Eight Hundred Grapes (28)

“Most people assume that it was idyllic.”

“Because it’s so pretty?”

“Something like that.”

Jacob put his hands in his back pockets. “Growing up is never idyllic, is it? Or it’d be called something else.”

I turned away, not wanting him to see how that made me smile. “My mother would say you had to use your imagination raising kids here because there wasn’t much going on. It would force us to make our own fun. Turning the old apple orchards into mazes. Doing a weekly relay race that would end at the ice cream shop and with two scoops of their homemade ice cream. At ten in the morning.”

“I grew up in New York City. Our relay races would involve a nanny. And end on the 4 or 5 subway heading downtown for a hot dog at Gray’s Papaya.”

“Sounds idyllic.”

He smiled. “It wasn’t bad.”

Jacob bent down, picked up a handful of rocks. He started throwing them, one at a time.

“I remember coming to visit my grandparents when I was a kid. Of course, they lived in Napa, but they had this barn and I’d lie there staring at the stars,” he said. “It’s weird to live somewhere where you can’t see the stars. I told myself when I was old enough, I’d get my own barn.”

“Your own stars?”

He nodded. “Exactly,” he said. “Kind of how you want your own skyscraper. You’ll have plenty of those in London.”

“Or if I stay in L.A.”

It was the first time I had said it out loud. What I might do if Ben and I couldn’t get past it, in a world that went on for me Ben-less.

Still, I felt my breath catch in my throat, thinking of London. My new office was in a small building near the Chelsea Arts Club, a short walk from our house, a short walk from Ben’s architecture firm. Ben had done the walk when he had been in London the month before—in the morning and the evening—noting the places we’d most want to stop together. A coffee shop in a converted garden, a rooftop art gallery, every theater on the West End.

“Why would you stay in L.A.? I mean, if you didn’t go to London. Would it be for your job? I only ask because I hated being a lawyer. I really hated it.” He paused. “The five minutes I was one.”

“I thought you said you didn’t practice,” I said.

“No, I practiced. After I left Cornell, I moved to New York and joined a law firm in the corporate restructuring division. But it was literally five minutes. I quit before lunch.”

I nodded. I had friends from law school who felt like Jacob did, who absolutely hated the law. I didn’t. That wasn’t the same as saying I loved it. Suzannah loved it. She loved it because she loved confrontation and she loved being right—and law allowed her both of those things on a daily basis.

I didn’t love it, but it had always felt like the right path. And when I doubted it, I thought of my law school graduation. My parents had driven to L.A., proudly treating my then boyfriend, Griffin Winfield, to dinner after. At dinner, my father made a toast saying that he was glad I was going to have an easy life. Griffin had given him a look, as if deciding how rude he wanted to be. Then he decided he wanted to be very rude. He told my father that climbing the legal ladder was hardly easy. Though he hadn’t understood what my father meant. My father meant that law provided a path. If you worked hard, you’d be rewarded. You’d have a career you could count on.

Griffin didn’t agree with that either. He thought it was talent that separated out the most successful lawyers. Though that was the main thing he didn’t understand. My father never measured success the way he did—reaching the tip-top of something, as if there was an objective tip-top. My father measured it by how well you figured out what you wanted for your life—what you needed to be happy.

And this was where my mixed feelings came in. Recently, I had to admit I didn’t feel happy. Maybe I was distracted by the wedding planning, or our move to Europe. All I knew was that I needed a change. And I was hoping London was going to provide it.

“So you want to stay in L.A.? For your work?” Jacob said.

“There may be a world in which I do that,” I said.

“The world in which you tell me what made you walk out on your dress fitting?”

We reached the main strip of Graton, which wasn’t really a strip at all, just two restaurants across the street from each other. But they were great restaurants, farm-fresh food from the gardens behind them. Spaghetti nights on Monday. With all the great food in Los Angeles, I still missed spaghetti on Monday.

“You tell me first,” I said.

“About my botched wedding?” He shrugged. “My fiancé would say that she felt like I prioritized my work over her. We were getting married at City Hall, the week before we headed out here. Just a couple of friends and family at this restaurant in Tribeca afterward. Then, the morning of the wedding, she said that she didn’t want to get married the way we were getting married. That she wanted a wedding that counted more, with a fancy dress and a ten-piece band and an expensive cake.”

“You don’t buy it?”

“She hates cake.”

We passed through the entire town and were heading up the hill in the direction of my parents’ house.

He paused. “We weren’t in a good place,” he said. “And it’s hard to get married when you’re not in a good place. It feels fake.”