Eight Hundred Grapes (27)

In spite of Henry.

In spite of what was happening between them.

Bobby was standing near my parents, smiling. Finn was by the back door, smiling.

I, on the other hand, chose this moment to drop my wine, the glass shattering on the ground.

Everyone turned toward me, just in time to see the tears streaming down my face. The winemakers froze, drinks midair. Bobby and Finn looked at me with mouths agape. My father’s smile, disappearing. My mother’s eyes going wide.

As I moved as fast as I could. Toward the exit.





The Ride Home I ran out of The Tasting Room, needing air. I knew someone would head out after me, so I went directly to Finn’s truck, opening the unlocked front door, searching for the spare key where he kept it under the driver’s-side visor. I planned to drive myself out of there. I planned to keep driving until my father’s last tasting was far behind me, until I could pretend it wasn’t happening.


“I don’t think it’s there.”

I looked up to see Jacob standing by the driver’s-side door, holding a cup of water.

I wiped at my tears. “I don’t want to talk to you,” I said.

“I don’t want to talk to you either,” he said.

Then I took the cup out of his hands, drank it down.

“Uh . . . I brought that out here for myself.”

I handed him the empty cup.

He looked down at it. Then he turned it over, no drops coming out.

“I was thirsty,” he said.

I tried to focus on taking deep breaths. I couldn’t calm down, though. Apparently when your parents split up, it didn’t matter if you were a grown-up, it turned you into a five-year-old again: wanting them to promise you that everything was going to be okay. And wanting to make everything okay for them, the way you could when you were five, just by saying you loved them.

Jacob tossed the cup into a trash can. “You seem like you need to get out of here.”

“I do, but I don’t have a car.”

“You want a ride?”

I laughed, shaking my head.

“The proper response is thank you. Or, thank you anyway. Only two options.”

He wasn’t wrong, even if I couldn’t stand him.

I turned back toward The Tasting Room. My mother was walking outside to make sure I was okay. She caught my eye and started walking toward me.

Which was when I saw Henry. He was standing in the parking lot across the street, waiting for my mother, for wherever he was planning on taking her.

Had my mother told him to stay out of sight so my father wouldn’t see him? Was she going to run to their meeting spot now that my father was distracted? Was I going to have to see them kiss hello?

Jacob tilted his head, following my eyes across the street. “Who’s that guy?” he asked.

“Let’s just go,” I said.

Jacob looked surprised. “Okay.” Then Jacob paused, remembering something, looking like he didn’t know how to say what he’d remembered. “Thing is, my car’s back at my place. In Graton. We could walk to it. And then I could drive you home.”

“It’s five miles!”

“More like seven,” he said. “Remember your choices. Thank you or thank you anyway.”

My mother was getting closer.

I glanced at Henry. He hadn’t yet noticed my mother. He looked like he’d spotted me, though, like he just might decide to come over to introduce himself again. Fully clothed.

This was when I started walking.





Grown, Produced, and Bottled My father’s favorite varietal of his wine, Concerto, was an ode to my mother’s musical roots—and an ode to the word itself. Concerto. My parents loved what it meant. It originated from the conjunction of two Latin words: conserere, which means to tie, to join, to weave, and certamen, which means competition, fight. The idea was that the two parts in a concerto, the soloist and the orchestra, alternate episodes of opposition and cooperation in the creation of the musical flow. In the creation of synchronization.


Which was, precisely, what was required of wine.

Which was precisely what I had lost. Any cooperation. Leaving only opposition.

Jacob wanted to avoid downtown, so we wound up Sullivan Road into the hills—into the deep remoteness of the old apple orchards, stunning farmhouses, renovated barns. This route exemplified the very quiet I had run from as a teenager. It suddenly felt comforting to be back in it. It felt comforting and completely unchanged. Which maybe, at the moment, was the same thing.

I’d taken this walk with Ben one of the first times I had brought him to Sebastopol. Ben had immediately fallen in love with it—the hills, the crisp quality of the trees and the faltering terrain, farmhouses harboring stories.

Jacob and I walked quietly, neither of us anxious to talk, at least not to each other. Then, Jacob broke the silence.

“This is going to be a long walk if we don’t call a temporary truce,” he said.

I motioned toward the hills, the naked landscape around us. “It’s going to be a long walk anyway.”

Jacob nodded in agreement, which was about as close to a truce as we were getting. “It must have been weird growing up here,” he said.

I turned toward him, startled to hear out loud the opposite of what Ben had said.