Blush - Jamie Brenner Page 0,18

burned into the backs of her eyelids like a sunspot. She stood near the stairwell banister, rubbing her forehead.

“I can’t think about the winery when that woman is sitting there. How could you not tell me about this absurd engagement?” she said.

“I have more important things on my mind than Asher and that girl.”

Vivian was about to get indignant, to ask what could be more important than their son marrying a gold digger. Good lord, she could only hope the woman wasn’t pregnant yet. But something in Leonard’s voice silenced her. She had known Leonard Hollander since she was a teenager and had only one other time heard him speak so low in volume but at the same time trembling with the effort of restraint.

“Leonard, we’ll figure out whatever it is. If you saw how full the veranda was yesterday instead of sitting in here holed up letting Marty get to you . . .”

“We’re going broke, Vivian.” His face flushed with stress.

Okay, that got her attention.

“So we’ll tighten our belt. We’ve done that before.”

“It’s different this time,” he said.

Vivian knew things were changing in the wine industry. Global competition made it difficult for a small family winery to hold its own. Leonard had been complaining for years that the big corporations could sell at a lower price point because they made their money by volume. Hollander Estates couldn’t increase production—they had a finite amount of land.

“Okay. So what can we do?” she said.

“We’ve been going over our options,” he said. By “we,” she knew he meant Marty, Harold, and Asher. Asher, the heir apparent, even though the only hoe he’d ever picked up was the type who latched on to wealthy young men. She loved her son. They both did. But sometimes it felt like she was the only one who saw his weaknesses.

“I should have been included in those conversations,” she said. After all these decades, it was still frustrating that while Leonard respected her completely as the matriarch of the family, she had become a second-class citizen when it came to the business. She’d built the vineyard by his side, with her bare hands—literally. And yet she’d made one bad hiring decision years earlier and he’d never let it go—despite the fact that he’d made plenty of mistakes of his own.

“I’m including you now,” he said. “I waited as long as I could because I didn’t want to needlessly upset you. But, Vivian, we have to sell.”

She froze. “Sell the winery? That’s not happening.”

“Vivian, listen to me. It is happening. Our sales have been flat for years. We’re losing money. The best we can hope for this summer is to make the winery seem as appealing as possible to buyers.”

What? That didn’t make sense.

“If someone else can buy it and turn things around, why can’t we just fix whatever isn’t working ourselves?”

“Because any fix will take time. The money has run out. What we need is a buyer who is in a position to lose money for a few years. Who wants the winery for the fun of it, for the cachet. We don’t have that luxury.”

“So we find someone to buy the winery while we just sit around the house watching our legacy from afar? That doesn’t sound realistic.”

His expression softened as he looked at her. “No, I’m afraid it’s not. I’m sorry, Vivian, but we’re selling this house, too.”

Nine

The first thing Sadie always noticed when she walked into the winery was the smell of sugar and alcohol. It was as if the aroma had seeped into the pores of the wood, and the building breathed it out.

It was a wide-open and welcoming space, with vaulted ceilings, shelves and shelves of bottles, and plenty of room for customers to relax and enjoy themselves. Jazz music played on the sound system. In the tasting room, couples sipped glasses of the new Hollander vintage while sitting at the steel-topped bar. Ceiling fans whirled gently overhead, and the sound of popping corks filled the air.

One of the quirkiest things about the Hollander estate was the aesthetic difference between the winery and her grandparents’ home. The winery building was a simple, elegant farmhouse—functional and subtly chic. But their house was like something out of Versailles. She’d never known which style truly represented her grandparents. Maybe the hidden journal she’d discovered would give her some insight into her grandmother.

She’d been trying to work in the library again, thinking about the journal and whether she had any reasonable right to read more