The Vineyard of Hopes and Dreams

“What’s wrong?” Genevieve sounded concerned. Hayley wondered how long she’d been silent.

“Nothing,” she said. She launched into a light-hearted description of the sweet touches Roland and Miranda had added to make the house homier.

As she talked, she closed the door on her room and tried Genevieve’s. Though he’d left the pink ballerina border along the ceiling, her father had turned Gen’s room into some kind of home gym. A treadmill, a weight bench, a stationary bike.

She tried to picture him using any of this—and she suddenly realized that her mental picture was seventeen years out of date. She’d asked for a closed casket, and she hadn’t felt the slightest urge to look inside.

She shut the door. She kept talking, but her mind was sending out a string of painful questions.

Had he changed very much as he’d grown older? He would have been nearly seventy. He’d always been a little overweight. Beer belly, mostly. The lawyer who phoned had said her dad died of a heart attack. Was it a surprise? Had he been warned about his habits? Had he spent the last months of his life in the converted exercise room, trying to sweat out a lifetime of booze?

“Hayley,” Genevieve said, breaking into her mindless chatter, obviously not buying it for a minute. “You sound funny. What’s going on?”

Hayley had just opened her father’s bedroom door. Finally, a bed, the same dark walnut four-poster her parents had always shared. The same picture window that overlooked the vineyards, though the drapes were closed now, and the overhead light fixture was missing a couple of bulbs.

Now she understood Miranda’s furrowed brow, her anxious eyes, when Hayley insisted on coming up here to sleep.

She knew within ten seconds that she couldn’t. Without her mother’s presence, her mother’s perfume to lighten the air, the whole room smelled like her father.

The odor was sickly sweet, with a hint of sweat and leather. Heavy undertones of beer, though someone, probably Roland, had emptied all the trash cans and even wiped down the nightstand.

She would never forget that smell. Her uniform shirt, covered in the beer from her father’s broken bottle, and the sweat of her own pain as she lay on the sofa, had smelled exactly like this room.

But if this was the only available bed…

Her only other choice would be the divan in her mother’s sewing room, if it were even still there. But that was where her mother had always retired, so that she could be alone to weep.

She could use the sofa downstairs. That might have a certain poetic justice. Her last night here, and her first night back, spent on its leather cushions…

“Nothing’s going on,” she said to Genevieve. “I’m just realizing the place is messier than I thought. I think…” She hated to admit defeat, but, damn it, she wouldn’t sleep a wink here tonight. “I think you may be right about the hotel.”

“Of course I am,” Genevieve said, clearly relieved. She laughed. “Get the heck out of there right now. I know you believe you’re invincible and everything. But you’re only human, Hayley. Like the rest of us.”

Hayley shut her father’s door quietly, and headed down the stairs. She wasn’t defeated. She was just tired. It had been a long day. The funeral, then Colby…

Tomorrow, she thought. Tomorrow, she’d return to being invincible. Tonight, she just needed to sleep.

SHE ARRIVED BACK AT THE vineyard just after dawn the next day—or so her watch said. It was difficult to tell if the sun had risen, because a heavy gray rain pummeled her windshield as she made her way up the hill. It pounded the dirt rows between the vines, too, exposing stones and cigarette butts—plus all manner of debris unidentifiable in this dim light. A small but telling sign of how her father had neglected this property, maybe for a long, long time.

Up ahead, the main house squatted, dark-eyed and unwelcoming, under the low-hanging clouds. The car bounced over the driveway ruts slowly, and she finally came to a stop inches from the front porch.

For a minute, as she debated whether to bother with an umbrella, she exchanged scowls with the two-story structure. Wet and muddy definitely wasn’t its best look.

But sleep had restored her determination, and she was ready. A cup of take-out coffee nestled warmly against her thigh, and a banana from the hotel’s free breakfast poked out of the zipper of her purse. She’d scraped her hair back in a ponytail so tight her ears stuck out like a leprechaun’s—not exactly flattering, but functional.

In the backseat, she had a blank book for jotting notes, a plastic crate to collect important papers and a box of a hundred and forty-four garbage sacks in which to dump the rest. Plus, her cell was newly loaded with phone numbers—lawyers, real-estate agents, estate-sale agents, charitable organizations hungry for donations, carpenters, glaziers and house cleaners.

To heck with the umbrella. It wasn’t as if she’d put on makeup, or fixed her hair. This was work. Dirty work. Suddenly eager to get going, she flung open the car door and darted out into the rain.

Two hours later, the rain hadn’t let up. The big kitchen windows looked like they were covered in watery gray curtains, but she had all the lights blazing. She was on her knees in front of the pantry, a yawning garbage bag on the floor next to her, when the doorbell rang.

“It’s open,” she called out, hoping she could be heard over the drumming of the rain. She figured it had to be either Roland or Miranda, who both had promised to stop by and help if they could.

The shiny black plastic bag rippled as a gust of damp, earthy wind swept through the shotgun arrangement of front door, hallway and kitchen.

“Back here,” she said, reaching for a clear container of what looked like pasta dipped in pepper. When one of the grains of pepper began to move, she realized her mistake. She dumped it, container and all, into the bag and turned as Miranda arrived in the doorway.

“I’m sorry we didn’t get to that,” the older woman said, shaking raindrops from her long, black hair as she folded up a glistening umbrella. Her brow wrinkled. “We thought the fridge was more important. Your father wouldn’t let us in the house for weeks before he passed, and these last few days, with Roland finishing up the harvest and—”

“Don’t be silly. You guys have done so much already. I’ll have this cleared out in no time!” Hayley climbed to her feet and embraced Miranda, who smelled like cinnamon, as if she’d been baking. “I’d offer you something to drink, but nothing in here looks safe, except maybe the beer. I’ve already finished the milk you left.”

“I’m fine.” Miranda looked around, obviously registering the magnitude of the job Hayley was facing. “I can’t stay long, unfortunately. Just until Elena’s preschool lets out.”

Hayley assured her that was great. And it was—she knew the Eliots meant well, but some of the work she’d have to do here would undoubtedly stir emotions. The kitchen was merely grimy and annoying, but chores like sorting through her old things, or her father’s finances…

She’d rather tackle those alone.

Clearly not intending to waste a minute of what time she had, Miranda pulled out one of the padded bar stools that faced the granite island and moved it closer to the counter above the sink. She opened the cupboard door and sniffed.

“Most of these canned goods are probably still okay,” she said. “Shall we start a bag for the Food Bank?”

“That one over by the stove is set aside for donations. There’s not much salvageable in here, though.” Hayley surveyed the still-teeming pantry shelves. She was already on her third garbage bag, and only about half done. “Everything is years past the sell-by date. I guess he didn’t cook much. I must have found a dozen empty pizza boxes stacked up in the mudroom.”

Miranda laughed. “Yes, we saw the delivery boy head up here maybe four or five times a week. But never Diamante. He still refused to do business with them, even though they’re the most convenient. They probably have five locations within ten miles of here.”

Hayley paused, her fingers gingerly holding a can that had one bulging side, as if something on the interior was trying to get out. “Really? They’ve expanded that much? Before I left, they had only the one take-out place in Sonoma.”

“They’re everywhere. But your father…” She chuckled. “He said their pizza was crap.”

Hayley didn’t answer. She couldn’t. When Miranda said those words, Hayley could almost hear her father speaking. “Arrogant bastards,” he used to say when anyone mentioned Diamante. “Think they’re better than everyone, but under those expensive suits, they’re still just hash-slingers. And it’s crappy hash, too.”

He lied, of course—everyone knew Diamante had the best pizza. Strictly a California product, though. The first few years after she left Sonoma, Hayley had suffered intense cravings for the honey-sweet crust and signature red sauce.

“I guess he never forgave the Malones for…for Colby,” Miranda said tentatively. “I mean…Colby and you.”

Hayley tightened her jaw, but managed a smile and a shrug. “That was just the most recent sin. The truth was, Dad never forgave the Malones for deciding not to carry Foggy Valley wine in their restaurant anymore.”

Miranda nodded. “They were the first, weren’t they? But not the last.”

That was an understatement. Diamante had merely been the leading edge of a tidal wave of vendors abandoning the tiny winery Ben Watson had been neglecting for years. The Foggy Valley label had been well respected when Hayley’s mother’s parents were alive, but by the time Hayley was thirteen, the winery end of the business was only a memory. A few bits of silver equipment quietly rusting away in an abandoned barn on the eastern edge of the property.

Miranda probably regretted opening old wounds, because she changed the subject smoothly and began asking Hayley questions about her life in Florida. Hayley was happy to tell her all about Genevieve, and her promotion, and the little string of dress shops where Hayley had worked for the past fifteen years.

She still kept the baby news to herself.

They talked until nearly noon, by which time great, lumpy garbage bags covered fifty percent of the blue-tiled kitchen floor. All the cabinets were empty, except for the ones that held plates and mugs, glasses and other housewares. The estate-sale agent would be selling things like that. And soon.

Thankfully Hayley had learned that she wouldn’t have to maneuver through a complicated probate process. When her father’s lawyer had telephoned her with the news of the death, he explained that Ben had set up a trust that made the transfer of assets quite simple. He’d left everything to Hayley and Genevieve, no mention of his wife, as if he’d known quite well that Evelyn Watson had died long ago.