The Vineyard (52 page)

G
REG FELT LIKE
he was holding three hoses. Only one sprayed water. The other two sprayed thoughts—one of Natalie, one of Jill—and they kept crossing each other, spilling back on him, flooding his mind. Then a rescue truck arrived from Huffington and set up a floodlight beside the Gewürztraminer vines, where he was. He caught sight of his wife in the next row, and suddenly the flooding eased and clear thought returned. Yes, he felt possessive; that wouldn't change soon. But he also felt protective, which seemed a far more honorable trait.

Dragging the hose with him, he shimmied under the vines on his stomach, as Carl had taught him to do to keep from hurting the grapes, so many years before. Coming up near Jill, he continued spraying his row from her side. He had to speak loudly to be heard above the water's sibilance. “Want me to take your hose for a while?”

“No,” she called back. “I'm fine.”

“Are you sure this is all right for you to do?”

“Do you think I'd do anything to harm my child?” she asked sharply.

He pulled back. No. She wouldn't do anything to harm her child. He knew that. He also knew not to state the obvious and say that the child was his child, too. As angry as he was at Natalie for telling him how to handle his wife, he knew that things had to change if he was going to be any kind of a father to the child.

He could be a good one. He could be as good a father as Alexander had been—no, a
better
one, because he could be the breadwinner. That would allow Jill to be around for their kids as Natalie hadn't been around for hers.

Granted, Jill said she wanted to work. That would take some
figuring out. Same with Greg's time. He couldn't be much of a father if he continued to travel the way he'd been doing. Couldn't be much of a husband, either—though he wasn't telling his mother that. If he cut back his hours and traveled less, it would be because he wanted to be with Jill, not because his mother had told him what to do. Natalie had no right to do that. She was no saint. He had to confess that he'd found satisfaction in her discomfort there at the end.

That said, he still felt the sting of her rebuke. She hadn't ever talked to him that way. Hadn't ever criticized him like that. When he had been growing up, her distraction had been disapproval enough.

He wondered if he'd been wrong, wondered if it hadn't been disapproval at all, if she had just been …
busy
… like she'd said.

In the spirit of the honesty he had accused her of lacking, he did have to concede that she had built something quite nice here at Asquonset. There were many more vines now than there had been ten years before. The scope of the current cleanup attested to that.

“Have you seen the front drive?” he called to Jill. “It's lined with cars. It looks like half the town's come to help.”

“That's a tribute to your parents,” she called back, surely assuming it would annoy him, but it didn't. It just made him think, again on an honest vein. He had been wrong about some things.

“It may be a tribute to Natalie. And to Carl. Not to my dad, though,” he said. “Sounds like he didn't do as much as I thought.”

“Of
course
he did,” Jill scolded. “He just did
different
things from what you thought. If someone wasn't out there selling our wine, Asquonset would have gone right down the drain!”

She moved down the row to spray more vines.

He followed, taking strength from what she said. They were side to side, facing in opposite directions, and he paid attention to what he was doing, but his thoughts were back in Washington, back nearly eight years to the Jill he had first met. The one here now, in Asquonset, was like that old one. She was assertive. She wasn't afraid to speak up to him.

Marriage had muted Jill.

No.
He
had muted her. He had cut her short and put her down. He had taken their differences personally. He had wanted her love to be unconditional in ways that his mother's hadn't been.

Ohh, I loved you. I loved you both.
Natalie's words came back at him along with a light spray from the dying breeze. He heard the
breathy way she'd said them and saw, again, the tears in her eyes. He had never seen his mother quite that way before. It made him want to believe her—made him wonder whether he would view her as a parent differently once he was a parent himself. The issue of Brad was now put in a whole new context. He wondered what he would have felt had he been in Natalie's shoes.

He wanted to talk with Jill about that. He wanted to talk about how
they
would be as parents, because that suddenly seemed more important than any professional polling he might do. But talking wasn't easy, not when it was about substantive stuff, not when it was about personal stuff. In the end, he might not like what Jill said. There was that risk.

Everything good involves risk.
Natalie had said that, too, and he couldn't rule it out.

He took risks at work. He had fought to make the business succeed and had earned the respect of his clients and peers.

The question was whether he could take those skills and direct them homeward.

O
LIVIA WOULD HAVE SENT
Tess to bed at two in the morning if she had thought the child would go, but Tess was totally into the mission. Somehow, in the jungle of grapevines, river spray, and floodlights, she had found Seth and a boy from her sailing class, both of whom had come with their families to help. The three were taking turns with the nozzle, relieving one another when their hands tired, moving down one row and on to the next, keeping right up with the adults, even with the occasional squeal of laughter.

It wasn't until shortly before dawn that Olivia knew things were working. She saw the relief in Simon's tired eyes, saw the vigor of the handshakes he gave the friends who, one by one, coiled their hoses and returned to their cars. Floodlights were shut down. Fire hoses were disconnected. Simon and Donna sprayed the last of the vines themselves, then Donna and her family left, too.

By the time the sun had risen enough for its first long rays to expose the damage Chloe had done, the only ones not in bed were Olivia, Simon, and Carl. They stood on the porch of the Great House taking in the scene. The front drive was strewn with debris, and though much of it had come from the peripheral maples, oaks,
hemlocks, and pines, there were more than a few vinifera limbs in the mess.

Not knowing where he found the energy, Olivia watched Simon trot down the steps and jog toward the Riesling block. Random blank spots marred the perfect order that had existed there the day before.

“How bad is it?” she asked Carl.

He drew in a tired breath. “We've lost some. It was inevitable, with a wind like that. But we didn't lose anything to the salt. All said, it could have been worse. We'll replant. We've done it before.” He barely paused. “Can I ask you something, Olivia?”

Simon turned down a row. Only then did Olivia turn to find Carl studying her. His eyes were Simon's, plus forty years, brimming with exhaustion and hurt.

“Did Natalie tell you about Brad?” he asked in a voice that was more gritty than ever. “While you were writing. Did she say that he was … mine?”

Olivia's heart ached for the man. “No. She didn't.”

He looked out toward the vines. “Did you guess it?”

“No. I knew there was something about Brad that wasn't being said. But I didn't guess that.” She paused. “Did you guess it? Did you ever wonder?”

Carl didn't answer. Olivia wasn't even sure he had heard the question. He continued to look out over the field, but blindly now. Even from the side, she could see tears in his eyes when he finally turned and entered the house.

C
ARL WANTED TO BE ANGRY
. He wanted to lash out at Natalie for the years he'd had to live without her, the years when he'd had to play second fiddle to Alexander in her life, the years when he had truly believed that Brad was another man's son.

But his heart lurched when he reached the top of the stairs. Natalie stood in a beautiful long nightgown, arms bare and elegant, head bowed. She had her back to the wall beside the closed door to Brad's room, and looked so sad and vulnerable that he couldn't sustain disappointment, much less anger. He had loved her for more than seventy years. He had believed in her that long. Even through the dark days after her marriage to Alexander, he had known she had done it in good faith.

Now there was this.

His clothing was damp, and he was tired. Every bone in his body ached, but it was the ache inside that propelled him over the carpet to where she stood.

He leaned against the door by her side, staring at the baseboard on the opposite wall while he faced a personal truth, made a soft confession. “I used to dream he was mine. After the war, I used to look at him and see if there was anything of me in him, but I only saw you.”

Her voice was broken. “There was a chemistry between you two that was never there with Al.”

“Did Al know?”

“No. He resented my favoring Brad, but he never guessed why.” She wrapped her arms around her middle, and whispered a fierce, “Of course, I favored him. He was all I had of you. Then I lost him, too.”

A tear slipped down her cheek. Carl turned to her in time to catch it. He left his finger on her jaw, needing to comfort her as surely as he needed to breathe. “You never lost me. I was always yours.”

When she looked at him, he saw that the tears weren't new. She had been crying before he had come. “I wanted to tell you about him, Carl. You can't imagine how many times I came this close”—she gestured—
“this
close to it, but stopped because I thought it would only cause more pain.” She pressed a tissue to her nose. It was a minute before she lowered it. “I used to look at the two of you and see the pleasure he gave you, and I said that it didn't matter if you didn't know the whole truth, that telling you everything would change our lives and that would only hurt Brad. I loved him. The world allowed me to do that. I loved him with all my being, because the world wouldn't let me love you.” The tissue went to her nose again.

Hearing her reasoning, Carl wondered if he would have had her do differently. She was right. Things would have changed, perhaps her marriage would have fallen apart, but would that have made Carl happy? Or Brad? Would Brad have felt responsible for the breakup? Would he have lived any longer if he had known that Carl was his father?

In the end, the questions were moot. The only thing that mattered—the only thing that learning about Brad proved to Carl—was
that Natalie had loved him for the same seventy years that he had loved her.

Pulling her close, he held her while she cried. When she quieted, he kissed her brow and murmured against her skin, “It's done. So, so long done. We can't change it. We can only go on.”

Drawing back, he searched her eyes. Along with the love there, he saw understanding. She stayed where she was for another minute, he hoped drawing strength from his closeness. Then, holding his hand, she quietly opened the door to Brad's room, pushed it all the way back, and led him inside.

O
LIVIA SAW THE OPEN DOOR
as soon as she turned down the hall. Glancing inside as she passed, she saw Natalie and Carl, with their backs to her. They stood at one of the bookshelves that held all the things an eleven-year-old boy had loved. She went quickly on. Of all the angst she had witnessed tonight, this seemed the most private.

In the wing, she checked on Tess, who was sound asleep. She pulled draperies shut to darken the room, took a brief shower, and returned to her own room to find Simon there. He was propped on the edge of the window seat with his elbows on his knees, looking disheveled and needy, tugging at her heart like there was no tomorrow.

Trying to make light of the way she felt, she said, “Why do I get the impression that if I were to push one of your elbows, you'd fall on the floor?”

“I would,” he said without a smile. “I'm that tired. I can't sleep for long, just an hour or two. There's cleanup to do.” His heavy eyes held hers. “I can't … do anything. I just want to hold you.”

She could barely breathe. No man—not a one—had ever said that to her. It was a profoundly beautiful thing to say.

Wondering what in the world she was going to do about the things he did to her heart, she turned away to pull back the sheets, but by the time that was done he was in the bathroom. The shower went on for barely two minutes. He returned with his hair damp and a towel around his hips. Dropping his clothes by the door, he climbed into bed and pulled her close—and it was exactly as he'd said. He didn't remove the towel. There was no sex. He just held her cupped snug to his body and was asleep within minutes.

Olivia had a harder time of it. She didn't want to sleep, if sleeping
meant missing a minute of this. So she lay awake, aware of every spot where they touched, every sound, every smell. Inevitably, she dozed, only to waken a short time later when he rolled the other way.

She sat up then, wrapped her arms around her knees, and watched him. He was so very real lying there, the kind of man she had spent a lifetime fantasizing about.

But he wasn't the only thing she had been fantasizing about, and much of the rest was real now, too. She had found her mother. She had found a degree of financial security. She had found options for Tess. She had found a job, even a family of sorts.

So many changes this summer, so much of it unexpected. She could deal with the money, the school, and the job. Simon was the problem.

His back was broad and bare, freckled at the shoulders and lightly tanned, tapering in a virile way to his hips. From rounded biceps on down, his arms were darker than his back. One hand lay palm up. She studied it, mapping calluses and scars. She held her own hand inches above it and compared the size and shape of the two.