Too Close to the Sun (39 page)

"The blaze moved amazingly fast, Ava," he
went on. "The only good thing is that Napa's firefighters are so
well trained. Otherwise the damage would have been even
greater."

"Yes." She looked down into her lap. "I can
hardly bear to see the burnt area. Porter would have been
devastated."

Will eyed his guest. Ava Winsted might be
chilly, she might be theatrical, but it seemed she had loved her
husband, and she was nobody's fool. He doubted Porter would have
married her otherwise. True, her son exhibited a distinct lack of
character. Was that her fault? Perhaps in part, but Will wasn't
inclined to blame the parents for the sins of the children,
particularly not the adult children.

Janine appeared with coffee, served quickly,
and departed.

"How was your stay in France?" Will
asked.

"Enjoyable." Again Ava smiled. "But I'm glad
to be home."

He was wondering just how true that was when
she shifted position on the couch as if to signal her readiness to
get down to the business at hand. "I know that Max did not
participate in the signing ceremony," she said.

How delicately she'd phrased that. A more
accurate construction might be
Max blew it off
or
Max
really screwed GPG, didn't he?
But Will wouldn't challenge Ava,
or embarrass her, or demand an explanation. His goal was Suncrest,
and to get it he'd better let its owner save face. "No, he didn't,"
he agreed mildly.

"Despite that, I remain very interested in
selling the winery to GPG. If you care to pursue the matter
further, I would love to hear a new offer."

He kept his face expressionless as
conclusions spun out in his mind.
So Mantucci didn't make an
offer. As I predicted. And Ava doesn't want to run Suncrest any
more now than she ever did. She certainly won't let Max run it now,
even if he wants to.
This was what Will wanted, this was
so
what he wanted, but he was hemmed in by his partners, as
always. He needed to wring concessions out of Ava—gently, of
course—to convince the GPG brass to go another round.

Carefully he set down his porcelain cup and
saucer. "Ava, as you know, we had a deal with you and your son. You
also know that he backed out at the last minute. We invested a
great deal of time and money in the due diligence. I can tell you
that my partners feel poorly used by what transpired. And now,
given the fire"—he spread his hands—"I can only say that any price
I might offer would be significantly lower than the one we agreed
to before."

She nodded. "Let me assure you, Will, that
from now on you will be dealing only with me."
Translation: My
idiot son is out of the picture
. "I have been advised by my
counsel that the final documents are fine and need no revision. I'm
prepared to do a transaction here and now, if you and I can agree
on a price."

So far, so good
. "I should also warn
you that any agreement you and I reach is contingent on my
partners' approval."

"Fine."

This could not be going more smoothly
.
Will cast his mind back to the price he had calculated earlier,
should his conversation with Ava move in this direction. The old
price, from the prior Friday, was 27 million dollars. "I can offer
19 million dollars," he said.

She hesitated only a second. Then, "22."

She just wants this done
. A thrill
pulsed through him as he realized that he was about to get what he
wanted. He shoved aside the image of Gabby that rose in his mind.
She was wrong about him, she was wrong about Suncrest, and he
wouldn't let her resentment spoil this moment. "Twenty million," he
said to Ava, knowing this would be it. He would get his victory,
his ultimate vindication. He would win at last.

Ava held out her hand, her gaze steady and
clear. "Done."

*

Dispense the fledgling wine from the
fermentation tank, roll it in the mouth, judge the flavor, spit it
in the drain gulley that runs the length of the concrete floor, go
on to the next tank. Motions one after the next, repetitive,
pointless, bereft of their usual joy and satisfaction.
Meaningless
, Gabby thought,
like everything else
.

It was Friday, late in the day, evening
really. Gabby was alone in the old winery building, everyone,
including her father, gone to get a jump start on Labor Day
weekend. Yet she wanted to be alone, and she wanted to be working.
Right now she was good for little else. She had no plans for the
weekend and no ability to be social. She felt amazingly similar to
the way she had a year before—raw, wounded, shell-shocked.

She moved on to the next tank, placed her
wineglass beneath the spout. Out flowed an ounce or so of the thin
crimson liquid that over time would become a complex, nuanced,
multifaceted cabernet sauvignon. Not only would it carry a prized
Napa Valley appellation, but it would also be an estate wine, as
all the grapes used to make it had been grown on Suncrest
property.

Gabby held it up to the light, assessed its
color, viscosity. It was the last of a dead breed. Suncrest would
never make another vintage like it. That era was over.

She ran the wine through her teeth,
calculated how far the fermentation had progressed, then bent over
the gulley and spit it out. The ceaseless mechanical whir of the
tanks hummed in her ears; the vinegary smell of grapes fermenting
assailed her nostrils. Another week and the baby cab would go from
tanks to barrels, to age for two years more. In the end, because of
the peculiarities of the soil and the climate and the sunshine and
the rain and the exact moment she had chosen for harvest, it would
have a flavor distinct from any other cab she had ever made or ever
would make. That was the wonder of it, and the beauty.

She abandoned her wineglass and walked
outside to stand on the pebbled path. Here it was quiet, save for a
stray birdcall, and the air was sweet. The sun teased the jagged
crest of the Mayacamas; soon it would disappear behind the
mountains and roll across the Pacific. Its last rays caressed the
grapevines that covered the slope down to the Trail, the grapevines
that had every excuse to rest not just for the night but for the
season. Their fruit had been taken, and their labor was done.

She was back inside the winery doing the last
of the closing-down for the night when she heard footsteps behind
her on the concrete floor. She turned, surprised, then caught her
breath, more profoundly shaken. "Will."

He stepped closer. "I thought I'd find you
here." He wore gray suit trousers and a white dress shirt open at
the neck. "Sorry if I startled you."

"No," she said instantly, though he had. She
hadn't been sure she would ever see him again, except in some
businesslike setting where she was getting the corporate word along
with every other Suncrest employee. And even though this was Friday
night and they were alone, this was pretty much along those lines.
The tone of Will's voice, the planes of his face, were cool and
hard. By now she could barely remember seeing them any other way.
"How are you?" she asked.

"Fine," he said, though to her he looked
exhausted. Then again, that was typical for him late on a weekday.
"And yourself?"

"Fine. My father, too," she added, to
forestall the polite inquiry she knew Will would make.

Silence fell between them. The tanks chugged
relentlessly, their task never done. Gabby busied herself making a
useless notation in her notebook, something she'd just have to
cross out once Will was gone. Though in some ways he already was.
The man she'd known had disappeared behind a mask of distrust and
formality.

"I've come to tell you something," he
said.

She didn't look up from her notebook. All the
horrible possibilities of what that something might be zigged and
zagged in her mind. Very likely of course was that this was the
formal breakup announcement, though by this point that really
wasn't necessary. Then again, Will was the type who liked to dot
his i's and cross his t's.

He spoke again. "Ava just signed the final
documents selling Suncrest to GPG."

She caught her breath. "So you own it
now."

"Well, GPG owns it."

"Congratulations." How trite and false that
sounded, echoing off the walls of the tank room. She didn't say
You won
, though it occurred to her. But she didn't want to
sound petty, didn't want to add that to the list of damning
adjectives that Will no doubt used these days to describe her.

She turned away.
It's over
. Here it
was, the moment she'd been dreading. Yet she felt oddly detached.
It was as if she'd already begun, some time back, to separate from
Suncrest.
To give up on it
, she corrected herself, which
made tears prick hot behind her eyes. It was like the feeling she'd
had when her Grandma Laura died, when Gabby knew that her nonna was
going in one direction and she was going in the other, and that as
much as they loved one another, neither could share the other's
path.

Will's voice interrupted her thoughts. "I'll
be going then," she heard him say. "I just wanted to let you
know."

And to rub her face in it, at least a little.
That didn't really seem like Will, but apparently she'd read him
wrong. A mistake she'd made before, with another man. In another
country, in another life.

Something, perhaps a last frantic bid to keep
him from leaving, possessed her to call after him. "I gather
Vittorio didn't make an offer for Suncrest?"

Will halted, half turned. "No. He
didn't."

"But you still can't forgive me. Or
understand why I did what I did."

At that his eyes, as cold a blue as the
frigid North Atlantic, rose to hers. She had a moment's thrill
thinking he might actually pick up the bait, get down in the muck
with her and yell and scream and shout, which would be so much
better than this chilly interchange. But he only shook his head,
and she knew she'd lost again. He wouldn't bother. Only people who
cared about each other fought. People who were walking out of each
other's lives didn't go to the trouble.

"I understand everything I need to," he said,
then turned again to go.

Hollow tomorrows stretched out in front of
her, gray and without definition. Rainbow colors gone, everything
dull and faded. Nothing as it ought to be.

And Will was lying. Supposedly honest,
trustworthy Will. He said he understood but he didn't. He wasn't
even trying.

She watched him walk away for good, heels
clacking in efficient rhythm on the concrete floor he now owned,
the floor he'd won, the floor of her undoing.

The big oak door closed behind him. Somewhere
the winery building groaned in an unseen settling of its old
bones.

She told herself, as the tears came, that
this was how it must be. For after the debacle with Vittorio, she
had to be with a man she understood, and who understood her. Didn't
she? Otherwise what did she have, really? Something impermanent.
Something throw-away. When what she needed was something that could
last.

It still eluded her. And might always.

Late afternoon on Labor Day, when most valley
residents were firing up their barbecues while chugging down a cold
one, Max got home from a weekend trip to find himself getting
grilled. Not surprisingly, by his mother.

She was sitting at the antique desk in the
living room writing something, wearing her typical laze-about
outfit—white pants, white top, white headband, white sandals. She'd
worn that sort of thing all his life. The incredible thing was,
he'd never once seen a stain on her. "Did you have a nice time?"
she asked him.

He dumped his duffel on the floor, slumped
onto a chair. "It was fine."

She kept her eyes on her writing. "How was
the surfing?"

"Fine."

"The water wasn't too cold?"

"Mom, it was
Malibu
."

"Hm, I suppose you're right." She looked up,
then over at him. "How are Rory and Bucky?"

He took a deep breath. "Fine." It'd been sort
of fun to get away with them, but he was ready for them to leave
Napa Valley already. Seeing them sort of made him feel like a
failure. Though he wouldn't be for long. Not once he got away from
Suncrest. And pocketed his cash.

"Bucky flew you down?" she asked.

"Yeah." That was another annoying thing in a
growing list. Not only did every female on the planet think Bucky
was hot, he was in med school, so everybody took him for a
brainiac. And then he went and got himself a pilot's license, so
now he was flying around this hot-shit Cessna he rented out of
Angwin airport. If that wasn't a babe magnet, Max didn't know what
was.

Max kicked at his duffel, which skidded a few
feet along the whitewashed hardwood. Bucky had it so easy. Rory,
too. Unlike him, they weren't plagued with life's big questions,
like what the hell to do with the years that stretched ahead of him
like the runway for a 747.
I must be more complex than they
are
, Max told himself.
That's why I've got all these
challenges
.

His mother was talking to him again. "Did you
tell me Rory is joining a law firm?"

"Yeah."

She waited. Then, "Care to tell me where it
is?"

"DC."

"What sort of work will he do?"

"Corporate."

She sighed. He was irritating her, he knew,
but he was too hot and tired to be a scintillating
conversationalist. Then, when he was about to hoist himself off the
chair to go in search of a beer, she spoke up. "Since it's fairly
clear I can't get anything out of you but monosyllabic replies,
perhaps I should do the talking. There's something I need to
discuss with you, anyway."