But I told myself that I had to swear off William. He was on his way to New York. I was settling here. It was my first day of work in a job that I felt I was made to do, working for his parents. I was still technically with Ethan; maybe there was a way for me to have this life and for his plan to work out also. This is what I told myself as I showered and made coffee and toasted an English muffin that I found in the refrigerator. I covered it in the quince paste that Linda had left on the island the night before. I wondered if she made it herself. The label read Old Winery Road, and it was entirely possible that there were quince trees on the property. I sat on the patio for a few minutes drinking coffee, eating my breakfast, and smelling the air—moss and dirt and a hint of the roses planted all around the cottage. This was better than what would be happening in New York, right? I took out my phone and looked at Instagram. The first icon that came up was a new follow from Celeste and a tag from Tyra of a Venti Starbucks with her name on it. Caption: “Fueling for first day at Goldman in NYC. Thanks to @realhannahgreene for passing up the best job on earth.” I commented back, “You’re welcome,” and then went back inside to get the quince paste and a Champagne flute. I filled the flute with orange juice, took a croissant out of the freezer, and set up the flute, croissant, and Old Winery Road quince paste on the wrought iron patio table. My caption: “Heaven on earth. #Ichooseme.” I tagged Tyra just for fun. She didn’t heart my post.
At around ten, I headed down to the office in the back of the tasting room, but it was locked. I went around to the front door and it was also locked. I remembered that Everett was driving William to the airport today, but I wondered where Linda was. She hadn’t said anything specific about when we would start working today, but she also hadn’t said we wouldn’t start.
I wasn’t sure what to do. I had gotten dressed for work in a knee-length skirt with a bird embroidered on it and a supersoft T-shirt, so it didn’t make sense to go for a run. Instead, I decided to go for a walk. I headed back toward town, and as I walked, I called my brother, Drew. He was whom I turned to when I didn’t know what to do. I was lucky to catch him during a quiet moment in his office. School was still in session, and usually in the mornings he walked the hallways, talking to students.
“Hannah,” he said. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I said. “I’m walking through paradise. I have a babbling brook below my feet and can reach out to touch a redwood tree.”
“You only call me if something’s wrong.”
“Nothing’s wrong,” I said. “How are you?”
“You’re stalling.”
“So, remember when I texted you about Sonoma?”
“Sure,” he said.
“Well, I decided not to go to New York for that job at Goldman that I got and instead work in this winery in Sonoma, but it’s already weird. I’m falling for the son of the winery owners and the parents weren’t even at work this morning.”
“What time did you go in?”
I loved that my brother didn’t ask me any other questions about why I had made the decision or what was going on with Ethan. He knew me well enough to know that I didn’t want to talk about that.
“Ten,” I said.
“And it’s a winery? In California?”
“My first day.”
“You’ve got to chill out, my sister. All will be fine. And the son, well, I wouldn’t worry too much about it. You’ve got to figure things out.”
“He’s going to New York.”
“Perfect. Listen. You’re living the life. You made a decision and now you have to embrace it. Go enjoy your morning. Drink some coffee. Eat a pastry. Talk to a local. All will be fine.”
“So wise. Thanks,” I said. “How’s the family?”
“Elise is finishing up the year. Gillian is going to sleepaway camp for three weeks and Duncan is on a traveling soccer team. We’re all ready for school to be over, but we have a few weeks left.”
“Tell them I say hi,” I said. I loved my niece and nephew, had made it my business to be home when they were born and for most Christmases. They also once came to visit me in New York (with their parents, of course) and I got to have the perfect kid New York vacation with them. We went on the Staten Island Ferry, to the Prospect Park Zoo, and on the Dumbo carousel, and they got unlimited artisanal ice cream, which Duncan declared “much better than boring Iowa ice cream.” I hoped that one day they would run away from Iowa to stay with me. Not that Drew and Elise were bad parents; they were amazing. I just wanted the kids to feel like they had somewhere else to go, a feeling that I never quite had. That was one of the reasons I kept in touch with them via FaceTime, so they would know I was out there for them. A friendly face who could provide fun times and good snacks.
“Sure,” he said. I could tell he was getting distracted.
“How’s Mom?” I asked.
“Fine,” he said. “She’d love to hear from you. She said she called?”
“Yeah,” I said. I called my mother only rarely. We didn’t seem to have much to talk about other than Drew, and I talked to him twice a week. I was just . . . different from her. Mostly she didn’t understand what I was doing or why. Our conversations didn’t feel supportive, or even really congenial. “It’s hard for me,” I said.
“She does love you,” he said.
“She doesn’t understand me,” I said.
“You need to give her a chance to try,” he replied.
“Fine.” My walk had taken me back into downtown Sonoma. “Tell her I’m okay. I guess I should go,” I said. I clicked my phone off and walked right into Celeste.
“Fancy meeting you here,” she said. Her hair was in a high ponytail and she was wearing workout gear and carrying a yoga mat in a yoga mat–shaped bag.
“Good morning,” I said.
“I’ve been up for hours,” she said. “I like to go to sunrise yoga and then do the Pilates class right after. Really gets me ready for the day.”
“Sounds exhausting,” I said.
“You should come with me,” she said. She rooted around in her purse and handed me a coupon. “Here’s a free class.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know what my schedule will be.”
“Just take it,” she said. “I mean, you are allowed to take care of yourself. You have to, really, if you work in hospitality. You need to look and feel good to deal with the general public.”
Celeste reminded me of my parents’ next-door neighbor, Mrs. Anderson. She knew everything about everyone in Winthrop. She called my mother once a day to tell her what she had learned via her phone calls with Mrs. Holliday (Justine’s mom), Mrs. O’Callahan (David’s mom), and Mrs. Carpenter (Alexandra’s mom). Each of those women got similar reports, I was sure. Mrs. Anderson’s calls kept my mother entertained, but they were the way that I found out when Justine started wearing a bra, when David had been rushed to the hospital with dehydration after a particularly nasty bout of diarrhea, and that Alexandra wanted a dog but hadn’t remembered to water her “pet” cactus, which had withered and died. I’m sure my mother told their mothers things about me that I didn’t want known. And now that we were all out of the house, I’m sure the conversations were even more invasive, although my mother rarely reported on them. Mrs. Anderson was a bit of a busybody, but she was also the person who brought my mother soup when she was knocked out with the flu. Celeste seemed to have similar qualities.
“Do you want me to drive you back to the winery? Did you walk here?” she asked.
I nodded. She shrugged and put her arm around my shoulders. She walked me two blocks farther into town and opened the door of her white Mercedes SUV. “Get in,” she said.
* * *
—
The thing was that she didn’t drive me right back to the winery, which made me a little nervous; it was my first day on the job after all. She gave me a tour. We drove
out of town and onto winding roads. I didn’t quite know where we were, but it reminded me of the movie Under the Tuscan Sun. “It’s really beautiful here,” I said.
“Just wait until I bring you farther north,” she said. “But this place is pretty nice. Has a nice view at least.” We drove up a winding road to a new building at the top that had a fountain in the courtyard. “A little cheesy,” she said. “But just wait until you eat their salami on their patio.”
“Do you think I should call Linda and tell her where I am?”
“Don’t worry about Linda,” Celeste said.
We walked through the courtyard and into the tasting room, which reminded me a bit of the one Ethan and I had been to on our first day—the Disney one.
“We’ll skip the tasting,” she said. “Their reds aren’t great. But we can get a glass of sparkling wine and sit outside.” She whispered to the woman at the hostess desk for the patio and we went out and sat at the table in the corner with the best view. The wind was blowing a bit, but it was warm and sunny. All of a sudden, overflowing flutes and a plate of meat and cheese appeared in front of us.
“Welcome to Sonoma,” Celeste said.
“Thank you,” I said. We clinked glasses. “I love this Champagne,” I said.
Celeste looked appalled. “Just so you know, you can’t call it Champagne here. Even though it’s made in exactly the same way as French Champagne, with the same grapes and the same process, we have to call it sparkling wine. Except for Korbel, André, and Cook’s; they were calling their wine Champagne before that ruling came down, so they can.”
“Crazy,” I said. “I have so much to learn.”
“You’re smart,” she said. “It’ll be fine. So let’s get to the good stuff. You fell in love with William at first sight, broke up with your boyfriend, and moved here for the summer?”
“I wouldn’t say exactly that,” I said. “But you seem to know so much about me; why don’t you tell me about you?”
“Not much to tell,” she said. “I’m from here. I went to UC Davis. I moved back here. I sell real estate. I just got divorced. It was a mistake all along; you know, high school boyfriend. We’d been together forever and it was like: either break up or get married. And I felt like I should, you know? I was twenty-five. Everyone else from my sorority was doing it. But it didn’t last. We pretty much knew by the wedding that it was a mistake, that we had nothing in common anymore, but by then, it had all been planned.”
“The world does sometimes make us feel like we should do what it thinks,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“Water under the bridge,” she said, waving her hand. She picked up a piece of sliced meat with the other.
“I’ve never been married,” I said.
“Better that way,” she said. “I won’t do it again. I mean, maybe I would. But he’d have to be rich.”
I smiled. She was a ridiculous person, but she was entertaining.
“Tell me about Everett,” I said. “I can’t get a read on him.”
“A serious man,” she said. “He loves that winery. It’s his life. It was his father’s. He has a pretty incredible palate. Hard to talk to, though. You should read some books about wine. It’s easier to talk to him about wine than anything else. He can’t really do small talk.”
“I noticed that,” I said.
“And he’s trying hard; so is Linda, but the world is changing and how wineries succeed is changing. They’ve been falling behind despite having a good product.”
“Are they in trouble?” I asked.
“They can use a lot of help,” she said.
I nodded and wondered again if I had stepped onto a sinking ship that I was unqualified to fix. I ate a piece of cheese.
“The cheese is delicious,” Celeste said, although I was pretty sure I’d eaten most of the cheese and she’d just sipped her sparkling wine. “I’d say we should have more, but I should get you back to work. They usually open up around noon. And it’s already one.”
“It is?” I asked.
“Time flies here,” she said. “Get used to it.”
I reached for my wallet, but she shook me off. “It’s all taken care of. I have an account. Let’s go.”
We walked back out to the car and she brought me back to the winery.
“Do you want to go to yoga together tomorrow?” she asked when we stopped in front of the winery. Then before I could answer: “I’ll pick you up at seven thirty. It’ll be great.”
I didn’t want to, but I didn’t know what else to do and I could already tell that Celeste would be the kind of friend who more or less maintained the friendship for me. I wasn’t great about reaching out or making plans or keeping in touch, which was why my friendship with Nicole in New York had faded away. Neither one of us ever really reached out. I assumed the same would have happened with Tyra if we didn’t part ways over the job. “Okay?” I asked.
She peeled off without a word.
CHAPTER 10
Celeste had dropped me off at the front door of the tasting room, which was finally open. I went inside to find Linda in the office, telephone headset on her head, concentrating deeply on her computer screen. The room was disorganized—paper piled on every surface. There were two desks and a bookshelf, about six laptops stacked on one chair, and file folders on another. There wasn’t really anywhere for me to sit. They clearly hadn’t thought about the logistics of me actually working there.
“I can work up in the cottage,” I said, looking helplessly at the mess.
“Oh,” she said. “I’m sorry. I’m used to working alone. We can clear off a table for you.” She also looked a bit helpless. “I don’t even know what’s in here.”
She stood up, but I waved her off. I rearranged a few things, filed a few of the papers in the filing cabinets that were actually clearly marked. I then wedged myself into a little niche of emptiness that I created at a table near the back of the room. There was one dusty laptop among the papers. I took it and held it up to Linda. “Okay if I use this? Or should I use mine?”
“That one should work,” she said.
“Thanks again for dinner last night,” I said as I opened the computer, which was unsecured and already connected to Wi-Fi. I logged in to my Gmail. It was filled with sales and offers for stores like Pottery Barn and Zappos, but nothing personal, no messages from Ethan, no letter from Goldman saying anything positive or negative, nothing from school. I was like a blank slate. My new job was just beginning, but my old life was gone. I couldn’t help but check William’s Instagram; it showed a photo of an airplane tray table covered in tiny liquor bottles. He was having fun already.
“Of course,” she said. Her tone was curt, as if she wasn’t used to having an office mate and wasn’t interested in a casual chat. Maybe small talk also wasn’t her thing. I had always been impressed with the type of people who embraced silence over mindless chatter. I wasn’t one of those people; I was great at mindless chatter.
“I met Celeste in town,” I said, unable to settle into the silence that Linda obviously wanted.
“She’s a piece of work,” she said. “Don’t listen to anything she says. She just likes to get a rise out of people.” It was as if she had been listening to our very conversation.
“I didn’t mind her,” I said. “She took me on a drive. Showed me the neighborhood.”
“She’s lonely in her heart. That’s why she is the way she is. Sometimes the things she says . . . Well, I guess she was always that way even when she was little,” Linda said. “We tried to take care of her when she was young. She was here a lot. Her parents traveled all the time.” She squinted at her computer screen. She typed for a few minutes and I stared at my screen, not sure where to begin.
“I did think it was weird that she had already researched me before I got here,” I said.
“She’ll do that,” she said.
“She’s always trying to sell something.”
“Maybe she just wants friends?” I asked.
“Oh, she definitely does,” Linda said. “And you two would be good for each other.”
“She’s already making me work out with her,” I said. “So that’s a good thing, I guess.”
Linda laughed. “She does love those exercise classes.”
“Who’s pouring in the tasting room today?” I asked.
“Oh, I will be if anyone comes. It’s a Wednesday, so maybe one or two people later in the day. I’m not too worried about it. A bell rings in here when the door opens and I just scoot out and do my show.”
“What would you do if more people started coming for tastings?”
“Well, now that you’re here . . .”
I smiled and decided that I should start on the things I had promised. I opened the winery website, Facebook page, Twitter, and Instagram, which William had given me the passwords to. I read the entire website from top to bottom, including the history section and the description of the wines and the wine club. Those parts seemed to be in good order. On Facebook and Instagram, I posted a photo from the previous night’s dinner: We had posed Tannin with the bowl of pasta and a bottle of Pinot Noir. Then I shared it on my personal Facebook and Instagram: “Summer job. For real.” Comments were already popping up on my accounts and likes were transferring over to the winery pages. Not that my social media acquaintances were going to change the fate of this place, but they were a start.
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