Eight Hundred Grapes

“I’m not giving anything back.” He shrugged. “We’re going to have a contract and everything. A guy’s got to eat.”

I shook my head, not knowing what to do, thinking if I tried to do anything I might pass out.

“There is a caveat too. We still own the name The Last Straw Vineyard now, so you’ll have to pick a new name for these ten acres, for what they produce. You’ll have to start fresh.”

I nodded, still staring at the deed.

“And if you flame out, you sell these ten acres back to me.”

“Okay.”

“Don’t say okay. Think about it. Think about the fact that if thi

s doesn’t work, you’re going to be the one selling the land back to the mean and mighty Murray Grant Wines because you’re going to have to put that part in writing.”

I started to say that wasn’t going to happen, but he was looking at me. He knew that wasn’t going to happen. It seemed like he knew too much. And it flashed before me: What if Ben and Michelle hadn’t walked by the dress fitting? What if we’d walked down the aisle together in that beautiful tent and I hadn’t met Jacob. Jacob, who was standing before me, offering me a future I hadn’t known I wanted.

My father would call it synchronization. Not fate. Don’t confuse it with fate. Because there was still the rest of it. The deed in my hand, the sense I was moving toward a place to build a home. The need I had—the hope I had—that I would do the right thing with these gifts now.

“You look like you might pass out,” Jacob said. “FYI, I don’t know CPR.”

“You should know. I’m not ready to date anyone,” I said.

Jacob nodded. “Me either,” he said.

Then he kissed me.

Part 5

An Unnamed Vineyard

Sebastopol, California. Present day

She takes a seat, cross-legged, and looks at the vineyard. It is her vineyard now. The gardens and the vines, rested from the winter. The winemaker’s cottage—the new incarnation of it—painted a royal blue. Bobby helped with the painting. Bobby and Margaret both helped to paint. They had argued about the color. Bobby and Margaret had wanted to pick something more neutral, an ivory or a sand. Though she could only picture a bright blue greeting her in the early morning hours when she was supposed to be sleeping. And it’s her winemaker’s cottage. So she insisted.

Sitting here, she knows two things to be true. She shouldn’t have insisted. The winemaker’s cottage looks like a dollhouse. That is the first thing. It looks like a strange and impossible dollhouse. And she should be more nervous than she is. That is the second thing. She should be more nervous than this. But she isn’t nervous, not looking over this land.

She has spent the winter quietly preparing for today. She painted the cottage and studied the compost patterns. She bent the ear of every winemaker who would spend time with her. She wandered the halls of her childhood home, her home now. She has turned it into something that feels like hers, slowly and surely, making better choices than that dollhouse blue.

She hears a loud honk and flips around. Jacob pulls down the driveway, Finn not too far behind him. They are stopping by on their way to work—Jacob heading to Napa Valley, Finn heading to a photo shoot in San Francisco, then to lunch with his new friend Karen. But they wanted to stop by quickly to talk about the weather, to talk about her plan for the compost, to remind her that on the other side of today, they would be there to buy her a beer and for Jacob to cook some bad spaghetti.

That is the plan for tonight: Jacob’s overcooked spaghetti, complete with a store-bought rich and creamy pesto sauce, which Jacob thinks masks the fact that he can’t figure out how to boil water. She can hardly wait.

For another minute, she’s alone in the vineyard. She will produce different wine than her father did, but she won’t know what that means until she makes some decisions. So she turns toward the vines and bends down to touch the soil beneath the vine, the telling soil. To see where it is starting. Rubbing the soil between her fingers. Soft, lush. To see where she imagines it will go.

She is not twenty-five years old. She has a new boyfriend who has usurped her father’s winery, a useless law degree, no money to speak of in the bank. And no backup plan if this vineyard goes bust. This unnamed vineyard, her whole beautiful future. Her past, her beautiful future. And something like the best thing that she could possibly do for herself.

She’s been told that it takes ten years to figure out what you’re doing. Ten years.

She takes a breath, smiles. She’s ready to get started.

With the beginning of it. Her life.