The Shortest Way Home

by Miriam Parker

  “That’s great,” she said. “I’m sorry I’ll miss it.”

  “You can still come,” I said.

  “Oh, Hannah,” she said. Fresh tears came to her eyes and she walked ahead of me into the office.

  CHAPTER 15

  Linda spent the next few hours narrating her day. She showed me how she tracked the inventory, how she filled orders like Chris’s from the day before, the list of wines that would be ready for the next season. She had highlighted a few restaurants and wine stores that I could just call on the phone to see if they wanted to restock. Some needed more handholding. I nodded. I was planning to call a local wine distributor as soon as she was gone to have them take on the existing accounts and try to grow the business. I could deal with the wine club and the tasting room and the social media and planning the party on my own—with a little help from Celeste, of course. But I also needed to show Linda that I respected what she did.

  At the end of the day, she pushed back from her desk, took off her headset, and closed her laptop. She wrote down a list of her passwords and her cell phone number. Then she gestured for me to follow her into the tasting room, where she opened a bottle of Taittinger 2011 Domaine Carneros Brut Cuvée. It was frothy, but she poured it into our glasses so that the froth grew just to the very top.

  “This is one of the best out there,” she said. “Cheers. To new beginnings.”

  “To new beginnings,” I said, feeling a bit terrified for both of us.

  We clicked our glasses together. She smiled. “I smell honeysuckle,” she said. “Maybe also violets.”

  “That’s still hard for me to notice,” I said. “I still just taste fruit. Maybe like bitter strawberry?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Bitter strawberry; that’s exactly it. And maybe a hint of wasabi? I’ve been saving this for a long time. This is the perfect time to have it.”

  “Also, you won’t be able to take it with you,” I said.

  “Good point,” she said. “I should go throw some things in a bag.”

  She walked out of the office and I sat down at her desk with my flute of sparkling wine mostly full. I put her headset on my head. But it bothered my ear so I took it off. I looked around at everything Linda had built and I had organized. We had worked together for the past week, and now she was gone. I would have to fill her shoes. I knew I could do it. I had learned a lot, but there was something to be said for having that institutional knowledge there. The person who knew everything. I was starting from scratch.

  I texted Drew a photo of the office and made sure to include the open bottle of Cuvée. “This is where I work now,” I said.

  “Sexier than a school,” he wrote back.

  “So true,” I wrote.

  “I’m sure you’re killing it,” he wrote. “Now I have to go check in on the kids in detention.”

  I liked how he could always remind me that his life was way weirder than mine.

  * * *

  —

  After I finished texting Drew, I went out into the tasting room and sipped my Cuvée behind the bar. It was a Tuesday, so it was not entirely guaranteed that someone would come into the tasting room, but it wasn’t out of the question either. I sipped my sparkling wine slowly and mentally tried to envision the room filled with a jazz band and partygoers and passed hors d’oeuvres. The party. It was coming up. I felt like things were organized, but I wasn’t sure. I was sure about so little all of a sudden. So I decided to call Celeste. I told her about the open bottle of Cuvée and she arrived in ten minutes flat.

  She walked through the door wearing a backless Lululemon top and white lace short-shorts. “Bubbly!” she said, smiling.

  “It’s like your bat signal,” I said. “Who knew?”

  “I mean, it’s not just any bubbly,” she said. “I wouldn’t rush over here for Prosecco.”

  “Duly noted,” I said as she settled herself at the bar.

  “This is one of the top ten wines of the region,” Celeste said. “I have a case in my basement, but I never drink it; I just give it as housewarming gifts to my clients. I do so much for them. I give them tours; I take them to parties; I introduce them to new friends, who are, of course, other clients.”

  “Real estate isn’t easy,” I said.

  “Finding the property is the least of it,” she said. “The negotiation. Dealing with lawyers. Renovations. Architects. Contractors. I’m just involved in everything.”

  “That’s why you’re good at what you do,” I said. “Are you bringing any clients to the party?”

  “Oh,” she said. “I hadn’t thought about that.”

  “Not fancy enough?” I joked.

  “Not that,” she said. “But maybe. Maybe if it was at the house and not at the tasting room. So it would feel more exclusive. But that house is like a mausoleum, isn’t it?”

  “It is kind of like a mausoleum,” I said. “I wonder why they keep all those nice rooms so dark and all the furniture covered. Why not enjoy it? Instead they just sit in that ugly kitchen.”

  “So weird,” Celeste said. “But that’s what rich people are. Weird. If I know anything from my job, it’s that.”

  “They’re not rich, though,” I said. “Everything is kind of falling apart behind the facade. They were thinking of renting the place when I started.”

  “They live in a castle,” Celeste said. “They’re rich even if they are cash poor. And we’ll help them. You’re growing the business already; just look at all the RSVPs for the party. And the social media. I can’t believe that dog already has over a thousand followers.”

  “Good point,” I said. “I just want to do the right thing for Linda, you know?”

  “I do,” Celeste said.

  We polished off the last of the Cuvée and headed into town to eat lavender crème brûlée.

  * * *

  —

  The next morning, feeling only a tiny bit foggy because of the sparkling wine and the sugar, I found a couple standing outside of the front door of the tasting room just as I was opening. “Good morning,” the woman said, and walked right past me as if she had been expecting me to open the door for her and had timed our arrivals simultaneously. The man walked in behind her but immediately took her hand after they passed the threshold. They were laughing and pointing at the details in the tasting room. I walked around to the other side of the bar as they got themselves situated, but I overheard her say, “The outside looks like a wine barrel, how clever.” I liked them immediately. Their faces were young, but their hair was gray. I was impressed that in the world of eternal youth we all lived in, they had embraced their own gray hair. I resolved right then to let my hair go gray naturally rather than fighting it with dyes and pigments. They settled down at the bar and I introduced myself and asked them if they wanted the reserve tasting.

  “Oh, we so do, sweetheart,” she said, in the least condescending way someone can say “sweetheart.” “But this is our first stop of the day. Can you just pour us your best white, your best Pinot, and your best Cab?”

  “Of course,” I said. I pulled out the early-harvest Chardonnay that Linda had poured for Chris on Monday. “I love this wine,” I said. “It’s a Chardonnay, but we age it in steel, not in oak, so it doesn’t have that buttery taste.”

  “So glad that’s gone out of fashion,” he said, swirling his glass.

  “This is delightful,” she said. “I taste snap peas. And I smell . . . rosemary.”

  “We grow rosemary next to the grapes,” I said, remembering what Everett had told me that first night at dinner. “Grapes tend to take on the elements of what grows around them.”

  “How interesting,” she said. “I didn’t know that.”

  I smiled. It was nice to finally feel like I knew something about what I was doing. I pulled out the Private Reserve Pinot Noir and poured them each a taste. We rarely opened the
Private Reserve for regular tastings, but I had a sense that they might buy a case of it. They seemed fancy. And then I could finish the bottle in my cottage that night.

  “Wow,” he said.

  “This is a limited-edition wine,” I said, “that we grow in our coastal vineyard, because it needs a slightly cooler temperature than here. It’s cooler on the other side of the mountains near the ocean.”

  “Coastal vineyard?” she said. “That sounds like a great place to have a vacation.”

  “I smell cherry pits,” he said. “And a berry flavor.”

  I nodded. I hadn’t been to the coastal vineyard and I wasn’t even sure it was part of Everett and Linda’s actual property. But I knew they didn’t buy grapes from other people, so there must have been an explanation that I didn’t understand. I made a mental note to ask Everett about it.

  “Where are you from?” I asked.

  “Colorado,” he said. “A blond woman in a pink print assaulted us at the coffee shop this morning and told us this was the best wine in Sonoma.”

  “Celeste?” I asked.

  “That sounds right,” she said.

  “She’s quite friendly, and really, she’s your best advertiser,” he said. “She insisted that we come here. You should pay her!”

  “She means well,” I said. “She’s helped me a lot with a party I’m planning here.”

  “Party?” the woman asked.

  “We’re going to have music and a food and wine tasting here the first Friday of June.” I said.

  “Oh,” she said. “We’ll be back home by then.”

  “You can fly back out for it!” I said, only sort of joking. “I swear it’ll be great.”

  “Our son is out here,” the woman said, shaking her head like he had been a massive disappointment. “We don’t know what he does. But he seems to manage. Though his apartment is disgusting. So much dust. It’s amazing they can breathe.”

  “That’s all we can ask,” the husband said. “Food. Shelter. Some modicum of happiness.”

  I wondered if my mom talked about me in such hushed tones. The daughter who left. The one in “business.” The world I lived in wasn’t one she understood. She understood that Drew was a principal. That made sense. Lawyers, doctors even. But business. Marketing. She had no idea what that was. I’d tried to explain once after my first few months in New York. Trying to explain what I did at Tiffany’s was a bit of an uphill battle. “Sounds like you’re an overpaid secretary is what you are,” my mother had said.

  “It’s like an apprenticeship,” I had said.

  “Do you think you’ll ever have your boss’s job? Do you even want it? Are you being trained for it?” my mother had asked. Training was important to her. She was always taking classes to improve her nursing skills.

  “I mean, I guess one day. It’s not really what I want, but it’s good experience.”

  “So why are you doing it?”

  “To learn.”

  “I don’t understand,” my mother had said. “It sounds to me like they’re just taking advantage of a smart girl and making her get coffee and print out reports.”

  “You learn from those things,” I’d said.

  “You don’t have to go to college to get coffee,” my mother had said. “You went to college, Hannah. Why don’t you use some of those skills? Become a teacher like Drew.”

  I wanted her to think what I was doing was worthwhile. Explaining this would be even harder. So probably I wouldn’t even bother. Maybe that was why I wasn’t taking her calls. I just didn’t want to explain. Maybe Drew would tell her if he was feeling generous. But he probably wouldn’t. I just felt stuck.

  * * *

  —

  I poured the final wine for the Colorado couple, and we had moved from talking about disappointing children to discussing good restaurants in the area, which was a topic I much preferred, when Felipe came running into the tasting room breathlessly, his short brown hair mussed. “It is Mr. Everett,” he yelled. “He has had an accidente.”

  “An accident?” I asked.

  “He needs . . . He fell from ladder. Now he is not moving.”

  I could tell that Felipe’s English was starting to falter under the stress. I tried to be calm, but I didn’t know what to do. My own English disappeared. I was struck dumb with silence, staring at Felipe, who was fumbling for his phone. I looked to the couple at the bar.

  “Don’t move him,” the older man said. “He could have a concussion or worse. Have a local ambulance come. Bring him to the hospital here and they’ll decide if he needs to go somewhere else.”

  “You’re a doctor?” I asked.

  “I’m a nurse practitioner,” he said. “I work in a hospital every day. There’s nothing worse than moving someone who has a neck injury.”

  “I’ll do it,” I said to Felipe, and I ran into the office to call 911. I screamed that somebody needed to come out to Bellosguardo right away. We then all sat in silence for a moment and waited for the sounds of a siren. Then I ran to the office and looked at the list of numbers Linda had given me. I tried to type hers into my cell phone, but I kept messing up. Finally, I got it to work. “Linda,” I said. “There’s been an accident.”

  “What?!” she said. “I’m in San Francisco. I told Everett.”

  “You have to come back,” I said.

  “Okay,” she said. “I was so close to getting away . . .”

  “The ambulance is coming. You have no choice.”

  I went back into the tasting room. “His wife is coming. But it might be a little bit of time. Should we go to where he is?” I asked Felipe.

  He led us out into the parking lot and down a dirt path toward the vineyard. The nurse practitioner and his wife trailed behind us.

  As we jogged through the vines, I asked, “How will the ambulance get up here?”

  “There is a service road,” he said. “Where we bring the picking trucks.”

  I nodded. “Should we tell William?” I said to nobody in particular. “He’s the son in New York.”

  “Probably best to get Everett to a hospital,” the older man said. “You’ll know more then, before people start getting on planes. He might be fine. Just in shock.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “I don’t even know your name.”

  “Walter,” he said.

  “I’m glad you were here, Walter,” I said.

  “Me too,” he said. “This is Nancy.”

  I shook Nancy’s hand and strained to hear an ambulance. “We should go out in front. In case they come.”

  * * *

  —

  Four hours later, Linda and I were huddled together in the waiting room of Santa Rosa Hospital, anticipating the results of an EKG, an MRI, and a CT scan. They didn’t know if it was a stroke, a heart attack, or both. I didn’t know what to say, so I concentrated on basic needs—did Linda need coffee? A sweater? A snack? The answer to all was no, although I did wrap the shawl I had been wearing as a scarf around her just in case, and she didn’t complain.

  When she arrived at the hospital a few hours after I had, I just hugged her and said, “Sorry your trip to the store got interrupted.”

  She nodded at me, like she knew what I was saying. She didn’t bring up William, so I didn’t either, although I was itching to call him. It was true that he wouldn’t really need to know what was happening if his father was going to be okay, but likely he would be angry not to have been informed. When my father died they kept it from me for as long as possible. My mother had gotten a phone call in the middle of the night and had woken me up to tell me that she needed to go on an emergency call at the hospital and would we be okay by ourselves? I could get breakfast for myself and Drew and get us both to school, right? She didn’t even wake Drew. She just disappeared. She didn’t come back for two days. She called and made sure we were oka
y. She sent over her friend Mrs. Anderson, who wouldn’t answer any of our questions, but who let us have French toast for dinner. And even let us use the real maple syrup, which my mother kept in the top of the cupboard for really special occasions. I can’t eat maple syrup to this day.

  We found out after two days that my father had been in a truck accident. His truck had slid off the road on a night that was plagued by black ice in the middle of Nebraska. The front cab had gone into an irrigation ditch, jackknifing the tractor-trailer, and my father had been knocked unconscious. Luckily, another trucker had seen it happen and had called for help. My father ended up in an Omaha hospital and my mother drove out there to be with him. But she hadn’t told us that he was in a coma; she didn’t keep us updated on his progress; she tried to make us think it was going to be okay. Maybe because she thought it was going to be okay. Who knows. But all we knew was that after two days, Mrs. Anderson told us that he was dead and that we needed to go to the store to buy black clothing for a funeral. When our mother got home, she looked like a ghost and just sank into my dad’s chair in the living room, turned on a hockey game, his favorite sport, and rarely got up again. I never really forgave her for not telling us what was going on as it happened. We deserved to know. I know the way she dealt with it was the only way she knew how, but I wished it was different. And for that reason, I felt like William deserved to know. Although it also wasn’t my decision to make. So, I bit my tongue, as much as it killed me.

  * * *

  —

  Linda had fallen lightly asleep on my shoulder, but I had to wake her when the doctor came out. He pulled her aside and whispered to her and then brought her with him behind the doors that read: IMMEDIATE FAMILY ONLY.

  I waited for what felt like an interminable amount of time, leafing through old issues of Us Weekly and Psychology Today. I wondered if they merged the two magazines whether they could figure out what was wrong with the Kardashian family. Or maybe they were all the sanest people on earth, and they had just figured out a way to make money off of their family drama. I knew that I was tired when I started rationalizing the behavior of the Kardashians.