by Laura Dave
Ben opened the refrigerator to get Maddie some milk. He handed me the bottle, trying to get me to talk to him. I couldn’t seem to meet his eyes.
Maddie was sitting at the kitchen table having an enormous piece of chocolate cake, her arm protectively blocking the plate as if she were afraid someone was going to take it away from her before she could finish.
Jacob sat across from her, his eyes focused on those bites. He didn’t look toward Ben and me, standing by the refrigerator, getting the milk. But I knew he was trying to listen.
“What happened to you not showing up here?” I said.
Ben poured the milk into three of the glasses. “We needed to talk,” he said.
“So you bring Maddie?”
“I also brought you a suitcase full of clothes including a dress for the harvest party, the purple one that looks so pretty. What about a thank-you for that?”
“I’m serious.”
“Yes, we needed to talk and we needed you not to kick me out.” He held up the empty glass. “I still can’t tell if you want the milk or not. The cake is going to be much better with it.”
He flashed those eyes at me, and I wanted more than anything to let it all go—to just decide that everything was okay.
And maybe I would have, but he headed back toward the kitchen table and took the seat next to Maddie, leaving me the one between him and Jacob.
“She’s serious about that cake,” Jacob said as we sat back down.
He wasn’t wrong. Maddie was precise in her bites, not like the twins, who would tear through that cake in the time it took Maddie to eat one bite. She moved slowly, savoring it.
Maddie felt my eyes on her and looked up. “Would you like some?” she said.
Her tiny, British accent could make you melt it was so cute. And there was this: She held out the fork to share, which looked like it pained her to do, to share anything with me—the cake or her father.
Who could blame her? She had just found him for herself. And now she was being forced to meet the woman he was going to marry? Who might want to take her father away from her. And her cake.
I smiled at her, anxious to relieve her anxiety. “That’s all for you, Maddie,” I said. “But thank you.”
She nodded, relieved. “You’re welcome.”
Then she turned back to her chocolate cake.
Ben looked between us. I kept my eyes on Maddie, avoiding looking at him or at Jacob, who watched me, amused.
Ben gave Jacob a look. “So catch me up. How do you know Jen and Dan?”
“I’m a local winemaker,” he said.
“Kind of,” I said.
Jacob gave me a smile. “I own Murray Grant Wines,” he said. “We’re based in Napa Valley.”
“I know Murray Grant Wines.” Ben smiled condescendingly. “Everyone near a grocery store knows it.”
Jacob ignored Ben’s insulting tone. “I guess that’s true,” he said.
“You’re Murray’s son?”
“Grandson.”
Ben took a bite of Maddie’s cake, winked at her. He didn’t turn back to Jacob when he spoke next.
“I didn’t know Murray had much to do with Dan,” Ben said.
“He didn’t, but I do.”
“Why’s that?”
“We’re purchasing The Last Straw Vineyard,” Jacob said.
Ben turned toward me, shocked, compassion filling his eyes.
“We’re planning to keep the vineyard in the tradition of Dan’s work, to offer a biodynamic option to our customers. The vineyard will be run exactly the same.”
Ben smiled, tightly. “If Dan’s not here, it can’t be run exactly the same.”
“Dan isn’t worried about it,” he said.
Ben leaned in. “How much money did you have to pay him so he wouldn’t be?”
The tension between them was thick. I should have enjoyed it, neither of them in my good graces. But I didn’t want to watch it either, which maybe Jacob sensed.
“I should probably get going . . .” Jacob said. It was less a statement, more a question. Did I want him to go or did I want protection from the talk Ben would demand we have as soon as we were alone?
I didn’t meet his eyes. I didn’t want protection from Ben, at least not from Jacob.
“You need us to call you a cab?” Ben said.
His eyes were still on me. “No,” Jacob said. “I’m going to walk.”
“Who’s walking where?”
Margaret walked into the kitchen, more like breezed into it, smiling, animated. She wore workout clothes, a sun visor, her long hair swept beneath it. She looked around the table and noticed Ben.
“Ben!” she said. “When did you get here? Did you come up for the family dinner tonight?”
Ben stood up to hug Margaret, wrapped his arms around her. “Of course.”
He smiled, happy to see Margaret, happy to be going to the family dinner. He hadn’t missed it since we’d started dating. The intimate family celebration before the big harvest party celebration. Ben loved it so much that he flew from a meeting in New York one year to be there for it. Another year, he cancelled a trip to London. He loved it as much as any of the Fords did.
Margaret smiled. “We were hoping you’d show up,” she said. “And who is this cutie pie?”
Ben looked at his daughter, smiling. “This is Maddie,” he said.
“Maddie?” Margaret said.
“Ben’s daughter,” Jacob said.
“What was that?” Margaret said.
Ben drilled Jacob with a dirty look, but I stifled a laugh, enjoying the confused look on Margaret’s face.
“Maddie, this is Margaret,” Ben said. “Margaret is going to be your aunt.”
Maddie nodded, uninterested.
Margaret looked like she’d swallowed paste. Then quickly recovered.
She bent down so she and Maddie were eye to eye. “It’s nice to meet you, sweetie.”
She forced a smile, looked at Ben and me.
Then she motioned to Jacob.
“Do we know each other?” she said. “You look familiar.”
“I’m Jacob McCarthy. I think we met once at a pickup party for Angus.”
“Right,” she said. “Great.”
She looked back and forth between Ben and Jacob, noting the tension.
Then she forced a smile, motioning to Jacob. “You’re coming with me,” she said.
Sebastopol, California. 1989
Murray had been the one who told him that you have to give farming—winemaking included—ten years. Ten years to figure out how the land beneath you was going to work. How you were going to work it.
This would mark year ten—the beginning of it, the end. Today was the harvest party, a small party. Dan had taken the extra money this year and built a winemaker’s cottage, where he could do his work. It had been Jen’s idea. She’d thought that they needed a separation between church and state.
He’d thought it was a bad idea, but he hadn’t argued with her, and he was glad he hadn’t. He was glad to be sitting on the porch of his cottage now, watching the festivities happen—tons of good pizza and free beer for the workers.
It wasn’t much of a party, but it was something. He was glad to do something for them. They had earned it. And they were happy sitting in chairs that Jen had set up, umbrellas shielding them from the sun, Bob Dylan playing in the background.
It had been a good harvest despite the cold temperatures. The grapes had held on, and he had no complaints. Or, he had one complaint. His five-year-old daughter had taken this opportunity to announce that she knew what she wanted to do for a living. She wanted to be a winemaker like him. It broke his heart. It broke his heart and made him happy all at once. He didn’t like to think about her out here, without having him to protect her. Now the vineyard was a joy for h
er, a pure and unadulterated joy. What if it became something else? But you don’t get to choose for your kids, not once they were grown-ups: not once they were five, going on fifty.
She was sitting on the porch with him, reading a book, when Murray walked up.
“Dan,” he said. He was smiling, holding a bottle of his wine in one hand, holding his grandson in his other, his grandson, Jacob, who was visiting from New York City.
Dan’s daughter dropped her book and ran away. She ran toward her brothers, who were playing catch. Finn picked up another glove as soon as she got there, wanting to play, Bobby biting his nails. This was a two-person catch and he didn’t want to include his sister. But Finn put his arm around Georgia protectively until Bobby relented and threw her the ball. This was the interesting part. Jen had pointed it out, and now Dan would notice it too. Bobby always threw the ball so Georgia could catch it. Bobby threw the ball softer than Finn would throw it to his sister. He threw softer and he waited longer. He moved to her level as opposed to asking her to climb to his. This was why they didn’t intervene too much, letting the kids work it out. Because Finn seemed like he was the one taking care of his sister, but, in the ways it counted, Bobby was too.
“How are you doing, Murray?” Dan said.
“Good. Good. No complaints.”
Dan motioned toward the pizza, smiling. “Help yourself,” he said.
Murray nodded, picking up a piece of the greasy pizza, handing it to his grandson, Jacob taking a big bite.
“You want to go play?” Murray said to him.
Jacob nodded and ran out into the yard, toward Dan’s children—the kids dancing, Jen dancing. Then he ran past them to a tree in the shade, guarding his pizza, and pulled out a comic book.
“He’s a city kid. Not much for the outdoors.” Murray shrugged. “I’m working on it.”
Murray took a seat beside Dan on the steps, Dan pouring him a glass of wine.
“I was just thinking of you when you walked up.”
“Were you?”
Dan nodded. “I was thinking how you were the first to tell me that it takes ten years for a vineyard to become itself. That I should be patient and I would get there.”
Murray took the wine, tilting it in Dan’s direction. “I was right, wasn’t I? This has become something lovely. Don’t you think?”
Dan smiled. He knew Murray meant that. But he also knew Murray profited ten million dollars last year, which meant more to him.
Murray smiled back. “I want to make you an offer,” Murray said.
Dan shook his head, impressed by the old guy’s perseverance. “You’ve made it. I’ve gratefully declined.”
“Remind me why?”
“I can’t do what I do for a hundred thousand cases of wine.”
“Five hundred thousand.” He shrugged.
“Five hundred thousand.”
“You thought Sebastopol was going to turn into a bastion of winemaking, didn’t you? It hasn’t happened.”
“Yet.” Dan smiled. “There’s time.”
Murray took a long sip of the wine. “That’s true.”
“More people are coming out. There are two new vineyards up the road.”
Murray nodded. “Also true. I think I passed one on my way in. What is that? Five acres?”
Dan ignored his tone.
“If you’re so sure Sebastopol isn’t going to become anything, why do you want my little vineyard so badly?”
“I don’t. I don’t want it at all, really. I want your winemaking. I want you to come and work for me. You can keep control over your vineyard, which I’ll fund as a thank-you.”
Dan took a sip of his own wine, hoping that Murray couldn’t see in his eyes what that kind of money would mean to him. He would have financial security. And he could still do what he wanted. He could still make wine. He could stay in this house, with his kids, without worrying about it. But that was the thing about how Dan made wine. It wasn’t just about the wine for him. It was about the land and how he was changing it, ten years in or not. He was still getting there, and wherever he was going, he knew that Murray and his offer were going to send him in the wrong direction.
“I’m not going to do that,” he said.
“Well.” Murray tipped the wine in Dan’s direction. “There’s time for that too.”
The Terroir Has a Story
My mother loved to tell a story about the day she fell in love with my father. They were having dinner at a small Chinese restaurant before her performance that night, before he was scheduled to fly back to Northern California. Over stuffed cabbage and pork dumplings, she asked him what a winemaker did. What he actually did: If you do your job, he said, then you make good soil. She liked how he said it, even if she didn’t understand what he was saying. It took her a while to understand what he did mean.
My father believed that the most important aspect of winemaking was the soil. That his wine got better, from year to year, because his soil did. He would monitor his soil carefully, treating it with the nine biodynamic preparations. Preparations made of teas and organic compost, seven of them buried in the soil, two of them sprayed and spread over the vines. Cow horns buried deep into the soil during the winter. No chemicals, nothing added from outside the farm. This created a lot more work, but it also created a more stable ecosystem. This was what he was the proudest of, that he had made the land stronger.
My father said that this was what most people missed. If you took something out of the soil without putting it back in, the wine would suffer. The soil would suffer. You had to figure out how to get it to a better place than where it had started. My father was of the belief that, if you did that, winemaking took care of itself.
Many of the factory winemakers would disagree. After their grapes were off the vine, that was when they started intervening, making their wines do what they wanted them to do, adding chemicals and eggs and sulfites to aid the fermenting process, to refine their wines. My father didn’t add anything to the grapes. His winemaking facility was stark: a sorting table; a destemming machine; open-top fermenters. He would wait for the grapes to ferment on their own. Spontaneous fermentation. Where for fifteen to thirty days, the grapes begin the process of turning into alcohol. No help from chemicals or additives. No help from cultured yeast to make fermentation predictable. The patience it took was extraordinary. The faith it took too.
My father said this was the best part of winemaking. When the grapes you had taken such good care of did their thing, not because you were forcing them, the wine beginning to ferment because it was ready. The wine fermented because after the care you had taken with the grapes, they knew what to do. They used their own juices to move toward the wine they were meant to be.
If that sounds hokey, you should watch it happen. It was inspiring every time. The grapes sat in their tanks. My father punched them down—until, like that, the grapes revealed themselves as something new. My father able to give them the foundation they needed and step back.
Here’s why my mother fell in love with him, she said. She was sitting at the Chinese restaurant, hearing him talk of soil, about the importance of foundation. And she heard the rest. His belief, at the center of his winemaking, that with work, you can give something the strength at the beginning that it needs later on. Before it even knows how it’s going to need it.
Ben and I walked through the vineyard, Maddie a few paces ahead of us. She was quiet, focused, staring at the grapes—at certain shoots—as if she was trying to figure out which were the good shoots, which ones should get to stay.
Ben touched my wrist. “So I have a plan if you’re ready to hear it,” he said.
“For what?”
He slowed to a stop, smiled. “Us, of course,” he said. “Making this okay for us.”
“What’s that?”
“We’re not going to talk about what h
appened,” he said.
“That’s your plan?”
“That’s my plan,” he said, proud of himself.
Then he started walking again, keeping Maddie in his view. I tried to understand what he was doing.
He shrugged. “Talking about Michelle. Maddie. It’s just going to make it worse. We’re better off talking about the weather.”
“Are you serious right now?”
He nodded. “Bobby says it’s been an ideal harvest. And it looks like it’s going to finish out that way, don’t you think?”
I looked up at the sky. It looked blue and bright. I didn’t know what I thought, but I didn’t want to talk about it, not with him. He held my cheek in the palm of his hand, forced me to look at him.
“Please try it this way,” he said.
“Until when?”
“Until you remember that this isn’t what defines us.”
He looked at me, challenging: Did I want to try and make this okay? I took a deep breath. I did want this to be okay—and maybe he was right. Maybe this only had to be as big as I let it be. So why was I letting it be everything?
“I know you’ll fall in love with Maddie. You’re already falling in love with her.”
“This isn’t about Maddie.”
“It is, a little. If for no other reason, you’ll forgive me for keeping her from you even if you don’t accept why I did it. You’ll forgive me because of her.”
Then he leaned in and kissed me on the cheek, the softness of his lips jarring me, reminding me of something I had almost forgotten.
He smiled and motioned toward Maddie, who was bending down in the gardens. The tea gardens. Her chubby fingers were touching the top of the leaves tentatively. Aside from the stinging nettles, which were far in the back, she was safe. So I didn’t make a move to stop her, letting her explore the leaves for herself.
“Is it just me or do I have a future farmer on my hands?” Ben said.
“She does seem to love it here.”
“She does, doesn’t she?” he said.
Then he looked at me out of the corner of his eyes, taking in how Maddie was having an impact on me. How could she not? This adorable little girl studying the gardens, thrilled at the idea of what she was going to find next. And yet, if I was falling for Maddie, the reverse was certainly not true. She was avoiding any kind of contact. She was pretending it was just her and Ben.