The Vineyard Page 6

  They passed a plaque marking the Asquonset town line. The inside of the car grew still. Olivia was as terrified as she was excited; she imagined that Tess felt the same.

  The road was flanked by low-growing shrubs and the occasional large maple or oak, but the few houses strewn about looked run down. There was a rusted piece of farm equipment at the start of a dirt path, and a broken-down truck in a field just beyond. If Olivia didn’t know better, she would have thought she was in a dying town.

  But she did know better. There were neatly mowed fields in the distance beyond the truck, and grazing in its midst, a pair of elegant horses. Besides, according to the Asquonset Web site, the vineyard was thriving. Last year it had produced sixty thousand cases of wine, up from fifty-five thousand the year before, and the estimate for this year was even higher. Asquonset wines were hot up and down the East Coast. Estate labels were being served in the best restaurants, more moderately priced labels were being snapped up for home use, and all of that stood to increase if Natalie’s upcoming marriage merged two big wine names. No, there was nothing dying about this operation. A little chipped paint on the outskirts of town wasn’t getting her down.

  More to the point, she wasn’t about to judge a book by its cover. She had wasted far too much energy in her life doing that. She had fallen for Jared’s brains and Ted’s intensity, for Damien’s singing voice and Peter’s baklava. Not a one of the four had offered much else in terms of a relationship.

  Now Olivia had new clothes, a new job, and a new town. This was a new day. She was turning over a new leaf.

  ASQUONSET CENTER materialized just when Natalie’s directions said that it would. It was little more than a crossroads, with a sandwich shop on one corner, Pindman’s General Store on another, a Cape cottage that appeared to house a lawyer, a psychiatrist, and a vet on the third corner, and a private home on the last. All four buildings were variations on the wood-frame theme, with the sandwich shop low and long, the general store narrow and tall, and the cottage and private home somewhere in between. All four were yellow and painted none too recently—although the faded look struck Olivia as being deliberate. A couple emerging from the professional office looked well dressed and content, as did a pair of little boys sitting on the general store steps. American flags flew proudly. Mailboxes were neatly numbered. A FedEx delivery truck approached from Olivia’s right. The driver honked and waved at a group of twenty-somethings sitting on picnic benches outside the sandwich shop.

  Deliberate, indeed, Olivia thought. The center of town had age and a cultivated charm. She suspected that there were wonderful stories to be told about the origin of Pindman’s or the various incarnations of the professional building; and the sandwich shop had eternal-gathering-spot written all over it. She would be back with her camera to photograph this corner, and more than once, she guessed.

  The road began to climb, taking them past a small brick building with a Town Hall sign and an oversized garage with a Fire Department sign. They crested a gentle rise that held a pretty white church. Its steeple was luminous in a pale blue sky, but what caught Olivia’s breath was the view of the ocean beyond.

  “Look!” she cried.

  Tess said, “I’m hungry. Aren’t there any restaurants here?”

  “There’s the ocean.” But the view was already gone, obstructed by a stretch of thicket, and then the road dipped again, heading inland. Olivia was ebullient. “This is going to be so good.” She rolled down the window and felt a wash of warm, salty air.

  “I have to use the bathroom,” Tess announced.

  “Hold it. We can’t be two miles from the vineyard.”

  “But there’s nothing here,” Tess remarked, and she was right. At that minute, Olivia saw only scrub forests and barren fields.

  Then the vineyard came into view—not the vineyard, actually, just the sign, but the effect was the same. It was bold and bright, startlingly vivid in a world where all else seemed muted. No single minimalist line here. This bunch of grapes spilling from a wineglass was painted in glorious color, and instead of having the expected burgundy letters, the vineyard name was embossed in gold.

  Heart pounding, Olivia turned left onto a narrow road covered with pebbles that crunched under her tires. The road undulated inland, alternately climbing and leveling, brightening with fields of young cornstalks, darkening under forests of cedar and birch.

  “Where’s the house?” Tess asked after a minute.

  Olivia was waiting, watching, wondering the very same thing. They crested another rise, and the fields changed. There were low stone walls running along the side of the road now, and though the greenery here grew in rows as neat as the corn, it was low to the ground.

  Olivia had done her homework. “Those are potatoes,” she told Tess. “The Seebrings grow both—corn and potatoes.”

  “I thought they grew grapes.”

  “They do now, but they didn’t always. Potatoes came first. They were the cover during Prohibition.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “During Prohibition, people weren’t allowed to sell wine. For all official purposes, Asquonset supported itself growing potatoes and corn.”

  “But they did grow grapes and they did sell wine?”

  “Much less than they do now, but yes.”

  “Then they were criminals.”

  Olivia didn’t want Tess thinking illegal, much less asking Natalie about it. “Well, Prohibition was very unpopular. More people were against it than for it. That’s why it didn’t last very long. It was a bad idea from the start. Put down your window, Tess.” She inhaled as Tess complied. “Smell that?”

  Tess sniffed. “I smell dirt.”

  “It’s earth. It’s earth that’s fertile and moist.”

  “If there’s poison ivy here, I’m in trouble.”

  “You won’t get poison ivy. I brought your medicine. You never get it when I bring the medicine.”

  Tess didn’t respond to that. She was sitting as far forward as her seat belt would allow, scanning the road again. “So, where’s the vineyard?”

  Five

  OLIVIA GUIDED THE CAR around a turn to a patch of farmland that at first glance looked simply scrubby and low. Then she noticed posts, wires, and a pattern of plantings. Exhilarated, she declared, “Right there.”

  As the car cruised slowly closer, a world of neatly trellised vines became delineated, tidy rows of gnarled canes and branches with pale green canopies, sides trimmed and guided for maximum exposure to the sun.

  Some rows had signs. Chardonnay, read one. Farther on, another read, Pinot Noir.

  Olivia got goose bumps. It didn’t matter that the hard little BBs growing on the vines in June only remotely resembled grapes. After ogling Asquonset on paper for months, she felt as if she were in the company of celebrities.

  No. That was not the right analogy, she realized. Celebrity was shallow. The feeling here was almost religious. Driving more slowly up that pebbled road, flanked by descendants of the vinifera that had been producing precious European wines for hundreds of years, she felt a hush. And the awe seemed mutual. She imagined that the vineyard had parted to let them through and would close up again once they passed.

  “What do the signs say, Mom?”

  “They’re the names of grapes. Must be by section. That was Pinot Noir on your right. You know which side that is.”

  Tess often confused them. This time, she didn’t. She pointed right, then switched sides. “What’s that one?”

  “Riesling,” Olivia read and gasped. “Oh my.”

  A man had risen between two rows of vines.

  “Who’s he?” Tess asked.

  “One of the workers, I guess.”

  “Where’d he come from?”

  “He must’ve been crouched down in there.” Standing now, he was taller than the highest trellis by more than a foot. She saw auburn hair, sunburned skin, broad shoulders, a maroon T-shirt with the arms ripped off and a tear under the neck band. He w
ore dark glasses, but he was clearly looking their way.

  “Why was he crouched down?”

  “He was working.”

  “Why is he staring at us?”

  “Not staring. Just looking. We’re strangers. He’s curious.”

  “Mom,” Tess murmured out of the corner of her mouth, “why are you slowing down? He does not look nice.”

  No, in fact he didn’t—but Olivia hadn’t realized that she was staring, or that she had slowed. Facing forward, she accelerated gently.

  “I hope they’re not all like him,” Tess said once they were safely past. “He doesn’t want us here.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “His face said it.”

  Olivia thought his face was pretty compelling. Somber and intent. But compelling.

  “So, where’s the house?” Tess asked.

  “It’s coming.”

  “We’ll be at the river soon,” the child warned. Bless her, she had studied the maps and remembered Olivia’s narration. She knew that if the ocean was behind them, the river was ahead. Yes, Olivia thought, she is smart. What she lacked was a sense of distance, which had more to do with inexperience than dyslexia. She didn’t realize that driving slowly, climbing and twisting, they had crossed barely a quarter of the peninsula that the Seebring family owned.

  Then the Great House appeared. It rose with surprising suddenness, and actually had been there all along, but was so neatly framed by trees at the very top of the hill that it had been hidden for a bit. Then again, Olivia may have been so taken by the sight of the vineyard that she had missed it. The Great House looked different from the photographs she had restored. It appeared nowhere near as large or as bright in person. The first floor was clad in large slabs of stone held together by mortar, deeply shadowed where a sloped roof covered the porch. The second floor wore wood, weathered gray by the sea air. The two blended into one hard, craggy face.

  It hadn’t been like that in pictures. Bottom and top had seemed gentle and distinct. For a second, Olivia had the horrible thought that she had created something in the darkroom that hadn’t existed at all—worse, had created something in her mind that hadn’t existed at all.

  All right, she reasoned. Without a point of reference, perspective was often lost in photographs. In the case of the pictures of the Great House, she had relied on the trees. But trees could be larger or smaller. If Olivia had imagined them larger than they were in real life, the Great House would have seemed larger as well.

  And then there was the age factor. The Asquonset she had worked with was many years younger than this one. Some things were bound to be different. But the windows were the same—large, handsome, multipaned casement windows angled open. The peaked gables were the same. The shingled roof was the same.

  The face the house wore might be craggy and hard, but its eyes were open, its brows raised in curiosity as they approached. With clouds floating in wisps above the roof and the vineyards spilling beneath it, Natalie Seebring’s Great House was still an impressive sight.

  Driving that final short distance, Olivia allowed herself a final dream. She pictured pulling up at the door and having a beaming Natalie run out, followed by a flock of household staff, lining up on the walk, eager for introduction.

  Olivia pulled up in the semicircle at the end of the stone walk and parked the car. A low stone wall marked the crescent. A nearby flagpole flew the American flag on top and the Rhode Island flag beneath it.

  She sat for a few seconds, waiting. The front door was a wood-framed screen, much as she had imagined, but it remained empty and dark.

  Climbing out, she rounded the car. Taking Tess’s hand, she went up the walk. Her heart was in her throat. So much was at stake here.

  The front steps were stone, five in all, and wide. They climbed them, crossed the darkness of the porch, and peered inside.

  “Is anybody home?” Tess whispered.

  Olivia put her ear to the screen. “I hear voices.”

  “Talking about us?”

  “I doubt it.” If she was wrong, they were in trouble. From the sounds of it, there was an argument going on.

  She knocked softly on the wood frame of the screen door. The distant voices were joined now by the jangle of the telephone.

  They had come at a bad time. Given her druthers, Olivia would put Tess back in the car, drive out to the main road, waste five or ten minutes, then rearrive. It was a foolish thought, of course. It would be ridiculous to turn back now. Besides, they had already been seen by the man in the vineyard.

  Mustering courage, she pressed the doorbell, an ivory button encased in a swirl of wrought iron. The chime was resonant. The voices inside stopped. Seconds later, the sound of light footsteps approached. Seconds after that, Natalie Seebring appeared.

  When she saw them and smiled, Olivia felt a wave of relief. Everything was going to be all right. Natalie was here—and even thirty years older than in the last photos Olivia had seen, she was lovely. She was of average height and slender, in neat jeans and a polo shirt with the vineyard logo on the breast pocket. But Olivia was most drawn to her face. Her skin was dewy, only barely made up, lightly creased but soft and sweet. Her hair was thick and white, gently shaped to her jaw, faintly windblown, feminine but not prim. She stood straight and agile, wore her age with pride and style, and exuded command.

  Olivia was immediately in awe.

  Still smiling, Natalie opened the door and, amid the faintest scent of freesia, waved them inside. Olivia was just as delighted with what she saw there. The front hall was large and predominantly green. It had an Old World feel to it, with lots of dark wood interrupted by several murals. The staircase made a gradual turn, with a landing every five or six steps. A big orange cat sat on the first landing. A smaller black-and-white one sat halfway to the second.

  Olivia could tell the instant Tess spotted the cats by her excited little catch of breath.

  “You’re just in time,” Natalie said. “There’s a war going on here. I need reinforcements.”

  The words were barely out of her mouth when a woman entered the hall. She looked barely sixty. Her gray dress said she was the maid.

  “Mrs. Seebring, that’s your daughter on the phone.”

  “Olivia, Tess, this is Marie,” Natalie said, rolling the r. “She has worked at this house since she was old enough to hold a job. That’s thirty-five years. Now, suddenly, she decides she wants a career change? I don’t think so.”

  “It’s time,” Marie said, extending a piece of paper that Olivia guessed to be her notice.

  Natalie drew her hands back out of reach. “I won’t take that. You’re upset with the change, is all. But I need you, Marie.”

  Marie shook her head.

  “At least wait until after the wedding,” Natalie begged.

  “I can’t,” Marie said and handed the paper to Olivia, who took it out of sheer surprise. “Mrs. Seebring’s daughter is on the phone. The woman has been trying to reach her. Would you please make her take it?” She turned and walked off.

  “Marie,” Natalie protested.

  “I have wash to do.”

  “I don’t care about the wash,” Natalie called, but the maid was gone. She sighed and gave Tess a more tenuous smile. “Guess we lost?”

  Tess nodded. “Are these your cats?”

  “Yes. That’s Maxwell on the landing and Bernard halfway up.”

  “They’re both boys?” Tess asked, then gave a small cry and bumped into Olivia when a third cat brushed her leg.

  “That’s Henri,” Natalie said, giving the name a French twist. “No need to be afraid.”

  Tess knelt to pat the cat. This one was a black-and-gray tiger. “I’m not afraid. I just didn’t see him coming.”

  “Neither did I,” Natalie said. “He showed up here one day looking half starved, and I couldn’t turn him away.”

  With Tess momentarily content, Olivia was acutely aware of the telephone button blinking red on the mahogany t
able by the stairs. “We can wait here, if you want to take that call.”

  “I don’t,” Natalie said. “My daughter isn’t any more pleased with me than Marie is. None of them understands. As far as they’re concerned, I’m an old piece of cotton candy that should just be sweet and pink. They don’t credit me with having a mind.”

  “The phone, Mrs. Seebring!” came Marie’s distant call.

  Natalie pressed two fingers to her temple. Her eyes met Olivia’s.

  “Would you like me to take it for you?” Olivia asked.

  Natalie’s relief was instant. “Please. Introduce yourself. Tell her that I can’t talk now.”

  Delighted to be of use so soon, Olivia crossed to the phone. In an upbeat voice, she said, “This is Olivia Jones. I’m Mrs. Seebring’s new assistant. I’m afraid that she can’t take the phone—”

  “Assistant?” an upset voice cut in. “What kind of assistant? And why can’t she take the phone? I’m her daughter. I only want a minute.”

  Olivia looked at Natalie, who held up her hands, shook her head, took a step back.

  “I believe she’s outside,” Olivia said into the phone. “Can she call you back?”

  “Of course she can. The question is whether she will. She’s avoiding my calls. Olivia Jones, you say?”

  “Yes.”

  “When did you start working for my mother?”

  “This is actually my first day.”

  “Do you know what’s going on?”

  “Uh, I’m not sure that I know what you mean.”

  “The wedding.”

  “Yes. I know about that.”

  There was a pause, then a beseeching, “She needs to rethink this. It isn’t right. My father’s been dead barely six months.”

  Olivia didn’t know what to say to that. She was a newcomer. She was an outsider. “I think you ought to talk with your mother about this.”

  “That’s easier said than done. This is a woman who couldn’t tell her own daughter that she was remarrying. She knows that what she’s doing is wrong. It’s an embarrassment.”