napa diminished with every stroll down the Avenue Foch, every visit to the Musee d'Orsay, every cafe au lait sipped at a shaded sidewalk table.

  She rose from the sofa and walked to the garden door to gaze at the gurgling stone fountain in the shape of a half-shell. Porter wouldn't blame her for how she felt, she told herself. And he wouldn't blame Max, either. He'd been an understanding husband and a patient father, far more tolerant of his family's foibles than she could ever be.

  Ava turned to regard her son. "I do think your father would understand your desire to pursue your own goals."

  Max's face lit up. It was Christmas all over again, her little boy catching sight of the gifts piled high under the tree. "Yes, Mom, he would understand. He spent his life doing what he wanted, and so should I. Then I'll really be committed."

  She didn't even haggle with him over the details of Will Henley's term sheet. Thirty million dollars was a tremendous amount of cash; it would guarantee that she'd never have to think twice about money for the rest of her life. And neither would her son. She would not simply hand it over to Max, of course; trusts would have to be established and rules set down. She would take care of all of that, as her maternal duty demanded.

  Ava read the document, then reread it. When finally she poised a pen over the space marked OWNER'S SIGNATURE, she had the oddest sensation of Porter behind the sofa, watching her. Judging. And, she had to admit, condemning. The feeling was so strong she actually turned her head to look, half-afraid of what she might see.

  But there was nothing there, of course, only the empty Paris apartment she had leased for a few months. Which might well have ghosts of its own, but none from her swiftly receding past.

  *

  Gabby stood with her father among the stainless-steel fermentation tanks, cleaning them in advance of another year's crush. It was a messy business involving hoses and spray nozzles and chemical solutions, and both father and daughter wore plasticized aprons, rubber gloves, and wading boots.

  But this wasn't the only messy business going on at Suncrest, and the other couldn't be protected against by proper gear.

  "Will says it's called due diligence, Daddy." Gabby carefully stepped down the last few rungs of the ladder that had allowed her to peer down into a tank, a large silolike contraption. She hit the concrete floor and turned to face her father. "That's why these people are running around, poking their noses into things and asking questions. He warned me it would start as soon as Max and Mrs. W signed the term sheet."

  "That's the document that lays out the details of the sale?"

  Gabby nodded and started pulling off her gloves, finger by sticky finger.

  "I can't believe Mrs. Winsted signed it," her father said.

  "I couldn't, either." Gabby watched a young brunette rocket past, notebook in hand, looking every pin-striped inch like one of Will's colleagues. Will had a few junior GPG staff helping him out, and while Max was still in France had set himself up in the winery's main office, his folders and documents and laptop on what Gabby still thought of as Mr. Winsted's desk. "But at this point, I think it's the best thing, Daddy." She glanced at her father to see if he agreed with her, though she wasn't even sure she agreed with herself. "Max was killing Suncrest, and it's pretty clear that Mrs. W doesn't want to run it anymore. We need a new owner. I have to believe that Will and his company know what they're doing."

  Her father nodded. Gabby knew he was having as much trouble as she had had trying to grasp that Max and Mrs. W were selling Suncrest to Will Henley and GPG. It was such a huge development, and so hard to fathom. Truly the end of one era and the beginning of another.

  But the Winsted era had to end, she told herself, one way or another. Because if someone didn't buy Suncrest, Max would run it into the ground. Of that Gabby was fully convinced.

  "So it's a done deal?" her father asked.

  "Mostly. Unless they find something wrong they didn't know about. Either Will's people, or the accountants, or the lawyers." What seemed like armies of them had descended on the winery that morning. They all looked cut from the same mold as the brunette, whether male or female. Gabby realized that if she didn't know Will so well, she'd lump him in as just one more of their corporate number.

  She didn't dwell on how little she liked the look of them, how poorly they fit in, how much they unnerved her. They were like visitors from another planet. All wore business suits and moved around at high speed and spoke in hushed tones with their heads close together. That is, unless they were on cell phones, in which case they talked loudly. Sometimes they would smile at her when she walked past, but invariably they stopped speaking, as if they couldn't risk her overhearing their conversation. When she was a few yards away, she could hear them start up again, and words she didn't care for drifted toward her. Expansion. Brand extension. Mass market. They'd barely been around a day and already she was building a healthy resentment. And a certain fear.

  Will's not like them, she told herself. He understands. Yet the words he spoke in the darkness of her bedroom the first night they made love rushed back into her mind.

  If GPG ever does get to acquire Suncrest, I don't know what the deal will look like. It's not entirely up to me. You understand I'm a junior partner, right? I don't get to decide everything myself.

  But you'll try? she'd asked.

  I'll try.

  She winced. Later he'd called her a blackmailer for extracting that promise from him. Yes, he'd apologized, profusely. But still. Did she really expect he would honor it? Or, given the partners he had to answer to, that he even could?

  The brunette intruded on Gabby's thoughts. "May I bother you for a few minutes?" She was smiling, looking kind and helpful. Like a nurse who's about to jab a needle in your arm, Gabby thought. But don't worry. It's for your own good.

  "Your name is Dagney?" her father asked.

  Another smile. "Good memory!" She brandished blueprints rolled up into a tube. "I have here a map of the property and I'd love some help identifying which vineyards produce which grapes, and so forth." She cocked her head, all charm. "Will's spoken so highly of both of you and I know you're both so knowledgeable."

  Gabby watched her father wink at Will's young associate and knew he did it in part for his daughter's benefit. "We try. Do you want to spread those out on that table over there?"

  Minutes later, all three were bending their heads over the blueprints, anchored to the table in four corners with bottles of Suncrest cabernet. In light blue ink on white architect's paper, the prints mapped Suncrest's buildings and acres of vineyards. Dagney pointed at Rosemede, on the valley floor. "What's grown here?"

  "Sauvignon blanc." Gabby pointed to the other vineyard that produced that varietal. "And these eight, including Morydale here on the slope, produce cabernet sauvignon grapes."

  Dagney's pen flew over a page of her open spiral notebook. "That's everything?"

  "We also have a few rows of merlot and petit verdot here and there," Gabby's father added. "For our cabernet. We sort of paint with those."

  Dagney's pen stopped. She lifted her head and arched a brow. "You do what?"

  Gabby piped up. "We add complexity to the wine by weaving in the flavors of those other grapes."

  Dagney nodded slowly. Then she pointed to an area that didn't delineate a specific vineyard. "What's grown here?"

  "We don't use that acreage," Gabby's father said. He pointed to several other blank areas. "We don't use any of that, either."

  Dagney frowned. "And why is that?"

  "It's substandard soil," he said. "It doesn't have the pH value we look for."

  "So you don't think it's good enough." Dagney seemed to consider that while biting the end of her pen. Then, "Okay, let's move on." She con
sulted a list of typed questions. "What is the yield per acre? Approximately?"

  "About three tons per acre," Gabby's father said.

  That time Dagney stood straight up, her tone incredulous. "Don't most wineries get more like eight?"

  No wineries that we like, Gabby thought. "The rule of thumb is, the lower the yield, the higher the quality of grape. So Suncrest has always been very selective in which grapes make the cut, so to speak."

  "So you could get a higher yield if you wanted to?" Dagney asked.

  "We could," Gabby's father said, "but the quality of the wine would suffer."

  "Would it suffer by a lot? I mean, they're Napa grapes, so they're still pretty good, right?"

  Gabby and her father looked at each other. Then Gabby spoke. "Maybe the difference in quality wouldn't be apparent to everyone. But it certainly would be to Suncrest customers, who are looking for more complex, nuanced flavors."

  Dagney bit her pen and again bent back down over her notebook. Somehow Gabby got the impression that nuance and complexity weren't high on her agenda. She asked a few follow-up questions and then let Gabby and her father go, with protracted thanks for how helpful they were and what valuable "resources" they were proving to be.

  "Maybe she'll put gold stars on our foreheads next time," Gabby's father muttered as they ambled back toward the fermentation tanks. But halfway there, he abruptly sat down on top of an overturned plastic crate.

  Immediately Gabby crouched down next to him. Her heart started pumping a faster rhythm, but she hoped his hadn't varied by a single beat. "Are you okay?"

  "I'm fine."

  "Do you need to take a rest? Because I can do everything else myself."

  He shook his head and smiled at her, a wan smile that she knew lacked its usual vigor not because of the grim prospect of hosing down the tanks but because of the Q and A they'd just undergone. And what it foretold.

  Gabby watched her father rub his forehead and could guess what he was thinking. Somebody stop this craziness. Make it go back to the way it's always been.