That was exacerbated by the damage done to the grapes. Kane did what he could to save some strains in his lab and was diligent at protecting them as best he could. But the damage done in some areas was simply too much, and it would take weeks, months, maybe years to fully recover. Thankfully, Kane was brilliant, and he was prepared to do the work. It just meant time, and unfortunately, money.
Money they didn’t really have in the budget. Having money problems meant there was nothing to hire a crew with. So, for a few weeks, Derek and I were put on hold, even though everything else was ready and in place. We had to wait until we could hire line cooks and waitstaff to fill out the restaurant. Not to mention to train them in how we wanted them to cook and how we wanted the waitstaff to serve. Considering the low budget available meant we had to invest in one really seasoned line cook and one seasoned lead on the floor and hire new people to the industries for the other spots.
In the meantime, we tried to use what time we had to continue to develop menu items and then try them out on a very grateful crew. I wasn’t complaining either, getting a chance to feed the pregnancy cravings with dishes that Derek and I came up with specifically to do so. We joked we should create a “With Child” portion of the menu, just so pregnant women could come in and have a few dishes already prepared with wild combinations only pregnancy brain could come up with. A few dishes I created ended up being big hits with the crew though, and I was proud to see them added officially to the menu.
Then I got sick.
The baby was taking everything out of me and getting sick meant that I just had nothing in me to work with. I couldn’t handle standing on my feet, and it wasn’t a good idea to have me around food anyway, so Derek made the decision to shut the restaurant down and move on with opening up the vineyard piece by piece rather than all at once like they planned.
I ended up on bed rest, which was absolute torture. I hated not having the ability to do what I wanted when I wanted to, especially after recovering from the ankle injury. Again, Noah waited on me hand and foot, worrying excessively over me while I tried to recover and stay calm enough that I didn’t go into labor prematurely. We were doing great, and I was feeling a lot better when, a month before the due date, my water broke.
Everything happened so quickly that it was a blur. The baby was born early and had to spend time in the NICU. For weeks, we stayed at the hospital, going back and forth between the vineyard and the nursery to spend time with our precious little girl as she gained strength enough to come home. When she was finally off all the machines and had a clean bill of health, we had a ton of work to do.
While I had been in the hospital, I had notified my landlord that I would be moving out in a few months, breaking my lease by half a year, but they were fine with it. I had been an exceptional tenant, and they weren’t going to hold it against me. That meant moving into Noah’s place had one less obstacle.
Not that there weren’t obstacles. Since we’d been working and dealing with having our baby in the NICU, we hadn’t done any of the move. So, the first few days were spent in the apartment, one of us with the baby and the other packing. When it was time to move, the brothers all closed the vineyard for a day and did it all in one shot. It was incredible and touching seeing them all come together to help Noah out, and when everything was moved into Noah’s garage, we began to move pieces into the house one by one, making sure it went to a place that made it feel natural and like it was meant to be there.
Slowly, it started to look like home. Not just Noah’s, and not Noah and Monica’s, but ours. Traces of Monica were still there, and they always would be. I had no intention of erasing her from Noah’s life. But he was moving on and having me there meant that it was time to focus on our relationship. I helped him choose what he wanted to keep and what would happen to the things he wanted to donate. I didn’t want to push him on anything, but he was fantastic. It had been a long time coming, and he was ready.