Eight Hundred Grapes

I looked at her, confused. “What?”

She shrugged. “Henry is impotent, if you must know.”

I covered my ears. “I must not know. I must go back in time and know anything but that.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, holding up her hands in surrender. “I’m just saying . . . I’m just trying to explain to you that things are more complicated than they seem.”

Complicated. That was Ben’s word too. The problem was that they were both using it passively. When the truth was that they had made things complicated. Actively. That was the important part they each were leaving out.

“Where’s Dad?”

“Dad and I are taking a little time apart,” she said. “He’s been staying in the winemaker’s cottage for the last couple of weeks. Not that he doesn’t do that every year during the harvest.”

There was an edge to how she said that, which I chose to ignore.

“Because of Henry?” I asked.

“Because we’re taking time apart,” she said.

I looked through the bay windows to the lantern-lit vineyard, the lantern-lit path that led to the winemaker’s cottage. My father was asleep in one of the two bedrooms inside. When I was a little girl, I’d beg to sleep in the other room and go out with him first thing in the morning to help pick the first grapes before school. I told him that when I was older my brothers and I were going to take over the land for him—to keep his legacy running. I meant it. Running the vineyard was what I had wanted more than anything when I was a little girl. Now I had left him there alone. Each in our own way, we all had.

“How could you not have told me what was going on?” I asked.

My mother reached for her coffee. “We were waiting until after your wedding. We didn’t want to ruin it for you.”

I met her eyes. Apparently Ben and I had done that all ourselves.

“I’ve tried not to burden Finn and Bobby with this either. They both have their hands full with other things.”

I thought back to the bar—Finn acting weird when Bobby came up. Bobby nowhere to be seen. “With what things?” I said.

She shook her head. “I can’t get into all of that right now. They should be allowed to be here to offer their side.”

How had we gotten to the place where everyone in the family was on different sides? I had been home for the last harvest, I had been home another time since—everyone had seemed fine. Now though? I felt like I was going to cry. And Ben—usually my first call when I felt this way, the one person who could help me find perspective on this—was the reason I had none.

My mother cleared her throat, seeing an opportunity to change the subject. “Are you going to tell me what happened?” she said.

I shook my head.

“Did he do something unforgivable?”

“What kind of question is that?”

She leaned in. “A bad one, probably. What’s a good one? Tell me and I’ll ask.”

Ever since I’d left the bridal shop, I’d envisioned sitting at this table with my mother and my father, talking it out. The way we had when I’d needed to figure out what college to go to, how to pay for law school, how to get over a thousand broken hearts. Now my concern was that the three of us were never going to be sitting here again.

“Georgia . . .”

I looked up.

“Did you do something unforgivable?”

“Stop using that word. No.”

“Well, is there someone else?”

Normally, my mother was the first to think adultery went into the unforgivable category.