Blush - Jamie Brenner Page 0,31
was just being provocative. Vivian clearly knew it, too, because she just shook her head and rolled her eyes. Still, for Sadie, it hit a nerve.
“Yeah, well, you’re right, Grandpa,” Sadie said. “My boyfriend broke up with me because I work too much.”
She downed her glass of wine and wondered how long before she could reasonably retreat to the library.
Fifteen
Midafternoon, the sound of merriment, of clinking glasses and champagne corks popping, reached Vivian before she climbed the stairs to the veranda. She felt, as she always did, the electric energy of people noticing her. Of people whispering, That’s Vivian Hollander.
After saying some hellos and agreeing to a few selfies—heavens, how she hated that cultural development—she noticed Asher and Bridget in the corner talking to a woman holding a clipboard. She had salt-and-pepper hair and was dressed in a pantsuit. Asher waved Vivian over.
“Mom, you know Patricia Curtis,” Asher said. Now that Vivian had a good look at her face, she realized she was familiar. And then the tired synapses in her brain made the connection: She was a wedding planner. She’d worked with many couples who had their ceremony at the winery.
“Nice to see you, Mrs. Hollander,” Patricia said.
Vivian smiled and looked around the veranda. “Meeting clients here today?”
Bridget emitted a small, inappropriate laugh.
“Mom,” Asher said, reaching for Bridget’s hand. “We’re the clients. We’re getting married here.”
“Oh—of course.” Somehow, it hadn’t crossed Vivian’s mind that Asher would get married at the winery. A vineyard wedding was something she had dreamed about for Leah, but she had chosen to elope. Vivian had resigned herself to seeing only strangers wed in the spectacular setting she and Leonard had created.
“It was actually Bridget’s idea,” Asher said.
“Have you set a date?” Vivian said, her mind racing. How much time would he need to come to his senses and realize this was a mistake?
“We’re thinking Labor Day weekend.”
“Lovely. That gives us more than a year to plan.”
“No, Mom—this Labor Day.”
“So soon?” Vivian said, all veneer of pleasantry gone. “What on earth is your rush? You just got engaged!” Good lord, maybe Bridget truly was pregnant.
Asher and Bridget exchanged a look. Clearly sensing the tension, Patricia Curtis pretended to have an incoming phone call and wandered off.
“I mean, who knows how long we’ll have the winery,” Bridget said, her voice low. “With selling it and all.”
Vivian had no doubt this little fortune hunter expected quite a windfall from “selling it and all.” Maybe getting rid of her would be as simple as telling her the truth: the gravy train was out of gas.
“How sentimental of you, Bridget. But let me reassure you, it could take months to get an offer, and months beyond that until a closing,” Vivian said. She looked out at the green fields, confident there was no way this wedding was happening.
“Mom,” Asher said. “I met with Dad this morning. There’s already an offer on the table.”
* * *
Sadie pulled her messenger bag off her shoulder and unpacked her work onto the library table. In the stillness of the room, surrounded by all the great volumes of fiction, poetry, biography, the implications of her grandparents selling the property hit her more fully. She could imagine the vineyard going. She could imagine the winery in new hands. But this house? This library? She shuddered to think of every book in the room sold to the highest bidder.
Did her grandmother remember that her old book club journal was tucked away in here? And what about the books themselves? She hadn’t found Lace.
She climbed the stairs, painfully aware now that her time in this special place was finite. She returned to the alphabetically shelved contemporary fiction. Again, she looked through the books by authors with last names beginning with the letter “C”: John le Carré, Raymond Carver, Raymond Chandler, Paulo Coelho . . . and then she spotted it: Shirley Conran.
Sadie pulled the copy of Lace onto her lap, studying the pink satin nightgown and silver serving tray that adorned the book’s cover. It evoked expensive hotel rooms and cheap perfume. She cracked the book open and read the inside jacket: Four elegant, successful, sophisticated women in their forties have been called to the Pierre Hotel in New York to meet Lili, the world-famous movie actress.
A porn star, from what Sadie could glean from her grandmother’s journal.
Already a legend despite her youth, Lili is beautiful, passionate, notoriously temperamental . . .
And also, people really liked adjectives back in the eighties.
Each of the four has reason to