Eight Hundred Grapes (73)

She shook her head, taking a stick of licorice, taking a large bite. Then she stood up to go, care package in hand, my arm over her shoulder as we headed out the hospital door.

“It’s not all a happy ending. We’re going to have to get you a new tent,” she said.

I looked at her, confused, at which point she rolled her eyes, like she couldn’t believe she had to explain this.

“A new tent for your wedding. Rain damaged it. Rain and wind and everything else that a tent like that is supposed to stand up to, but doesn’t.”

She leaned in, as if listening to my heart, as if listening to how that made my heart feel.

“Not tonight, though.” She shook her head. “Nothing is open tonight.”





The First Contract When I got back to the vineyard, I went down to the winemaker’s cottage, the back of it burned off, Bobby sitting on the porch. He was sitting alone, drinking a beer. At 5:55 in the morning.


He didn’t look at me, keeping his eyes on our vineyard, the sun not yet lighting it. The fog still dusting the vines, laminating them in frost and half-light.

Bobby stared straight ahead, glassy-eyed and confused, the stare of someone who had been up all night. “You may as well sit down,” he said. “There’s half a beer left, and I don’t think anything is going to collapse.”

He moved over and handed up the bottle of beer. I had a sip, taking a seat.

“Long night,” he said. “We got half of the grapes. We can use half of them.”

“It could have been worse, then,” I said.

“It also could have been better,” he said. He paused. “Mom back?”

“Yeah. She went upstairs to go to sleep.”

“Good. She must be exhausted.”

Then he took his beer back, even though I was mid-sip, which was when I noticed he had Band-Aids on his fingers, over the nails.

Bobby shrugged, looking down at them. “You’ve got to start somewhere, right?”

Then he took a sip, turning back to the vineyard. The morning glaze holding in the sky, intoxicating him. It was comforting, the way this place got more beautiful every day. Wasn’t that the gift of a home? You looked at it the same way, but then when you needed it to, it showed you all over again the many ways you’d been during the time that you had been living there. The many ways it had brought you back to yourself. The many ways it still brought you back to yourself.

“Margaret went back to San Francisco with the twins just a few minutes ago. They were asleep but I helped her load them in the car. They didn’t make a move. We’re good at that. The two of us. You’d be surprised how much skill that takes.”

I reached for the beer, took a small sip, mostly because I wasn’t sure what to say, and I didn’t want to upset him more than he had already been upset these past few days.

He took the beer back. “We talked before she went. We decided I would stay here for a minute with Mom and Dad. We decided to take a minute apart to see if that would help us remember how much we used to love being together. That’s the plan at least.”

He was holding the beer or I’d have handed it back to him, just so he could have something to do besides sitting there, telling me his family was falling apart before him.

“I made a mess of things,” he said.

“I don’t think you should be blaming yourself.”

He laughed, a little angry. “What should I be doing?”

I shrugged. “Drinking?”

He smiled, took another sip. “She’s not wrong. I stopped paying attention to her. I stopped doing the things that someone does for the person he loves. Because I was tired. Because other things always seemed to matter a little bit more.”

He paused.

“That doesn’t happen overnight, you know. It happens slowly. You should be careful of that. You should be careful not to take the person you love for granted. Not only because they’ll notice. But you’ll notice too. You’ll think it means something it doesn’t.”

“Like what?”

“Like that’s how much you care.”

He looked like he had lost everything. If Margaret saw that, would it be enough? Bobby loved his wife in a way she couldn’t feel, but he loved her all the same. Shouldn’t that count for something? Shouldn’t the effort, no matter how misinformed, be enough to keep people together—especially at the moment they might otherwise decide it was easier to be apart?

He took a swig. “I’m mad at her. It doesn’t help, but I am mad at her and him.”

“Me too.”

“That really doesn’t help.”

I moved closer to him. “What are you going to do?”

“Make it up to her if I can. Forgive her if I can. Help her forgive me.” He shook his head. “Something like that.”

“That sounds like a plan.”

“What choice do I have?”

He put down the beer, rubbed his hands together.

“You don’t give up on a family. Not without trying to put it back together.”

That stopped me. My brother, who always said the wrong thing, had said the most important thing of all.

His words vibrated in the place that had gone vacant the minute I’d seen Ben on the street in my wedding dress. With Maddie. With Michelle.