by Donna Ball
Lori slanted her an upwards grin. “The Internet?”
Cici put an arm around her shoulders and hugged her tight. “And please don’t ever let me hear you say again that you’ve made my life harder. You’ve made my life—and everyone else’s—richer by coming here. You’ve brought us adventure and inspiration and hope. You’ve reminded us how to think outside the box. You’ve made certain no two days are ever the same, and okay, so some of those days have been a little more exciting than we’d like, and maybe a little adventure goes a long way when you get to be our age, but . . .” She took Lori’s face in her hand and turned it toward her, regarding her seriously. “I am so glad you are here. And I’m sorry if I’ve tried to make you into something you’re not, or hold you up to a standard that doesn’t fit. You are a smart, imaginative, ambitious young woman, and I believe you can make your mark on the world with or without a college degree. Only you know what’s best for you. And whatever you choose, I’ll support you.”
Lori turned and wrapped her arms around her mother, hugging her fiercely. Cici returned the embrace until she felt tears stinging her eyes, and then she pushed away, swallowing the moisture in her throat, smoothing the damp curls away from Lori’s face. “Come on,” she said, “let’s give the others a hand.”
Noah was using a wide snow shovel to scrape debris out of the corners of the barn that Farley’s big plow had been unable to reach. Lori went behind him with the wheelbarrow, and when it was full, she carted it off to the trash pile where the women had taken over the digging of the trench. For almost an hour they worked in silence, then Lori observed in surprise, “Hey. There’s a stone floor under here. I never knew that. Let me see that shovel.”
Noah glared at her through bloodshot eyes and a face that was streaked with soot. He looked for a moment as though he would not comply and then, abruptly, handed it over.
“Did you tell your mom?” he demanded.
Lori scraped away a layer of dirt and ash from the floor, exposing another section of mortared stone. “Tell her what?”
“You know what.”
Lori looked up, regarding him frankly for a moment. “It’s not my job to tell her.”
His expression grew belligerent. “Nobody knows what started that fire.”
And Lori agreed mildly, “That’s right. Nobody does.”
“And nobody can prove a damn thing.”
The sound of the shovel raking over stone was the only reply as Lori cleared another four-foot section that was dusted with ash. And then the shovel struck something sharp sticking out of the ground. She thrust it back toward Noah and dropped to her knees, brushing the ground with her gloved hands until she uncovered a metal ring. “Hey, look at this. It’s like something they used to tie horses to.”
She tried to lift the ring, but it wouldn’t budge. She tried again, straining her shoulders, to no avail. “Bring that shovel back over here,” she said. “It’s buried or something.”
“So what if it is? We’re supposed to be cleaning out this junk.” But reluctantly, he returned with the shovel, and even helped her dig out the layers of packed dirt around the ring.
Less than ten minutes later they both stepped back, gazing at the six-foot panel of solid wood set into the stone floor, with the iron ring affixed to it in the center. “Will you look at that?” said Lori in amazement. “It’s a door! A trapdoor! I wonder what’s down there?”
“Spiders,” replied Noah.
“Mom, come here!” Lori called. “You won’t believe what we found! Aunt Lindsay, Aunt Bridget, come look at this!”
By the time the women arrived, Noah and Lori had used the metal ring to swing the door upward on a pair of powerful hinges. A couple of spiders did, in fact, scurry out, along with a surge of cool, damp air, but once they were gone, nothing more frightening was revealed inside than a set of sturdy stone steps.
“It’s like a castle dungeon,” said Bridget in awe. Her voice echoed as she leaned over the opening.
“Or a treasure cave,” agreed Lindsay, wide-eyed.
“What do you suppose it is?” Cici wondered.
“Maybe where they used to hide out from the Indians,” Noah suggested.
“Or where they hid the Confederate Treasury.” Bridget’s voice barely contained her excitement.
Lindsay shot a dry glance her way. “With our luck, it will be in Confederate bills.”
“Lori, run to the house and get some flashlights,” commanded Cici impatiently. “Hurry!”
And so, in an instant, the gray aftermath of disaster was transformed into a morning of adventure and possibility as, one flashlight beam at a time, they made their way down the stairs and into the vast cellar below.
“Smells like somebody puked down here,” observed Noah.
They stood close together at the bottom of the stairs, the slow sweeping beams of their light crossing and occasionally glinting off the round curves of something metal. Their voices echoed.
“Sour,” agreed Lindsay.
“More like moldy bread,” said Bridget.
“Oh, my goodness, I think I know what this place is,” Lori said excitedly. “It’s the cave where they used to age the cheese!”
Cici swept her light along the wall near the stairs, and found a switch. There was a buzzing and flickering overhead, and, one by one, a bank of fluorescent lights sequenced into life. They found themselves standing in a vast concrete room with a steel door at the far end, surrounded by giant, dusty steel vats with tubes and pipes connected to them.
Bridget gave a little shudder, her eyes wide as she looked around. “It’s like Frankenstein’s laboratory!”
“Nope,” said Cici. “It’s not a cheese cave either.” Smiling, she flicked off her flashlight. “It looks to me as though Noah and Lori have discovered what remains of the old Blackwell Farms winery.”
They bombarded Ida Mae with questions at lunch. Why hadn’t Ida Mae ever mentioned the winery beneath the barn? Why was it hidden away like that? Where did the steel door, which they had tried with all their strength to open, lead? Why had all that equipment been abandoned like that? How long had the place been closed up? And why had it been kept such a secret?
Ida Mae, complacently serving up homemade vegetable soup and fresh buttermilk cornbread, replied, “Weren’t no secret. You just never asked before.”
“I swear, you are the most exasperating woman!” Cici exclaimed. “All this time, a part of this county’s history has been sitting down there and you never said a word.”
“And not one single bottle of 1967 Shiraz with the original label,” Lindsay felt compelled to point out, a trifle fatalistically.
“Ida Mae is right, you know. We knew about the winery before we bought the house, but it never occurred to us to wonder where it was.”
“I wonder if the equipment is worth anything.”
“Maybe.” Cici tasted her soup. “We could do some research, try to sell it on eBay or something.”
“What I don’t understand,” Lori said, “is why they put a winery in the cellar of a barn.”
Ida Mae gave her a disparaging look. “You ever hear of Prohibition?”
Cici put down her spoon, her eyes growing bright with interest. So did Bridget and Lindsay. “Do you mean . . .”
Ida Mae nodded smugly. “Everybody thinks the Blackwells made their money in phosphates, but that was just the start. It was bootleg whiskey that built their fortune. Hear tell that door you found used to be in the floor of the chicken house, the last place the law would go looking for a speakeasy—or a distillery.”
She sat down at the kitchen table and sampled her soup. “Good soup,” she commented, “if I do say so myself.”
“Ida Mae!” Lori practically squealed. “Is that all you have to say? Tell us more!”
“Ain’t nothing more to tell.”
“Are you serious?” Bridget demanded. “There used to be a speakeasy in the cellar of our barn and you say there’s nothing more to tell?”
Ida Mae chewed a morsel of cornbread for an inordinately long period of time. “The door,” she said at last, “was put in when they decided to make wine down there. Couldn’t exactly carry all them grapes and barrels and stuff down the stairs, so they cut a door in the hill down by the orchard. All they had to do was drive the trucks up and unload.”
“I know the hill she’s talking about!” Bridget exclaimed. “Where the raspberries are planted, right?” And then she frowned. “But I never saw a door there.”
“It would be all overgrown now,” Cici said. “That’s probably why we couldn’t get it open, too. Ida Mae—”
“Will you all stop pestering me about stuff that happened way back in the old days?” the older woman demanded. “Can’t a person have a bite to eat in peace?”
“We don’t mean to pester you, Ida Mae,” Bridget said, sounding a little hurt. “But you could be a little more generous with your information, you know. You know everything there is to know about this house and the people who used to live here, but every time we ask a question you brush us off. All we want you to do is tell us your stories. Why won’t you do that?”
Ida Mae dabbed a drip of soup from her chin, crumpled her napkin, and replied flatly, “Because those stories are mine. I can tell them or not tell them. This is your house now. Get your own stories.” And with that, she gathered up her dishes and took them to the sink, effectively closing the subject.
They gathered on the porch at dusk, but this time they did not even make it to the rockers. They sat on the front steps to remove their ruined work gloves and filthy boots, and they were too tired, for a moment, to go further.
Finding the winery—and later, uncovering the briar and vine-encumbered door that was cut into the hillside—had provided a welcome distraction from the drudgery of the cleanup, but eventually the inevitable could be postponed no longer. Lori had practically fallen asleep over dinner, and Noah had gone to his room directly afterward. Cici, Lindsay, and Bridget had returned to work until daylight died.
“You know,” said Bridget, resting her chin wearily in her hands, “I just realized something. I am really old.”
“I definitely can’t keep up this pace,” admitted Cici. “Especially on no sleep.”
“I’ve got to wash my hair,” Lindsay said, but made no move to get up. “I’ll never get the smell of smoke out of it. I’m going to look like crap in the morning.”
They were silent for a time, trying to wrap their minds around the fact that a crisis of a much different kind awaited them in town tomorrow. On another evening, they would have talked about the upcoming meeting, expressed their feelings, tried to prepare themselves for it. Now they could barely imagine it.
“One crisis at a time,” Bridget murmured.
Cici wearily rubbed the back of her neck. “Sounds like a slogan for the Ladybug Farm twelve-step program.”
“This is not going to make us look very good in the eyes of Social Services.”
Cici gave Lindsay a puzzled look. “Why? It’s not like we planned the fire.”
“I know. But it makes it look as though . . . I don’t know. As though our lives are out of control.”
“Right now I feel as though our lives are out of control.”
“It’s not an interview,” Bridget had to remind them unhappily. “It really doesn’t matter what we look like in the eyes of Social Services, does it?”
And the other two, wearily, had to agree.
“By the way,” Cici said with an effort, after a moment, “Ida Mae said the fire marshal called while we were out cleaning up this afternoon. The reports are in, and it looks as though the fire started with that electrical outlet we were using yesterday for the power tools.”
Bridget gasped and sat up straight. “Oh, no! I was supposed to put all the tools away and I did, only—I left the extension cord plugged in. I thought we would be back at it this morning, so I just wound it up and—”
But before she was halfway through, Cici started shaking her head. “No, no, it’s okay, it doesn’t matter. It wasn’t your fault. It was old wiring, that’s all, and probably chewed on by mice . . . It might have overheated while we were using it, but how could we know that? It’s no one’s fault.”
“I guess not.”
“Funny how things work out,” she said after a moment. “If the barn hadn’t burned, we never would have known the winery was even there.”
“I’m not sure it’s much of a trade-off,” Cici said.
“It might be,” Lindsay offered, rousing herself with an effort, “if we can sell the equipment.”
“Maybe for enough to rebuild the barn.”
“Maybe,” agreed Cici. “But I’m really too tired to even think about it now.”
“One crisis at a time.”
Cici sighed. “Right.”
And, one by one, they pushed themselves to their feet and went to prepare for what awaited them tomorrow.
18
In Another Time
Emmy Marie, 1967
It was only six weeks, but six weeks can be a lifetime. She set to work with her sketchbook and her paints and an air of fierce concentration that endeared her to Andrew in a way he couldn’t entirely explain. They walked at sunset through the vines, and they talked. They had picnics in the vineyard, and talked. And as much as they talked, they laughed. And then one day he kissed her flushed, upturned face, and she kissed him back. They sank to the couch in the sun-dappled folly, shedding their clothes like impatient teenagers, and they made love.
With her, he did not feel like a forty-five-year-old man chasing a twenty-three-year-old girl. With her, he simply felt happy.
It was an extraordinary summer. Although he was running unopposed for the fall election, there were dinners and barbecues and speeches; the law practice still demanded token attention, if for no other reason than good public relations. He worked in the winery, he carried a briefcase, he shook hands and made speeches. But he led two lives, and the only one that mattered began and ended in a folly in the woods where a face dearer than life awaited him.
In the midst of all else, Blackwell Farms Winery was about to bottle its finest Shiraz yet. It was so fine, indeed, that Andrew and Robert still argued whether to bring it out under its own unique label. In the end it was Emmy’s opinion that won out, as of course it would. Andrew was impressed by how much she had learned from Robert and Dominic during the days she spent in the winery with them, and she was beginning to develop a respectable palate. When she tasted the subject of the dispute, she did so with care and reverence, and stood gazing thoughtfully at the glass for a moment before declaring softly, “A wine fit for kings. And it definitely deserves its own label.”
Dominic, who had taken his father’s side in the dispute, laughed and tugged at one of her curls in the familiar way of young people. “There you have it, Mr. Blackwell, you’re outvoted. And by the royal princess of the vines, no less!”
Emmy started to make a face at him, and suddenly her eyes went wide and she set down the glass on the tasting table. “Wait!” she said excitedly. “I have it. I have the perfect label for your wine.”
She scrambled through drop cloths and under scaffolding until she found her sketch pad and the nub of a pencil, and she quickly sketched out a rough likeness of a heraldic crest featuring a winged horse. “The horse is supposed to be a symbol of supremacy or something,” she explained as she drew. “At least that’s what my mother said. I think this was our family crest a long time ago. Mother actually has a quilt with this design sewn into it, which has been handed down for generations. Of course it’s all patched and worn-out now, but . . . here.” She tore the sheet out of the pad and handed it to him. “What do you think?”
He smiled as he looked at it. The sketch was quick and amateurish, but
he wouldn’t have cared if it had been done in crayon. “Well, what do you know about that? The princess of the vines is actual royalty after all.”
She struck a pose and an affected accent. “Perhaps not royalty, my dear man, but definitely of the peerage.”
He laughed and tucked the sketch into his pocket. “I would be foolish indeed then, to turn down such a commission—if, of course, you’re sure your ancestors won’t mind. Can you do a full color sketch for the printer?”
Because of course he would not deny her anything.
He showed the sketch to his mother that night after supper, and told her of their plans for the new label, but she did not seem much impressed—either by the design, or by their guest’s lighthearted claim to highborn ancestry. She tossed the little paper away, which was a shame, because Andrew would have liked to have kept it.
He thought he was living the best time of his life. The Shiraz was going to put Blackwell Farms on the wine-making map. He was going to be elected a District Court judge. And every day he came home to that beautiful face, sometimes smeared with paint, sometimes deep in concentration, and always making him feel he could spend hours simply gazing at it.
He planned a party in the winery for the end of the month, to show off the new mural, promote the winery, and honor the artist. His mother loved the idea, and so did Ida Mae, and the two of them buzzed around the house like hummingbirds in a field of poppies. Emmy started the much smaller murals in the living room, and when they were finished, she would go. He could not, of course, let her go. He began to fantasize about taking her to Paris, after the election, of course, and staying there for a month or so, just the two of them in a little hotel on the Rue Sancerre, where the morning sun came through the windows and painted the room gold, and then he began to fantasize about what she would say if he were to ask her, and he tried to imagine how he would ask her. He thought it would be at the party, when the paintings were finished. He would take her off alone, and he would tell her his plans, and he would watch her eyes light up with delight, and he would live on her joy the way other people lived on food and wine.