I also wanted to talk to her. And I was officially in the middle of a crisis. Of course, part of the crisis involved having a crush on her son and having a possible soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend in my cottage. And my own deep indecision and fear. What would she tell me to do if she was around? What would my own mother advise? I just didn’t know.
As I drove, I passed the cows and the goats. One of the goats was standing on the back of a cow and that made me smile. I turned onto the long dirt road that led to Jackson’s cabin, with forks off it for a variety of properties, all surrounded by high fences and set off by electric gates. Mini compounds. So different from the streets of Iowa or the apartment buildings of New York and Berkeley. The dirt flew up around me as I drove; the road was dry, reminding me of the never-ending drought. I approached the closed but unlocked gate, got out of my car to open it, and passed through. I drove up toward the cabin, making sure to look out for the dog now that I knew there was one, not that the dog had been very interested in my approach the last time. I stopped the car in the same place I had last time, but Jackson did not emerge to greet me. His truck was parked by the side of the house, though, so I suspected he was home.
I got out of the car, approached the door, and knocked. No answer. “Hello? Jackson? It’s Hannah.”
The door was open, but I felt afraid to step inside. In case there was something intimate happening I didn’t want to see. I waited and knocked again. Then I took out my phone and called Jackson. The landline rang. Then, finally, he answered. But I still didn’t see him. He must have been in the back, the bedroom, perhaps.
“Jackson? It’s Hannah. I’m at your front door . . . I’m looking for . . .”
“She’s here,” he said. “But she doesn’t want to be found.”
“Can I just talk to her?” I asked.
He mumbled for a moment and then I heard some static and fumbling. Linda got on the phone. “Hello?” She sounded a little groggy.
“Linda! It’s Hannah. Celeste sent me out here to check on you.”
“I’m fine, you know that. I told you what I was going to do.”
“I know,” I said. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay. As a friend.”
“Please keep this just between us, my conversation with Everett, why I’m here.”
“Okay,” I said. “But I need some help in what I should say.”
“Just say I’m traveling for a little while. Tell them I’m fine. I’ll be in touch when I’m ready. Tell them I trusted you with the winery, with the business. Everything will be fine.”
I was quiet. I didn’t know how to respond. I wanted Linda to be happy. I also knew this would hurt her family.
“What should I tell William?”
“He doesn’t have to know for now. He’s back in New York already, as you well know. If you can just keep it to yourself for a little while, I’ll tell him when I’m ready.”
“What if he asks?”
“My advice is that he should do whatever makes him happy,” she said. “And he shouldn’t wait until he’s old. He should do it now. Those are my words of wisdom for him. There’s no reason to wait or to settle. Taste everything,” she said. “Don’t just buy the first bottle that comes along.”
I nodded, still unsure how I would relay all that advice. “Thanks, Linda. I wish you the best,” I said.
“You’re a good person,” Linda said. “You really seem to care about the winery, and I appreciate that. And if you and my son like each other, you should work on that, but if you love that other boyfriend more, or someone else, you should follow your heart. Don’t do things because you think you should. Do them because you want to.”
“What if I don’t know what I want?”
“You do,” Linda said. “You just need to be quiet long enough to listen to what your heart is telling you.”
I nodded. There were tears in my eyes. It was the truest thing anyone had ever said to me. And the last thing I ever allowed myself to think. I clicked my phone off, threw it in my bag, and returned to the car, wiping away the tears. I got back in the car, turned on the air-conditioning, and just sat there for a while, in silence. I resisted the urge to turn on the radio. To even think about anything. I tried to empty my mind the way they told you to in yoga. I considered attacking my cuticles and then resisted. I whispered to myself, “It’s going to be okay.”
I just had to figure out what my heart was telling me. I didn’t want to blame my mother, but of course, I could. It wasn’t like our house growing up was a feelings-rich place. My only solace had been going to the library, where Mary Ellen gave me Eloise to read, and that helped me generate a vision of myself as a grown-up Hannah in a convertible driving down Fifth Avenue in front of the Plaza. A vision that took me to Tiffany’s. I had accidentally envisioned my future, as off as it was in terms of specific details.
And now I found myself in a place that I did care about. And with people who also cared about the same thing that I cared about: making this winery work. It wasn’t just about the wine or the scenery or the beautiful cottage or the castle, although all of those things were amazing. It was finding something that needed help and having the ability to help it grow and change.
As I sat in front of Jackson’s house, I dug my phone out of my bag, put it on speaker, and called Drew. He was the only one who knew what my past was like. He had paved the way for me by going to college, figuring out the network of scholarships that one could get from a small place like Winthrop with parents who lived paycheck to paycheck.
“Hannah,” he said after the third ring.
“Drew,” I said.
“Did he come back?”
“Who?”
“Ethan. For the party. To tell you he loved you.”
“Sort of,” I said. “How did you know he would do that?”
“He called me.”
“I don’t know what to do,” I said. “Is your life boring?”
“I wish it was a little more boring,” he said.
“Are you happy?” I asked.
“Mostly,” he said. “As happy as you can be, I think. Without being crazy.”
“Is Elise?”
“I’ll ask her. We’re driving to Target.”
Drew and Elise did have a pretty great relationship. I should have put them on my list of couples to aspire to emulate. Drew was the principal of the middle/high school in Winthrop and Elise taught high school biology in nearby Independence.
“She says yes.”
“You guys get the summers off, so that’s why. You should come visit me here. Bring the kids!”
“Elise still has to grade final exams,” Drew said. “And I have to have field day. A bunch of kindergarteners throwing water balloons at one another.”
“Sounds fun,” I said. “But how do you know? When it’s right?”
“Something just clicks.”
“Nothing is clicking for me,” I said.
“It will,” Drew said.
“But Mom didn’t . . .”
“It’s not her fault anymore, Hannah. You’re a grown woman. You can do it yourself.”
I sighed. It was true. I had found this place and I had made a choice. “Okay,” I said.
“You’re an attractive, smart, and capable person, and any man would be lucky to have you.”
That put tears in my eyes, so all I could say was, “Thanks.”
Still confused, I clicked the phone off, turned the radio on, and drove back to Bellosguardo.
* * *
—
As I drove, the NPR host delivered a soothing report on a recently published study that reported there are some people who are head people and some people who are heart people. Head people think “rationally” when making moral decisions and heart people think “emotionally.” I diagnosed myself as a head person; Ethan was one too. William wa
s more of a heart person, I thought. I wondered if it was possible to change—to become a heart person after being a head person for so long. Maybe I was transitioning and I wasn’t sure which way I was going to go yet. Maybe I had always been a heart person but had been masquerading as a head person. Or maybe it was just a problem if two head people were together. Maybe you need a mix. All I knew was that I was going to keep following my heart for a little while longer and see where it got me.
When I got back to the winery, I assumed that Ethan was still in the cottage, so I decided to go up to the main house instead to see how Everett was doing. So for the first time, instead of pulling into my usual parking spot, I drove up to the house, around the grand entranceway, and along the circular drive that led to the huge carved wooden door flanked by columns and ivy. It was going to make an amazing hotel. I couldn’t wait to get started.
CHAPTER 22
I went inside, and even though I knew Ethan was in the cottage, I headed straight up to Everett’s room and knocked on the door. There was no answer, but I assumed that maybe he couldn’t hear me since he was all the way inside, through the sitting room. I cracked the door open. The lights were on, which they hadn’t been the other times I’d come by, and I took that as a sign that he was feeling better. I went through the empty sitting room toward the open bedroom door. I peeked in, but he wasn’t there. The bed was made and the hospital bed was completely gone. There was still a little tray of medicines on his nightstand, but the curtains were open. Maybe he had gone out for a walk or down to the kitchen.
There were only a few places that he could possibly be, so I headed back down to the winery. I went down the main stairs of the house, gazed upon William’s great-great-grandfather’s giant portrait, and headed to the kitchen. There I found the nurse standing on her little stepstool.
“Hi, Selma,” I said. She jumped a little and I rushed toward her to keep her from falling off the stool, but she righted herself in time.
“Hello, miss,” she said.
“Where’s Mr. Everett?” I asked. “I just tried to visit him.”
“He insisted on going to the cellar with Felipe,” she said.
“Oh,” I said. “Where’s that?” I couldn’t believe I’d never been to the cellar.
“Under the big room,” she said.
“The tasting room?”
“I think so,” she said. “Big room with big brown couches.”
“Yes,” I said. “Okay. So he’s feeling better?”
“I think he should rest more, but he is feeling better,” she said. “He needs to walk. So this is good. Plus, Mrs. Everett leave and I think that help his spirits.”
I nodded. Strange. But possible.
“Thanks, Selma,” I said.
I walked out the kitchen door and headed down to the tasting room. In the office, a door was open that I hadn’t noticed before. I followed a circular metal staircase down to the basement to find the wine cellar. I had wondered where the wine was made, and here was the answer, literally right under my feet for weeks. The cellar was cool; the floor was packed dirt and the walls were stone. The first room I entered was lined with floor-to-ceiling stainless steel tanks, each labeled with grape names and dates. All the tanks had thermostats on them set at different temperatures. In the next room were the barrels, and in the final room, the bottling machine. This was where I found Everett and Felipe.
“Hi, kid,” Everett said.
“You’re a hard man to find,” I said. “Are you feeling better?”
“Much,” he said. He did seem brighter. He was standing up, which was one difference from the last few times I’d seen him. He had a cane, but he was standing. And smiling. His cheeks were flushed red.
“You shouldn’t be stressing,” I said.
“I’m relaxing,” he said. “And I’m supposed to be walking. And Selma is here. I’ll be fine. Besides, Felipe is bottling our 2014 Cabernet today and I wanted to try it.”
“How is it?” I asked. And then: “Should you be drinking wine?”
“I’m clearing my arteries! It’s our best yet, don’t you think, Felipe?”
Felipe nodded.
“What did you do different?” I asked.
“I stomped the grapes first,” he said.
“Really?” I said. “Like in I Love Lucy?”
“Yes,” he said. “It is a little out of fashion, but it releases some of the juice before you start fermenting. It brings up the color and the fruit.”
“It’s brilliant,” Everett said. “We’re so lucky to have him. Here, try some.” He took a long contraption that looked like a giant syringe and dipped it into the barrel. He squirted wine into two glasses that he had sitting in front of him.
“That’s for Felipe,” I said. “I couldn’t.”
“I insist,” Felipe said.
“Let me run upstairs and get you another glass,” I said.
“There are more around here somewhere,” Everett said.
“Are you sure you should even be down here?” I asked again.
“This is healing me,” he said. Felipe unearthed another glass from behind a barrel. He squirted wine into his glass from the syringe and we all clinked glasses and tasted very seriously. It smelled like leather and tasted like plums and pepper and a tiny hint of dirt.
“Amazing,” I said.
“I think it will get ninety-two points,” Felipe said. “We will mix it one last time in the tank and bottle this week.”
“Sold,” Everett said.
“I’ve never been down here,” I said.
“We keep it secret,” Everett said. “Do you want me to give you a tour?”
“Of course,” I said.
“This is the kind of end of our process. Many wineries outsource their bottling, but my father bought this machine ages ago. It’s not the fastest or the highest tech, but it works and keeps us from having to pay bottling fees.”
“You should rent it out,” I said. “Let other wineries use it when you’re not busy,” I said.
“You’re so smart,” Everett said. “That’s a great idea.” We then walked through the barrel room. I had seen only the first part of it, but instead of going straight into the tank room, Everett turned left and we walked through rows and rows of barrels. “These are all in various stages of aging,” he said. “Felipe decides when we bottle. I like to age a Cabernet for a few years, but some kinds like the Pinots we bottle pretty quickly. Really depends. I use oak barrels from France for the reds. And I have started aging the whites just in stainless steel because people seem to like them better.”
He kept walking through the rows of barrels, tapping his cane on them, and I followed him. It started to feel like a maze and I wondered how big this underground cellar was. “Has this cellar always been here?” I asked.
“We’re about to go into the oldest part,” he said. “We’re actually under the house now. We were in the tasting room. But the count, when he built the place, dug a storage cellar under the house. Then over the course of the next generations, the cellar was expanded into a wine-making place.” We got to a huge, round, barrel-shaped door with iron fittings. Everett raised the iron bar and I followed him into a cool dark room. He flipped the light on to reveal a gorgeous wine cellar. Racks of bottles organized by vintage. Reds on top, whites on the bottom. A soft light emerged from behind the bottles and faintly from a chandelier overhead, making the room feel cozy even though it was quite chilly.
“It’s naturally sixty degrees in here, year-round. Maybe fifty-eight in the winter. It’s a perfect place for storing wine,” Everett said.
“What’s the oldest wine you have?” I asked.
“Well, I have a few bottles of the count’s first vintages, but those are likely vinegar by now. It’s more just to have something to see.” He pulled out the bottles, which did look quite aged, and the label
s were handwritten: The Count’s Cab Franc. The Count’s Riesling.
“Is that his handwriting?”
“Maybe,” Everett said.
“Amazing. Do you have anything you’ve been meaning to drink?”
“I have a bottle of 1973 Stag’s Leap, which was one of the first bottles that put California wine on the map. In the 1976 Judgment of Paris, they did a blind taste test and one of the wines they tasted was the 1973 Stag. It was deemed the best wine in the world. And that revolutionized wine making here. My father was already making wine then, but it was a side business. The 1973 Stag’s Leap changed everything. But I’ve only tasted it once.”
“Wow,” I said.
“I have a few 1985 Bordeaux that I’ve been saving for the right moment,” he said. “I bought them for very little back then, knowing I would age them. I buy Bordeaux every year and age it . . . and then I wait and see. Nineteen eighty-five was really the best. Linda and I opened one bottle on our anniversary last year, but it was spoiled by a fight. I can’t even remember what we were fighting about.”
He pulled a bottle of 1985 Château Margaux from the middle of the rack. He held it up to the light, turned the bottle. “This will be amazing,” he said. “With a steak. Potatoes. Something simple but flavorful. I probably shouldn’t eat red meat yet, but one day, soon.”
I smiled. “I hope I get to try that wine one day,” I said.
“It’s at its peak right now,” he said. “It would be a crime not to drink it after aging it for all these years.”
“Well, then we absolutely have to! Speaking of which, I should probably be in the tasting room now. After yesterday, people might want to come.”
Everett looked momentarily sad as he remembered that Linda was gone. “Yeah,” he said. “If you need help . . . you can hire someone temporary. It’s not the same without her, is it?”
“It isn’t,” I said. “I think I can do it. But I am going to line up a distributor to come in and meet with you and Felipe so that they can go out there and sell your wines more widely. Do you have any favorites?”
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