by Laura Dave
I smiled in agreement as Ben leaned in closer, kissing me. As he did, his phone rang. He ignored it, but I could feel his body tense.
I pulled away from him. “Michelle?” I said.
Ben turned to his phone, checking the ID and quickly silencing it. “Yeah . . .” he said.
“Are they back in London?”
“Not exactly. They stayed in San Francisco last night,” he said.
He paused as that registered.
“Maddie wants to come to the harvest party tonight.”
I looked at him, confused. “She does?”
“I can tell her it’s not a good idea.”
I jumped right in. “I don’t want you to. If Maddie wants to be there, I want her there.”
Ben nodded, appreciative. “That’s very sweet. But I’m just not sure how we would handle Michelle.”
“What do you mean?”
“I think she wants to be there too.”
I wasn’t sure how to respond to that. “What? Why?”
“Michelle is a very good mom, despite her other faults. And I think she wants Maddie to know we all get along. I can tell her no, but I just . . . I don’t want to alienate Maddie by alienating her mother. If that makes sense?”
It did. I nodded, getting that, and trying to process what to do. “So let’s invite her too,” I said.
“What?”
“You should invite Michelle.”
“To the harvest party?”
Ben looked like that was the last thing he wanted to do, the scene in the kitchen flashing before his eyes. Why would he set himself up for another terrible encounter?
I moved closer, trying to figure out how to explain how important it felt to rectify our awkward first meetings, to begin to all move forward. Michelle was going to have as much power as I handed her, and I was done handing her any.
Ben shook his head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“If we’re going to make this work, we need to make things right. We need to all be on the same page.”
“Michelle is on her own page.” Ben took a breath in, as if he didn’t know how to explain it, as if he didn’t want to explain it. “Isn’t tonight going to be hard enough? I don’t want spending time with Michelle to be another hard thing.”
“Maybe this is one thing that doesn’t have to be,” I said. “Let’s just decide that.”
He looked skeptical, but he nodded. “Okay, then. Whatever you want is okay.”
I smiled. “Good.”
He smiled. “Good. I’ll call her now.”
Then he moved closer, kissing my neck, wrapping his arms around my waist.
“Well, not right now.”
People Who Screw Up
Bobby stood by the kitchen table. He was drinking the green drink he had most mornings, the green color that made it hard for me to look at, let alone ingest.
Bobby was in his suit already, the newspaper open in front of him—the only indications of the fight the cut by his lip, his bruised hand.
Even though he heard me walk in, he didn’t look up. He sat down, turning the page of the newspaper.
“Beautiful day for a harvest party,” he said.
I took a seat beside him. “It is.”
He turned to the back of the first section, reading the sports rundown. “Dad was just here,” he said. “He wants to wait on Block 14. Have the family pick them together after the harvest party, like usual.”
He motioned toward his green drink. “You want some?” he said.
It was an offer on the other side of what he wasn’t giving away: any information on how he was feeling. It was the last thing I wanted, but I took a sip of the thick mess of it so he would feel like I was on his side.
He smiled. “Pretty good, right?”
I motioned toward his suit. “Where are you going?”
He took the drink back, gulped down the green. “I’ve got to go into the city for a work thing,” he said. “I have a lunch, but I’ll be back in time for the harvest party. Don’t worry.”
Bobby started gathering his things.
“I’m already running late,” he said, standing up. “I should go.”
“Can I at least drive you there?”
“Didn’t I just say I was late? If you drive, who knows when we’ll get there.”
I started to argue, then I remembered the last time I had attempted to drive one of my brothers somewhere.
He reached for his briefcase. “Just say it already.”
“Say what?”
“Say whatever you think you need to say to convince me that Finn didn’t mean any of this. That neither of them did.”
I looked up at him, feeling the weight of his stare. He didn’t want me to try to make things okay between them. He didn’t want things to be okay between them.
“Where is she?”
He reached for his thermos, poured the rest of his juice inside. “She’s taking the twins to see a friend of ours in Healdsburg.”
“She’s missing the harvest party?”
“No, they’re coming back tonight, but I can’t handle her being in the house today more than she has to be. I thought it was a good idea for us to have a little space.”
“What does Margaret think?” I said.
“What does it matter what she thinks?”
“You need to talk to her, Bobby. Shutting her out isn’t going to do what you think it’s going to do. Margaret would never do anything to hurt you.”
“Do you think that makes this better or worse?” He shook his head. “I knew that things weren’t great between us. I’m not an idiot. But knowing things aren’t great and finding out your wife is in love with your brother? Those are two different things.”
“That isn’t what this is about, Bobby,” I said.
“You sure about that?”
He paused, biting his thumbnail. Bruised hand meeting bruised mouth.
“Do you know she’s been talking about having another kid? Why would she talk about having another kid if she was feeling as badly as this? Maybe she thought that would fill it, what she was missing with me . . .”
“I think that you and Margaret need to sit down and deal with this.”
He drilled me with a look. “I think you should have told me. That’s what I think.”
“Bobby, I didn’t know.”
“I’m not talking about Margaret. I’m talking about Ben. He has a kid?”
I nodded, unsure how to read my brother’s expression. “Does that make you hate him?”
He shook his head, surprising me. “No, not at all. It makes me sad for him.”
He started walking toward the door. Then he turned back.
“People screw up, you know. You shouldn’t hold it against them. You shouldn’t expect everyone to know everything you’re thinking about or not getting from them. It doesn’t mean they don’t love you. They screw up.”
I nodded, even though Bobby wasn’t talking about Ben—the kindest thing I could do for him was pretend that he was. I realized that was what was so hard for him. Bobby wanted to be the one who never screwed up, who we all looked up to, Margaret especially. He confused that with love. He confused how she saw him with how she needed him to see her.
Bobby sat back down. “I don’t want your sympathy,” he said.
“You don’t have it,” I said.
Then I took his hand.
High Yields
After Bobby left for San Francisco—for work, for a Margaret- and Finn-free day—I headed into Santa Rosa. I drove to the courthouse in the center of Santa Rosa—a small courthouse where the biggest business was traffic tickets. I had two enormous files in my hand, files I had found online that backed up my case. The case I was about to make to someone behind the small courthouse desk.
As it turned out, I knew the person I was making the case to. Kirby, from high school, was standing behind the desk.
Kirby Queen—Brian Queen’s daughter. We hadn’t known each other that well in high school despite our fathers’ desire for us to be friends. She had been the captain of the volleyball team. She looked ready to go to the gym now, standing there in a pantsuit that looked more like a jumpsuit, looking bored.
She perked up slightly when she saw me standing before her, but only slightly. Whatever she remembered about me from high school, it wasn’t really about me but about Bobby. The one meaningful interaction we’d ever had was when she’d confessed that she had a crush on him.
“Look what fell off the vine!” she said. “What brings you to Sonoma County?”
“Hi, Kirby.”
“I heard you were getting married, or maybe heard is the wrong word. I read you walked into town in your wedding dress. If it had been your wedding day that would have been news, but when everyone found out there was no wedding, it hit the Twitter feed.”
I felt my skin getting hot. “That’s embarrassing.”
“Sure is.”
I opened the files on Kirby’s desk. A legal case from the 1800s stared back at Kirby, Philbert v. Philbert, a small family case in which the grown children weren’t informed of a property’s sale. In that case, it had been a horse farm. Since their trust was linked with the land, the grown children had contested the horse farm’s sale, contending that they were losing out on future earnings.
My law firm had used this case once while representing a greedy billionaire whose father had built shopping malls all over Los Angeles. He was planning on selling one for one hundred million and the son was trying to stop him. Now I was using the case for something else.
“What can I do you for?” she said. “Because I’m not reading any of this.”
“I’m filing an injunction to stop the sale of my father’s vineyard.”
“Your father is selling his vineyard?” She looked shocked. “My father didn’t mention it.”
“Yep, to Murray Grant Wines.”
“Whoa. No way! Those corporate scumbags?”
I nodded, happy that Kirby was stuck on that, my desire to go up against a major corporation, and not the illegitimacy of what I wanted to do.
“Their grandson, the one who is taking over Murray Grant Wines, he sucks. He’s a major asshole.”
“You’ve met him?”
“No, I read about him. On Twitter. Give me your filing.”
She grabbed the appropriate paperwork, smiling, happy to be in the know about this. That was fine as long as she was willing to do her job here and get the lawsuit going. The reason corporations often won lawsuits was that they out-lawyered the small guy. Maybe I didn’t have a leg to stand on, but I had the manpower to see this thing through. And I was going to use it.
Kirby shrugged, apologetically. “You’re not going to be able to see the judge until next week. And it’s probably going to be Judge Riley, once he comes back from his fishing trip. He’s gonna be in a bad mood too, irritated he’s at work again.”
I nodded, knowing I’d lose in front of pretty much any judge. But that didn’t matter. What mattered was getting him to hear my argument for why my father couldn’t sell the vineyard without approval, to create work for Jacob’s lawyer, to create trepidation for Jacob’s board about getting involved. Why would they want to get involved with a small vineyard that was making waves? They could find another small winery with a good reputation. The upside wasn’t worth it.
I looked at Kirby, hoping she’d help with the second part of the plan, knowing it was critical that she did.
She smiled, thrilled to be on the inside of this secret. “I, of course, won’t tell anyone in the meantime,” she said.
“Thank you.”
She nodded seriously. “Of course. I would never.”
Which proved that the second she was on her own again, she would.
I felt pretty pleased with myself as I walked out of the courthouse.
Then the phone rang.
It was someone else I’d gone to high school with. Ethan Tropper. Ethan Tropper, who had once convinced Finn it was a good idea for them to break into my father’s liquor cabinet, while Bobby stood guard in the hallway, replacing all the bourbon with Dr Pepper. Ethan Tropper: former juvenile delinquent, current deputy sheriff of Sebastopol.
“This is Deputy Sheriff Ethan Tropper. I’ve got someone here who wants you to come and get him,” he said.
This was what he said instead of hello.
“Finn?” I said.
“Finn,” he said.
“I’m five minutes away.”
“Congratulations,” he said.
Then he hung up.
The Starkville City Jail
I didn’t have much choice here,” Ethan said, leading me down the hall toward the small jail cell where Finn had spent the night drying out, Ethan not officially booking him, but not letting him roam the streets either.
“These last couple of months, it’s been a lot. Disorderly conduct, drunk driving, sleeping in his car.”
“Seriously? That isn’t a crime.”
Ethan nodded. “It is here,” he said.
I didn’t like thinking of what it had been like for Finn since Margaret had told him how she felt about him, Margaret both closer to him than ever, and further away, Bobby unavailable for consolation. It just about broke my heart to picture him sitting in jail, Ethan Tropper the only one who was available to talk to him.
“Last night was the last straw, especially after the fire hydrant incident.”
“What did you just say?”
“The fire hydrant incident. Finn rammed his truck into a fire hydrant. Finn destroyed public property.”
“What makes you think it was him?”
“I don’t think. I know. I was able to decipher the marks left on the fire hydrant and match them to the chipped paint on Finn’s truck.”
Tropper looked amazingly proud of himself for this great detective work, or for rehashing what he had seen on CSI: Miami.
I raised my hand, unwilling to let my brother take the hit, at least for that. “That’s on me, Ethan. I was driving the truck.”
Tropper cocked his head. “That was you? You hit and ran?”
Then Ethan reached in his pocket, and for a second, I thought he was going to take out his handcuffs. He took out a key instead.
Ethan opened the jail cell door, a tiny room with a toilet and a mattress and a pine tree air freshener.
Finn rose up from the twin mattress, Ethan jokingly knocking on the jailhouse bars.
“You decent?” Ethan said.
“Decent enough,” Finn said, smiling. He was slightly disheveled, but I’d never have guessed that he’d spent the night in jail if that hadn’t been where he was standing. Smelling of trees.
Ethan walked out of the cell, locking the door behind himself, the click deafening. “Give me a few minutes to sneak you past Sheriff Elliot. And summon your sister here for her hit-and-run altercation from the other night.”
I drilled Ethan with a look. “It was a fire hydrant, Ethan, not a person.”
Ethan got in my face. “What it is, my lady, is unacceptable.”
Then Finn stepped forward, putting his hand on Ethan’s shoulder. “Let’s just calm down here, okay? You need to ignore her. She wasn’t even in the truck. She’s just trying to help me out.”
“Is that true?”
Finn gave me a threatening look. “Tell him, Georgia,” he said.
“I guess,” I said, convincing no one.
“Come on, Ethan. Think about it. You think I’d let her drive my truck?”
Ethan looked back and forth between us, trying to decide if that was something he was willing to
accept, which was when his walkie-talkie went off, Ethan picking it up.
“We’re not done here,” he said, pointing to me. Then he turned to Finn. “But I will deal with Elliot for you, Finn.”
Finn smiled. “Thanks, Ethan. I appreciate it.”
Ethan smiled back, no one immune to Finn’s charms, female or male. “No problem, pal,” he said, heading out, giving me a look as he went.
Finn looked at me. “Way to narc on yourself.”
“I didn’t want to leave you in the cold.”
“I’ve got Ethan covered.”
I looked around the jail. “Obviously.”
Finn shrugged. “Yeah . . .”
We hadn’t spoken since our blowout and he looked uncomfortable. He was embarrassed about our fight, this stint in the city jail, apparently one of many stints. But what was there for him to say? The Ford children didn’t apologize to one another. We did what my mother had told us to do as children. We held out a hand and the other sibling had to take it. Everyone willing to move on.
This was what he did. He reached out his hand and took mine as he sat back down.
“My hands are a little clammy,” he said. “I haven’t washed them for twelve hours.”
“You really do suck at apologizing,” I said.
He smiled. “Thanks for coming to get me,” he said.
“You okay?”
“Yep. It’s no big deal. Just needed to dry out.”
“Ethan says you guys have a standing date, like a weekly poker game. Without the poker.”
He shrugged. “Ethan likes my company.”
I shook my head. “Finn . . .”
“You want to start, Miss Hit-and-Run?”
He shook his head, getting serious all of a sudden. And looking older than he was.
“I know. It’s going to stop. I’m stopping it.”
“How?”
“However I can,” he said.
Then he nodded, like he was resolved. Resolved and exhausted—done with his own nonsense, done with how he was feeling.
He looked down at his fingers, shaking his head. “Maybe it was sleeping here last night, but I keep thinking about the night before they got married. That wedding we crashed together. Do you remember?”