This Place of Wonder (24)

Our fights, starting near the beginning, were legendary. Not physical, unless it was fight sex, brutal and wildly satisfying but vicious. I was known to throw things. He was known to yell. Twice, we nearly got kicked out of the dorms or school.

But we also shared a genuine, deep passion for the art of wine, and that connection, that dream of having our own label, bound us together for a long time. After graduation we settled into our relationship, learned how to avoid setting each other off. Together we traveled the world, tasting wines and partying with all the other young, ambitious vintners we met. Through those years of exploration and travel, when we applied ourselves to learning our craft and plotting how to make our own wine, we were wildly happy. Even during the first few years of making our own wine, we were mostly good. We still broke into extreme fights followed by extreme sex, but I told myself that was just the DNA of a relationship between two intense people.

We were in trouble long before he left for Paris. Some of that was me. The more I drank, the more volatile I became, and although he drank as much as or more than I did, it never seemed to affect him the same way it did me. He didn’t want to fight the whole world. He didn’t want to burn things down and start again.

But he was not blameless. His rigidness, his focus on doing things exactly as they’d always been done, his powerful need for rules and order aggravated the hell out of me. It was constraining. Claustrophobic. It roused my battle instincts.

Looking back, I see that it’s possible we had outgrown our relationship. We got together in college, after all, and people don’t always stay together. We were bound by the big dream of making perfect wine, but what was underneath that? I didn’t know then. I don’t know now. Maybe I honestly don’t even care.

Still. Why did he have to cheat? He knew this was one of my hot buttons, that my father cheated on not only my mother but then my stepmother. I hadn’t spoken to Augustus in years because of the affair that broke his marriage with Meadow.

How could someone who said he loved me have done the very thing that would hurt me the most?

A derisive voice in my head says, Well, it wasn’t like you were exactly a great catch.

I bow my head, letting the wind toss my hair. It will be a mess to untangle, but the sudden heavy heat of shame weighs me down so much I just can’t worry about hair.

What is wrong with me?

Stop. The voice belongs to my sponsor, a woman with a heavy cigarette smoker’s voice. How is this helping?

I lift my head, take in a deep breath, pull my shoulder blades down my back to straighten my spine. Stay where your feet are. I’m here now, walking on the beach. Looking at seagulls. A plover pokes her beak into the wet sand. Overhead, a heron swoops by with powerful wings. I can smell ocean and seaweed. My lips taste of salt.

Here. Now. In this small space of nowness, I can breathe. I don’t have to be anything to anyone.

Take a step. Take a breath. Look.

At an outcropping of rocks, I start to go around the front on the tiniest sliver of sand. It’s always dicey, this bit, and it’s not really navigable except at low tide. Judging by the foam line, it’s on its way back up, and I won’t make it on the sand. I have to make the passage over the boulders fallen from the cliff above. Using a hand to brace myself, I lean on a gritty rock and slip along the sand, feeling the suck of air pockets beneath my heels.

I see the cresting swell before it hits me, but there’s no time to get out of the way. I leap to the top of the nearest rock, raising an arm to protect my face. The rock below takes the full brunt of energy, but the spray leaps into the air and onto me with a great splat. It’s cold and salty and takes my breath for a second, and by the time it retreats, I’m soaked.

And laughing.

“Are you all right?” a voice asks from my right. A man is coming from the cove, and he’s taken a side hit, but only his shoulder and one pants leg are wet.

I look down, shaking my hands, wiping my face. “It’s only water. You?”

“Fine.”

We’re at a bit of an impasse, him coming my way, me going his, and both of us trapped by the sudden swell. The rocks are biting into my feet and I sit down, pulling my knees close to my chest. “Do you have enough room to pass?”

He shakes his head. He gestures toward a flat rock nearby. “Do you mind?” His accent is British, mixed with something I can’t quite place. “It will recede in a moment.”

“Go ahead. It’s not my rock.”

“Nor mine,” he says, settling. His hands are long fingered, the skin a warm brown. His feet are much lighter, bare, beneath khaki trousers rolled up to above his ankles. His hair, like mine, is curly and black, and it tosses around his face. It makes him seem friendly. “Are you visiting? I haven’t seen you before.”

I take a breath, wondering how much to say, but there are not really many ways to phrase it. “Not exactly. My father died and I inherited his house.”

“Ah. Your father was Mr. Beauvais.”

The “mister” makes me smile inwardly. “Yes, that’s right. Did you know him?”

A one-shouldered shrug. “Not well. Only as neighbors.” He points down the beach. “I’m four houses to the north.”

“The glass house. That’s a beauty.”

He nods, but there’s an aura of sadness about him. “Yes. My wife quite loved it.”